Nothing against stenographers . . .

Some advice a Washington Post reporter gave me 20 years ago still resonates.

His name is Gary Lee. He covered the environment, having returned from a stint as the Post’s Moscow bureau chief. Nowadays, according to his LinkedIn profile, he owns a Peruvian hotel and runs a restaurant in DC with the mission of providing employment to recent immigrants. Obviously, a smart dude.

Back then one of my college professors saw something in the freelance articles I was writing for the local paper, and she kind of knew Gary. She arranged for us to meet when I went home to the DC area for Christmas break.

I arrived at the Post newsroom a bit awe-struck. Gary showed me around, very polite, and didn’t say much. We sat down at his desk and he gestured for me to hand him the portfolio of articles I had clutched against my left side.

You know that nervous tension you feel when you’re in a job interview and the interviewer is reading your resume? It felt like that, only lasted a lot longer.

Eventually Gary finished and said something obligatorily nice. Then he gave the pearl of wisdom that’s persisted these 20 years, and has developed even more meaning now that I’m on the PR side:

Your role isn’t to simply write down what people said and what happened. That’s what a stenographer does. Your role is to interpret and synthesize everything relevant for your audience. Don’t be a stenographer.

Gary was talking about the relationship between sources, me as a journalist, and my audience. Here’s how I’ve applied the same advice to the relationship between “clients” (internal or external), me as the pitching pro, and the influencers my clients want to reach.

The Client often tells you what the news is, and even the “messaging,” which to them are the words you should use to pitch the news. And most PR people simply act like a stenographer, writing down what The Client says and then relaying that to the media, even to the very same list of influencers the client dictates.

Like Gary said, don’t be a stenographer. You gain respect and earning power in this business when you take what the client gives you and then inject added value at least three levels of the pitching process.

1. Targeting and customizing for the right influencers, not whomever the client says.
2. Creatively framing the information in a way that’s newsworthy and useful to your targets, regardless of what The Client gives you to work with.
3. Persisting until those targets consider what you have to offer.

If you don’t feel like you have the authority or license to apply your own creativity and expertise at those three levels, you need to achieve a track record of success that you can point to and respectfully demand such license.

More to come on all three of those levels.