What time/day is best to call?
There is no good time for a PR person to call, but the best window would be late morning/early afternoon... That's generally a period where the morning fires are put out, and I'm not yet racing to tie up loose ends in the late afternoon so I can get home.

How do you like to be contacted? (e-mail, phone, fax, mail)
Via Fax. With e-mail, everything looks like spam after a while... Snail mail has really kind of disappeared as a story pitch source... and phone calls are, frankly, annoying. Faxes are good because they come into my computer. I can print out the ones I need, and it gives me a hard copy to look at that I can place in my assignment file.

Which topics are hot right now? Which are not?
Anything having to do with Homeland Security... Personal Finance, Traffic and consumer issues are good for us. We have little to no use for health issues or national-focused stories that take place in DC.

What's your most memorable experience with a PR person?
I married one. My wife was an Account Executive for Edelman Public Relations in DC... We had an agreement... She would never pitch me at home!

Anything else you'd like the Public Relations industry to know?
Before you call to pitch, know something about the radio station you're calling... Taking the approach of calling every radio station in hopes of finding someone - anyone - who will do your story really wastes your time and mine. We are located in Washington, DC, but we are a local news station... The fact that an association or a company is having a news conference in this city does not make it news for our purposes. There are more news conferences in DC daily than any place else on the planet... But most of them don't apply to us, because we do LOCAL news!

Our thanks to this month's Media Pro Guest Columnist.
John Matthews
News Director
WMAL-AM
4400 Jenifer St. NW
Washington, DC 20015
Phone: 202 686-3020
Fax: 202 686-3061
Email: John.Matthews@abc.com