Breaking the “news” embargo
TechCrunch, one of the leading tech news and information Web sites, is fed up with the way news is distributed by public relations firms representing technology companies. Competition among the legion of sites covering the tech scene is keen, and some reporters “break” news by ignoring embargoes placed on the public release of information. (PR companies regularly issue news with a scheduled release date that all reporters are supposed to comply with.)
However, those embargoes are regularly broken and offenders not only don’t get punished, they frequently are rewarded with increase readership for having “broken” the “news.” Fed up with process, TechCrunch has decided to ignore embargoes.
We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo. We’ll happily agree to whatever you ask of us, and then we’ll just do whatever we feel like right after that. We may break an embargo by one minute or three days. We’ll choose at random.
Some firms will stop talking to us (yeah! less email), but we’ll find other ways to get the news. Others, who haven’t read this post because they don’t read TechCrunch, will be unpleasantly surprised. Maybe if we cause enough pain then PR firms will start to take action against those publications who break the rules.
I’ve never broken an embargo, and I have been burned when competitors did without penalty. I understand the frustration. I’m just not sure I would handle it the same way, although I’ve not found a better method.
Don Mecoy
Business Writer
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[...] In December, 2008, TechCrunch declared it was sick and tired of being beaten by competitors who routinely broke embargoes to be first. It said it would no longer honor embargoes. [...]