Why Do Clueless Publicists Still Have Jobs?

not to mention a grammatical error on the "under construction" page

hrm.. nothing quite says 'posh' as much as 'cheap discount domains' sprayed all over your web site.

I'm sure they'll do just fine.

Instead of having her fired, how about just teaching her the right and wrong of PR email etiquette. I was sent an attachment press release, and asked the person not to send me attachments.

They complied. Easy as pecan pie.

I have politely asked at least 10 publicists so far this year not to send email attachments and told them why. Educating flacks is not the media's job. Enough already!

As a former PR person, I would think that you would want to continue to help the profession, and raise the bar. So, yes, that is your job to educate others.

Is it the media's job to shame them into compliance by publicly naming them? I think not, and it shouldn't be yours either.

Jeremy: It is NOT my job to educate publicists, it is their employer's job to educate them. The main reason I am no longer a publicist is that the work is performed at such a low level by the vast majority of practitioners that I don't want to be associated with them.

Yes, there are brilliant publicists. Yes I read releases sometimes. Yes I even put out releases for clients sometimes.

And when I tell this woman that I don't open unsolicited attachments for fear of email viruses and that other journalists don't either, and she writes back "Thanks for the Advice!" instead of "would you like me to include the release in the body of an email?" or "here is a link to a copy of the release online," or just plain "I'm sorry," I think it's time to name names.

Were you also offended last week whwen Seth Godin ran the headline of a press release from hell that was sent to him? He named the company. And I wrote about his post. Should neither of us have said anything?

Darren: Bloggers *are* new media. We *are* journalists. We're writing new rules for what "should" and "shouldn't" be said. I'm tired of seeing 1 MG attachments from PR people spamming my inbox. And when it happens, my policy is to name them. You are free to make your own policies.

Well, since I don't regulary read Seth's Blog, I missed that post. I worked with Seth at a company I used to be with, I like him, I get sneezing. Plus, he's a great speaker.

There's a slight difference between what he wrote, and what you wrote. You're calling for someone to be fired. He called out a firm - as I have before - for not getting the blogosphere, and the changing media relations that go with it.

You went for blood asking for that person to be fired, a person merely trying to make a living. Think how YOU would feel if someone posted something like that about you.

If you want to take a shot at anyone who publishes in a public space (myself included), that's fair enough. But publicly criticizing a private citizen because you happen to disagree with how they do their job? That's highly dubious. If you want to be perceived as a journalist, you should act more like one.

I know of what I speak, because I used to think like you. Ultimately, I recognized the stories I told weren't improved by naming the unsuspecting people who emailed me. In fact, the practice only undercut my credibility by making me appear petty and hurtful.

We also need to be responsible with our Google clout. From the looks of things, you'll soon be the #1 result for "Brenda Versova" on Google. How's that going to look to friends, family and future employers who Google her? Ms. Versova shouldn't have to expend significant time, energy and expense creating an online presence simply to combat your cheap shot.

To paraphrase Stan Lee, with some power, comes some responsibility. If you don't care about inflicting that on Ms. Versova, frankly, that's pretty heartless. If you think she deserves it because she works in a field that requires her to email public figures, that's foolish.

I do the same thing as Jeremy. Any time I receive a large attachment via e-mail from somebody I send them a standard response..."there are many issues...blah blah, you might want to consider dial-up users.....I think you just filled up my 10MB limit on my Blackberry service" etc.

I usually get immediate responses apologizing. Most the the 'offenders' are from corporations with networks where sending a 1MB+ attachment takes the same amount of time as sending a 1K e-mail so to them there is no difference in size. Often these e-mails are sent by an assistant.

Of course if the same person continues to send me large attachments then that is a different situation.

In one case I recently recieved an e-mail with a logo at the bottom of the signature line. Well the image file was 1.2MB. The assistant had simply resized the print version of the logo down to 150 x 25 pixels in the e-mail editor.

I e-mailed the assistant to tell them why they might want to consider doing things differently. Guess what? It was her first day on the job.

B.L. If the phrase, 'any publicity is good publicity' is true and you like to name names, then any firm looking for some publicity might want to send you some 5MB attachments.

This publicist learned how to use e-mail but couldn't be bothered to learn netiquette. It's not B.L.'s job to teach her -- it's her job to learn. And there are plenty of books and web sites that will teach her the basics fairly quickly.

In 1994, National Public Radio publicly humiliated me by awarding me the "longest header of the month" award for a boneheaded e-mail I sent that had the entire recipient list in the CC: field instead of the BCC: field. I apologized. It didn't hurt my career that I'm aware of.

I have sent over a thousand e-mail news releases since 1994 and I never made that mistake again. Sometimes public shaming is called for and it's often quite effective at changing behavior.

STEVE O'KEEFE
Author of "Complete Guide to Internet Publicity"