Allison Schiff is the managing editor of AdExchanger, where she covers mobile, Facebook (sorry, Meta), measurement, privacy and the app economy. Allison received her M.A. in journalism from the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland (her favorite place), and a B.A. in history and English from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. We spoke with Allison Schiff on her background in journalism, what makes for a great story, and advice for young PR professionals looking to pitch.
How did you get into journalism?
I was always interested in writing. My parents love telling the story of when I was in high school and I first told them I wanted to be a writer. They smiled at me, closed their bedroom door, and talked about getting a second mortgage on the house.
I consider myself very fortunate to have found a job in writing when I was in college. I went home for the summer and worked at my local newspaper writing stories about all of the cute little news items happening in suburban New Jersey like dog shows and September being National Square dancing month.
From there, I earned a degree in journalism in Ireland, which was a great opportunity to live abroad. When I came back, I was unemployed for a while. I ended up doing a little medical copywriting and writing about public accountancy for a trade publication about CPAs. My editor there then moved me to direct marketing news.
The job position was open, so she brought me over and that was my first exposure to writing about marketing. After a few years there, another of my editors moved to AdExchanger and brought me along with him. I’ve been meandering over to ad tech trade journalism for a little while, but I’ve always been really interested in talking to people and getting to the bottom of things that seem really complex and trying to make them explicable.
What makes for a good story as it relates to the sector/industry you cover?
I hate to say this, but what makes for a good story is not often what is pitched to us. We get pitched a lot of stories that are not really stories because they’re just things like partnership announcements or hirings, which can be interesting, but not exactly what we’re looking for.
What makes a really good story is being able to talk to a technology provider or one of their clients. Discussing a challenge, a new feature or a new approach is extremely helpful because you’re able to see what is going on in the industry and who is being affected.
The use of data also makes for a good story. It helps us really understand the reason why a piece of technology exists, and it helps us prove that it’s real and not just vaporware or aspirational, because sometimes we get pitched on things that don’t actually exist yet.
What is the biggest piece of advice you would give to young PR professionals who are pitching you?
I find that so many pitches are clearly not personalized. I don’t mean personalized in the sense of “Hey Allison, how’s your cat?,” but a lot of pitches are clearly blasts and the topic is so niche. It doesn’t make sense to me because when a topic is so niche, not a lot of people are going to be writing about it.
A pitch with just a brief and a little personal note is always better than a really long exposition that comes out in blast form. Just a simple “Hey, I have this client that’s doing X. We can provide X, Y, and Z. Are you interested?” works. Pitches don’t have to be super long, and they also don’t have to boil the ocean every time.
I will also often get pitches that talk about the history of marketing. That’s general information that is not really necessary. It’s important to know how to build relationships with journalists as well. The best people that I work with are the ones that know what I cover.
I’m not the busiest person in the world, but we are very busy and we’re a small team so our time is quite precious to us. I do like to make it a habit though to respond to almost every message I get, even if it is a blast, because I don’t want to leave anyone hanging.
What are some trends in the media that you’ve witnessed and how do you anticipate the industry will change moving forward?
These days I am primarily focused on privacy. I’ve found that when I talk to people, privacy and protection services are topics that always come up.
It’s a lot more mature and different than even just a few years ago when people would pay a lot of lip service. Companies are a bit more willing now to go into detail and explain how they actually protect privacy and what some of the challenges are in doing that.
It’s nice to see that some of our privacy coverage is our most popular now as opposed to six or seven years ago when I was writing stories about privacy and they weren’t really driving that much traffic, because the topic wasn’t top of mind for people.
Today, you almost can’t get through a conversation without talking about the consumer perspective and privacy protection. I would say this is definitely changing the face of tech.
If you hadn’t pursued journalism, what other career path would you have chosen?
This is adjacent to journalism, but I’ve always dreamt about being involved in writing in any way, so I would love to write a book. I don’t know exactly what it would be about, but that’s been a bit of a fantasy for me.
I would also love to learn how to work one of those fancy coffee machines. I’ve always thought baristas are really cool. They have a great job where they get to talk to people and it always smells like coffee. Those machines are just so interesting to me! There may even be a little downtime to read a bit while you’re waiting for your next customer.
