Cheryl Beck, a freelance writer from Ray Township, Michigan writes:<\/p>\n
“I have been wondering about the proper way to address journalists\/editors.\u00a0When I call and pitch, after a reporter answers, do I address them as they have introduced themselves? If you answered ‘Hello this is Joan’ do I say ‘Hello Joan I am…and calling from…’ or should I be more formal? Ms. Stewart?<\/p>\n
“I have the same question regarding email. If I have not spoken to the person first, do I use Mr. and Ms.? If I have spoken to them, is using the first name appropriate?”<\/p>\n
Cheryl,\u00a0there are two schools of thought on this.<\/p>\n
In my 22 years working in newspaper offices, I never once saw a journalist become\u00a0insulted because somebody didn’t call them\u00a0Mr., Miss, Mrs. or Ms. In fact, the only journalist\u00a0who would probably insist you address her that way is\u00a0Judith Martin of The Washington Post<\/a>, a.k.a. Miss Manners.<\/a><\/p>\n Some PR people prefer the more formal approach when calling or emailing. As for the journalists,\u00a0all they care about is whether\u00a0you’re\u00a0going to waste their time or give them a scoop.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cheryl Beck, a freelance writer from Ray Township, Michigan writes: “I have been wondering about the proper way to address journalists\/editors.\u00a0When I call and pitch, after a reporter answers, do I address them as they have introduced themselves? If you answered ‘Hello this is Joan’ do I say ‘Hello Joan I am…and calling from…’ or\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":3,"wds_primary_category":606,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[29],"class_list":{"0":"post-25049","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-public-relations","7":"tag-media-relations","8":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25049"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40946,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25049\/revisions\/40946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}