Journalists and PR folks alike had a good laugh (at the expense of the PR industry) when a viral video about embargoes recently made the rounds on social media channels.   In the video, a PR flak calls a journalist in order to pitch her with an upcoming announcement, but first she has to agree to the embargo.  Annoyed, the reporter agrees, only to be hit with a generic, buzzword-filled pitch.  To top it off, it’s not even in her coverage area.  The journalist tells him as much, but undeterred, the PR guy stumbles on.

PR Pro: And you’ll honor the embargo?

Journalist: Yes, I’ll honor the embargo.  In fact, I’ll make you a better offer.

PR Pro: Oh.

Journalist: I will honor the embargo for the rest of my working life.  As I have no intention of writing about your new revolutionary software as a service for social media companies that will change the way social media marketing is done forever.  So, yes, I’ll honor the f**king embargo.

This video struck a nerve because the embargo conversation takes place all the time between PR pros and the media, especially in science and technology.  But are embargoes really necessary?

Back in the old days, news cycles moved more slowly, and journalists were happy to honor embargoes.  The advantage of the embargo is that it allows journalists time to research the topic, conduct interviews, and write up the story before it breaks.   Ideally, at the precise moment the embargo lifts, stories from multiple journalists go live at the same time.  The client gets lots of clips, and multiple journalists get to “break” the story.  Nobody wants to publish their article second and give the impression that another outlet scooped them.  In addition, sites like Google News prioritize the first article published, rewarding them with increased traffic.

In these dark days of media layoffs and publications disappearing altogether, journalists are under more pressure than ever to be the first to break a story.  The 24-hour news cycle never stops, and stories and rumors can spread across Twitter and Facebook almost instantly.  The media landscape has changed dramatically, with traditional news sources being eclipsed by blog-oriented news sites like the Huffington Post, ReadWriteWeb, and Mashable—sites that tend to post many short stories throughout the day, but don’t take the time for interviews or in-depth research.  Even at traditional outlets, with fewer writers to carry the workload, reporters often don’t have time to jump on the phone for a briefing.  They want to be emailed with just the facts, ma’am, along with a quote or two that they can quickly package up into a story and send out the door.
Taking a jab at bloggers’ tendency to slap together basic posts (in lieu of more-substantive journalism), someone in PR posted a video response to the famous “Embargoes” video:

Blogger:  We are in the business of breaking news here.  Our readers demand it.

PR Pro:  Do your readers also demand quality in your posts?

Blogger:  That is less important.

PR Pro:  So, short of an exclusive, you would rather I just send you the information the morning of the announcement and let you scramble with the rest of the world in a race to see who can crank out the quickest, shoddiest, slapped-together blog post with no context, background, or in-depth information?

Blogger:  Yes.  I will fill in the blanks later, or not.

In the worst-case scenario, a reporter will agree to the embargo and then break it, which rewards the embargo-breaker with increased web traffic and, thereby, more revenue.  On the flip side, the broken embargo throws the PR person into frantic crisis-management mode, and angers the other journalists who were honoring the embargo.  For the client, a broken embargo can affect the amount of media coverage the announcement gets–usually for the worse.

These days, some bloggers and journalists are refusing to honor embargoes altogether.  A prime example is TechCrunch, which acknowledges the benefits of embargoes but complains that too many embargoes today are broken, putting reporters who play by the rules at a disadvantage.

So, what’s a PR pro to do?  It’s part of our job to make the reporter’s job easier, and increasingly that means avoiding embargoes and providing content via email instead of telephone interviews.  My approach is to avoid embargoes as much as possible, using them only occasionally for my client’s most important announcements, particularly where there is a lot of dense subject matter for reporters to slog through.

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