The 5 Easiest Ways Publicists Burn Bridges with Freelance Writers

It takes time to build relationships with freelance writers. You must establish rapport, build trust and understand what each side needs to be successful. If you hit that sweet spot—boom! That’s where the magic happens. There are some actions publicists take, however, that can sabotage those relationships quickly. Here are some of the top reasons that freelance writers sour on publicist relationships. Some of these might explain why you’re not hearing back from writers you used to work with.

They don’t respond in a timely fashion.

Freelance writers’ livelihood revolves around hitting deadlines. Wherever possible, we try to avoid last-minute requests to publicists—but sometimes that’s unavoidable. Yet whether we give someone a deadline that’s two weeks away or two days away, it doesn’t feel unreasonable to expect a response (even if that’s a “so sorry, but we can’t make this deadline!”) within 24-48 hours. If I send an inquiry with a specific deadline and get a response from a publicist two weeks past that date asking if it’s too late to be part of the story, my internal response (while politely saying yes via email) is: What do you think? There’s really no excuse for this. Communication is key.

They act unenthused.

I recently sent a request to a restaurant for images for a national publication, and after spending about a week getting forwarded on to various people within the business, my email finally reached the PR team (which wasn’t listed on the restaurant’s website, or anywhere). The publicist replied saying they’d “try to pull some things together” for me. Correct me if I am misunderstanding some part of the process, but sending along high-res images doesn’t seem that difficult—and I was turned off by the reaction of the PR person responding as if it was a hardship for them to send these to me, rather than a positive response regarding earned media toward which they had to put forth very little effort. The little things matter, including how you word emails.

They overpromise and underdeliver.

Sometimes far-out deadlines are riskier than shorter ones. I think it’s because we all have a tendency to procrastinate what we know is not due for a while­—and then risk the chance of forgetting about it entirely. My pet peeve is when a PR person immediately responds to an inquiry of mine, saying they’ll absolutely get all assets to me by deadline. Then, when that deadline hits, there’s no email from them, and I have to follow up to actually get the requested information. And the worst? When, after all of that, all they do is send a general blurb or direct me to the website (trust me, journalists know how to Google). That’s just being lazy, and I don’t generally desire to work with publicists who work this way.

They share incorrect information.

The old days of publications having fact-checkers reviewing every story are mostly gone. Often, freelance writers are tasked with ensuring every single detail in their stories are correct. Publicists need to take the same care with accuracy. It’s not OK to send writers names that are misspelled, incorrect titles or just wrong information. Once or twice is understandable, especially if that publicist is new to their role—but if I notice a PR team has a habit of doing this, I am inclined to cut ties.

They want changes after the story runs.

This point is tied into the previous one. The time it irks me the most is when publicists have sent wrong information to begin with that’s been included in the story, and then want changes after it’s published. (If it’s information that’s changed from reporting to publication, that’s a different situation.) I plan to do a dedicated post about this soon, but the bottom line is that as freelance writers, we don’t have access to change stories after they run—print or digital. It’s not easy to change stories after they are published, and it make us look bad to our editors if we have to ask them to do so. If you make a freelance writer look bad, don’t expect them to be excited to work with you again.

Are you guilty of any of these bridge-burning moves? If so, what have you done to try to repair those relationships? I also want to hear from the opposite perspective: In what ways have freelance writers burned bridges with YOU?