Why journalists and PR pros hate each other

Dueling Top-5 lists of professional peeves.

If you’ve been in the industry for any amount of time, you know that some PR pros and journalists get along as well as cats and dogs. This isn’t always the case, but the truth is most have at least a few pet peeves concerning one another.

That’s why I’ve come up with these lists of things journalists and PR people hate about each another.

5 things journalists hate about PR pros

1. You don’t respect their time. Journalists have this thing called deadlines—and guess what. Those deadlines aren’t flexible, and they certainly aren’t going to get met if you try to talk their ear off on the phone. When speaking with journalists, get to the point, and if they tell you now isn’t a good time to talk, be respectful of that and try to schedule another time for your chat.

2. You send poorly written, spam-like press releases. If you had to guess, how many press releases do you think are sent out each day that are well written and useful? I suspect it’s probably less than 10 percent. Don’t believe me? Just go read any online news wire. Yikes!

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