As an old hand (established in PR in 1987), I remember having to decide whether a story deserved a bike (in London), first class post or a fax. And yes, back in '87, I asked what my colleague meant when he asked me to send the news release to the news release distribution company by bike.

By the way, do people still send photos to radio stations? That was one of the big howlers in the 8os!

Excellent post. I particularly liked the reference to sending by “bike”, as half the RealWire team cycles to work you have given me an idea for a new distributon method

It is fair comment to say that some of the rights are a bit ambiguous. Funnily enough the telephone point was one I thought about at the time as perhaps being unclear, but as these were for discussion we didn't want to go into too much depth as otherwise the list could have ended up being very very long! The main aim was, and still is, to get a constructive discussion started about these issues rather than a reactionary one in response to complaints and posts like this one are exactly what is needed to achieve that.

On the permission point though I am not sure I agree. Where a journalist is concerned then your approach may well be valid, but when outreaching to someone who blogs in a personal capacity then express permission is surely absolutely required and in fact there are legal issues here that apply to reinforce this. You could of course seek permission as part of a pitch, but nevermind legal reasons, isn't it more polite and respectful to ask someone's permission to talk to them in a very brief way first before starting a conversation – however relevant?

As the industry increasingly seeks to engage with the public in more direct means rather than simply though the traditional media, shouldn't we revisit how, and when, such traditional tools as press releases are used in these situations? Your own great work on the SMNR for Dolce and Gabbana is an example of this http://www.wolfstarconsultancy.com/newsroom/jalou/

Right off to buy some bicycle clips….

I agree with the death spiral of bad practices within the PR agencies – the managers indeed perpetuate cold-calling and e-mail blasts upon the young execs, very often appealing to need to increase productivity. Some of my fellow PR practitioners keep hearing “There's no time for that!” or a more sophisticated argument “The journalists appreciate the information, not personalisation.”

As for media lists, we are probably talking about two different landscapes in which the PROs operate – the Eastern and the Western. Given that the Czech media organisations are understaffed and the market is quite small, you can stuff the whole media list for the whole country into one Excel spreadsheet. Any media database company will go out of business, because the agencies are maintaining their media lists on their own. Paradoxically, this might be a good thing – the young PROs should get acquainted with the people they are catering to.