Sometimes we get into it a little bit on our Yammer account at TechCrunch. It’s usually me and MG, and every once in a while I like to post the exchanges. See this one for example. Tonights fabulous discussion – embargoes and the frustration they cause.
Having seen this issue before, with tonight being a very obvious case, I think it makes as much sense to highlight those breaking the relationship with entrepreneurs when it happens as it does to discourage them all. It’s an old topic, yes, but it seems when we talk in hushed tones around the issue, it doesn’t help. That’s why I mentioned VentureBeat failing tonight. MyLikes isn’t ready and this doesn’t help anyone… at midnight PST on the eve of CES. Dumb.
Embargoes actually are very anti-journalist. Why? Because companies know that if they embargo everyone they can get everyone to write about them. Getting 20 journalists/bloggers/twitterers to write is a lot better than getting one person to blog, etc.
Exclusives are a lot better, because that rewards someone who works their ass off to build relationships, understand a market, find a news scoop, etc.
It’s very rare that I see a really well done embargoed item, because you know that everyone else is going to have the same story as you do so why work harder than to just put out the usual press release regurgitation and take the time you saved to work on some project or finding some exclusive that actually will get your media business new visitors.
I hate them, I actively try to make sure that at least some of my videos aren’t done on a news cycle so I don’t fall into the “same as everyone else news” trap.