The last time Apple had bad financial news to report, the Cincinnati Bengals had just picked Carson Palmer as the No. 1 player in the NFL Draft, Johnny Depp was only a few short weeks away from making his debut as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, and Twitter didn’t even exist.

It’s been a long-debated topic in media relations: how much is a PR professional’s relationship worth in terms of getting stories placed for clients?

Easter is coming up – you’d better believe brands will be jumping like the bunny to post a clever holiday-based tweet or two. In much the same way, savvy PR pros with access to quality data can hijack the revolving news cycle to promote their data prowess.

The U.S. department of labor shows that there are now 4.6 public relations pros to every one journalist.

Thanks for sharing. But don’t bother pitching.

Just look at the race for the 2016 presidency, where a lack of quality media training has produced some cringe-worthy moments for candidates.

Hooray! Twitter eliminated the 140-character limit on direct messaging (DM), time to get pitching! Pause, take a deep breath and first be sure you’ve got a relationship in place.

Practice media relations that are relevant and drive value for both the client and reporter.

I studied postmodern American literature in college, so the idea of recycling historical content and putting a new spin, or voice, on it rings a lot of familiar bells for me. It seems that advertising has started to catch up to other industries in its efforts to recycle and reuse the gold mine of existing content at their disposal to trigger attention with a wave of nostalgia.