Writer's Block

Public Relations 101

The first thing I heard from my normally relaxed boss Thursday morning was cursing. Why? An announcement we had been trying to get Wednesday night, which the public relations firm had insisted was not going to be released until morning, was smack-dab in one of the Honolulu papers.

It was a story that belonged in The Maui News if it belonged anywhere: Kaunakakai Elementary School Principal Janice Espiritu had received the 2009 Masayuki Tokioka Excellence in School Leadership Award. It's not a big story in Honolulu -- the other paper ended up running it on page B3. As a community paper, we might have put it on the front page. But we didn't, because we didn't have it.

Here's what happened: reporter Claudine San Nicolas knew the award was being announced Wednesday night, and that a Maui County principal might win. So she contacted the public relations firm representing the event. She knew they couldn't release the name of the winner ahead of time. But she hoped they could give her a hint about whether we should set aside space in the paper for a story. See, if a local principal won, we were willing to hold the paper past our usual deadlines for an announcement Wednesday evening after the ceremony in Honolulu. Not a bad deal if you're looking for publicity, right?

But the PR lady told her no. A press release was going to be sent out Thursday morning, and the firm wouldn't give out the information before then, to be "fair," she said. Just one problem: since the other paper is physically located in Honolulu, it was able to send a reporter to the ceremony and get the name of the winner Wednesday night.

Holding back that information from Neighbor Island newspapers until the next day isn't "fair," it's unfair. And when the award winner is a Neighbor Islander herself, it's also stupid.

When Claudine called Thursday morning to complain, the PR lady shrugged it off and stood by her firm's policy. It wouldn't be "fair" to give us the information before the release went out Thursday. (Here's an idea: how about "releasing" the information Wednesday night when it was acutally announced?) It wasn't her fault another paper sent a reporter to the event and we didn't. (It's called the Pacific Ocean, lady.)

The whole episode is a lesson in how not to do public relations. PR lady burned a bridge with the paper (my boss commented that next time we get a press release from her firm, to put it at the bottom of the stack). It was humiliating for Claudine (she had to watch Ms. Espiritu's friends present her with a laminated copy of the other paper's article as she was interviewing her Thursday). Most importantly, PR lady did a disservice to her client,  by missing a chance to get a solid next-day story in the one paper in the state that would have given it good play.

Claudine was especially frustrated, because as our education reporter she always hears the criticism that newspapers don't print enough good news about schools. 

"Here we were making an effort to do that, and this is how they treated it," she said. "In the end it's just sad, that the recognition wasn't given when it should have been, and in her local hometown paper."