PR Week has an article this week about a second editor who has posted a black list of PR professionals who have sent her unwelcome pitches. Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker, followed in the footsteps of Wired magazine editor, Chris Anderson, posting the e-mail addresses of PR people who have not met their expectations for pitching stories.

I understand reporters’ frustration. Public relations professionals have a responsibility to research a publication, formulate a pitch that is relevant to an outlet’s readers or viewers and send the pitch to the right person. However, this mass posting of PR professionals’ e-mail addresses demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of our own professional responsibilities, time constraints and the demands placed upon us.

In the rapidly changing media world, keeping up with exactly who covers what at even one, let alone the many hundreds of news outlets we must pitch, is all but impossible. Reporters move to new publications, take different positions and sometimes just leave the industry altogether. Even when you feel confident a topic falls squarely within a reporter’s coverage area, a pitch may not resonate.

PR professionals, at least good ones, make every effort to work with reporters in the way that suits each of them best. These whiny postings of blacklisted PR people serve only to degrade a relationship between reporters and PR professionals that should be mutually beneficial. And they demonstrate a severe lack of understanding of the benefits we can provide to them.

PR professionals actually serve many important purposes for reporters. We ensure that information coming out of a company is accurate. Without accurate information, a reporter’s story, and potentially their credibility, is jeopardized. Furthermore, we educate our clients about the needs and constraints of reporters. We tell clients when a story is irrelevant and steer them on a course to providing real, pertinent news.

Without PR professionals, reporters would be lucky to receive any significant story ideas in their inboxes. Believe me. I have heard what many CEOs consider to be a good story. Alternately, reporters’ access to the business leaders who provide the color and details that make a story shine would diminish. Skepticism of reporters among top-level corporate players is remarkably high and PR professionals help bridge that gap.

We are the link between reporters and the people and organizations they cover. Few companies would manage to get the needed information in reporters’ hands without us. And however irrelevant reporters may find many of our pitches, few of them would manage to do their jobs well without us.

In today’s world of instant communication, I wonder sometimes if anyone actually speaks anymore. Between IM, text messaging, e-mail and Web sites like MySpace, I think people forget there is such a thing as picking up the phone to communicate.

I get very confused with techno speak created by techno geeks. I’ve finally figured out what terms like CYA L8R, LOL and BRB mean, but what about CWOT (complete waste of time) and JAM (just a minute)? And, what does having an F2F meeting mean? (Turns out it’s a face to face meeting.) Yikes! Am I nostalgic for good old-fashioned phone calls between me and a client? Or, am I just plain behind the times?

Let it be known that while I’m happy to send account updates via e-mail, schedule meetings using Outlook’s calendar function, and keep in touch with old colleagues through sites like LinkedIn, I still look forward to my F2F meetings and discussions over the phone.

At Philosophy, we still believe in a personal touch. Got an acronym for that?

I just saw a commercial for Southwest Airlines. A dog is chasing its tail, spinning in circles. Kind of funny. Held my attention. Then the commercial cuts to a screen with copy. A voiceover proclaims, “We go nonstop too.” The copy tells viewers about great prices on nonstop flights from Denver to San Diego. But instead of Denver, the screen says, “Dever.”

Now, I know mistakes happen, but seriously? A network commercial? Denver? For everyone out there who could use a little help catching misspelled words, read your copy backwards before finalizing it. It forces you to see the words as words. When you read a sentence, it’s easy to compensate for mistakes because you know where it should be going. Perhaps Southwest could use a new editor. I know where it could find a few. No chance the ladies at Philosophy Communication would let Dever fly.

Recently, I was reading about the ongoing 2008 Presidential race and realized how much hype there is surrounding the primary races, especially among the Democratic candidates. Of course, part of this hype is due to the fact that both contenders are of a race or gender that has never made it to the general election and the race is so close it is neck-and-neck.

“Hype” of course is part of our daily world. We hype companies, movies, people, presidential candidates; even the housing market bubble burst has been hyped-up. The word hype as defined by Dictionary.com is “Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion.” Well, excessive publicity is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you don’t make your audience tired of hearing about you and you deliver on the hype.

There is nothing worse than a company who overhypes itself and then underdelivers. This is a good way to come into the market with a bang and then fall out just as quickly. At Philosophy Communication, we make sure that our clients messages are true to their offering so this communication faux pas doesn’t happen to them!

In a recent lunch meeting, I was minding my own business making a delicious turkey sandwich when something on the deli bag caught my eye. It was an advertisement for a television show…on the deli bag sticker! What? Is there nothing sacred anymore? It is understandable that ads might be on a brand name box of chips. This is something I expect, and of course, completely ignore. However, when ads start popping up on the store brand’s deli bags, the ads have gone too far.

Have you watched a movie on cable lately? You have to love the ads at the bottom of the screen that come zooming into focus like some poorly thought out PowerPoint Presentation and completely interrupt your focus on the movie. And it happens on the Internet too. Ever been surfing around and all the sudden you come to a Web page where there is some obtrusive human person speaking loudly about the benefits of some program, and every time you go to a new page they repeat their speech all over again? The only way to get rid of these people is clicking on them. Talk about inflated click-thru rates.

To be fair, advertising is necessary to promote the growth of brands and alert consumers of products and services that meet their ever growing needs. And it is also true that as more and more companies advertise, that viewers get more and more inundated and only the truly innovative ads stand out in the clutter. But innovative doesn’t have to mean annoying. And while we sometimes remember those annoying ads more than other ads that get lost, it is highly likely that the brand gets a negative image. If someone comes across a brand that they relate to as annoying, they likely will not buy it out of spite. To be successful at advertising, try creating ads and messages that speak to the audience and make them want to watch the ad (i.e. Super Bowl ads). Don’t annoy your audience, no matter how high your click-thru rate is!