CorpComms Magazine

Half way down a rocky mountain slope, limbs flung out in every direction but holding on tight, there was a bald-headed Sun journalist where no Sun journalist should have been. Just minutes earlier, the PR who had invited him and a collection of other journalists on a fact-finding press trip had been happily gathering them all together to board the coach to take them back to the airport.

He missed the errant Sun journalist who, fuelled by a large liquid breakfast, misjudged the curve on the last slope, shot over the edge of the mountain and straight down the incline - to the horror of his host.

 This was the journalist who had insisted that drinking a bottle of red wine for breakfast was perfectly normal and had entertained his fellow guests with tales of how, on a previous trip, he and his friends had removed their hotel room doors in the middle of the night to use as sleds down the mountain.

After being rescued, it took the negotiating skills of his host to persuade the journalist to visit a Swiss doctor. receiving the all-clear, he headed to the airport and to another night of hard drinking - this time in London.

It is incidents like this that loom large in the nightmares of PRs as they contemplate organising a press trip for a client. Given the right conditions, journalists still have the capacity to play hard when far from home (and far from the news editor's glare). That might include a full night of clubbing before a major press conference, or it might not.

Usually, whatever happens the night before does not stop them from getting the job done - although one female journalist, who shall remain nameless, still feels aggrieved about the occasion when, after a particularly hard night's drinking on a press trip to Singapore, she was the only hack to make it to a Japanese breakfast with a particularly serious company chairman the next morning. She was faced with two problems that are not usually compatible with a hangover: eating raw fish and asking sensible questions.

Not worth it

Exceptions aside, however, most journalists cannot afford to miss a story and face their news editor's wrath. They have been allowed time out of the office, leaving somebody back home to resentfully cover their patch, so they turn out of their beds, even if they feel like dying. Their job security usually depends on it. This is doubly true for freelancers.

But Sue Ockwell, managing director of Travel PR, feels it is getting harder to get freelancers to go on press trips. They contend that the money they will earn from the article does not justify the time lost from the working day (or week). Some journalists favour trips individually tailored to them.

'When you are trying to find a story the last thing you want is for everyone to have the same angle,' explains Mark Frary, business travel editor at the Times. He believes PRs are much more aware of this than they used to be. On group trips, he notes that PRs build time into the schedule to allow journalists to pursue their own agendas.

Frary, who has recently been to the US and Australia, gets annoyed when freeloaders turn up on trips. 'Some people have no intention of writing a thing; they are just larking about,' he complains. 'It's the PR's responsibility to make sure that sort of person isn't included.' Many PRs also oversell what the trip can offer or fail to recognise what the journalist needs from it. 'It has to be worth it for me,' adds Frary.

Rob Outram, editor of CA Magazine, the publication for chartered accountants, agrees. 'I have been on press trips where I wondered why I had been asked,' he says. 'A UK IT company took a party of press and other business contacts to a very swanky hotel in Monaco. I certainly enjoyed it but didn't come away with much I could use. The technology was all too hard core for the magazine I was editing at the time.'

Angle-grinding

Most switched-on PRs are well aware that news pegs are far more important than Champagne. 'We always find out about the biggest issues of the moment,' says Lis Griffiths, head of travel at Four Communications. She tries to give the journalists as many leads as possible, even if they do not relate directly to the product she is promoting.

Steve Dunne, group managing director of Brighter PR and former European head of corporate communications for South African Airways (SAA), reckons press trips are never going to drop out of the PR armoury because they can be effective. 'When I was at SAA it used to be easy to get a lot of good people from good publications on to a trip,' he recalls. 'I used to do nine-day press trips.'

Chris Clark, managing director of Financial Dynamics, says the web has changed things enormously. 'These days, with magazines and newspapers under pressure, there are fewer people available,' he explains. 'Then you are dealing with the fact that some of the bigger publications have correspondents and freelancers in a particular part of the world. But they are generalists, not the specialist you want to report the story.'

Obviously laptops, mobile phones, wi-fi and other gadgets have made it easier to relay stories from abroad, while internet sites mean they can be published within minutes. A decade ago, when journalists headed off to the airport they were out of contact for a few days. In the 21st century they are hardly ever out of the news editor's reach, and often expected to file copy the minute a story breaks.

'Timings are important,' says Clark. 'It used to be a story wouldn't be written up before the journalist returned. Now several stories can be filed within an hour. Be careful about inviting journalists from websites if it means the broadsheets will lose out.' Some media relations executives have learned to be more aggressive about who they take on a trip. Nick Britton, Continental Airlines' European head of corporate communications, says he is far more likely to ask to see a commission before he agrees to put a freelance journalist on a trip.

High maintenance

Journalists are always demanding, but never more so than when they are away from home. Running a press trip can be rather like being a combined babysitter/entertainment officer. Lizzie Fairrie, former features editor at glossy magazine Food and Travel, remembers one highly strung photographer who, when the airline lost his luggage on arrival in Mozambique, dragged the trip's PR around the shops demanding not only that his clothes were replaced, but also replaced with the same designer labels. Labels that, alas, were not available in that country.

At the other end of the scale, journalists can arrive woefully underdressed. The ritzy restaurants of St Moritz still reminisce about the national newspapermen who arrived to tour them in their usual dowdy brown trousers. Then there are journalists who just refuse to deal with clothes. Some PRs still cannot believe the female journalist who, despite being on a press trip, refused to come out of her hotel room for days having just met the love of her life. She was thoroughly immersed in a deeply spiritual moment that superseded the need for all other communication.

Most people in the PR industry agree you have to have a very special type of patience to cope with press trips. Passports, tickets, room keys and wallets are regularly lost by the very people whose advice and words of wisdom readers depend on.

'You definitely have to be the right type of person, who is calm and never shows panic,' says Griffiths. 'You have to be able to get on with a bunch of people you have never met before.' Clark disagrees with the industry technique of always sending the most junior member of the team on all the press trips, and tries hard to take as many trips as possible himself.

Sorting out the invitation list is where it all starts. 'There are journalists who are well known for not delivering and they go down in my little book of people to avoid,' says Dunne. He also tries to avoid mixing freelancers with commissioning editors - 'otherwise they get pestered to death' - and broadcast with print. 'Getting the chemistry right is important,' he advises.

But if the PR does nothing else, make sure he or she keeps those journalists well away from any rocky mountains. At least until after a proper breakfast.

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