[Marketing] how I add a contact to our targeted mailing list, part 17

Sean DALY sdaly.be at gmail.com
Mon May 18 05:52:03 EDT 2009


http://www.watoday.com.au/executive-style/gadgets/lowcost-laptop-in-australia-20090518-b97m.html

Here's a post from Down Under adapted from the Sydney Morning Herald
(I can't show you the source article since their database is on the
blink) with lots of information about OLPC (and almost none about
Sugar).

Unfortunately, lots of the information presented is dated and
inaccurate; the journalist probably didn't get everything Barry Vercoe
was saying. Although it's tempting to want to contact the journalist
and offer to brief them, we don't have enough PR staff for that (yet
:-) so I just add the journalist to our list, here's why:

Journalists at most news organizations have "beats" (areas covered,
some expertise to great expertise); in some newsrooms though, many
beats are self-organized - one colleague has often covered the
computer industry, another education including government policies;
the two journalists might flip a coin at the coffee machine to decide
which one writes today's story. At a tech publication, one colleague
might cover networking, one software, one hardware, etc.

Most journalists who see something interesting and specific such as
OLPC will start by checking if a colleague has already done a story on
it and will ask them if they are interested in doing another, or in
providing rapid background. So there is value in targeting a
journalist who has already written about OLPC/Sugar; they will likely
do so again, or provide background to one of their colleagues.

Sean


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