I find, on average, five pitches in various formats in my inbox each day. The delete key lets me deal with most of them in short order. When I see one that I find particularly irksome, I may be inclined to blog about what was wrong with the pitch; I might forward it to my friends over at The Bad Pitch Blog.

What I don’t do is whine about it.

I’m a blogger. I reach a group of people who share common interests. That makes me a target of others who want to reach the same people. As a result, I get pitched. A lot. I get pitched badly. I get pitched well. Not surpringly, I sometimes actually get something from one of these folks that’s relevant and interesting enough that I actually write about it. I mean, hell, I spend a fair amount of time checking my RSS subscriptions for interesting content to share. I sometimes write about something I saw on TV or heard on the radio. Every now and then, a friend, reader, or podcast listener will forward an item. So do I care if a good piece of content comes from a PR person in the form of a pitch or press release?

Nope. Don’t care. In the end, they’re all just sources. It was an unsolicited press release from the American Cancer Society, for example, that led me to write about the Society’s success with its fundraiser in Second Life. I actually appreciated getting that release. I would have appreciated it even more if I had been contacted personally first, but ultimately it was the quality of the content that mattered to me.

Interestingly that defines the role of PR, an industry that prominent blogger Tom Coates holds in such low regard. PR is not about buying off a blogger (or TV station or newspaper); that’s the advertising business. PR is all about knowing the publisher/blogger/channel well enough to provide material in which he actually might actually be interested. Advertising is bought. PR is earned. That’s why I’m more or less okay with spending 30 or 40 seconds every day deleting bad pitches by clueless practitioners in order to get to the infrequent nugget that appeals to me.

What disturbs me about Tom Coates’ fit over being pitched is that he lumps all blogger outreach together, suggesting that it is inappropriate under any circumstance for anybody in the wretched and subhuman PR profession to reach out to him (or, by extension, to any blogger).

This all started when WebitPR’s Stephen Davies posted a list of 100 influential UK bloggers to his PRBlogger blog, which included Coates. Coates evidently started getting a flood of pitches after the list appeared, which prompted his tirade:

It really pisses me off that press people consider me an outlet to push their marketing messages. It upsets me that people in the world can look at me and only see ways that they can scavenge some limited advantage through which to push their agendas. They see my personal expression, my unadulterated opinion and they think they can use it as a host for their parasitic bullshit.

Worse still, I’m not sure they understand how revolting I find the whole thing. I’m not sure they get that I don’t consider it part of my life’s mission to carry the messaging they want to distribute. I don’t think they understand that it’s an insult to me for them to think that my voice is so apparently for sale. I find it degrading, patronising, cynical. It makes me want to hurl.

Coates has resolved to never, ever talk to his readers about something that was pitched to him. It doesn’t matter if it’s something his readers might find useful. He doesn’t care about the value of the content, only that it came by way of a press release or a PR shop. He draws no distinction between good pitches and bad ones. “I will absolutely never talk about something that I receive through a press release, or as a consequence of someone giving me a freebie.” He seems to think that passing along information he got from a PR source somehow means he sold out.

Incidentally, there’s nothing new about this idea. There are even icons, published in mid-2005 on MobHappy.

Even that’s not an adequate solution for some people. A comment to Davies’ blog from someone named Mark reads, “Why should Tom, I or anyone else be required to post a ‘do not pitch’ policy on our sites? Why should we be required to engage you on your terms? Our time is valuable, and I???m not going to apologise for reacting badly when people act antisocially towards me.”

Hmm. Okay. So every PR agency with a blogger outreach program, no matter how ethically and intelligently they implement that program, and no matter how much other bloggers find it to be useful, should just pack it up and go home? All blogger outreach is antisocial and inappropriate?

What utter nonsense. I’ll speak from my own personal experience: I have never been rebuked for one of my blogger outreach efforts; more often, I have been praised by bloggers who appreciate that I’ve done my homework. I really have read their blogs. I really do believe that my client’s message is relevant and of interest to their readers. I ask first in a personal email if I can forward the content. And I’ve prettymuch always been right. That’s not to say there aren’t PR practitoners who spam bloggers or otherwise fail to execute proper blogger outreach. But for goodness sake, do we really want to throw the baby out with the bathwater?

There are a

couple

few lessons that emerge from this kerfuffle:

• If you’re going to engage in blogger outreach, do it right. Don’t be one of the buffoons who earn the wrath of people who will paint an entire profession with your behavior (like Coates) or prompt bloggers to ridicule your specific pitch (like me). There are plenty of resources to help you.
• Be prepared for those who reject your place in the blogosphere regardless of how well you do your job.
• If you’re a blogger, and you develop a sizable and targeted following, be prepared to get pitched. Put your policy on your blog. Get ready to use your email filters and your delete key. Don’t be shocked and offended to find that someone with a commercial interest believes you might actually share an interest in their message. Just find a way to deal with it.