I’m getting a lot of feedback from people complaining that we aren’t writing about them because we don’t get an exclusive on the story. I just want to make my policy on embargoes and exclusives clear.
Embargoes: This is news that’s delivered to us early under a verbal agreement that we will not post early. We have never broken an embargo except for the Justin.tv launch, which was a mixup. Nick Gonzales wrote the story and sent it to me for review. I hit publish without realizing there was an embargo. The funny thing is I then got caught up watching the show, and heard the justin.tv guys screaming that the post went up too early and brought their site down. It all worked out and I apologized personally to them. But other than that one time, we’ve never broken an embargo.
Exclusives: We never require them and are often offered them. I know how the game works - the PR firm tells everyone an embargo, then tells us we can write early. Then they tell everyone else we broke the embargo. But we’re being accused of demanding an exclusive or we won’t write about the company. That’s ridiculous and it would only hurt ourselves. Now sometimes companies come to us for the first time after they’ve gotten a lot of press from others. We may choose not to write in that situation because the company is already known. They and their VCs often get pissed off. But they can’t tell the real story (that they forgot to ping us on a story) and so they say we demand exclusives instead. They are lying.
The truth is though that it doesn’t matter if they’re lying or not. When enough people say that TechCrunch demands exclusives it effectively becomes true. Then other journalists write about how we demand exclusives. Suddenly, we have a reputation and the reality of the situation no longer matters.
Our policy is clear: we want to write about stuff on the same deadlines as everyone else. If you give someone else an exclusive, don’t expect us to automatically write about you.
On a related note, I’m finding a number of PR firms that are really dishonest. They give us or others exclusives without telling other people. Then when the first publication writes, they say that they broke the embargo. They have no problem flat out lying and get extremely agitated when they are called on their bs. I follow up on these accusations and call the reporter in question. When I see a pattern emerge around a particular PR firm, we stop doing business with them and ask to be taken off their distribution list. We’ll still write about companies they represent, but I go through the CEO or founders directly and won’t work with their PR.
On the other end of the spectrum are firms that are always above reproach. Not only do we work with them, I recommend them to startups looking for a good firm.
I have worked with Mike on many stories over the last few years and he is extremely trustworthy. He NEVER breaks an embargo.
It’s implicit when working with Mike that I can share confidential information back and forth and he won’t post a word until the time I say it’s fair game.
For all of you PR rookies, I suggest you start trusting reporters and, in turn, act with integrity. If you don’t, you ruin it for those of us who just want to get a fair story published when the news is officially released.
I work under these same rules. In fact I’m holding something under embargo for Monday.
Any chance you could publish the list of PR firms you think are above reproach? Thank you. -Edwin
Back when I was a print reporter I remember one day at the courthouse a lawyer went around saying he had an tape that he would give to me exclusively. I said that’d be great, and then about 15 feet down the hall he made the same offer to someone else. I think I heard the “exclusive” tape on the radio and two TV stations, one with a big “EXCLUSIVE” tag on the screen. The source said it was exclusive, and that was all they needed.
Lawyers lie. PR boobs lie. Color me shocked.
Your policy is certainly fair, but it seems like after a while it’d be hard to keep track of just what was said to whom. I wouldn’t blame you for starting a policy of no embargo at all. You tell everyone that if they are going to show you something or tell you anything, you may post it at any time, totally up to you. The only downside to that I can see (as a reader) is you not getting to play with stuff for a while before you write about it.
I think you would be surprised at how willing people would be to work with you under that simplified kind of rule. Those that demand special treatment are welcome to find other outlets, but they know that you have the audience so they’ll work with you.
I think PR firms are a waste of time and money. My advice to startups is this: HAVE a great story instead of spending so much time (and money) trying to TELL one. Kudo’s to TC for staying true…..
Perhaps you should request, in Calacanis fashion, that they send their “exclusive rights” to you via email (if they don’t already). That way, you can refresh their memory by posting it on your blog if they insist that you broke an embargo.
All the best
Tom
Mike can you list the PR firms that:
“are always above reproach. Not only do we work with them, I recommend them to startups looking for a good firm.”
I’ve worked in both PR and in media, so I’ve been on both sides of this coin. PR firms blanket exclusives because ALOT of the print media in tech will take the exclusive and do nothing with it, which then pisses the client off because they assume it’s in the PR firm’s control. You figure out very quickly that you need a back up in case it happens, and that’s where it comes from. Believe me, nothing is worse than a client griping over something that wasn’t in your control in the first place. It’s sort of a CYA kind of thing to blanket exclusives.
