Why Embargoes Will Survive
December 17th, 2008 by JeremyMike Arrington wrote a ranting-yet-good blog post today called Death to Embargoes, in which he states:
PR firms are out of control. Today we are taking a radical step towards fighting the chaos. From this point on we will break every embargo we agree to.
I’ve written before on the conundrum the embrago process creates, but considering a portion of our services include PR, I felt it important enough to address the topic. Mike blames PR flacks, and he’s partially right yet partially wrong to do so. I’m sure he gets a tremendous number of pitches, the vast majority of which are terrible. As I’ve said many times, the PR industry itself is in a time of major transition. The old-school tactics of blasting out releases to purchased media lists barely work at all, and, per Mike’s post, are causing more frustration than they are creating news.
But let’s share the blame a little bit, shall we? These days, the momentum shift of newsmaking is being the absolute first to break a story. We’ve heard numerous times that outlets won’t cover a piece of news because of pre-existing coverage, from the same day! I wrote a blog post on how differing factors of online newsmaking have wreaked havoc on the entire PR process. The problem is, there’s no “better” way to handle it.
So the fit hits the shan when these two competing interests meet up, which tends to centralize around “real” news (which I’ll define as something worthy of a blog post/article). If we all stop using embargoes, then we have to tell the media news as it happens, which truly puts writers into a race situation. Odds are less coverage for the company. Furthermore, for those of us in the business of building real relationships with journalists, it’s a losing game.
The key problem is the unmovable object vs unstoppable force argument. Companies need to attract attention to themselves. They need to be newsmakers. The problem is there’s often a lack of interesting news. At Stage Two we help our clients determine the stories we feel are newsworthy, and we do this based on our relationships with the media and bloggers we know. Even then, there are times where we think the interest level will be high, but at the end of the day the pickup is low. Hey, it happens.
On the flipside, bloggers are faced with the challenge of building traffic. If you are in the business of breaking news, as sites like TechCrunch are, your brand will live or die based on your ability to have quality news. So when your competition breaks an embargo or otherwise “scoops” you, you lose credibility, lose traffic, and therefore lose money.
I’ve also heard the argument made that embargoes cause the same story to get written in numerous outlets, and that this is a problem. I don’t agree. While us “echo chamber” people follow Techmeme and see the overlap, the majority of readers do not aggregate from all tech news sites. They find writing styles they like, and while they may subscribe to several blogs, they certainly don’t look at things the way we do. For the general news consumer, more/wider coverage is good.
So while I still believe in the embargo process, I also applaud Mike for calling the industry out on the problems. I put the onus of responsibility on bloggers and “PR folk” alike. Here at Stage Two we’ve had a few embargoes broken, and we take each very seriously. In every case we’ve received an apology and explanation from the outlet who broke it. In some cases entire publications are removed from our targets for a period of time. Other times, we accept the mistake and move on. It’s a two-way street.
I don’t think Mike’s solution is perfect, but I do like the fact that it will help “prune out” some of the signal from the noise. On both sides of the fence, that is.
December 17th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
you guys do a great job of not only targeting the right people, but building relationships with the journalists and bloggers you work with. it also helps that your products don’t suck ;)
December 17th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I’ll second Veronica in pointing out that S2 does a good job of targeting the right bloggers with the right stories and think that your approach is better then 99% of the PR firms out there, but I also feel like the whole PR system is a disaster. A few months ago, I put a notice on my contact page asking PR people not to contact me unless they actually worked for the company they were shelling for. It just got really annoying to get a bunch of random pitches on stories, when I didn’t feel like my site was a “news” publication. I guess, I felt like if a company wanted to talk to me, I still wanted to be open to them, but I also felt like firms who get paid to drum up coverage weren’t very selective about the stories that would be of interest. Instead of sending me unique/exclusive stuff they’d try to repackage their client’s “news” simply because it was their job to get as many people to publish as possible. In the past, I’ve taken advantage of a few embargoes, but since I tend to prefer writing posts that you won’t find anywhere else, I’ve pretty much decided that I’m just not interested in getting early access. if it means that my post is going to be a me too story. I’m not sure the best solution for PR firms, but can sympathize with Arrington’s position. Nontheless, when push comes to shove, I do think it’s the wrong approach. If he doesn’t want to fight with other bloggers for the same story, then he should just refuse to accept embargoes. If he wants early access to give him time to process his thoughts, then he should honor his agreement and live with the fact that every post he writes won’t be breaking news.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
The bigger problem is when a bad PR firm targets an organization without taking the time to understand an organization’s policies. (Let’s face it, anyone who sends embargoed information to TechCrunch can only blame themselves for the consequences.) Sure there are financial pressures on PR firms, and sure blanket “spam” solicitations by PR firms have some rate of success, but one would hope that businesses would eventually gravitate to those PR firms that take the time to understand their targets.
