Beyond Hype: The Rules of #Tech Journalism: I've got 99 Problems and your PDF ain't one!

We kick off this new series with some basics... 

To set this into context, we are an information provider – our mission is to curate and supply information to our readers that they will find useful, informative and (hopefully) entertaining.

We do not charge vendors and other organisations money for running their stories and press releases – no pay-to-play here. You either get in on the editorial merits of your story or you don’t. The end. And please don’t whinge if you have sent us a boring story that we haven’t published because it is boring.

All we ask in return for running your stories is that you minimise the production process at this end by supplying content in a convenient and accessible format. Remember, your company or client may be very important to you but it's just one of dozens vying for our attention every day. (And heaven help those big news services and national newspapers who have to sift through hundreds of press releases and pitches on a daily basis.)

So here we go with simple cut-out-and-keep rules…

Rule 1:  We want press releases as either plain text within the body of an email or as a Word Doc/Docx file attachment. PDFs are a pain because, depending upon how they have been created, they can be difficult to copy and paste into website, blog posting, and/or newsletter page makeup systems. Odd line breaks, odd text formatting etc. Incidentally, we’re fine with PDFs as white papers and case studies as we just post them up as is. 

Additionally, PDFs are a complete nightmare when we need to work from a tablet, such as an iPad, or even a smartphone. The story within the body of the email is our favourite format.

Rule 2:  We only accept press releases that are emailed to us. Life is too short to visit external websites and/or read RSS feeds from 500+ vendors and PR agencies. We are also not fans of press release distribution services, such as PR Web, because we get way too much irrelevant content. We do not sift these services – ars longa vita brevis and all that (aka life's too short) – they go straight to spam.

We are also not impressed by people who email to say “this story went onto our website last week, will you use it?” because by then it has then lost its newsworthiness. Ditto telling us the story has already been published by another zine.

Rule 3:  As part of our information mission, we also provide vendor etc contact details to our readers – typically a website or microsite URL – so if readers want to follow up a story (and if it is a good story, they will) they can do so directly and don’t have to contact us to contact you for the vendor’s contact details etc etc etc. So, please include a relevant URL in the release. And in clear view NOT as an embedded URL.

In case you were wondering, it's a curse of Microsoft Word that sometimes embedded URLs transfer intact, other times the coding goes missing. And, if it is a very heavily formatted Word document we may have to tip the whole lot into plain text editor to clear out the crap, so we lose all the embedded URLs anyway.

It should also go without saying that it is not helpful to have a PR agency provide only its own contact details. What, so we have to contact you or Google for information that should have been in the press release from the outset. Get out of here.

Rule 4: Image files. Sure, send in a picture if you think it is appropriate or relevant. But, once again, don't embed it with a Word document. Attach it as a JPEG file or, better still, provide a URL link to Dropbox or wherever it can be found. 

ALSO remember that unlike the colour print brochures you may produce for your marketing collateral, we don't need huge hi-res images for websites. In fact big images slow download times – the world does not enjoy ultrafast broadband speeds. Consider 840 pixels as a maximum for the image's longest side. 

Rule 5:  We are great fans of social media – all stories published on our website are also automatically reposted to LinkedIn and Google+ (for the people who still use it!) In addition we always promote stories via Twitter (via @GonzoNewswire & @ChristianUncut) so if you have a Twitter handle, please include it with your story, so we don’t have to search for it.

And that’s it. Simple.