I think the problem lies in the clients, not the PR firms. A lot of companies source out PR, have no idea how the media works, what a journalist needs, what constitutes news and a story, deadlines, lead times, etc., which makes sense of course - that’s why they’re sourcing it out. The problem is that most think paying a firm means they’ll get what they want, when they want it and how they’d like it to be from the media and that’s impossible. I’ve seen clients flip out on their firms - literally - because a journalist is on the road and they want an interview. PR people suck, but the companies kind of suck more in a lot of these situations.
Either way, exclusives on anything beyond a major company (think Google) are worthless anyway, in my opinion. Very few companies are recognizable enough to really merit their news being worth an exclusive. Nobody cares that much.
Patricia, isn’t a PR firm’s job to be able to tell a story well, succinctly, and effectively? If so, then I would think it’s the PR firms’ jobs as well (and one woudl think they’d be very good at it) to make it clear enough to the client what the expectations are. Maybe too many of them are just pacifying the client by laying down an unrealistic hope/expectation in order to get the business. Just a thought. But it seems odd if the PR company, of all peeople, can’t even make a client understand the expectations.
@ Antje, the short answer to that is yes. The long answer is that it all starts with a good story to tell and unfortunately, few companies have one or give their PR firm the access it needs to them to find it for them. The majority of start ups come to a firm with zero brand recognition/identity, no media relationships, little traction, few customers - and then expect you to land them in the Wall Street Journal, and not by a back door angle like a big management trend story but a feature on them alone. It’s not about their being misled by firms so much as that they mislead themselves - they’ve got their eye on a specific prize and can’t understand/accept how far they are from it or that it’s going to take time to build them in the media so that they can appear where they want. It’s understandable because most start ups are burning funding, are under pressure in crowded, noisy markets, but I can say from experience a lot of companies get in the way of their own PR.
Picture the media as a big, noisy convention center full of companies and people of all sizes, and then picture an ant trying to get everybody’s attention by yelling. That is PR for a start up. Now tell that to the ivy league CEO who thinks he’s got the killer app. It rarely goes over well.
When a print publication reporter talk about embargies, you might want to ask them to get their online folks to make the same promise.
I’ve been burned twice in the last couple of years by large publications breaking the agreed-to embargoes by several hours. My guess is that these breaches are a result of a lack of communciations between editorial and IT (or, at worst, an understandign that being sloppy will only hurt others, and not the publications themselves).
Let me acknowledge, publically, that one organziation, with a much larger issue, was able to deal with things effectively and make sure a story on how the NY Times buys traffic went out with enough time for hundreds of print pubs to get it into the morning paper, but make sure *no* online source had it until deadline.
The Associated Press (the reporter was Mike Lietke) got it right by us. You can trust them when they tell you about embargoes.
Patricia - I have been looking at stories lately [that are in my area of interest], and notice that the ones that get traction in web2.0 topics (outside of TC) are usually (a) with a founder of noteriety (b) have that good story. The good story though is often hard to flesh out. A recent example is Eons, which got a lot of stories generated by selling the “social networking for death” angle (Eons is the over-50 portal that apparently has some minor feature where you can receive death notices of your friends but is by no means a main focus of their site).
Personally I don’t yet understand fully what PR people need but I’m trying to learn. Thanks for the response, interesting.
Mike will you share this list to your favorite people here?
sorry - I meant share your list of favorites (not favorite people of the readership, although maybe that too, j/k)
Mike,
Why haven’t you launched PRCrunch.com, where you spotlight good and bad PR firms?
thanks for addressing the issue Mike, you do a great job bringing us the the tech news.
I actually posted this comment on gigaom.com but it’s on embargo over there for the next 24 hours.
Fortunately, I’m giving you an exclusive….
I hate embargoes. I guess I could write a post immediately and then publish it when allowed, but that feels silly. On the other hand, if I let it sit, the briefing is less fresh in my mind by the time the embargo is off. Recently, I’ve taken to asking that firms not brief me until the embargo is off.
But then, I compete on quality of analysis, not first-to-press. So my approach wouldn’t work for many people.
CAM
Thanks for the info, Mike. I think that people also tend to make assumptions when they don’t have the whole story (i.e. due to transparency, communication, etc).
If someone were to submit a story through your form, do they always get a reponse (whether or not they get an article)? Is there a backlog that peolpe who do get published have to wait for?