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.
Background:
Tech companies are desperate for press and hammering their PR firms for coverage on blogs and major media sites. That in turn means that PR firms hammer us to get us to write about their clients. Gone are the days of polite pitches and actual relationship building. Today, PR firms email a story to us as many as 20 times, and call every TechCrunch writer on their cell phones repeatedly. If we say we won’t write a story (which is most of the time), things often turn nasty (check out Lois Whitman at HWH PR/New Media for a fine example).
For the most part we’ve dealt with the problem quietly over the last couple of years, other than the occasional lashing out on Twitter. Others, like Wired Magazine’s Editor In Chief Chris Anderson, have been more public with their frustration.
But now a new problem has emerged that we won’t ignore.
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.
A year ago embargo breaks were rare, once-a-month things. Today, nearly every embargo is broken, sometimes by a few minutes, sometimes by half a day or more.
We can’t continue to operate under these rules.
Our New Policy
The reason this is becoming a larger problem is because there is no downside to breaking embargoes. The PR firm gets upset but they don’t stop working with the offending publication or writer. You get a slap on the wrist, and you break another embargo later that day.
There are a few (very few) exceptions. One is Waggener Edstrom, who handles PR for Microsoft. Their embargoes don’t break because they’d unleash hell on the offender. Another is Google. The few times they’ve had problems they’ve chosen the nuclear option and banned the offender for as much as a year. As you can imagine, Google and Microsoft embargoed news doesn’t break early.
We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo. We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that. We may break an embargo by one minute or three days. We’ll choose at random.
Some firms will stop talking to us (yeah! less email), but we’ll find other ways to get the news. Others, who haven’t read this post because they don’t read TechCrunch, will be unpleasantly surprised. Maybe if we cause enough pain then PR firms will start to take action against those publications who break the rules.
There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won’t be any mistakes. There are also a handful – maybe three – people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes (if you are a PR person and wondering if you’re on that list, you’re not). But for the vast majority of news we get in our inboxes, we’re just going to fire it off to our readers ad hoc whenever we please.
This policy stays in effect until I update this post, which won’t be any time soon.
I’ll also be publishing a blacklist on TechCrunch listing every firm, company, publication and individual writer involved whenever an embargo is broken. Of course, given our new policy, I’ll be putting us at the top of that list.
Update: Good discussion on this at Mahalo.
Update 2: The rant continues.
Thanks You so Bad
Irrelevant posting. This does not change anything to me. I will still get news with the same speed.
If others were breaking the news, Techcrunch will join the crowd.
If others were not breaking the news, Techcrunch will be silent as well.
Added value to the readers by you doing this = 0.
All this will do is cause PR to wait until giving out news. To achieve the same effect as embargos, they would have to send an email on the day when it they would like the news to be printed.
PR again wins and the readers and blog sites gain little. Due to short time to publish news, most blogs will simply copy and paste the briefed version, which in turn will make it harder for them to stick out. The readers will not get to see as many varying and interesting takes on the news being pushed out.
It seems like it will get down to who can write interesting engaging articles in the shortest amount of time. Good luck.
Mike, can you tell the PR people to stop calling me? Three have called already to talk about this post.
Personally, I agree with you. There’s too much emphasis in this whole industry anyway about the scoop and breaking news.
If I were in PR I’d just Twitter the news, link to a blog explaining it, include a video on how it is being used/designed, and then work with journalists and bloggers I trust to get the inside story.
Quite a few company CEOs tell me that Twitter and FriendFeed are bringing more traffic than any other blog than TechCrunch anyway. So, Twitter is where the real action is.
By the way, did you make that bet with Guy Kawasaki about Twitter?
“Quite a few company CEOs tell me that Twitter and FriendFeed are bringing more traffic than any other blog than TechCrunch anyway…” – Robert Scoble
HA!
“Twitter is useless. It’ll be in the Dead pool soon…” – Michael Arrington
Well if PR firms break Embargos it is not far to treat startups who r innovative but underfunded to hire a PR firm, Silicon Valley is about little guy who can make it big, many garage startups do not have Advertising budgets to market their products/services, the rely heavily on PR and getting covered by blogs like TC RRW GigaOM and so forth, Embargo will help them get more reach and help kick start their ventures, not honoring Embargos will hurt those startups.
