Make Sure Not to Send Bruce Sterling Any News
February 11th, 2008 by Tim Allik
There is a blogger over at Wired who asks that you not send him any news. Bruce Sterling rather viciously and ineffectively called out a PR executive named Susan Wise for committing the sin of sharing some information with him.
On his Wired blog, Beyond the Beyond, Sterling wrote a post titled “I’m Suffering An Evil Tidal Wave of Blogsurfing Public Relations Spam,” and presented Wise’s thoughtful, reasoned pitch as evidence.
In her pitch, Wise responded to an earlier post by Sterling about the recent severing of Internet cables that affected a number of countries in the Middle East. She pointed out that thanks to the virtual networks, automatic rerouting and other services supplied by her client Virtela, Virtela’s customers in the region were unaffected by widespread Internet outages.
The irony here is that while Sterling’s original post about the cable outages was strictly a cut-and-paste job that consisted entirely of information from other published sources, Wise’s pitch included information that was both novel and interesting.
We are all dealing with information overload now, most especially journalists. Good reporters use automated processes of filtering their email so they stay organized and don’t get distracted. But reporters and bloggers presumably post their email addresses on their websites for a reason: to receive pertinent, relevant information that might make for a good story, one that hasn’t already been reported elsewhere.
In no way is Bruce Sterling’s rant analogous to Wired Editor In Chief Chris Anderson’s beef of a few months ago, when Anderson rightfully called out PR people for pitching him inappropriately and without bothering to read his prior reporting (I agreed with Chris at the time and said so on this blog).
In this case, the PR executive bothered to read Sterling’s post about the cable outages and wrote her pitch based on what he posted. Sterling is not editor in chief of Wire and presumably has a beat that demands more than cutting and pasting information that has been previously reported elsewhere.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Blogging, Journalism, Media Relations. 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.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
The Internet has proven time and time again that if you don’t know how to construct a proper rant, you will fall on your face.
This is not a properly constructed rant mostly because, as Tim pointed out, the content he’s railing against is relevant to his story.
Per Twitter, if his background isn’t in journalism, maybe we need to re-think the whole Citizen Journalist movement to avoid seeing these painful blunders.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for posting this. With all of the (valid) rants about lousy pitches, someone does exactly the right thing, and still gets railed against. Disheartening.
I hope Susan Wise gets the support she deserves, both from the PR community but also bloggers.
Jen
February 11th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
All I can say is -
Send me news.
A few PR folks already do, and I welcome it. I may not use it on my radio show, but I always respect and thank you for it.
February 12th, 2008 at 8:01 am
A couple of interesting comments from Steve Rhodes on Twitter, here and here. In short, he points out that Bruce Sterling isn’t a “traditional” reporter, but a science fiction writer and cultural critic.
I can’t say that Wired makes it clear on the blog who Bruce is or what the blog’s purpose is, something the PR executive here sussed out from content; incorrectly apparently.
What is clear- now- is that Mr.Sterling is not open to input from PR– or anyone else, for that matter. There are, however, more civil ways of making that clear.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Doug, the simplest thing that Bruce Sterling could do is take his email address off of his Wired blog, but something tells me that the powers that be at Wired probably wouldn’t go for that.
It’s ironic that a guy who apparently made his name being a forward thinker (as a novelist of the cyberpunk genre) is so backwards when it comes to social media today. No comments allowed, no e-mails allowed. Might as well put it on paper and send it in the mail.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Yup. Bruce Sterling ain’t a journalist. He’s an author (a respected sci-fi/cyberpunk novelist) who simply doesn’t understand the journalism process. He’s used to working in an ivory tower and dictating his pronouncements down to the masses.
It’s nice to see the support Susan’s getting. It was a good pitch. It was just sent to the wrong person, and it reiterates the care that must be taken when pitching bloggers.
PR people are still used to the kind of professional nonchalance you get with real journos. First it was *bad* pitches. Fine! Call us out on them! We’ve all written one, and it’s great blog fodder. But now it’s *good* pitches!
February 12th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Todd, why was Sterling the wrong person? He had “written” (actually, cut and pasted) a blog post about the Middle East cable severings and he his email address is published on the blog as well. I know now that he was the wrong person because he’s just made it clear that he doesn’t want to receive or news or information from primary sources. But how was anyone to know that prior to this episode?
May 27th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Hey what’s the problem?
Susan Wise got her message out…
We all now know of Virtela’s remarkable performance. Bravo!
Bruce Sterling did the ironically surnamed Susan a favour! god knows why she approached him in the first place tho, LOL