Hacks vs. Flacks

I just came across the Hacks vs. Flacks article that was published in the New York Times on Monday. According to the article, Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired was fed up with "lazy flacks," and permanently blocked 329 unsolicited e-mail senders. According to the story, the list includes people from leading PR firms like Edelman, 5W Public Relations, Felishman, Ogilvy, etc.

As PR professionals, there have been times where we have all been a little lazy and rely on e-mail, instead of calling, we did not do enough research to realize that our favorite beat reporter just changed beats and yes, we probably do deluge reporters way too often. But, reporters need to realize that without people like us - their jobs would be a lot harder - they wouldn't get exclusives, they would have to do a lot of research on their own and they would have to track down executives and elected officials for interviews without staff begging and pleading their principal to speak with a reporter that wrote a bad story about their organization last time.

Journalists need to realize that PR pros are necessary for them to do their job. And, not all of us are great and sometimes we make mistakes - but, hey so do journalists.