Archive for October, 2008

If we were right now a week into the secular calendar, we’d still be making our way through the annual "Year in Review" issues of magazines, features in papers and programs on television. There’s nothing quite like time that gives journalists the license to forget "news" for a bit and focus, instead, on perspective. And so they do.

But PR doesn’t work that way. Oh, sure, our trade magazines also do their annual highlight issues, and we all read them. But our industry is all about today – and tomorrow.

I’ll give you an example: I had a wonderful relationship with a particular reporter from the NY Times some years ago. He loved the stories I pitched him and he usually wrote long, deep articles about my clients. Of course, I only pitched him the good stuff. After all, that’s how wonderful PR person-reporter relationships grow.

Anyway, it happened one time that he thought I had given an exclusive to his competitor, The Wall Street Journal. He called me in a rage, doing his best impression of George Carlin’s "The Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine. And that, as they say, was that.

He never took a call from me again. The fact is that I hadn’t been the one to give the story to his competitor. The M&A agency had done the deed. But it didn’t matter to him.

And that’s what I mean when I say that PR doesn’t work that way. Had you looked at the previous 12 months of my relationship with that reporter, it was a heck of a year for me. But that one tirade-inclusive day destroyed the whole thing.

So it’s nice to look at the magazine features, but it truly does not matter at all. What matters is where we are and where we are going, with the media, with our clients, with our colleagues, and even with our own approaches to our careers.

So congratulations on all our industry has achieved, but more importantly, here’s to a wonderful Jewish New Year, filled with positive growth for all of us!