Why note Mike respect Embargo only from garage startups at least?
@Who Cares –
I think you’re missing the point.
This post isn’t meant to add any value to the readers. It’s to add value to TC, which will now break more stories more often –> more traffic/links
This is all just out of control. I dont like embargo’s at all. I think they are a complete waste of time in terms of the person breaking the story, and they are there to be broken!!
Steven Finch
http://crenk.com
> “Added value to the readers by you doing this = 0.”
Added valued to your pageviews and ad impressions = $50,000
lets see how this turns out. looks like techcrunch has had it enough, time to punch back.
jess
http://www.Yocial.com
Is any of it really news anymore anyway?
I think your confused but I think Mike covered it already.
I’m pretty sure PR firms will just adapt to this.
If they send you a press release with an embargo that asks you not to publish till the end of the week and you consistently break the embargo by publishing the story that very same day, they will just start sending you press releases much later.
Only this time, they will state an embargo till the end of that very day. If you go ahead and break the embargo by publishing the story the very next minute…….big deal, they lose very little.
If anything, this can only hurt you, the publisher. In the past, you will have had a week to look over the story, research it and publish YOUR angle on it. But now, because of the time crunch with breaking an embargo and publishing a story ASAP, you will essentially be cutting and pasting THEIR version – not a very good idea.
Will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Mike, there is an embargo on http://notifixio.us : it the coolest notification platform and they now have an awesome Firefox Addon to subscribe in one click to your favorite other blogs, as well as craisglist searches etc…
Want to know more? Check our mashups :
http://notifixio.us/mashups
And please, don’t talk about this before this afternoon, it’s embargoed
Thanks!
PS/ at least, I tried
Thanks. http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
Amazing… your tinyurl link is longer than what the original link would have been: http://jugargame.com/
Though I suppose using tinyurl has the advantage of the curiosity clickthrough because people have no idea where it goes. Maybe it’s a malware site, maybe it’ll auto-install some crazy rootkit. Who knows?!? Let’s click on it and find out!
An eye for an eye, leaves the whole world blind.
yeah well i’m tired of being the only blind person around.
This is why I love TechCrunch
Glad you did it Mike. I have had direct experience in having a PR firm blow “an exlcusive” with you in the past. Would be cool if there was an easy way to submit a story to TC, get confirmation when it was read, and see the status. On your end, you could pair the story with a google alert and see if it is broken by the time you get to it. That way, you will always know the status of the story and people who send it in, will know that it has been seen. This would cut down on spam (perhaps).
Mikey: Embargoes may be broken, but agreeing to them and then breaking them is wrong. Why not just refuse to agree to them? Douchenozzle.
Media is going through a sea change and the busting of embargoes is another nail in the coffin of the honorable, gentlemanly profession we once had. For savvy publishers, like Mike, the only alternative is to settle for being regularly scooped. That’d be idiotic.
Mike, I might suggest you make poster children of the embargo breakers, and maybe even of the PR firms who can’t manage their embargos. For the rest of us good PR firms out here, I think your policy paints with too broad a brush.
If a PR firm repeatedly goes overboard on spamming the masthead or calling personal cells, make poster children out of them.
My fellow PR firms out there need to learn how to manage an embargo. A year ago when I was a contributed writer to VentureBeat, clueless firms and/or their CEOs would often email me “embargoed” press releases before asking if I would agree to honor the embargo. I never broke them (in fact, such cluelessness always turned me off from the story), but I can understand how others would break them.
At Dovetail Public Relations, if in the RARE event someone breaks our embargo, we’re not quick to forgive because of the damage it causes to our relationships with media and bloggers who do honor their commitments.
“We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that.”
Word-breaking isn’t the best way to solve the issue. It hurts trust with others. I recommend just telling them your policy is to not honor their embargoes unless they’re on your short-list.
You reap what you sow Michael.
Problem is, there is no accountability for repeated, awful PR.
The US industry brought this on itself — and spamming reporters and following up with calls is just poking eye after eye after eye.
C’mon John Galt. This isn’t garden variety, knee-jerk retribution, but the evisceration of a largely illogical and arcane practice. Plus…when was the last time anyone read such a beautifully elucidated FU post. Rock on MA.
Two wrongs make a right.
I agree, (-)+(-) = +
Carry on Mike, we are behind you! At least, I am.
