Michael Arrington posted on TechCrunch Wednesday that he would no longer honor news embargoes, noting that his competitors already break embargoes regularly, hurting his readership. But even Arrington recognized the benefits of news embargoes done right. From TechCrunch, on "embargoed news":
"A lot of this news is good stuff that our readers want to know about. And we have the benefit of taking some time during the pre-briefing to think about the story, do research, and write it properly. When embargoes go right, we get to write a thoughtful story which benefits the company and our readers."
News embargoes are agreements between journalists and PR folks not to run a story until a certain date. They're more relevant to national stories that will garner a large amount of coverage: say, a multi-million dollar merger or an upcoming release of an innovative product by a major company.
Arrington blames PR firms for sending emargoed news stories to bloggers who aren't likely to honor embargoes - and he's right, this is a problem - but it's just too easy to extrapolate the actions of a few hasty, desperate PR people to the entire industry. I mean, are all PR people guilty of this?
Well, Arrington does mention that Microsoft and Google enforce their embargoes by denying known embargo-breakers releases. It's a splendid way to enforce an embargo - if you're a massive company that can throw its PR weight around. Smaller companies don't have that luxury.
Is there a solution? Well, it shouldn't be to throw out the news embargo entirely, as Arrington has done. News embargoes are valuable to both PR people and journalists. They help PR people get maximum coverage and journalists create well written and researched stories. What we need is to make sure PR people understand the blogs they're contacting.
News embargoes are likely to be respected by newspapers and magazines, but an obscure blogger who's eager to get some attention is much more likely to post a hot story early. The problem only gets worse when credible bloggers break embargoes.
For more insight, check out this post in POP! PR Jots, which also discusses Arrington's recent criticism of Lois Whitman and HWH PR.
"A lot of this news is good stuff that our readers want to know about. And we have the benefit of taking some time during the pre-briefing to think about the story, do research, and write it properly. When embargoes go right, we get to write a thoughtful story which benefits the company and our readers."
News embargoes are agreements between journalists and PR folks not to run a story until a certain date. They're more relevant to national stories that will garner a large amount of coverage: say, a multi-million dollar merger or an upcoming release of an innovative product by a major company.
Arrington blames PR firms for sending emargoed news stories to bloggers who aren't likely to honor embargoes - and he's right, this is a problem - but it's just too easy to extrapolate the actions of a few hasty, desperate PR people to the entire industry. I mean, are all PR people guilty of this?
Well, Arrington does mention that Microsoft and Google enforce their embargoes by denying known embargo-breakers releases. It's a splendid way to enforce an embargo - if you're a massive company that can throw its PR weight around. Smaller companies don't have that luxury.
Is there a solution? Well, it shouldn't be to throw out the news embargo entirely, as Arrington has done. News embargoes are valuable to both PR people and journalists. They help PR people get maximum coverage and journalists create well written and researched stories. What we need is to make sure PR people understand the blogs they're contacting.
News embargoes are likely to be respected by newspapers and magazines, but an obscure blogger who's eager to get some attention is much more likely to post a hot story early. The problem only gets worse when credible bloggers break embargoes.
For more insight, check out this post in POP! PR Jots, which also discusses Arrington's recent criticism of Lois Whitman and HWH PR.
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