Blogs are no longer fringe media. In fact, most traditional media outlets now feature wide-reaching bloggers in the editorial mix and many of those blogs cover consumer technology, gadgets and gear. What's more, leading tech-related blogs can make or break a launch and some have almost single-handedly managed to bring major corporate monoliths to their knees with just one post. So what are the new rules of pitching online influencers in technology and beyond? Join Bulldog Reporter's PR University and our panel of Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, "D: All Things Digital;" Author, "BoomTown," Tom Foremski, Publisher, "Silicon Valley Watcher;" Board Member, Research Fellow, Society for New Communications Research, Dean Takahashi, Lead Writer, Digital Media, "VentureBeat," Neville Hobson, Blogger, "NevilleHobson.com;" Social Media Consultant; Co-Presenter, "For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report" and John Biggs, Editor in Chief, "CrunchGear;" Author, "Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals and Scammers in the Internet Age;" Publisher, "BigWideLogic," for the answers to these and other critical questions designed to break down today's best blog-pitching practices to turn you and your team into blog PR experts: Thursday, May 15, 2008. For more information or to register, go to conference details or call 1-800-959-1059.

By Brian Pittman

"If you're working with a major radio outlet, remember that clean audio is absolutely important," says Paul von Zech, the afternoon news editor at the Wall Street Journal Radio Network. "A lot of people today use cell phones as their sole source of communication. For example, many CEOs we need to talk to will be calling from cell phones in cabs. There's nothing worse than that—unless it's your source calling from a conference and there's people clapping in the background"...

Brian Pittman's spotlight this week: Eric Auchard, Reuters

"The best way for a PR person to deal with a journalist is to treat the reporter like a hungry teenager," says Reuters technology correspondent Eric Auchard. "We're impatient, we need things, we're on deadlines and we need to be fed. If we're not fed, we get angry and have tantrums."

"If you feed us, we'll be satisfied and move on to terrorize someone else," assures Auchard, whose refreshing perspective on PR owes itself in part to discussions he had with his stepmother when she was a lead public relations practitioner for several top British companies. "Reporters who aren't getting what they need become a lot more dangerous to you," he stresses. "But if you are helping them fill in the pieces of their stories and they trust you, then you're in a much better position to get your side of any situation or story out"...

With many PR campaigns serving deep?pocketed, million?dollar corporations, it's refreshing to hear about one that scores huge media results on a small budget?for the benefit of someone in need. One such unique opportunity came about for The Intrepid Group when owner Chris Thomas got word of Terry Birch, a custodian at Olympus Jr. High School in Salt Lake City.

Birch had been progressively losing his hearing as a result of a childhood illness and was in need of a cochlear implant. He had previously been laid off from a job in the communications industry, but, "Many people felt he was laid off because he was hearing impaired," Thomas says. "At the same time, his wife had breast cancer, and the home he was living in had serious mold problems"...