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Here's a "PR 2.0" idea that I dig, yet which is doomed to never launch. It surely would not work today, anyway, except for perhaps the most web-savvy of journalists.

Concept:

• Imagine if each PR agency (or PR person) maintained a "Pitch Blog."
• Rather than blasting pitches to a wide swath of reporters, the PR pro would post their story idea to the blog.
  • (Primarily trend pitches, not time-sensitive news.)
• The blog post containing the story idea is (Technorati) "tagged" with the names of the reporters who the PR pro would want to approach.
  • I'd guess no more than 3 reporters would be tagged, or else it would be too sploggy.
  • The 3 reporters would ideally not work for competing publications (though that might make things interesting: "whoever responds first gets the most material").
• The post would assure the 3 reporters that they'd each be given additional story angles, spokespeople, i.e., anyone who responded would get unique content of some sort.
• The reporter would "find" the pitch via a Technorati search on their own name (or blog, etc.).
  • This could be an automated RSS "ego search" --- in which case, the reporter would basically have an "alternate in-box" (RSS-based) solely devoted to receiving PR pitches via these Pitch Blogs.
  • You could similarly tag a Social Media News Release with some top reporters' names.

Benefits:

• This idea would inject ever-greater transparency into the PR process.
• It would be interesting to track which reporters were being pitched (the most, the least, the worst!)
• Other reporters could check their peers' and competitors' "pitch tags" to get ideas.
• Other PR pros could get a sense for how busy the reporter is, based on the ### of pitches being tagged; as well as get a better sense of what types of pitches seem to get that journalist's attention.
• Other PR pros could also mock and/or critique their peers' pitches --- which would ultimately make us all better writers, story-tellers, PR professionals.
• Less PR spam for reporters: only real news goes into their main in-box, and when they are looking for some good trend ideas, they could just tap into their "alternate in-box" full of the pitches in their RSS reader.

Why It Would Never Work:

• Journalism thrives on exclusivity. The media does not want their story ideas available for all to see.
  • Similarly, the media does not want the rest of the world to know how many of their story ideas originate in the PR realm.
• Bloggers would use the Pitch Blogs to jack-up some memes that the PR firm's clients don't want or expect.
• PR people wince at the idea of posting their pitches in public.
• PR agency principals don't always want their client lists (or employee names) exposed, for fear of competitive poaching. Additionally, at some point, a bone-headed move would occur, out in the open. Yikes!

There are probably another 20 reasons why this idea would never fly. But sometimes it's worth exploring the lame ideas, because new, cool ideas just might leap from that Pandora's Box o' Lameness.

UPDATE: Although she finds the core concept "inspired," Teresa Valdez Klein of the Blog Business Summit wisely points out that this practice, if it were ever instituted, would require that "the practice would need to be explained to bystanders ... many readers and searchers might be truly confused" to see reporters' names displayed willy-nilly.

In other words, if Suzy Consumer does a search on her favorite NYTimes writer, looking for an article that that journalist had written months ago, Suzy might be understandably confused if the search results pulled up a score of pitches intended for that writer. Interesting feedback, Teresa, thanks --- you've pointed out another good reason why this idea is flawed!

Tags: social+media, public+relations, pr, marketing, pr+2.0