December 17th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
[...] this end, check out what Jeremy Toeman has to say about the survival of [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
The question becomes how to use the (non)system to your advantage. If I were StageTwo, I’d pretend I didn’t get Arrington’s embargo notice. Then I’d send TC, and only TC, an “embargoed” news release from one of my clients. Which ever embargo is “broken” first is going to get a ton of blogosphere coverage… ;) You don’t even have to admit it was a set-up. Just bask in the glow of being atop Techmeme.
December 17th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
One of the biggest problems is that there are still too many lazy PR practitioners who don’t do their homework before pitching a publication or a reporter. And regardless of how many times someone like Chris Anderson or other reporters chastise our industry, PR people will continue to guilelessly send out their blind (blanket) pitches. In addition, there are quite a few who don’t understand the difference between embargo and exclusive, and that’s a serious problem. PR agencies need to educate their staff and make sure that they do their job properly with respect to the writers, and in turn getting the best coverage possible for their clients. Sloppy PR work reflects badly on everyone and seriously damages a client’s standing and reputation with the press.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:58 am
I’m confused. Perhaps it’s because I report for a top tech site and cover the really huge companies. But your contention that, ‘These days, the momentum shift of newsmaking is being the absolute first to break a story’ … just isn’t true from where I’m sitting.
In fact, for me, coming in later on a big story is almost always the best strategy for getting more traffic, because Google News likes us a lot and will usually stick our headlines at the top of news clusters. The reason it’s better to come in later is that the story cluster has probably advanced higher on their rankings, so more exposure and more traffic. Getting a story into the top right-hand corner of the Google News page is the crown jewel and good for triple to quadruple the traffic of even the top headline on the top story in the Sci/Tech section (which is often in the top right-hand corner too, so …)
In fact, I regularly sit on embargoed stories for several hours after the embargo lifts to play for this more optimal scenario.
But this may just be because I’m covering big companies with guaranteed big news (e.g. HP, Apple, Microsoft). Smaller companies and blogs that live in the TechMeme or Slashdot world may have a completely different set of best practices for getting traffic, and I take it from the post and comments here that they do.
I would also like to suggest a clarification on one thing — the distinction between an ‘exclusive’ and enterprise reporting. The first being a vendor/PR driven ’scoop’ and the second being a story a reporter or news org. developed and broke on their own. Being first on an ‘exclusive’ is no great accomplishment, whereas being first on the second is something to be proud of.
Finally, I have to take exception to your saying it’s a new thing in the media for there to be an emphasis on being the first to break a story, partly because as I say, it’s actually moving in the opposite direction for the larger online news orgs, but also because, dude, ‘getting the scoop’ has been the absolute prime goal of reporters since guys in loincloths were stamping clay tablets with breaking news about Gilgamesh.
December 18th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Very interesting discussion. I agree that Arrington’s anger is, again, more than is justified. I know the situation is frustrating to everyone involved, but I also doubt TechCrunch has never, ever broken an embargo.
Sometimes journalists break embargoes because they develop a relationship with the company and the company tells them they can break the embargo. Still not a completely kosher activity, but that’s hard opportunity for a journalist to pass up. Also, I think, most of the time journalists do honor embargoes.
I agree with D. Aristophanes. I’m not sure being the absolute first to break news is the trend. Of course bloggers try to do it. It is great to get on TechMeme. But the bloggers I know (of big and small sites alike), treat breaking news like icing on the cake: nice, but not necessary. They will usually be happy, if not compelled, to write any decent story that is in their beat. They do assume loyal readership and they do think their readers will want to know their take on the subject regardless if they break the news. Though I am sure it varies by site and subject.
January 5th, 2009 at 4:30 am
[...] I understand that embargoed stories are an important part of the way news currently works. Jeremy Toeman has some good points about this in response to Arrington. But as Arrington alludes to, as more and more blogs get added [...]