I recently attended a ‘meet the media’ style event arranged by Full Run . It was a great session all around, and a good opportunity to get in front of Matt, the Deputy Technology Editor at The Daily Telegraph. I always find it’s useful to attend these media events as it helps me to build better relationships with the journalists that I work with on a daily basis. It helps me to understand exactly what they do, and allows me to ask them questions one-on-one to get to know how they work and what kind of stories they are interested in.

Journalists have very different ways of working, and I work with hundreds of them. Pretending I know each of them inside out would be wrong, so making the effort to get to know them individually and actually listening to what they want makes a world of difference to how we work together.

In the spirit of community, I thought it would be useful to share some reminders for anyone who is interested in targeting the Telegraph for potential technology stories:

- The technology section runs on a Thursday and on a Saturday

- Each edition features two technology articles, using the rest of the space for the best, the most interesting looking or the oddest gadgets

- Thursday’s technology page always features the ‘best buy’ and ‘must have’ gadgets and is much more serious and news lead

- Saturday’s technology section will feature novelty gadgets, in the glossy magazine

- If they feature a product or gadget, they will write about what is it and what it does, rather than the deep technology that lies behind it

- A regular piece might only warrant 200 words. Only a revolutionary or innovative news story will make a 1000 word article (a good example would be the Wolfram Alpha story)

It’s worth remembering that the typical Telegraph reader is conservative with a high disposable income, but not someone who will part with their money easily. So pitch the editors with their reader in mind.

It’s obvious that both Matt and Claudine Beaumont (The Telegraph’s Digital Life Channel Editor) receive hundreds of emails every day from PRs asking them to review or feature their “exciting” gadgets…but how do you actually get them to take interest in yours?

I found Matt’s answer to this question interesting: what it came down to was ‘anything to do with convergence’. He doesn’t want anything painfully stylish or úber expensive, but something simple that does useful things really well and that can handle multiple things at one time. A good example is the iPhone. Oh, and apparently anything relating to iPods gets noticed.

Something that I've been acutely aware of recently is the fact that there are currently a huge number of PR people trying to reach out to a shrinking pool of journalists. The pressure is increasing to make every single pitch perfectly relevant for the journalist I am talking to, and the audience they are writing for. That said, Matt’s view is that he would rather be bombarded with emails telling him about all and everything, than not know about it at all. Any tips to make sure your email gets read first? According to Matt, a good headline or a bad pun usually does the trick.

All in all, I found this to be a useful session, and have taken away some insight I am already putting into practice. These media sessions are definitely something I would recommend PR people make an effort to go to as it can only help you improve the way you work with press, and build on important relationships. I believe that regularly meeting face to face also helps ease the sometimes negative perception of relationships between journalists and PR people, and that can only be a good thing.