Go team.
Correction:)
(-)*(-) = (+)
Two wrights make an airplane.
So will TC break Google embargos?
Banned by Google, think of the web cred.
Long live Hotbot
Pure Genious…
“Two wrights make an airplane.” haha brilliant!
they are hometown heroes…
How and why is any of this relevant to your readers? Your internal frustrations and airing them are totally moot to your audience. This is just bizarre.
Why is it bizarre? Most of the offenders, bloggers, publishers and PR firms (smart ones) read Techcrunch. Mike can’t be emailing everyone and letting them know what he is going to do.
@miked, the offenders, blogger, publishers, etc., are not TC’s core audience. Writers for NYT I’m sure check out the Washington Post and WSJ, doesn’t mean that NYT should be sending them messages via their articles.
not me. i love the inside baseball.
“There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively”
Nice.
actually Richard, you guys (ReadWriteWeb) and others like GigaOm are the good guys. I have not problem working with you.
And ditto, I have no problem working with you or other blogs. But seriously I don’t think asking PR firms and startups to give you exclusives is the way to go. That’s asking them to choose which blog they want to get on, and of course they will opt for the biggest one. It’s unfair to put that choice onto PR firms and startups too. It basically means that startups probably won’t be covered by other top blogs if they give an exclusive to someone else. Maybe that’s something they’re ok with, but I think it’s unnecessary as all the best blogs have a unique take on the good stories. So I take your point that breaking embargoes is ruining it for everyone, but exclusives isn’t the answer imho.
Richard – I’m not sure I understand your comment. The statement ““There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively” only relates to TC honoring embargoes and provides two separate paths – either trusted (which I assume can be earned over time) or exclusivity to publish first is offered (I assume others can write about the news item once its out).
I’d be curious how many news items have “embargoes” tied to them? I would have assumed most pr firms contact TC (and other sites) without required embargoes.
@Richard MacManus
An excellent point.
John -
I took that to mean you have to be trusted AND give TC the exclusive.
It does give companies the incentive to give the exclusive to TC.
Tom – I think you’re right, sorry. I misread “We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively,” as trusted companies or PR firms. I guess still raises the question of how many “news” items have embargoes attached?
TC states: “Tech companies are desperate for press and hammering their PR firms for coverage on blogs and major media sites. That in turn means that PR firms hammer us to get us to write about their clients.”
If most calls are from PR firms repeatedly asking for a write up about a startup, isn’t the startup usually already public and therefore no embargo requested?
Richard – you can correct what you see as “unfair” (though it’s not, in the least) by nurturing your enterprise to outgrow Arrington’s.
Will it happen? Not likely… but you are no small rag either, you will get your share of exclusives (or all inclusive with everyone *but* TC) from those that want nothing to do with Mike (we all hear the horror stories and a fraction of the populous believes everything they hear, however false it may [or may not] be).
P.S. to both of you… this whole “work with you” silliness is out of control… you are competitors, neither of you is a PR firm OR a start-up (and rarely are one of you the topic of the others’ headlines)… so you are not the target of any of the animosity in this post… and are we to believe the two of you share press-releases and/or talk behind the scenes about what you are writing before you post it?? Ha!! Hardly!! So all this brotherhood ilk and “togetherness” is enough to gag us…
As for the announcement of this post… HURRAH! Go Mike! It will take the influence of a place like TC to really do something about what everyone else only complains and cries about. Not to mention, the over-saturation you speak of has turned the tech-web-blogosphere into a total toilet in the last 12 months. Way too many “social media publications” and not enough well written original articles (like TC was back in the day, and looks to be becoming once again!!! yay!!). Also, thank you for starting to name names of the PR firms that are the worst offenders as well as those that are “beyond reproach” (to cite an earlier conversation about PR firms).
@Michael: Who are the 3 “people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes” – Some of us are still interested in getting a PR firm to help us get mentioned in TC.
As someone who earns a good portion of my annual income from PR, I believe good PR relationships are built on trust.
My clients trust me to be honest with them, and tell them when they have good, great or mediocre story. We manage their expectations. If they want a guarantee of placement, that is called advertising. And we refer them to an ad agency.
The journalists I work with trust me to bring them good stories, and not waste their time. So when I do send them content, they give it prompt and fair consideration. I email good stories, and call when I have a great one.
