When it comes to working with journalists, I'm pretty much a straight shooter. I don't flatter; I don't suck up. I give respect, and I expect the same in return.

I can't recommend this approach to everyone. Many PR people would be out of a job if they didn't know how to suck up. Why?

1. Because they don't understand journalists.

2. Because they don't know what a real news story is.

3. Because they don't understand their own value.

Sure -- all PR folks understand the value of what they do for clients. But do they realize the value of what they do for journalists?

If you do your job well, you make the journalist's job a hundred times easier. And that merits respect. That's what I mean when I say I'm a straight-shooting, no-suck-up, expect-respect kind of guy.

But ... there are limits.

For example, if I give a reporter my best pitch, and he/she decides to twist it around and write something nasty about my company or client, I don't get upset. Assuming we both played the game by the rules, I don't take it personally. I remember for next time -- but I let it go.

I don't call the reporter up and say, "You misled me! Where's my respect!"

And I don't -- under any circumstances -- write an angry letter to the reporter giving him a taste of his/her own medicine.

Many times, I have been asked to write such nasty missives on behalf of wounded companies or clients. In all but one or two cases, I have succeeded in talking them out of it.

Comedian Rob Schneider's publicist didn't succeed, however.

Earlier this year, Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times wrote that Schneider's Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo had been "sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

Funny, right? Rob didn't think so -- and so (I'm assuming over his publicist's strenuous objections) he wrote an angry letter to Goldstein. He then published the letter in a full-page ad in Variety. The letter includes hilarious lines like:

Maybe, Mr. Goldstein, you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for "Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter, Who's Never Been Acknowledged By His Peers!"

The anger is just not attractive, is it? I would assume that afterwards, in consultation with his publicist, he learned the err of his ways and decided the letter had been a mistake.

But no. He's still writing letters -- although at least he's toned it down a bit. Defamer has the latest.

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