When Stuck for a Source, Look Here

By: Joe Strupp Less than a year ago, public relations veteran and Web junkie Peter Shankman used his Facebook page to give reporter friends a place to find sources. Since then, www.helpareporter. com has become a daily necessity for hundreds of journalists ? as well as many publicists seeking to get their clients some press, all through a simple Web-based newsletter.

"Reporters who are friends of mine would call me looking for sources," says Shankman, 36. A founding editor of AOL News in 1995, he has since done PR and Web consulting and created the successful Geek Factory public relations outlet. He initially used his Facebook page to match up scribes and sources in November 2007, then extended it to a separate Web site in March when demand grew. Journalists looking for sources, and those seeking to create some news, can visit and sign up.

Three times a day, Shankman sends out e-mails with topics and names of reporters looking for sources. If a would-be source thinks that he or she can contribute to a journalist who is listed, they can respond by e-mail. "The whole logic is that it lists the sources a reporter can get," says Shankman. "There are 25 to 45 queries per e-mail, from CNN to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal." On Aug. 5, Shankman boasted his 20,000th registered member receiving the daily missives.

An E&P query within one of the e-mails seeking users of the site brought a flood of testimonials praising Shankman. "It was great," wrote Erin Frost, news editor of the Lincoln (Ill.) Courier, who cited two experiences. "The first was for a column on baby names. I got more than 30 responses in 24 hours."

Etan Horowitz, technology reporter, columnist, and blogger at the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, says the site has proved useful twice recently: "Once seeking an expert on digital movie distribution for a column about the new Netflix Player by Roku, and once seeking expert comment for a story about the increasing number of adults who are finding text messaging to be a valuable business tool. In both cases, I found the service to be easy to use and was pleased that I got responses so quickly.

"One thing I liked about the responses," he adds, "is that people offered experts that had different takes on the topic I was writing about. For instance, for the text-messaging story, I wanted someone to confirm that text messaging for business is on the rise and give their thoughts about why this was happening. I was also contacted by people who either thought the trend was a good thing or a bad thing. I didn't end up needing those perspectives, but it was nice to get such a broad array of responses with so little effort."

But does it pay off? Shankman, whose Facebook page still lists some 4,200 "friends," says his revenue comes from the sponsors of each e-mail, whose ads are placed at the top. He contends his bulletins also work for sponsors because they have a 96% "open" rate: "The reason for that is that you never know what the query will be, so you check."