Just had a phone call from a public relations person in Boston -- (Boston, Massachusetts, this individual emphasized, lest I be confused) - who wondered what format I would like my press releases in. I replied that plain-text e-mail is always best. This individual sounded surprised when I said that and noted that their original thinking was the press releases should be formatted differently for Canadian newspapers. Hmmm. I don't think so, but I'm happy to be enlightened. But, more seriously, I'm often asked by those who want to communicate something to the press what's best. So here's a couple of guidelines that will impress me:

1. Never pitch by phone. Always pitch by e-mail.
2. E-mail should always be plain-text. No one ever decided to this story or that story because the press release had better bold text or italicized text or better coloured stationery background than another one. We don't care how it looks, we just want the information.
3. Never send unsolicited attachments. There's nothing worse than dialing up a slow network connection on the road only to have to wait to get through a 5 megabyte PowerPoint presentation that you're going to delete anyhow.
4. So to review: No phone calls. Plain text e-mail. No attachments.
5. There's never any need to follow an e-mail with a phone call unless the e-mail bounces back to you. If that happens, check to see if the e-mail address is correct. Those e-mail addresses are always at www.davidakin.com

I'm going to put a page with more suggestions and hints but in the meantime, what San Jose Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor has to say on this would parallel my thinking on the issue very closely.