As a former Chicago Tribune tech columnist, I’ve been on the receiving end of thousands of pitches and press releases. Ninety-nine percent of them are not good. Ninety percent of them are really terrible.

Why do media relations people blast impersonal, ineffective, poorly written press releases to overwhelmed, on-deadline media (the only kind of media, mainstream on online)?

Because they’re told to blast terrible press releases by their managers, who are told to do so by the people who run public relations, who are expected to do so by the marketing department.

Media relations efforts take effort.

That goes beyond putting the reporter’s name (sometimes) on the press release.

You need to know the reporter, have a relationship with him or her, understand what they cover and what they look for, what’s interesting to them, what will stop them in their hectic tracks and say “Aha! I want that!” Do you think your target media members will be inclined to accept your story if it arrives to them in a short personal email, or a long, uninteresting, blast release?

That’s the effort it takes.

Once you consider that the technology you’re pitching cost tens of millions, sometimes more to develop, it’s really not that much effort at all. And it’s really embarrassing — unforgivable, really — that high-tech media relations doesn’t put in this effort with regularity.