Stephen Pritchard’s media blog

Wishing everyone the best for the festive season…

click here for our e-card this year

I’ve been working on a couple of FT stories this week and thought it might be worth recapping why so many PR pitches fail to make the grade: they focus too much on the UK.

It’s worth repeating that unless it is for a report that is for the UK only, FT content is written from a global viewpoint. In particular, the US audience is a very, very important readership.

Pitches have a much greater chance of success if they reflect that, and offer high-quality global or US interviewees or examples.

Don’t just take my word for it though: this quote is from Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com.

“The US is FT.com’s biggest market, with more subscribers and registered users than in any other region, and we see a great deal of potential in building on that substantial base of loyal US readers.”

(please see here for the original story on journalism.co.uk, about the expansion of US financial coverage).

So, to recap, the audience is not UK, nor EMEA, but global with a strong US presence. That’s why we put so much store on US angles and truly global commentary in FT stories.

If clients don’t get it, by all means show them Rob’s quote…

I’ve posted a quick (2 minute) video review of Panasonic’s FT1 digital camera over at stephenpritchard.com.

It’s worth checking it out, and a companion piece I will be recording on syncing with external audio for a more professional result.

Any company that says “our execs won’t be appearing on video” should think about what happens when journalists, bloggers, or even disgruntled customers, can carry something like this in a jacket pocket.

I really don’t like to complain but unfortunately I’m forced to put up this note regarding PR pitches for this Autumn’s features in the FT’s Digital Business. Digital Business (and the FT of course) have a global audience. That means the content has to have a global outlook.

If you are going to make an unsolicited pitch for your clients for upcoming features, please keep this in mind. There is no bias in favour of UK customer examples. In fact, unless they are globally known organisations or brands, it is very very unlikely I will want to feature them.

And I will not, under any circumstances, interview UK or other country executives, or regional types. Any client executives put forward need to be on the global management team. Also, I will not, unless the piece is specifically about marketing or sales, speak to executives in either discipline.

Apologies for cross-posting but given the importance of the issue, I thought it best to reproduce the whole post from stephenpritchard.com rather than just link to it.

It seems to be increasingly difficult for working photographers and video makers to work freely in public places in the UK. A minority of police officers and other officials seem to believe that public order and anti-terrorism legislation can be used to prevent anyone taking pictures or video, without any real evidence of a threat to public safety. For some reason, professional photographers and photo or video journalists, as well as keen amateurs, seem to be at the sharp end of officials’ displeasure.

For a particularly extreme example, see Henry Porter’s piece in the Guardian following allegations of mis-treatment made by Kent amateur photographer Alex Turner.

Experiences, such as those reported by Turner, appear to be increasingly common. And there are serious implications for professional photographers who need to work in public places.

It is doubtful that the legislation cited to Turner, and used elsewhere against photographers, is meant to operate in this way. It is also strange to see so much attention being focused on professionals or people with professional-looking kit, when so many members of the public carry and use simple digital cameras or camera phones. It would have to be an extreme double bluff for those with nefarious intentions to go to the trouble of carrying complex, bulky and above all highly obvious professional equipment to capture images that might assist them in planning crimes, given the capabilities of a £50 pocket compact.

Whether or not Turner was sensible (rather than within his rights) not to identify himself to the officials in Kent is a mute point. Working journalists should — and usually do — carry recognised ID, either in the form of employers’ identification cards or the UK national press card (available, for example, through the NUJ or for video crews, BECTU). Professionals working at demonstration and other public order events often wear their press card where it is clearly on view to police and other officials.

Citizen journalists, bloggers and others who are not eligible for a staff or union card are in a more difficult position, as are amateurs and students. But there are a few guidelines that can help take the heat out of most day-to-day situations:

This is one for the in-house PR and marketing folk. We are trying to gauge the extent to which spokespeople are being trained for multi-media interviews (podcasts, online video, as well as conventional broadcasts).

Anecdotal evidence suggests that many are not, but I will post a summary of results here in a few weeks’ time.

Here’s the link – thanks for helping out.

I’m looking at how flexible people are when it comes to recording podcasts, and trying to find out whether there is more scope for remote (down the line) interviews.

If you are a PR (agency or vendor) and have five minutes to complete the survey here, that would be a great help.

If you are interested in remote interview technology, or training for podcasts and broadcasting, please click here to get in touch.

For another view on the pitching story, please see an interview with Digital Business editor Peter Whitehead, courtesy of Paul Stallard’s blog.

Over the next month or two we will be launching some new training courses.

The first is a course aimed at PR professionals tasked with setting up and staffing multi-media interviews.

Not everyone has the luxury of a broadcast team (and nor do all clients have the luxury of retaining a broadcast agency). And although there is some overlap, the requirements of podcasters, videocasters and journalists working online do differ from those of the conventional broadcasters.

The course will be a one-day session covering both theory and practice (with a chance to try out some of the kit too), and is suitable for small groups of six to eight people.

Click here to contact us for more information.

The cause of all the trouble (and a little green, as white balance is not my Nokia's strong point)

So an overnight flurry of snow has brought one of the world’s great cities to a halt — yet again.

Leaving aside whether the transport network could be better prepared, how have online services coped?

The web site for my local train company, SouthWest Trains, as well as the pages for National Rail, were down or unreachable during this morning’s commuter peak.

The BBC’s London web pages also contained very little specific information this morning (old-tech Radio 5 Live was a more useful source). The mobile phone network was overloaded, so no luck there either.

So no chance of making it into London for an 08.30 meeting. Separately, the local authority decided to shut my son’s school but the only way to find out was to walk up there and see the queue of parents and kids heading away from the gates. No information on the Richmond Council web site until mid-morning, well after the school run. Apparently some parents sent emails to some other parents, but that rather falls down if the parent on the list doesn’t have a PDA.

The school website does actually say it’s closed today (though isn’t the council’s site a more obvious place to look?) And couldn’t we make better use of the technology? IM, SMS, Twitter even?

Also how many people are really set up for working from home, with secure VPN access and reliable broadband? It’s not just the major disasters that can catch businesses out.

Update

The rail companies’ sites now seem to be up and running again.

If you use and want to follow train services updates that way, you can do so by following this link to Ben Smith’s uktrains wiki.

(*) For the non parents out there, that’s a Thomas the Tank Engine quote. But at least he tried to get through, even though he wouldn’t wear his snowplough.