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Advice to PR - If an IT editor in print says he has an off stone deadline looming, it isn't a threat

The IT journalists in Singapore who I know are usually very nice people. When a statement made by a spokesperson is found to be false, they will usually give the PR team a benefit of the doubt and ask double check.

Unfortunately for an IT editor who explained that he needed a new statement within 30 mins with an off stone deadline looming, otherwise the options would either be to pull the story out or prove that the statement made was found to be false.

Both would have dire consequence for the PR team.

Unfortunately, the PR person, rumoured to have an experience of 17 years in PR and marketing, took the off stone statement as a threat from the journalist.

"Are you THREATENING me?" screamed the PR person according to inside sources in the local newsroom.

It took just four words to end the courtesy extended by the IT editor to change the wrong into a right.

PR lesson of the day: If a journalist is nice to you, as a PR person - be nice too. You need to do what is right, not what the client tells you. But if your client insist, put it in black and white. Don't take it out on the journalist whose job include getting the facts right.

PS: According to Wikipedia, "Off stone" is s seen as an archaic printing term used to describe the moment at which pages of newsprint are sent off to be typeset. The term comes from the early days of printing when an imposing stone, a slab of stone or metal on which the type was set into a layout (or forme), was used to align the text.

PSS: If any print IT journalists want to off stone me, please make it a diamond!

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