We take our work seriously, but if you take yourself too seriously, you aren’t going to fit in at Topaz Partners. To that end we A) don’t schedule in-house client meetings on Oct. 31 and B) get pretty weird around here because there is nothing more amusing than pointing and laughing at each other.

See some more pix here.

Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired, has had an “I’m mad as Hell and won’t take it anymore” moment and is publicly waging war against PR spammers on his blog.

Chris has published the entire list of people and companies that have been added to his Outlook blocked list over the past 30 days. If you scan it you’ll see some notable PR firms (but not Topaz) represented. Ouch.

“So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that’s why my email address is public).”

Chris’s point is that no one in their right mind should be pitching stories to an EIC directly, but instead to the editors and reporters on the appropriate beats. And Chris is correct that virtually anyone who is hitting him directly with a pitch is likely a spammer (or just a sloppy PR grunt).

On the other hand … I’m in PR and used to be in news, so I’ve been on both ends of the relationship. Reporters are paid to be curious, so whenever I see a reporter paint a derogatory picture of “flacks” with a broad brush my radar goes up. People who have access to information are an asset, not a liability, to a good reporter.

And as long as we’re sharing gripes, my beef with some reporters is this: I take the time to follow their coverage, write my pitch in the context of their coverage (and only if I genuinely think it would be a suitable story), ask politely for a response (pursue the story or decline, I don’t care), and I get no response at all in return. Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

Perhaps these reporters are sick of the spammers who appear to ruin it for everyone on both sides of the equation. Or perhaps they are just lazy. Or both.

But typing “no thanks” seems about as easy as pushing the delete button, and considerably more polite.

And besides, if you don’t respond to my e-mail I’m gonna have to CALL YOU ON THE PHONE. BWAAAAAAHAAAAHAAAAHAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!

If only we could yield to the wisdom of the immortal words uttered by Rodney King those many years ago: “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”

I read The New York Times Sunday Book Review every weekend because even if I don’t have time to read many books these days, the Book Review allows me to maintain a semblance of cultural literacy. I can learn something about the books people are talking about. If one looks really appealing, I’ll take the time and effort to buy the book and read the whole thing.

In this era of time starvation and information overload, a new client of ours, Brijit, fills a similar niche, but on a broader, multimedia scale.

Brijit’s professional editors guide a stable of writers to craft 100 word abstracts of high quality news and feature stories regardless of format (print, radio, and television). The stories are then rated by Brijit’s readers, separating the wheat from the chaff with surgical precision. Links to the full stories are included as well, with no strings attached.

Sources include BusinessWeek, The Economist, The New Yorker, Wired, Barrons, This American Life (Public Radio), The New York Review of Books, Charlie Rose (PBS), Harper’s, Salon, Rolling Stone, and dozens of other quality outlets.

In Monday’s Washington Post, Frank Ahrens writes, “just scanning Brijit could make you the smartest person at your next cocktail party.”

As a follow-up to the Post article, Marshall Kirkpatrick shares his thoughtful observations about Brijit on ReadWriteWeb.com.

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