Industry Insights: Taking some time to update those contact lists (and why it matters)

Happy Saturday!

I’m sending this email from my flight home to NY - had the bright idea to leave at an ungodly hour this morning which means I’ll be home by later this afternoon (a good thing), but absolutely will need incredible amounts of caffeine once I get there.

You may remember a while back, I took some time in my daily newsletter to share a harrowing tale of an identity theft scam in the travel PR/writer world. While that was a story of a pretty terrible grifter, it speaks to a larger problem — the importance of vetting journalists before working with them. Yesterday, I was roaming about wine tasting and vineyard hopping (as people do!) when I heard of a similar but unrelated grifter type story — it served as a strong reminder there’s a whole lot of shady people out there. (As if we, sadly, needed that reminder.)

While vetting journalists is imperative, an element of taking control of that specific situation was updating contact lists to make sure the people being contacted were the intended recipient — that is something that is important across the board, even when you are not dealing with the Anna Delvey of travel writing….

Today, I'm going to talk a little about the importance of updating and editing your media list, and some important things to consider when you are doing so — as well as how to do so!