Hear ye, hear ye! New rules of media relations declared!

A medieval town hall meeting it was not. Rather, Marketwire co-sponsored a webcast that took place yesterday (October 28, 2009) on “The New Rules of Media Relations,” focusing on how PR pros can effectively work with today’s journalist in the media landscape that’s morphing right before our very eyes.

Helpful tips, useful facts and insightful questions made the webcast a source of valuable information as we all navigate our way through unchartered territory.

Highlights included:

• Make sure your pitch is relevant to that journalist and closely reflects what they cover.
• In the subject line of an email pitch, mention a recent story that the journalist published and relate your pitch to that.
• Journalists use Twitter as a news source when tweets link to a recent study, an embargoed press release, or when determining what the hot topics are.
• Traditional media kits are obsolete, for the most part, unless they’re uploaded onto a USB drive – and even that’s iffy.
• Even good, targeted pitches fall off the wayside, simply because journalists don’t have the time to review them all. Don’t take it personally.
• Write at an 8th-grade level for a web-based/universal audience.
• Keep headlines under 65 characters to maximize search engine optimization.
• Yahoo! is releasing a web-based editorial style guide in 2010.

See the slides and hear the audio from “The New Rules of Media Relations.”

We posted tweets throughout, and received tweets from webcast participants. The string can be seen at #prweekmarketwire; here are a few of the tweets:

• Great Webcast today. Very informative, thanks!
• Journos agree – Facebook & Twitter relevant, LinkedIn OK, MySpace dead
• Panelists want PR pros to provide short and concise bullet points instead of flowery descriptions
• Interesting webcast today from @PRWeek & @marketwire … we’ve all been assured journalism is not dead, thank goodness
• Listening to The New Rules of Media Relations webcast. Great stuff from #PRWeek & @marketwire on connecting effectively with journalists.

Included in the discussion were Ivan Oransky, executive editor at Reuters Health (@ivanoransky); Chloe Albanesius, news reporter at PCMag.com (@ChloeAlbanesius); Kevin McCormally, editorial director at Kiplinger Washington Editors; and Jessica Strange, executive director of Media Relations at Marketwire (@marketwire). Rose Gordon, news editor at PRWeek, was the moderator.

Next up: Marketwire will be at the PRSA conference in San Diego (November 7-10) and is sponsoring a workshop — “Way Above Water: Keeping Afloat through Turbulent Economic Times” — on the 10th at 3:30 pm, presented by Sally Falkow, social media strategist extraordinaire.  Also, check us out in the Exhibition Hall, booths 63 and 64.