HARO, or Help A Reporter Out, was started in March 2008 by CEO Peter Shankman. Since then it has become one of the most used journalist query systems in the communications field. People in the PR field can subscribe to HARO and receive three daily e-mails containing queries from journalists who need help on the stories that they're working on. It's a perfect pairing of journalism and PR.
The only complaint that PR people have had with HARO was that they have to search through every query to find topics that relate to their clients, but as of yesterday that has changed. Now PR people can subscribe to the master HARO e-mail and also secondary HARO e-mails that only contain queries of a specific topic, like technology, food or lifestyle.
Other changes to HARO will benefit the journalists who use it regularly. Journalists e-mails will no longer be written directly on the query lists in order to avoid e-mail harvesting. For example, instead of PR people sending their response to joe@nytimes.com, they will now send it to 1234@haro.net. The masking of journalist's email addresses will also protect them from spamming.
I'm excited about HARO's streamlining of their query system. It will make finding media opportunities a lot quicker and easier. How do you feel about HARO's changes? Let us know!
Brianna, the new changes at HARO are spot on consistent with what we found journalists and experts wanted at PitchRate. Anything that makes journalists’ jobs easier when using these free query services will help PR people get more coverage for themselves and their clients.
ReplyDelete