No ‘editorial opportunities’ here

This afternoon, I received a pitch from a public-relations professional, who was inquiring about a special report listed on the SD Times editorial calendar. (I’m sure that Sylvia got the info out of a stupid media directory, since if she had actually looked at the SD Times editorial calendar she’d have noticed that I’m not the listed editorial contact.)

What was noteworthy is that Sylvia used the phrase “editorial opportunity” in her pitch more often than usual — once in the subject line, and then five separate times in the message body.

“Editorial opportunity” is a phrase that disturbs many journalists and editors. PR professionals who have a journalism or editorial background understand this, and don’t use that phrase.

But many other PR people don’t understand why the phrase “editorial opportunity” raises hackles.

For the benefit of the many PR people who read my blog, here is my response to Sylvia (expanded to be more explanatory than the original response):

Hi, Sylvia,

I’ll pass along a comment: The phrase “editorial opportunity,” while commonly used by PR and marcom professionals, sets a journalist’s teeth on edge. It’s like fingernails on a blackboard. Yes, you see a story that we’re working on as an “editorial opportunity” to promote your client to our readership. However, we don’t see it as an “opportunity” at all.

We don’t view journalism as being about creating “opportunities” for vendors to pitch their wares or get out their marketing messages. When writing magazine and newspaper stories, journalists and editors work for their readers. We don’t work for vendors and their PR agencies. That distinction is important to us.

While we might do a story on, say, [client’s technology], we do not consider that story to therefore be an “editorial opportunity” for [client name] or any of the other vendors in that space. That’s not why we’re writing it.

In fact, we try to hard to ensure that we are not creating an “editorial opportunity” because that implies that we’re sellouts who are colluding with vendors to help market their products.

Because we feel strongly about this, your use of the phrase “editorial opportunity” may cause us to give a negative response to your pitch. You see, if we provide a positive response to such a pitch, we are, by implication, agreeing that our stories are indeed “editorial opportunities” for your clients, and that we’re a de facto part of their marketing team. We don’t want to do that.

Thus, my advice is that “editorial opportunity” is not a phrase you should ever use in pitches to journalists and editors. Instead, please refer to what we’re doing as “stories.”

Best, -Alan Z