TechCrunch goes on Embargo strike
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- If you’re a working journalist, you’ll be more than familiar with the term ‘embargo’.
It’s something everyone from governments to PR agencies uses when they send you stuff they want you to (hope you will) publish.
But only when they say so.
Embargoes are either a kind of official ‘heads up’ which give you time to begin to ferret out information; or, they’re a kind of PR trick to get you to think you’re being told something important when you’re not.
Most working journalists impose their own embargoes — like when someone tells them something in confidence before it actually happens.
But TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, an ex-lawyer, definitely doesn’t like the practice and says he’ll no longer pay any attention to embargoes, stating »»»
A portion of the stories we write are ‘embargoed’ news items. They aren`t stories that we`ve dug up ourselves. Instead, PR firms have pre-briefed us on the news and have asked us to write, if we choose to, no earlier than a set time.
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.
But there`s a problem. All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn`t used to be this way, but it`s becoming more and more of a problem. As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.
One annoying thing for us is when an embargo is broken. That means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they`ve promised not to. The benefits are clear – sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first.
That means it`s a race to the bottom by new sites, who are increasingly stressed themselves with a competitive marketplace and decreasing advertising sales.
Actually, that’s only true if you’re worried about who gets the story first.
That may count offline when ’scoops’ are important to print and electronic media trying to steal a march on each other to attract readers. And for them, once a story is gone, it’s gone (unless you can afford to subscribe to one of the expensive archive companies).
But things are different online where the audience is global and located in so many different time zones that even for outlets which give a damn about who gets what first, it doesn’t really matter.
Once a story is online, it’s there. Period. And it’s easily accessible to anybody, anywhere, who cares to search for it.
For many blogs and sites, the important thing is getting the message out, not scoring off other media by being first.
Based on trust
The Financial Post’s David George-Cosh asked several Canadian firms what they thought about Arrington’s decision and among them was Justin Creally of High Road Communications
“This simply shows that the cookie-cutter approach to PR is dead,” he says, going on:
“Embargoes still have a place, but as TechCrunch highlights, they should only be used as exclusives or with a very tight group of outlets. I haven’t seen ‘mass distribution’ of embargoes, so I’ll take TechCrunch’s word that they happen. One thing is for sure, I feel sorry for the PR folks who haven’t read the post and end up getting a nasty surprise when TechCrunch breaks the embargo.
“The bottom line: Successful relationships between PR and reporters/bloggers are based on trust and respect for each other`s role.”
Right.
Meanwhile, “I’m telling them that they can give me the news exclusively or they can leave me out of it,” the Mercury News has Arrington saying.
Will Arrington’s decision to make a difference to anything?
Nope.
But it has generated an impressive amount of free PR for Arrington and TechCrunch.
And none of it’s embargoed. 
Jon Newton – p2pnet
TechCrunch – Death To The Embargo, December 17, 2008
Financial Post - Canadian PR firms respond to TechCrunch’s decision to stop honouring embargoes, December 18, 2008
Mercury News - TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington defies PR machine, December 18, 2008
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