I have a confession to make. In my ten years or so as a journalist I might occasionally have been guilty trampling rough-shod over the earnest pleas of PR agencies asking me, quite reasonably, to consider the newsworthiness of their oh-so-interesting clients. I admit it, I may also have, perhaps flippantly, cast aside the press release that did not immediately sparkle with the promise of a write-me-now story.

To any journalists reading, I have a modest request: please be kind to PR people, they are only doing their job, and it’s a difficult one too. This startling information was gleaned from several days spent freelancing at Quest PR’s Harrogate office last month.

Should be easy enough, I thought, glibly, as I strolled in on the first morning. Confident I knew what made a good story, and that I could communicate that succinctly to other journalists, I was pretty sure I’d soon be generating acres of coverage for Quest’s impressive client list.

How wrong can you be? Having had the phone slammed down on me yet again by some harassed hack on the newsdesk of a national newspaper, and spent an afternoon phone bashing the local radio and TV stations with a frankly pathetic degree of success, it began to dawn on me that PR, or successful PR is erm… shall we say, harder than it looks?

Ravaged by self doubt – could I possibly ever have been as rude to a PR person as some of these hacks had been to me? I hoped not – I was also full of admiration for Sharon and her team. Working with Shona, Tim, Karyn and Paul made me realise that really professional PR teams, like the Quest gang, bristle with a myriad of sharp-shooting qualities that many journalists seem to manage quite happily without. Not only are tenacity, quick wittedness and a resilience to flak from both journalists and hard-to-please clients a necessity, but even more importantly you’ve got to be very very smart. Oh, and did I mention excessively hard working and good at your job? Quest clients, believe me, you’re in safe hands.

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