Wednesday, September 17, 2008

If News Embargoes are Dead, What about Press Releases?

There have been separate discussions about whether the news embargo is dead.

Jeremy Wagstaff, a former Technology Columnist at The Asian Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Online, and Stephen Baker, a senior writer at BusinessWeek who writes the Blogspotting blog, both say the news embargo is dead. (Check out my previous blog on the topic here.)

I think that except for embargoes for peer-reviewed articles at top publications like New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), embargoes are dead.

However, that doesn't mean "advanced looks" are dead.

Mark Harrison of Abraham Harrison said that giving bloggers a heads' up to news before it hits can be a good approach. And Stevie Wilson of LA Story has posted a comment to this blog that touches on the value of getting a heads' up so that bloggers are not at a complete disadvantage.

The difference is that when you give reporters and bloggers an "advance look," you don't mind if they immediately post information about the news. With an embargo, you want all coverage to hit after the embargo time: news that hits before 11:10pm, for example -- bad; news that hits after 11:11pm is good.

Is that clear?

Now, back to the topic based on the headline: what's the deal with press releases in a Web 2.0 world?

In a panel discussion turned blog article, "PR in the Face of Web 2.0 and Social Media - Part II," Brian Solis discusses the state of the press release. Is it dead? let me know what you think.

On a related topic, check out "Does Good Tech Need PR?" on the ReadWriteWeb blog, written by Richard MacManus.

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