Embargoing News Releases a Relic of History?
There’s a great conversation over on Shel Holtz’s blog about whether or not organizations should embargo news releases any more - especially when they’re opportunistically naive about sending such news releases to influential bloggers like Shel. In it, he summarized:
“The advisory included a press release, which also is embargoed until the 14th. Maybe I’ll remember to blog about it then, but don’t count on it. I’ll be on the road and will have undoubtedly received hundreds of additional emails by then. Chalk it up as a lost opportunity based on a poorly thought-out communication plan.”
The comments are extremely excellent, and the one I agree with the most is from CT More who wrote:
“I think that you have a point of how the communication landscape has rendered the rationale obsolete. It’s pretty much the same story, though, with copyright, intellectual property, and any other industry where the majority of higher-ups obtained the majority of their experience before the interwebs popped up. Oh well, they’ll learn in time.” (emphasis from JLJ)
The good news? Some forward thinking journalism schools are educating their students well. Take Robert French at Auburn University for example. He’s having PR pros collaborate on a student blog called Marcom Blog. My buddy Tara Smith participated there for years when we were at Marqui together.
I subscribe to both blog feeds to see how the world of journalism is changing. It gives me hope for the future of the craft. Let’s just hope the “aging higher-ups” at professional PR organizations and their clients learn to subscribe to their futures, too.
It’s a pretty simple thing to do - you, too can have education delivered to your inbox every single time someone cares enough to write a post. I use Attensa for Outlook - my client and partner in SEMPR - search engine marketing public relations - an emerging trend in PR practice. More on that here.
Robert, if you want to add me to your list of collaborators, I would love to join the advisory team (at least I hope I could keep up!). We’re doing some pretty innovative PR work out here in Portland. Meanwhile, glad school’s back in session for all of us! Thanks in advance for your mentoring.
