I was talking to a US colleague of mine and he says that it is completely normal over there to provide the press list to the client, especially at the end of the engagement. His reasoning is that they are charged a separate fee which covers the creation, updating and ultimate handover of the lists. He argues that even by giving the list, the client company probably still doesn’t have the relationship with the journalists or the PR experience that the agency has, so a list without story ideas, regular contact, reading of the publiction and watching the journalist, whether on Twitter or their columns and articles, is not of much value.
In the UK however I don’t know of any agency or freelance consultant who hands over their lists at the end of a contract.
The press lists of most agencies have painstakingly been built up through the use of media databases and usually a lot of research and years of knowing who writes about what. Sometimes journalists have provided home and mobile numbers and usually these are not for handing out to everyone. Companies can of course get access to online media databases to build their own lists but PR consultants know that these lists are often incomplete or not kept up to date as often as they should be…..
We offer a service for small technology companies that provides a details of a few key targeted publications for DIY PR, but we stress that they do need to familiarise themselves with the publications, research the journalists they are targeting and understand what types of story that will succeed in them, otherwise they will be disappointed.