In return, I trust them to honor my requests on timing.
Reading Michael’s post I am honestly horrified by the behavior of some of these firms. I can’t and won’t work that way, I probably won’t ever have a $30,000 a month client, but I have the respect and trust of my clients and media partners.
And in the long run, without trust, none of this works.
Michael, I am sorry it’s come to this. But good for you for drawing a line in the sand.
@Why, are you joking? It’s this kind of stuff that keeps the pageviews incrementing.
In today’s age, embargos are over! Plus the PR shills that try and enforce them are powerless.
Very Thanks. http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
While I appreciate the issue, wouldn’t it be a bit better if you simply never agree to the embargo ane explain why (if they bother to ask). Just don’t agree to it. If they don’t send you the news so be it, but at least you never said one thing and did another as you plan with many of the PR agencies.
Rant, Rant, Rant! Whatever!
I bet Calcanis is one of the ones who ticks you off? Or do your new rules not apply to them because they’re sponsoring your conference? http://www.maha...o.com/Mahalo_PR . Shame.
A fellow tech journo
he doesn’t sponsor the conference, he owns half of it.
Good. Stick it to ‘em.
Also, the inside info is great to hear…
Mike –
What do you consider a “polite pitch” and how are we suppossed to build relationships with you if you won’t talk to us?
Thanks,
Curious PR person
go away.
Ahahahahahahaha! No more beating around the bush, eh Michael?
LMAO
Pride, so the saying goes, often comes before a fall.
Watch your step big guy.
Why not set up a PR section to TechCrunch – PressCrunch.
Charge $50 a pop for approved submissions and let the hoards of readers and cross press that rely on TechCrunch daily anyway have a dedicated area to RSS and get news.
Of course, the TC articles are interesting for the perspective of the writers here, not so much the event of news. Millions come here to read because of TC’s personality, if not then new.com would be my first stop every morning but its not.
Consider it, PressCrunch, a new revenue stream for TC and PR firms don’t have to go away, just pay
I think this will be a good solution for the big fish and the growing fish.
Disclaimer: Neither I or my company make any legal claims to the name “PressCrunch” and we waive any and all claims of such trademark as it is given only as an mere idea for the owners of TechCrunch.com.
Go Mike! Love the “f*ck you” picture btw.
For the rest of the startups out there, why hire a PR firm in the first place? You don’t need money or resources to do your own PR and get on TC or any other blog. Just build something people care about or are interested in. Talk to people the old fashioned way. It works. Really.
@Curious PR Person The reason your stories get ignored is because your client’s product sucks, so deal with and ask them to make it better.
you. are. a. douche.
If your clients built anything interesting, they wouldn’t need you.
I used to work for a PR company…
Sadly that was so true for too many of the clients I had to work with.
There were one or two who just didn’t have the right “persona” to get the word out… they were a rare treat
Rude dude, rude
Dear “Curious PR Person” – you just had your shot to “build your relationship” with Mike Arrington.
You blew it. You totally effing blew it.
These PR firms are worth hating, and in my opinion, seeing Arrington write pissed off posts is one of the prime reasons I read this site.
(This comment was really only left because I wanted to checkout the Facebook connect functionality. It’s nice!)
Why dint you chose the option of not publishing any embargo from non trusted PR firms. That way every PR firm will try to be like Google or MSFT. I know its difficult that it will happen but thats more logical.
What you are doing now seems like police is not catching any thief or even if they catch they are not punishing so I am also going to rob until police takes strict action on the thieves.
well put
Now that’s what I call balls
I really hope this will help to change the current PR spamming policy.
BTW, the same should be done with startups’ “advisers” who bombards investors with “exclusive” investment opportunities…
This is why blogs are more fun than newspapers. Keep up the good fight!
I like how the whole article goes through how every embargo you see will be broken. And then goes on to list all the exceptions.
The sad thing is that this will probably do nothing to lighten my inbox
Erick, there are simple ways to “lighten the inbox” –One: send the persons/companies you want to hear from a “code” word/s to be included on the mail header. No code, delete; it takes about 2 seconds or less.
