I learned about a service called HARO (for Help A Reporter Out) via some colleagues that joined a Facebook group of the same name a few months ago. The group seemed like a novel way to leverage social networking for connecting reporters with useful info and sources. So I signed up.
Shortly thereafter, I got a note from colleague (and top PR guy) Justin Finnegan about a media inquiry he had learned about through HARO. Only this inquiry came from a website service. Apparently Peter Shankman (the same guy who started the HARO Facebook group) also has a website, HelpaReporter.com.
Anyway, Gawker covered this today, in the post: Why Does a Flack want to Help a Reporter? (thanks for alerting me to this Justin). According to the article:
A flack named Peter Shankman (who enjoys getting tased) has built up quite a little reporter-helping service! Through a free website, Helpareporter.com,
Shankman takes in queries from reporters in search of sources for
random stories, and then sends those queries out to the PR world,
who—coincidentally—like to be featured sources. Everybody wins! Except for the other Profnet, which does the same thing, but charges a big fee to flacks to participate
This was also covered in the Industry Standard. Congratulations, Shankman!
Hi,
Thought you might be interested to know that this service has been running for several months now, as has a UK blog (run by me) called Getting Ink Requests, which provides free media requests by email, RSS, Twitter and on the blog itself. We’re still quite new but have more than 1,500 regular subscribers and growing! Site address below if you’d like to take a look,
Sally
(http://gettingink.typepad.com/journos)