Brian Pittman's spotlight this week: Eric Auchard, Reuters

"The best way for a PR person to deal with a journalist is to treat the reporter like a hungry teenager," says Reuters technology correspondent Eric Auchard. "We're impatient, we need things, we're on deadlines and we need to be fed. If we're not fed, we get angry and have tantrums."

"If you feed us, we'll be satisfied and move on to terrorize someone else," assures Auchard, whose refreshing perspective on PR owes itself in part to discussions he had with his stepmother when she was a lead public relations practitioner for several top British companies. "Reporters who aren't getting what they need become a lot more dangerous to you," he stresses. "But if you are helping them fill in the pieces of their stories and they trust you, then you're in a much better position to get your side of any situation or story out."

Surprisingly, Auchard believes the oft-maligned traditional press release is a big part of helping and "feeding" reporters the news they need—and isn't afraid to call tech giants on his beat out for shortfalls in this core media relations area. The details:

Why are you pro-press release when so many of your colleagues aren't?

Press releases are spit upon by the press and they really shouldn't be. They are very important commodities in the reporting process. We need the information in them to do things like fact check our stories, for starters. So the press release certainly isn't dead—or, at least, I don't want it to be. We want product details, specs, contacts, facts, data—and we can find that in press releases. So please send them.

The irony is that many in PR and even the people at Google aren't doing releases like they should or like they used to. They seem to have bought into complaints from some in the press that releases are boring or useless and that's just not the case. Some of this may be an effect of the blogosphere, where bloggers have made fun of press releases. The idea seems to be, "Don't give me the press release—just the facts, please." But that doesn't scale.

Sure, every journalist, writer and blogger wants to focus on the meaningful stuff. But press releases are full of things that are boring and necessary to file a story, including the spelling of names, correct capitalizations of funky technology names, and even boiler plates that give you a definition and context about the business and market. Sometimes, even the dateline is important—it tells us where the company is headquartered. And sometimes, it's the contact information that's what we need because we can't find it anywhere else.

Are you saying that companies just aren't providing press releases anymore—or that the releases they're providing aren't useful?

I'm saying both things. One trend we're seeing is companies not sending releases at all. And another is that releases may be coming too late, for starters. For example, a lot of PR people tell us they'll get us the release after a briefing. Well, that's useless. We need it before the briefing so we can ask more informed questions. We don't want to have to ask the basic factual questions that you can just put in the release for us.

Can you give an example?

Google typically does its announcements on its blogs. The bigger announcements that impact investors, of course, are done in releases. So, we'll get a call and get briefed and whatever we hear is over the phone.

Why is that a problem for the media—or company?

I have repeatedly had interviews with high-level executives at Google and other places, where I would have had more context and been able to ask more focused questions if I would have had a press release ten minutes in advance. The benefits to the companies and PR people would be: shorter interviews, livelier quotes and more significant interviews that get to the real story or correct angle. If you have a real long press release about a complicated issue like a partnership—that gives us context, for example. It also lets us know how you see, and are positioning, the announcement. Conversely, just stringing together a bunch of facts in a phone conversation or post is where things can go wrong in the reporting process.

Everybody in PR knows the more you give reporters the information they need, the more you control the story. The more you make us fish, the more we go off the reservation and find our own ideas. Of course, reporters should remain independent, but the less you help, the more potential there becomes for negative and incorrect stories.

What do you think of social media releases?

I don't mind those. Those kinds of releases are valuable to us. They represent how we're thinking as multimedia reporters or bloggers when we're in design mode, looking for pictures, video and audio to run with the post or story. So, they're useful—but not at the expense of the context and real news. That's why I don't think they replace the traditional press release. You need both.

How can PR people improve their hit rates for pitches?

Whether or not journalists ask, there are core questions you must be ready to answer when you're pitching—unless you are just throwing pitches away. If it's a tech product story, for example, I'll want to know: What is the product? When is it available and where? Is it international (I don't always write for the U.S., which surprises people)? What is the pricing? Why will readers care about it if it's a B-to-B product? The best way to begin to answer that last question is to tell us what problems the product solves for people. Help us connect the dots to a more significant issue or trend beyond just the product. If PR people could just do those things, they'd see more success.

What is your story gathering process—where do you go for ideas?

I read blogs, the trade press and mainstream media, too. I also have about 800 feeds in Google reader and have them sorted into folders. But I'm not Robert Scoble. I can't read thousands of feeds every day. I zero in on particular topics that may be relevant that day. For example, I am very caught up in the Microsoft and Yahoo! story right now—so I read the blogs posting about that first.

What mix of hard numbers/data to angle do you like to see in pitches or stories?

I love this question—and wonder why more reporters don't care about these issues. People call me up and sometimes try to get me numbers through surveys. Companies do surveys all the time to show the efficacy of a product, but if you sponsored the research, we can't use it. In my earliest days as a reporter, I realized everybody has an angle. But there are ways to present something that's more independent. Point me to good third party data, articles to read and even good analysts. I will read any and all research, but I want it all to be objective. Even then, I don't think of these materials as my parish priest. I'm not looking for something that will bless a product or anything. I'm just looking for some context and detail—and I think it's the same with any business reporter, really.

What about industry gossip and backgrounders—useful or not?

I am more than happy hearing industry gossip. It can keep me plugged in. But one trend I'm seeing that doesn't work is PR people representing startups going after the big guys by giving me nastiness. That's fine if I know who you are—but if you cold call and try to impress with dirt, it's going to back fire. As for traditional backgrounders, I can't think of a journalist who doesn't value them. The challenge lies in making the time.

Where do you go first for research on any given story?

I definitely do the Google thing. But I do that before I even think, actually. Overall, it depends on the industry. If it's a heavy duty telecom company, for example, I'd look to the research firms I respect in that area first. As for looking for experts, I don't use ProfNet, because I don't like to signal where my story is going. I also used to get too many responses from PR people trying to force themselves into a story or just trying to give me what I wanted. That disturbed me.

What about the trade pubs—are they useful for seeding stories?

They're great—I'm obsessed with reading them. That is their value, or used to be. The sad thing, however, is that the great ones I used to read in the tech space have become bloggers. I like bloggers, but the trade press used to be all about the hard-core facts, and now it's all just opinion. So now, I just start doing my own reporting and fact checking and the story becomes very different than what I've read in the trade press or the blogs. That's unfortunate, and it's a sign of how new media has impacted traditional media.