–Two: use the IP deny manager on your server and block the offensive ones…
We started doing this about a year ago, and went from about 400 emails/day down to about 60 now, all from people/companies we trust and work with. The IP address filter lists over 700 entries now, with about 100 ’spammers’ –life is sweet…
Matt
MedixNet.info
@Matt, MedixNet.info
I am a PR pro and ask you, please, to publish your list of IP addresses. The industry needs more accountability.
Plus, you would probably get a lot of traffic to the list (Adwords perhaps?).
Erick, be careful what you wish for.
An empty inbox means you’d soon be flipping burgers.
I’m sure you’ll still have Jason Calacanis’s emails to distribute, even though he’s placed an embargo on them from being shared.
Oh wait – it’s Techcrunch, it doesn’t matter, who cares about embargos? Not as if you guys ever broke any in your time, huh…?
I thought we had moved on from “Embargoes are Dead” to “Exclusives are Dead.”
Actually, I had been waiting for someone to boil over about broken embargoes. anyway, embargoes are tools to be used only in the right circumstances- right story, right publication, etc.– not willy-nilly, every day– same for exclusives by the way.
Bottom line, is you have spelled out your policy very clearly. PR flacks (I am one btw so hold your fire flacks) who disregard have no excuse, right?
(And Erick, I suspect, sadly, that you are right– though I do my best to keep my part of the PR universe relatively clean)
Mike, your so fucking cool!
You should have been a rockstar
I love it when you stick it to people
Mike, Amen!
You’re done with embargoes. I’m beyond done with them, especially this week. And I’ll spare you (and your readers) my personal rant on embargoes.
I’ve just started on the online beat. I’ve been on the daily newspaper for years. So I’ll meet or talk to anyone who sounds interesting right now. But it’s good to know when I eventually get fed up, and I will, I won’t be breaking new ground.
thanks.
like you said, the scramble for traffic and the need to be “the blog that breaks news” means that hungry bloggers cant resist the urge to break the embargo.
Finally.
Merry Christmas everyone!
If everyone starts breaking embargoes that could actually be a good thing. Embargoes are the reason we have media feeding frenzies. PR firms figured out a long time ago it is better to have everyone write about a company or announcement at the same time, makes it seem more important.
We played along as long as it was an even playing field. But it really helps the PR firms and the companies more than our readers, who end up seeing the same stories everywhere.
So you just needed an excuse to be yourself??
That’s true, when I scroll through Google Reader when a story breaks there are loads of similar posts from the sites that I follow. I’m looking forward to seeing this blacklist as I am sure that will create a storm!
Yes, but seeing the same stories everywhere is not a bad thing. Some people merely rewrite the press release, and some write very insightful pieces. Just having one person/outlet write the story is negating a multitude of other viewpoints that could shape the story completely differently—and seems a bit oppressive.
This is not the way to do it. You complain about websites breaking embargoes due to PR firms and the like spreading news like wildfire, but then turn around and do the same exact thing yourself?
This isn’t spreading a message. This is merely making the site look childish. Want to impress your readers with your “better” stance on embargoes? Then don’t accept any embargoes. But that’s not going to happen is it? Oh no, that would mean not being on top of the news and losing readership, rather than keeping your dignity and sense of responsibility.
For as long as this is going on, expect to have lost a reader. I’d rather get my information at a site that willingly breaks embargoes than at a site that complains about breaking embargoes and turns around and does it anyway.
Bara
I’ve never seen the upside of embargoed releases. What were the benefits supposed to be?
I can’t believe that I am finding myself total agree with Mike. He is write, there is no reason for this unruley behavior by these people.
crap- made a post and didnt go through?
i was going to ask michael and erick etc.. how come tech savvy startups can’t do their own PR and hire firms to do it for them. they should be smart enough to email techcrunch and other media on their own bypassing the firms (my friend worked at a PR firm and she said that all they pretty much did was spam away and didn’t even know how to leverage the web properly – not going to name names). also why dont the PR firms just mail you the day before for a press release. that way there is no possibility for an embargo. ><
Thats a serious generalization as is most of this conversation. PR peeps – be more aware of who you email/target for your clients. If a press person tells you they arent interested, leave them alone! Now, lets remember that there are many successful reporter/pr relationships…
same reason entertainers have agents – they got the connections and are better connected in the industry
good for you – the stance is well needed – and it is time to put others in their places. Too many times this has happened and sometimes interferes with legal contracts between partners – not the PR firms –
I will check back at a later date – don’t sway – don’t be a would-of, could-of, should-of – stand your ground – you may have to tweak it – but you will make your goal!
