PR Firms Keeping Dossiers on the Editors? hell, yes!

The blog-o-sphere erupted this week with a story about how Fred Vogelstein, of Wired, inadvertently saw his 'PR dossier', supplied by Wagonner Edstrom to its client, Microsoft.

The dossier he received has been posted by the editor, and makes for, well, fairly boring reading. Okay, I suffer from some borderline ADD, I suspect, but there was nothing damning in the lengthy posting, other than the observed fact that Vogelstein is "digging for dirt." Otherwise it is a summary of recent conversations, advice on what to focus on when talking to this editor. Pretty effective, if long.

Do we keep dossiers on CAD/CAM editors in our office? Hell no. We know pretty much everyone in our industry and can predict the possible responses, outcomes and questions fairly accurately. Our email is linked to our CRM and gives us more than enough evidence on how to deal with the 'characters' in the industry. As the small team that our company is, we all share our experiences between us regarding individual editors, enough to be able to work through any issues. This means that we often give clear advice to clients on how to 'handle' certain editors, (It works, believe me) but we are not large enough to require documented summaries, as per Wag Ed, to have to put it all in a document. (that is required when you have a large team that really has no experience in a specific vertical industry or niche market, like whot CAD is.)

Waggoner Edstrom did nothing wrong here. The summary seems fair. This uproar is unmerited and I suspect that now 'editor prestige' will be predicated on if they have a dossier, how long it is, and with which PR company it is with. If this is transparency of information, this is no sweat. Keep it up guys.

rach

Comments

[Randall Newton]

I saw my WagEd file recently. It said, "Will sit up and beg on command, but confuses 'roll over' for 'play dead.'"