It won't come as a surprise to anyone reading this that reporters don't attach the highest regard to most public relations professionals. But on the basis of my research for my book, I don't think the profession fully understands why this situation persists.

What's happening inside most major news organizations is not pretty. Jobs are getting cut. Most of the more senior people with experience have been pushed out. Productivity pressures are extremely intense, particularly in view of the growing demand for print, video and Internet "content." And of course, there's great uncertainty about the very survival of some top newspapers and magazines.

In this environment, the gatekeepers in the media have even less time and expertise than ever before. So the kinds of public relations pitches that they need (and they do need them) are those that have been digested, analyzed, well–positioned and, in general, thought out.

But the overwhelming majority of pitches I receive, and that all media gatekeepers receive, are coming from agency people who don't really know what they're talking about. I understand the syndrome perfectly—the CEO of the PR firm makes a presentation to the CEO of a company and wins the account. Then the CEO of the PR firm turns to his or her vice presidents, who in turn rely on 26– and 27–year–old "Little Jennifers," as I've come to call them.

So when they pitch by telephone or email to me, I ask questions: "How big is the company?" "What is the breakout of its U.S. sales versus its international sales?" "How does this particular technology work?" In a majority of cases, the agency people don't have the answers.

I was recently pitched by a PR professional on behalf of an insurance company. His pitch concentrated on global risk management. That kind of language coming from an insurance company puts any editor to sleep. But I noticed a line in his pitch about preparing U.S. businesses to cope with climate change. On further conversation, yes, the CEO of this insurance company is an expert on what business leaders should be doing to protect their key buildings and global supply chains from weather–related disruption. Bingo. That's a story. The PR firm had been given the task of promoting the company, but didn't have time or expertise or authority to really develop the themes that would be most attractive to an editor.

Sometimes, PR agencies go off completely half–cocked. One media friend who is in a gatekeeping role told me this story in an email: "I just got a FedEx, marked urgent, from a company in North Carolina called McNeill Communications Group. So I opened (and discarded) one medium FedEx box, transported from NC to New York. I removed (and discarded) some packing paper that was securing a cardboard box. I opened (and discarded) the cardboard box to find a plastic box wrapped in Styrofoam. I threw out the Styrofoam and opened the plastic box to find more paper packaging, a plastic bag of Styrofoam peanuts, a plastic swizzle stick, and a three–page press release.

"The title of the release? 'TharpeRobbins Celebrates Earth Day by Leading the Way with Environmental Initiatives.' The gimmick is that the Styrofoam peanuts dissolve in water. My jaw just dropped. I feel like this might almost be a joke."

Turns out the press release was poorly done and not very revealing or well–angled. The editor was turned off, to put it mildly, by the use of a wasteful mailing to promote an unfathomable environmental message.

I think that is typical of only a small percentage of PR pitches, however. The bigger problem is not knowing the subject matter well enough. Of course, it's not just the fault of PR agencies. They typically lead an inquisitive reporter into conversation with in–house communications people, who themselves tend not to be fully informed about the nature of the media's debate and who tend not to fully understand top management's thinking.

I lay part of the blame for that on PR professionals themselves, but I also understand that top management often doesn't spend the time with either internal or external communications professionals to help them understand the future of the business and how the company is positioned on key issues. "In too many cases, PR people are out of touch and don't know what's going on," says Richard Martin, a former AT&T top public relations officer and author of the 2005 book, "Tough Calls: AT&T and the Hard Lessons Learned from the Telecom Wars." In Martin's view, public relations people "are simply told what to say"—which means they have the unpleasant, and ultimately doomed, task of communicating a poorly formulated message.

Both PR agencies and in–house PR people must respond to these challenges. I think the best agency CEOs—take Kathy Bloomgarden at Ruder Finn, or Robert Marston at Robert Marston & Associates, for example—maintain direct one–on–one contacts with the CEOs they represent and at the same time have extensive networks of journalists whom they know on a first–name basis. They don't delegate all media contact to the Little Jennifers. They're personally involved and, because they have direct access to the CEOs they represent, they understand the issues. More PR agencies ought to organize themselves in this fashion; it's much more effective.

Similarly, internal PR people have to develop the expertise and gravitas to win a seat at the table where top–level corporate decisions are made. "What is required is a very thorough and savvy understanding of how the business works and what the market forces are and what the technological and political forces are," says George H. Jamison III, head of the communications search practice at Spencer Stuart. Unless PR people develop that savvy, "They are not in position to be the kind of adviser they ought to be. They don't have the intellectual horsepower to sit at the table with senior management and talk about the future of the company." Two good examples of top communications chiefs who do have a seat at the table are Steve Harris at General Motors and Tom Mattia at Coca–Cola.

Whatever the precise mechanism, public relations professionals who are trying to bridge the gap between suspicious and harassed CEOs, on the one hand, and suspicious and harassed journalists, on the other, must do a better job of translating and digesting the corporate to position it as part of the media's debate. The job of doing that has never been tougher.

William J. Holstein is an award–winning editor, author and journalist. He writes for The New York Times, Fortune, Corporate Board Member, BusinessWeek Online and BNET. "Manage the Media" is published by Harvard Business School Press.