Nice post
Nice, love it
It takes someone with a lot of influence to make a difference these days. Hopefully some PR firms will wise up. Somehow, I doubt it thought. These days, it seems like no one gives a fuck about anything other than getting that paycheck.
Some people seem to forget that the reason for an embargo is that the site or feature is not live yet. Personally, I think it’s hype to write about something that is not yet available to your readers.
And it’s been my personal policy to avoid exclusives, level playing field, and if someone breaks the embargo (sometimes by accident) or the site goes live early, then I immediately alert all those prebriefed that the embargo is lifted and their story can run.
You know those emails telling us that an embargo is broken so we’re free to run a story?
Usually I just trash the post. The one I’ve just spent the last hour working on. Because when it comes to trackbacks and news aggregators, getting beaten by 10 minutes (which is, at best, how long it takes for you to send that Email and me to post) is just as bad as getting beaten by an hour or two.
Wow. You prefer not to write a good story only because you were not the first. What kind of editorial ethics is that?
What I hear is that you prefer not to inform your readers if you can’t get to the top of TechMeme.
Sad, very sad.
I dont really get it, in effect you are proposing to compete on speed rather than quality, adding more momentum to the race to the bottom.
Moreover, you will likely lose to someone willing to accept lower levels of fact checking.
The actual flaw is in the aggregators and trackbacks, who reward being first too much.
As blogging matures, gains volume and loses transparency, differentiation is key to maintain a dominant position. Either play into the current mechanics of the aggragators and try to win the race, or stick to quality and see (a segment of) people get tired of press release parrots. They will flock to either your site directly, or to new and more advanced aggregators who will reward quality over speed.
Marcelo, if I write about the article with the broken embargo, there’s nothing to stop the PR firms from just using the same tactic (”oops, the embargo broke, post now!”) repeatedly. Too often it’s clearly not a mistake. Either the PR firm has lied to us (and gave the early go-ahead to another outlet) or another blog is going rouge for more page hits.
It sucks, because usually I’ve already researched and written the post. But it’s really the only way we can show the less honest firms that we’re not going to play their games.
Great to see you pick the path of integrity in this complicated times.
First, I have to say kudos to Mike for not placing all the blame on PR folks and for recognizing that while some people might not like what we do, it’s our job and how we make our living just like the rest of the world.
As someone who is now in PR but started on the media side, I can definitely understand how seeing a story break before an embargo when you’re sitting on it can be frustrating and detrimental to your business. That said, in my experience with broken embargoes, it has never been our direct doing by over-pitching news to multiple publications. First because I think we’re smart PR people and we’re not spamming the shit out of everying hoping to make something stick, and we only offer embargoes to reporters and outlets we trust. But most importantly, when we’ve had an embargo break it’s been because of one of two things: 1. someone in the company leaks it because a reporter calls them directly and doesn’t allow us to do our job, or 2. someone in the company talks to an analyst about the news and the analyst breaks it because they don’t care about the media.
I can see what you’re trying to do and where your frustration comes from, but I also don’t think it will stop what you’re really trying to prevent in the long run.
I don’t agree with you, unfortunately. People break embargoes regardless of how strategically and well-thought out your media relations campaign is planned. TechCrunch has always honored embargoes. Others that will remain nameless have jumped the gun with excuses like,”the person in charge of the post calendar typed in the wrong date and time. Sorry about that.” Mike is right. Since no one cares/honors about embargoes anymore, PR should restructure their strategies on outreach and engagement with media and analysts – and stop email blasting a week before the news breaks.
So many people people break embargoes these days, that there really is no validity to that rule anymore anyway. Regardless if it’s a “mistake” or an “oversight,” it’s going to happen. My recommendation is to not blast everyone just because the are on the “Web 2.0 list.” Focus on the core value of each blog [and blogger] and pitch based on interests, content and relationships. Not everyone will care about your story; a good PR firm will educate their clients on that point, and not pitch blindly to justify their existence.
Ruth,
As Erick mentions, many embargoes are just designed so news all gets out at the same time. If they hold, than no publication has the leg up on another- it’s supposed to be fair play.
