My HARO experience

When I watched the nightly news as a kid, I always wondered how news stations picked people to interview. Was it random? Was there an application process?

Thankfully, a few years in journalism showed me it was connected people that always seemed to get sourced. Guys like Richard Laermer do it all the time. So much in fact, he wrote an entire book about getting yourself out there.

Being a combination of huge self promoter AND blessed (might be a stretch) with an opinion on nearly anything, I wanted to be a source, too. It’s fun to be asked questions, it feels good to help someone with a story and it’s REALLY cool to see your name in print or on the TV screen (not COPS).

HARO is an easy way to do that. Journalists can find sources, sources can find outlets and information can be exchanged between people when geography would have traditionally held them apart. Peter Shankman publishes the HARO newsletter three times a day, and the information has become so valuable the guy nearly lives off the ads.

And it works. I’ve been interviewed on podcasts, quoted in BusinessWeek and even landed a writing gig on running. But this latest one beats them all. Thanks to Jesse Drucker’s needing a source for a story about pharmaceutical companies dodging taxes by shifting their profits overseas, I ended up being able to help with his story, get quoted on Bloomberg.

My 15 minutes of fame is almost up, so look quick.

Since ABCNews is a bunch of dipshits who disable embedding after the fact, you’ll have to click on my mug below to be taken to their website.