In doing research on ways to promote Tome Builder, I watched several videos from iOS developer conferences on how to get noticed by the tech press. These presentations were from people who write for websites that cover Apple products. The speakers repeatedly referred to themselves as journalists in the talks.
After watching the videos I went to a bunch of these Apple websites and discovered something. They cover the same stories. What I find disturbing is they write stories about Apple television ads and treat them as news. The following are examples of Apple news sites covering an ad Apple recently made for the MacBook Pro:
How is writing about a television ad journalism? They’re not fact checking the ad and pointing out false statements. They’re telling you how wonderful a TV commercial is.
Here’s the thing I don’t understand. In the videos I watched on how to reach the press, the press people talked about how busy they are and how they get flooded with emails every day. The chances of a press person responding to your email is slim unless the person knows you. If the press people are so busy they can’t reply to an email, how do they have time to write a story about a television ad? I have a suggestion for tech reporters short on time. Scrap the story on the TV commercial. Your readers will see the commercial on TV.