But– many are manufactured sto make news look more important than it is (that’s actually more true for “exclusives”), and more to the point, some publications break them for whatever reason, ticking off the rest of the honest publications who waited.
There are legitimate reasons for embargoes. I recently dealt with one that could not go out early because there was info sensitive to employees of the company. To the surprise of many editors, the embargo held. Hey, it happens. but part of the trick is not giving the news early to people who will break the embargoes (I guess that included TC now). That takes a bit of brains.
Doug – If the news is employee-sensitive you can cope by devoting more resources to your announcement, i.e. use a PR firm to handle the external communications/media/government relations while your in-house team handles the internal. Big companies making big announcements have more than one C-suite manager to use as internal/external spokespersons.
Has anyone ever suggested that effective communication was intrinsically easy – or cheap? If so, they were wrong.
In my case, I am from the agency– really, the big issue was timing- and it worked out pretty well
By the way– here is my post from October about the embargo of which I speak , and why they are still relevant– sometimes:
http://doughasl...s-not-dead-yet/
The upside is that you have time to prep your story and no one else BEATS YOU to the story. Everyone has an even playing field.
In the automotive press this is used all the time, except certain publications will break embargoes to get a boost in traffic and never get penalized by the automakers who set the embargo.
No auto publication would be this brazen even if they practice breaking embargoes to suit their purposes. We say we NEVER break them just so we have one policy and again, have proper time to write the story which can often be technical.
But we’re also not as “news’ focused as other car blogs. This is really interesting here though.
And in Automotive PR you NEVER get PR phone calls. You have to call and email and berate the PR people to get info you need.
Very true. Talk about setting an example.
Embargoes are never supposed to be used with *everybody* – so let’s see them go at it now.
I think this is an extremely relevant discussion — many of the people reading here are the people hiring PR firms or pitching directly for TechCrunch coverage.
I’ve tried using embargoes in the past to give bloggers time to write prior to news breaking elsewhere–any ideas on how to extend the same courtesy without using exclusives?
Kimber, no problem. just send us the news under embargo. We’ll definitely honor it. don’t worry about all that stuff i wrote above.
Well, I had to find out what Kimber was doing right so I checked out her website, thinking she represented a PR firm. Now, I’m checking out the product, instead. Talk about good PR.
LOL. Awesome Mike, she totally missed your sarcasm there, And Shelia too…
Sheila, I did the same thing. Very smart Kimber.
We always try to give you an exclusive angle to every pitch (a customer, an investor, an inside look at the tech, something unique). So, are embargoes off for breaking news if you get an exclusive angle? Just want to make sure I have it down:-)
PS: I agree with your decision and think it will make PR people work harder to find a unique angle vs. always relying on breaking news or a press release to get coverage.
I have to guess, was it Mashable that broke the camel’s back with breaking an embargo?
I think Mikes pissed off because he has to hunt for stories now rather than receive them in his inbox. TC is not as big as you thought hey Mike. Old media wins again.
Welcome to Littleblog Land
I think that’s awesome. Good for you. btw, where can I get that shirt?
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The game of Chicken, also known as the Hawk-Dove or Snowdrift game, is an influential model of conflict for two players in game theory. The principle of the game is that while each player prefers not to yield to the other, the outcome where neither player yields is the worst possible one for both players. The name “Chicken” has its origins in a game in which two drivers drive towards each other on a collision course: one must swerve, or both may die in the crash, but if one driver swerves and the other does not, the one who swerved will be called a “chicken,” meaning a coward; this terminology is most prevalent in the political science and economics. The name “Hawk-Dove” refers to a situation in which there is a competition for a shared resource and the contestants can choose either conciliation or conflict; this terminology is most commonly used in biology and evolutionary game theory. From a game-theoretic point of view, “Chicken” and “Hawk-Dove” are identical; the different names stem from parallel development of the basic principles in different research areas. The game has also been used to describe the mutual assured destruction of nuclear warfare.
Man it must be tough being bitter this close to Christmas and all..
The only, I mean *only* reason we ever had embargoes was because you (Michael Arrington) asked for exclusivity on breaking the news, so we had to embargo every other news outlet. That made absolutely business sense since the visibility of TechCrunch is much broader than other blogs.
I understand your need to control PR companies, but this kind of attitude will have more effect on startups like us that had to do it the hard way.
