Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Tell journalists what they want to know

During interviews with reporters, people don’t always want to answer questions about company earnings and sales figures.

We tell clients it’s best to give reporters what they want.

If they don’t, the reporter will figure it out on their own.

If they get it wrong, it’ll look like it’s right and there’s little anyone can do about it.  

I say this because we’ve had reporters guesstimate company earnings by using an industry average that was way too low since they were specialists with a large staff.

To have people think they made so little was even worse than having everyone know how well they were doing.

Another time, we almost lost a feature because the company was still in beta-testing, had run into problems and didn’t want to admit sales weren't as high as they’d projected.   

Which is why we say “Honesty is the best policy”—especially with journalists.  

For information, please call us at (916) 455-4790 or visit our website at www.dellrichards.com.