Profnet

PR Newswire (http://www.prnewswire.com), a targeted news distribution and monitoring service, offers reporters free access to industry experts through ProfNet. Launched in 1992, ProfNet provides journalists with access to more than 3,000 corporations; 700 nonprofit organizations and hospitals; 100 government agencies, national laboratories, scientific associations, and think tanks; and 1,000 public relations agencies. ProfNet connects journalists and experts from around the world, including Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America.

Communication practitioners subscribe to ProfNet for a fee. Instead of making cold calls to reporters, practitioners can receive e-mail queries from journalists who are looking for expert sources or can send alerts to the media through ProfNet's “Leads and Round-Ups.” ProfNet links reporters who need sources for their stories to practitioners who need media coverage of their organization. One of ProfNet's biggest success stories is Marist College, a small college in the Hudson River Valley in New York. By using ProfNet to pitch faculty and students, the college has repeatedly secured media coverage in The New York Times, CNBC, Fox's Good Day, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Fortune, Forbes, and Good Morning America. Despite its small size, the college has earned a national reputation of providing the media with experts on issues such as criminal justice, technology, and business.

Communication practitioners who quickly, accurately, and narrowly target their responses to journalists' e-mail queries are the most successful in securing media coverage. Journalists sending e-mail queries through ProfNet Search can designate whether their organizations' identities are visible to communication practitioners or cloaked (anonymous). Journalists often choose to cloak their e-mail queries if they work for highly competitive news organizations and do not want to tip off other journalists about a story they are pursuing. By cloaking their queries, they can reach practitioners without disclosing key information to their competitors. Cloaked queries only include generic descriptions of the journalist's news organization, such as “a national daily” or “a major women's magazine.” Journalists designate the deadline for their responses and the means of communication to be used—e-mail, phone, or fax.

Communication practitioners responding to journalists' queries must adhere to strict guidelines. Practitioners must limit their responses to three paragraphs and must include basic contact information, such as name, title, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses, for the practitioner and source. Responses must also include the sources' credentials and how they are relevant to the journalists' query. Communication practitioners are not allowed to use contact information obtained through queries sent through ProfNet to create their own database or to send unsolicited e-mails to journalists. Practitioners who fail to adhere to ProfNet's strict guidelines can lose access to the service.

Practitioners who use ProfNet can also use its “Leads and Round-Ups” service for a fee. This service allows communication practitioners to proactively alert journalists about experts who can comment on timely news events. The “Leads and Round-Ups” service is not designed to announce news or pitch stories but rather to provide journalists with experts who can offer informed perspectives on current national and internal issues. Like responses to journalists' queries, these alerts must adhere to strict guidelines and contain certain information. In addition, ProfNet's editorial team screens these alerts and distributes the information to the media.

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