Anarchy at its finest: Peter Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008It’s the latest version of David vs. Goliath and David’s going to win this one, too. Why? Because David is offering a service as good as or better than Goliath and he’s doing it for free.
It seems Peter Shankman, the irreverent but often self-deprecating founder of Help A Reporter Out , is giving ProfNet a run for its money, or more accurately stated, a run for ours.
You see, as public relations professionals and journalists grapple with how to most effectively connect for our mutual well-being, we have had to pay a significant price for the professional services of ProfNet – until now.
As Shankman writes on his site, “I built this list because a lot of my friends are reporters, and they call me all the time for sources. Rather than go through my contact lists each time, I figured I could push the requests out to people who actually have something to say.”
The pushing is done via his Web site, Twitter, Facebook, a (free) subscription e-mail list and, I’m pretty sure, by Peter talking about it to every person he meets regardless of the circumstances.
“I’ll have the #2 combo with a large Coke and, say, have you heard of Help A Reporter Out?”
What Peter and his list of followers (well over 16,000 now and growing every day) represent isn’t just a cool, free service. They represent anarchy at its finest. They represent the good that can be accomplished with a tool as powerful and ubiquitous as the Internet.
But they also represent the American dream that has been replaced of late with the American entitlement. Thomas Jefferson reportedly once said, “I’m a firm believer in luck and I find the harder I work the luckier I am.”
Hear, hear.
Success is within everyone’s grasp. All they need is the foresight to wonder why someone hasn’t done something already, the means to reach their customers, and the chutzpah to jump in the deep end and paddle like crazy.
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