Ethos Public Relations Manchester

Building Trust in the Digital Age

by Sean

I am not the first person to write about embargoes on press releases in the digital age. Last year Rob Brown's blog, Breaking the Embargo, highlighted cases of PR companies breaking their own embargoes and Jeremy Toeman's reply argued that embargoes are essential in maintaining relationships between journalists, bloggers and PRs.

For too long, I think, people have seen the embargo in terms of controlling news release, something bloggers and social networking sites seem to see as anathema. Too often PR companies and overzealous marketers have seen the embargo as a way of trying to ensure that the public get the right message at the right time. In today's 24 hour media world this really does seem old fashioned and counter to the prevailing idea that news belongs to everyone as it happens.

In the political arena, an embargo can ensure that politicians from other parties don't trump a major policy announcement, but even here publicists have been known to 'float' an idea before the announcement itself, calling into question the importance of an embargo.

But for me the use of an embargo is about something much more fundamental, and increasingly forgotten.

Some stories or announcements are actually complicated and deserve a measured amount of analysis. They shouldn't just be stripped from a press release immediately and posted to this blog or that website. They deserve preparation and, dare I say, some research by the journalist/blogger. The 24 hour news culture puts a lot of strain on journalists to deliver content speedily and the Twitter generation demands we distil things to appropriate soundbites.

But as professionals, dedicated to providing information, whether journalist or PR, we should also care about providing a 'quality' story. It seems to me that often that can only be achieved by giving our journalist colleagues ample time to digest information in the news release and then to undertake additional research. This can only be achieved by the appropriate use of an embargo.

(Photo by Danilo Rizzuti, courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Posted at 12:09pm on 27^th January 2010