The PR Spam Wall of Shame
October 30th, 2007 by Tim Allik
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?”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Blogging, Media Relations, PR, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:57 am
There are only two reasons I send any information – release or pitch – to an EIC. One – after research, the EIC is the right person to be approaching. Two – after repeated attempts to get in touch with the people on the EICs team have failed.
I think alot of this could be avoided if editors simply responded; yes, no, tell me more, anything but no response. Being a PR “flack,” I deal with journalistic “hacks” (name calling is so petty, but when in Rome, do as the Romans do) like everyone else. I try to reach the right person and admittedly sometimes I miss. But a simple response would solve alot of problems. And reduce the amount of time I spend and junk email out there.