Tory Patrick's Bad Pitch Field Report

When Tory Patrick noted on a recent post that she was undertaking one of our challenges, I asked if she'd be willing to blog about it. To be honest, I want Bad Pitch to be more of a community...we learn from each other and we (Richard and Kevin) should do stuff like this more often.

Tory rocks. Here's her post...

My Summer Field Trip
When Kevin Dugan threw out a challenge here last month, of course I wanted in!

It’s time to think outside the box…

The post that inspired Kevin.
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Stale. One thing that I never want to be.

We all have a tendency to learn up to a point, we get comfortable and keep chugging along rarely investing in our ongoing education.


I call it the slow but sure path to irrelevancy.


Let me share my prescription for avoiding irrelevancy: Try new things.|

Simple right?
--

My takeaway after reading this post? I realized I was "stale" when it came to my daily reading. *shudder*

But it’s true. I click on the same websites every day. This is fine, for the most part. And while I may not know every last details of a news story, between Facebook and Twitter, I feel I’m pretty on top of current events. But what am I missing?!

Crowdsourced News
So I opened it up to a group of my PR friends. Some work at an agency, some are in-house, and some work in public affairs. I asked them to throw me a few links. And I got responses. Lots of 'em. Some sites I knew about, others I had heard of but never really taken a look at, and others were so far out of my comfort zone I wasn’t even sure I wanted to click on the links.

But I did. And for the past week and a half I have been tackling these links and my brain feels ALIVE! My brain is on overdrive with ideas. Why haven’t I been reading ‘The Hill?’ I mean, I live and work in DC…on Capitol Hill, no less. It’s basically like my neighborhood rag! And I’ll tell you this, while most of what’s covered in ‘The Hill’ has nothing to do with my “everyday,” I’ve found inspiration just in reading some of the articles. And I found out where to get my fix of gossip, Hill-style.

Know the News (via the channel of your choosing)
By far my favorite response, and perhaps the most intriguing, was from my colleague Catriona.

"I read CNN everyday for real news, but get my news mostly on Twitter. Sad?"

I thought about this for a minute, and sat back in my chair and laughed. Here I was trying to expand my horizons and all I needed to do was dive a bit deeper into Twitter. With approximately 600 posts PER SECOND, it’s tough to filter through the noise. But maybe the source of my “read-aissance” lies within just 140 characters.

>>>EDITOR'S NOTE: Read-aissance?! You just unlocked the rim shot badge.<<

I still plan to challenge myself through Labor Day, when summer officially comes to an end. While I can't take a different route to work (unless I walked up the stairs to my home office backwards, which could prove dangerous), I plan to switch up my routine. Maybe I'll try drafting a press release while sitting on the exercise ball. Engaging my mind AND my core at the same time!

So what about you? What was your A-HA moment this summer?

Tory Patrick is an Account Manager at Vantage Communications. See what else Tory and her colleagues have to say on their blog, Vantage Points.