The primary intended audiences are:

• Vendors and agencies who want to learn more about what the press wants (and doesn’t want), and how to provide that better
• Editors and reporters who want to learn more about what vendors and agencies want, hope for, and think (including “what were they thinking!?”).
• Anybody who wants to get more/better media coverage, e.g. company owners, managers, network/system admins, end users, and sundry individuals (and why media exposure can be good — or bad — for your job and career).
• And anybody who’s interested in PR and the media, how it/they work (or don’t work).

What you’ll find here: tips (do/don’t do this, how to), blips, advice, Q&A’s, humor, horror stories and other instructive/entertaining items about PR. I may name-drop praiseworthy folks, acts, events, sites, products and services.

What you won’t find here: Don’t expect me any dissing or dishing, except maybe in cases where the name of the cat is already very publicly out of the bag.

Dern’s PR Tips is written from both the PR and press perspectives. (Changing hats accounts for the bald spot.)

Unlike many (but not all) of my fellow journalists/editors and PR folks, I’ve done, and continue to do both bylined journalism, and PR (and some things that are somewhere in between).

I’ve been an editor (Byte.com, Internet World) (see my editorial farewell to Byte.com), and do bylined tech journalism, writing for pubs and sites like ComputerWorld, eWeek, and Processor.

And I have also hi-tech PR experience. I’ve been a PR manager, handling editorial relations, speaker placement, freelancer writers, and customer case histories. I’ve been PR writer at a vendor, and have done and still do PR freelancing, e.g. writing press releases, feature articles, case histories, FAQs, backgrounders, and more, for a range of companies on a range of technologies and topics.

I have spoken at, and moderated, panels at BusinessWire, PRSA, and other (usually technology-oriented) events, and also written a number of articles and columns about PR, and working with the press, including my still-popular The Well-tempered Press Release”, which includes a Mad Libs-style “fill-in-the- blanks” press release form you can use.

Some of the posts for Dern’s PR Tips will be based on email I’ve posted to lists I’m on, LinkedIn exchanges, email I’ve sent, or things I’ve written in the past. (I won’t be using names, or other people’s words, except with permission and where relevant). Some will be based on something that’s happened recently, phone or face-to-face schmoozing, or the random percolations of my brain. And some based on things I’ve found on the net, including meritorious items from other members of the press and the PR trade.

So: read, learn, enjoy.