In just a couple of hours I’ll be phoning up a PR agency on the West Coast and could very well be saying yes to a pitch that found its way into our Monster e-mail inboxes earlier this week.

And here’s the thing: The pitch wasn’t very good.

For starters, we are addressed as “Hi Corporate” — you can’t get much sloppier than that. (I can hear Scott Monty telling me now, “Don’t read another word!”)

Next, the PR pro — who works at an agency that sponsored PodCamp Boston last year and should know better — makes zero effort to personalize her message. No mention of what we do at Monster. No attempt to find a match between the event she’s pitching and our career advice site or the Monster Blog, neither of which she bothered to research.

Finally, no links of any kind for me to check out her client’s event and associated product online.

Clearly, a disastrous pitch and one I should be forwarding to Kevin Dugan at the Bad Pitch Blog, right?

And yet, what we’re being pitched is intriguing. It’s funny. It’s a perfect fit for our blog, and potentially for our discussion forums as well. I simply wouldn’t be doing my job if ignored the message.

This post isn’t meant to justify lazy, brainless pitches. There are still best practices that should be followed, and I’ve written and podcasted about them in the past. But occasionally, someone can go about pitching all wrong and still win us over. It happens.

So to answer my own headline question: No, I’m not selling out. I’m being practical.

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