December 19th, 2008 by Lloyd Gofton
As you will have no doubt seen by now, Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch U.S. has killed/banned/stopped, call it what you will, the embargo. As you can image, it’s caused a bit of a stir and many hundreds of comments including counter points, general name calling and some insightful questions/points/suggestions.
Cutting through the wittering that surrounds such, let’s be honest - dramatic announcements, I tend to agree with the main issue; that fundamentally embargoes are dead, or are at least holding on for dear life. Blame who and what you will, it doesn’t really matter, there won’t be an agreement from all sides.
The fundamental point is that news is live, so if you’re trying to halt the flow of news or communications to favour one outlet or another, ultimately the environment has changed so much that it simply isn’t going to happen consistently. But, if you are successful in this endeavour now, it’s going to get harder and harder, so let’s all just move on sooner rather than later and reduce the pain endured by all.
So, a few requests: to the media that ask for exclusive stories only, clients that want stories in specific ‘favoured’ titles as well as going out to all, and PRs that pile on the embargo pressure or don’t stand up to one or the other and say ‘it’s not possible!’, stop. Do now what’s going to have to happen anyway, and move onto trying to embrace the wonderfully open news environment that we find ourselves in, rather than trying to cling onto the past.
Tags: Embargo, PR, Techcrunch
