Stage Two's blog

I’ve read more blog posts and tweets about how “all” PR is bad, full of spammers and people likely to go out and club the occasional baby seal. I wish I could say this was super-far from the truth, but from the stories I hear, along with the pitches I get for LIVEdigitally, it seems like a lot of these complaints are justifiable.  But, just as much as generalizations are over-used against PR people, I’ve noticed an equally, if not more, disturbing trend from bloggers and social media users in general.  It seems like there’s a trend toward less due diligence than in years past, in fact there’s often no fact-checking or other research done prior to a blog post or a tweet.

As much as PR people are here to pass news along to content creators, another reason for the existence of the trade is to support the news making/breaking process.  PR people are here to answer questions, support fact checking processes, provide access to executives for interviews, etc.  And just as guilty as they may be for deluging underinterested bloggers in uninteresting news, they are not being used as a good resource for many a blogger.

Our firm prides itself on its relationships and reputation (amongst other things).  We are well-known not to spam, and take a lot of effort to try to self-select which media outlets would be interested in our clients.  But even with that degree of credibility, I still feel there is a missing element to modern news-making. Here are the three most disturbing observations I have:

1. An utter lack of inbound requests from bloggers to companies/PR firms for anything other than review units.  No asking for comments, interviews etc.  Recently one of our clients had a really great wave of blog posts get written, without a single one of those bloggers contacting us to check details of the story or get an extra quote from the CEO.
2. A tendency to publish/tweet first, wait for corrections and more content later.  There’s been a lot of posts written with a goal to be “first” (or near-first) on a topic, without getting into details.  I’ve seen tweets and posts happen that make wild assumptions or accusations, and only see fixes or retractions much later.  There is unquestionably a stronger emphasis on breaking any news than there is an emphasis on reporting accurate stories.
3. A likelihood to use other bloggers as “sources” without any fact-checking.  This one pretty much goes without saying.  It is as if an article on TechCrunch or Engadget is simply “factual” just because it’s there (incidentally, I picked those blogs solely due to their size, not because they have done anything wrong and I am not calling them out for any wrongdoings).

I find these trends upsetting in many ways because of the relationships we have.  When a rumor (true or not) begins spreading across tech blogs, we would expect to get numerous inbound requests for information.  We are accessible via IM, email, phone, and Twitter, and virtually anyone we pitch has all of our contact information.  Yet we hear virtually nothing, and are more likely to hear inquiries from those who don’t know us.

So what’s going wrong?  I asked a few of my blogger friends their opinions, here’s some of what I heard (note the context here was me sending them the above statements, so this doesn’t necessarily reflect how they blog as individuals!):

Joshua Topolsky (Editor-in-Chief, Engadget): The news flow being what it is, it can be hard to wait on a quote from a CEO, and more often than not, the quotes they want to give us are generally as safe as possible. Companies often deflect or deny even when there’s a real story at play, so it’s a tight spot to be in, we’re breaking news in new ways, and companies are combating having their secrets spilled, surprises ruined, or plans misunderstood.  Overall though, I see a lot of writers making the mistake of shooting first (with their eyes closed), not bothering to ask questions later, and never owning up to anything.

Marshall Kirkpatrick (Lead Blogger, ReadWriteWeb): Right now there’s little incentive in terms of page views to do any but the most high quality research.  Cursory, matter of course, due diligence doesn’t get a whole lot of reward.   I’ve done it in the past and try to now when I can, but readers rarely seem to care.  Well earned scoops do get rewarded, but few bloggers have the chops or work priorities to focus on scoring those.

Louis Gray (independent blogger): If a story is “interesting”, but not a game changer, I tend to typically just ask for a login so I can check it out and do screenshots. On longer-lead stories, I do trade e-mails with the developer, but not if I expect they are “blasting” the announcement to a ton of folks, because then the effort seems wasted. I also tend to send the URL of the post to the contact after it’s up to ask them to make sure it is “right”.

Dave Zatz (independent blogger): Unfortunately, I think for many bloggers being first is important for traffic which directly corresponds to ad revenue. And of course controversy sells. Most of my PR people I have a relationship with at this point, so it’s very different. In fact, I’m visiting a company in Virginia tomorrow to be briefed by the CEO. No freebie hardware, just an overview for me and I’ll shoot some pics.

Robert Scoble (aka The Scobleizer): It seems like a majority of the time when I ask a PR person for something I want, I get answered “no”, and it sours me on working with PR people.  Also, I think there’s not much homework being done, just a lot of repurposing press releases.  I think it’s not just a blogger thing, by the way, I think it’s a journalism thing in general these days. There’s exceptions to these rules, and they really stand out from the crowd.  Lastly, there’s too much pressure on being first, yet there’s no pressure on being right.

It’s probably not too hard for me to go out on a limb and say the incentive system in place for modern journalism is, in a word, screwed.  Bloggers are pushed by numerous market forces to be first, under any circumstances – a fact that was equally lamented by the bloggers with whom I spoke. And with the high growth rate of Twitter as the next big place to break news, it doesn’t seem like a problem that’s about to get better or go away.  Which is sad, but probably just the state of things for now.

That said, I sure do hope to see more people playing at the same level.  It’s easy to call out PR firms, since so many do employ inappropriate, outdated media buying techniques.  But it’s easy to call out bloggers and twitterers too. There are a lot of glass houses out there, and rapid-fire typists with pervasive Internet access are throwing more and more stones, inadvertently or not.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Bloggers, Blogging, Marketing, Outreach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.