BTW, TC effectively gave up on the Startup community. TC used to be the place to find out about the new and cool startup from the world, now is mostly about tech industry, Apple, Google and all the big players.
This new direction kinda suck.
don’t confuse us being bored with sampa as a general decision to bail on covering startups. Generally half of our coverage is on new startups, and we always write about ones that we find interesting.
Low blow… ouch. And I thought this was about you not liking PR companies.
That’s why you stop covering startup the way you used to. You became a media company and you know what sells.
Most startup have only big news when they launch (or re-launch) or when they are acquired/fold. Everything in between is incremental and mostly would not make the cut to WSJ/NYT, but it used to on TC.
In comparison, a MSFT, GOOG, AAPL have major product launches every other week.
I absolutely understand your business direction, it’s just my opinion that makes TC less interesting to me. But I’m probably on the minority of your readers since I don’t use Outlook 2007 to read your content.
About you calling our news “boring”… I appreciate the feedback. I’ll hire a PR company to talk to you to spin the story in a way that’s more interesting to you.
“Most startup have only big news when they launch (or re-launch) or when they are acquired/fold. Everything in between is incremental and mostly would not make the cut to WSJ/NYT, but it used to on TC.”
What are you talking about? We write about startups every single day. We don’t generally cover ‘incremental’ updates like a slight UI change, but if there’s a major new feature we’re all over it.
Marcelo – that’s exactly the problem. Many people think their story is great, but others don’t. And “spinning” crap into more crap is just another part of the problem.
TC is not the right place for Sampa to seek media coverage. Find blogs and reporters that are writing stories about companies like yours, about entrepreneurs with similar background. Send these people timely information about new products, new agreements, new customers.
This isn’t the blog you are looking for.
“We don’t generally cover ‘incremental’ updates like a slight UI change, but if there’s a major new feature we’re all over it.”
Let’s not stretch the truth here, Jason. You’re good, but you’re not that good. You guys ignore a lot of the new, cool features announced by the start-up community (especially those outside the Valley). It’s cool though… it gives other news-blogs a void to fill & us readers the opportunity to expand our universe.
“We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once.”
Er
“We have never broken an embargo except for the Justin.tv launch, which was a mixup.”
(from http://www.crun...lusive-stories/)
‘amixups’ aside, I don’t believe you’ve never broken an embargo, sorry.
Maybe a PR person let you break it early, maybe you made a ‘mistake’, but sorry – I don’t believe it’s really as black and white and clear cut as you make it out to be.
You guys are cut throat. It’s a cut throat business after all – you all play the game. But don’t paint yourself as saints, cos you ain’t.
Ben, you are becoming increasingly aggressive towards us. I honestly don’t know why.
You’re right, we did break the justin.tv embargo in 2007. It was an accident, and that writer is no longer with us. I had actually forgotten about that.
But it was quite simply the only time, and we publicly apologized for it. Stop attacking us just for being transparent.
Hey Mike,
I’m not trying to be aggressive to you or techcrunch. But I’m also not in the business of going out of my way to give you an ‘easy time’ or choosing to play kid gloves with you because I want something in return from you – because I don’t. (and let’s face it, you know full well people there is a valley full of people who want something from you and will therefore not try to hold you to account or come back at you with stuff for fear of you not reviewing their startup or whatever.)
If you deem me to be ‘attacking you’ I just want to clarify it’s not because you’re being to transparent – far from it, you have my congratulations and support in that regard.
I’m just trying to hold you to the rigor and account that you hold(/should hold) startups and the industry at large to. And I don’t think that ever hurt anyone.
Hey Mike, how about updating the post with this correction?
Maybe you should speak to Erick about his constant breaking of Jason Calacanis’s email embargos – you know, the one that asks “Please do not republish”?
Or is it okay for you to say one thing and do the other, Michael?
Mike just comes off sounding like a pissed off asshole because hes not first at something. You realize TechCrunch isn’t king of we web right? However it might be if half the time you didn’t come off rude and demanding. This post is just a way of trying to drive more traffic to your site by stirring up some trouble. Here’s a better idea for you try building polite business relationships with people and they won’t break embargos with you. If you actually do have an exclusive guess what people are going to link to your article on your site and drive traffic to it. Use the influence you have for better reasons not just spouting off like a 14 year old girl who’s boyfriend dumped her for someone else.