Help A Reporter Out (HARO). No, really!

I'm one of those crazy, rabid fans and members of HARO's email list. Read the news report from The Industry Standard:

A source is a source, of course, of course, except when it's free and driving a huge company crazy

Jordan Golson
07.22.2008

When skydiving PR guy Peter Shankman started the "Help a Reporter" group on Facebook last November, he thought his project would help link a few reporters up with sources for their articles -- not realizing that he was about to start a private one-man war against a giant corporation.

Now, HARO -- Help a Reporter Out -- is a mailing list with more than 16,000 members and dozens of source requests being sent out daily. It's also a significant threat to the only other major source-finding game in town, PR Newswire's ProfNet.

ProfNet, which reportedly costs upwards of $3,000 per year for potential sources, has a huge HARO looming in its rearview mirror. In March, Shankman turned his project from a 684-person Facebook group into a full fledged three-times-per-day mailing list that was dead-simple to sign up for -- and more importantly, free, for reporters and sources.

10 days after launch, he had doubled his readership, to 1,400 members. In two weeks it doubled again, to 3,100 members. May 1: 5,000. June 20: 10,000. Today, Shankman's little email list goes out to more than 16,000 readers daily. Not bad for a pet project.

A typical email starts with a few notes from Shankman about the HARO publicity or calling out certain queries as high priority or personal anecdotes about skydiving or his "not fat but big-boned" cats, Karma and NASA. Following that are 10-25 source requests from big name sources like CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times, and some from small blogs and local websites. One evening email looked for "small businesses switching to rail due to fuel costs" from Reuters, a question about bridesmaids from an unnamed national publication, and a request for product offerings for the American Express holiday wishlist for 2008.

Not bad. But what do the reporters think? Jim Kukral, host of a daily podcast, posted a query for entrepreneurs and marketeers to be guests on his show. "In less than 24-hours I was bombarded with tons of high-quality and targeted proposals." I submitted query myself for people who had tried to activate a new iPhone 3G on launch day and had difficulties. Within an hour I had more than 30 totally on-target replies -- more than i could ever use.

As a reporter, finding good sources can always be a pain -- having a strong network of folks to call on is essential. Shankman's Help a Reporter helps link up reporters who need to meet a deadline with folks who are happy to share their knowledge, all free.

PRNewswire charges possible sources just to offer them queries with reporters. Anywhere from $600 to $4,500 a year depending on what "channels" they wish to subscribe to. That's a significant amount of cash coming in that is now being threatened by Shankman. Why would you want to pay PRNewswire when you can get Help A Reporter for free? One PR agency sent Shankman a note saying "I did it! We are off the grid. No more pr newswire!"

PRN is so concerned, Shankman tells me he heard from a source that ProfNet salespeople have been issued talking points against him -- and no wonder. With 14,000 "professional communicators" in its roster, that's significant cash, especially when your competition gives away its product for free.

Shankman says he'll never charge for his service and would never sell his mailing list -- the hour and a half per day that he spends on his mailing list results in great publicity for himself -- better than he could ever buy. Though, he does make some coin selling ads at "way over $100 CPMs" to advertisers like American Apparel.

Like Craigslist snagged hundreds of millions of dollars worth of classified ad revenue from local newspapers, the Help a Reporter mailing list is doing the same to PRNewswire. Using cheap technology to run circles around old media. It wasn't the first, and it certainly won't be the last -- but it does illustrate a belief that many successful entrepreneurs have: you never know what's something might turn into.

Copyright © The Industry Standard.

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