Getting a Response From the Media Relations Department

I just saw a story on Good Morning America that I believe should be read by every journalism student as well as every media-relations person.

The story involves Apple's Steve Jobs and a journalism student's request for cooperation on a piece that was a class assignment. Here's the link:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/apple-ceo-steve-jobs-liu-student-chelsea-kate/story?id=11686415

Now whether you are (a) on Apple's side (b) support the student (c) think each side has made good points and/or mistakes, here are some observations:

* Media-relations teams are bombarded with requests from working journalists -- and this now includes bloggers. If the journalism student was writing for a school news outlet, she was correct in requesting help from Media Relations; if this was for a journalism class, she should have made her requests through customer service (customer-service folks are amazing and have a knack for regularly delivering the impossible).

* If a student still wants to make a request for a class project via Media Relations, make the first request at least 10 working days in advance and in the request email -- never voicemail -- have a short explanation of the project, bullet-point exact questions and give Media Relations at least two full working days to respond. Remember to include your contact information.

* Many media-relations people have been on the side of the student, so if the request is made respectfully (in both prose and timeline)and has a decent storyline, most of the time the request will be answered with information. The CEO may not do a phoner, but it's possible another person in the company will.

* CEOs are human. They only have 24 hours in a day, and not every day is their best one. If Jobs did indeed write the messages (which I am not entirely sure he did as there has not been a response from Apple), he/his ghost writer would have been better off not to respond...old saying about "if you can't say something nice, say nothing."

* Students, especially, need to have a list of relevant sources as options to interview for stories -- we can't just wait for Steve Jobs to respond. While quotes from Steve Jobs probably would have helped this student's story, professionally completing the assignment on deadline is more important.

* The reporter always has the option of including "Emails and phone calls to Apple Media Relations and Steve Jobs were unanswered as of press time."