Comments on: Living Off the Land of Freebies from PR People

By: eemusings@twitter

eemusings@twitter — Sun, 20 May 2012 10:40:16 +0000

I once received a beautifully crafted and tailored pitch so ON it made me want to weep.

And there are a couple PR peeps I often deal with who are great and generally know their shit, and never ever take anything for granted (PR types with an entitlement attitude? DIE.)

But there are too many clueless ones who clog inboxes and phone stalk us. I try to take a deep breath after taking those kinds of calls and remind myself they are only doing it because a client is on their back. (And that makes me want to never switch sides.)

By: Ellie R. Levine@twitter

Ellie R. Levine@twitter — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:03:55 +0000

I was once a 24-year-old in Brooklyn, living off a savings account and the occasional freelance check.

I’m now 29, gainfully employed as a publicist, and have just been denounced as a “ghoul” by the ghost of my former self. Yet somehow I’m not ashamed…? Perhaps because I don’t fit the above description (nor do my colleagues, for that matter). I send tailored pitches to targeted media and I exercise restraint when using exclamation points. Most importantly, I’m not offering trash for review; I’m offering books. Yes, Ryan O’Hanlon, aspiring author: if/when your writing is published, you will have to rely on those word-sending vultures in the publicity department to get your book in the hands of editors–editors who (and I hope you see where I’m going with this) might accept the review copy but not actually write the review. Because, duh. Dog-eat-dog, and so on and so forth.

Anyway, gotta go draft some more twisted moral contracts!

By: homotextual

homotextual — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:08:28 +0000

Yeah speaking as an ex-editor who has written for several conde nast glossies (and therefore experienced a fair amount of PR attention) this feels needlessly dehumanizing, vicious, and unsympathetic. Perhaps more than anything it reminds me of entering this world when I was 21, seeing the same hierarchy, and behaving similarly. hopefully you’ll grow out of it, guy.

By: Megano!

Megano! — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:26:51 +0000

Maybe it’s Canada but all the PR people I have met/talked to have been lovely.

By: Will@twitter

Will@twitter — Wed, 16 May 2012 18:23:43 +0000

Wow… talk about making sweeping generalizations about an entire industry of people. Yes, some people in the PR industry are terrible do-nothings who send mass emails to every journalist and his mother, but a lot of them (I’m including myself here) are hardworking individuals simply looking to help journalists and editors while at the same time promoting their product/company/person (mostly in non-bro-code-following verticals, but still).

I would think that, being the editor of a men’s website, it would be the expectation that you would receive these types of offers. By the time that you’re experienced enough to become an editor, you should’ve been in the industry long enough to learn how those types of websites operate. And without the help of PR people offering up B-list celebrities to interview, how much more difficult would your job have been?

I’m just saying that there are two sides to every coin, and this article unfairly paints all PR people as terrible idiots (who, in your case, probably hate pushing their stupid products and are only doing so because that’s their job and they’ll get fired if they don’t and become part of that 8.2% as you so eloquently put it).