In a slowly recovering economy, journalists on shoestring budgets need all the help they can get, and publicists looking for media coverage have to get creative. While paid services like ProfNet have long facilitated connections between reporters and experts, an entirely free network has successfully surged ahead, helping to bridge public relations and journalism with a bit of altruism.
Help A Reporter Out — known to its users as HARO — began as a Facebook group in 2008 run by Peter Shankman, a serial entrepreneur and publicity veteran. With journalist friends always asking him for expert connections, Shankman realized that he could offer a crowd-sourcing service that made his friends’ lives a bit easier — while offering others a bit of free publicity.
After the Facebook group maxed out the 1,200-member limit after only two months, the service quickly morphed into an independent entity that now sends out thousands of email queries a month, sometimes flooding writers’ inboxes with responses. With nearly 30,000 journalists and over 100,000 experts, publicists and laypeople registered for the site, the free flow of information can be simply overwhelming.
Here are some recent queries from the HARO Twitter feed: “need to talk to ppl who had a debt collector find them via social media;” “need to talk to MA men who cry and nationwide experts to discuss the trend;” “need experts re: how purchase of an engagement ring works if hubby is less famous/successful than the A-list bride;” “need a child who’s afraid of Santa;” and on and on. They’re serious and silly and quirky — a lot like the media you consume everyday.
HARO has become so successful (bringing in over a million dollars in advertising revenue in 2009 alone) that it was acquired last year by Vocus, an on-demand software company.
Shankman is still the man behind HARO, a role he once gladly assumed without pay. After HARO was folded into the Vocus family last year, he got promoted. “As a Vice President of Vocus, I make a salary now,” he happily told me when we caught up last week. Despite his own income boost, Shankman is still actively expanding his brainchild, with hopes of launching the site in other countries in the coming year.
As for HARO’s users, they’ve never been happier. M. Natasha Reid, founder and editor in chief of F.I.T. Money Magazine, told Tonic, “As a fairly new online publication, HARO has been a great resource for finding sources that are credible and knowledgeable who want very little in return. It has helped us save both time and money.”
A workplace productivity expert based in Indianapolis, Robby Slaughter thinks of others first when he scans the daily email lists. “When a HARO email arrives, I take a moment to scan the topics and see if any trigger my memory of people in my business contact sphere. Then, I forward the relevant query to them via email and explain the HARO process,” he told me. Keeping others in mind when he reads HARO, he says, “is an easy way to stay in touch with professional contacts and to ensure that I am providing value to them.”
Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist who also writes about science-related topics, tries the opposite approach. “When I see somebody looking for an expert, and I know the best expert in the field, I’ll frequently answer their query, explaining that I’m a journalist, but leading them to the proper source,” she explained. “My interest is in seeing good science in the popular press.”
Shankman may not have had these pay-it-forward actions in mind when he started a simple Facebook group, but imagine if every social network could inspire such altruism. It might just be enough to save newsprint.
Photo 1 by Roger H. Goun via Flickr, photo 2 courtesy of HARO.