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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

I've wondered about the spectrum of behaviors/relationships that exist in PR. This article describes one end of the spectrum: straight-up pay for play. What is the slightly-less-outrageous behavior? Do big PR firms take people out to expensive lunches or get them floor seats at Knicks games (much like salespeople woo potential clients)?

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A much cheaper solution: send reporters or newsdesks article 'helpers'. Basically, provide a list of bullet points which can be trivially fleshed out into a human-interest article, chosen and ordered to produce the story you want.

If you have a synthetic diamond company or something (that's a fake example), you don't really need to bribe your way into the headlines. You can just provide a ready-made skeleton for an article about how lab diamonds are indistinguishable from natural diamonds, and spice it up with some stats about how they're a huge hit with millennials. You can even get your company into the story by providing a juicy quote, which will of course be sourced as "Joe Schmoe from LabDiamondsAreUs says..."

I've seen this operation happen from both ends, and it works eerily well. Harried writers are grateful for content that's easily converted into deadline-beating stories, and as long as the topic is relatively low-consequence they don't feel much need to cross-reference or seek dissenting voices.

I get these all the time from SV startup PR firms. "Story Idea: 5 innovative new uses for Docker/Containers/Mongo" etc. it's one of the fastest ways to ensure I never write about something.

So if a PR firm is working for Startup A and pitches a list that includes Startup A-E, then you wouldn't write about any of them? Or can you tell in advance who is paying the bill?

They way it goes is that the PR firm sends me a basically fully written story, and offers to get me on the phone with one of their marketing folks to get a quote.

Sometimes, it's just a press release, but with a bunch of prewritten social shares for me.

Here's an example, anonymized. I got this 2 weeks ago - https://pastebin.com/xwjiUhwS

Not egregious, in this case, but, pretty presumptive on the part of PR.

I guess, on reflection, the behavior that seems most frustrating is pitching it as a "Story Idea". I would prefer to have had "An offer to speak with CEO of XYZ". But, in fairness, as an analyst I have slightly different priorities that the average journalist. (not saying they're better priorities, just different)

This is from my own understanding, which might not be correct, but had friends in this field.

So papers and magazines need to fill pages, so that a they have a product and b hey get advertising revenue.

So pr is half about building a great relationship so you can get them to put in your 'good stuff', the easy sells, but them also having them be on your side to run your duff stuff - getting you in at the last minute or pushing a product that isn't all that. But generally the lunches and drinks and even holidays were about relationships and a small amount of 'gifting' - but at the end of the day the journalist can always turn you down. But then they might not fill all their pages. And that really is what they are paid to do.

But in terms of the freebies, it's just as you say - gig tickets, lunches, samples, goodie bags, holidays - but don't forget that most of these things will have you with the PR person, not alone - so not like you can take your partner etc. Though the gifts you usually can take home and keep. The paper/magazine aren't that interested in them.

Exactly. There are much less explicit ways of gaming the system once you're connected. Friends help friends. Just like so many jobs are filled through referrals, lots of marketing takes place through professional connections.

Get banned from future unveilings unless you write nicely about current products?

Happens to film critics, apparently:

> Disney’s behavior is not entirely abnormal; many entertainment journalists and critics have experienced some kind of retaliation in the past. Publishing a negative review can, in some cases, make it harder for an outlet or individual critic to get an interview or an invite to an advanced screening in the future.

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/11/7/16617394/la-times-disn...

In the fashion world the standard practice is: "You buy an ad in our magazine, and we can guarantee a placement of your product in one of our editorial stories."

I suspect that readers of fashion magazines are OK with that for the same reason that people used to read the Sears catalog: you know they're selling you something, but it's stuff you want to buy.

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