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May 14, 2007
Should I just stop taking embargoed news?
Three times in the past week, I've received "Please say you will accept the Embargo and then I will send you the press release" from PR firms, the latest being.... oh, I'd better not say. Should I say the firms representing Citel, Optimum Lightpath... I forget the third?
Actually, it's worse than that, since two of them used "If you agree to this NDA"... which is just f***ing WRONG. NDAs are formal agreements threatening bad legal things, not temporary e-mail exchanges like air kisses at a bad party. What crap.
Unfortunately, the embargo/NDA abuse seems to be happening more often than less often.
I don't get what the game is, other than to rack up billable hours for PR firms. Either you trust "us" (VON Magazine) to responsibly handle an embargoed press release (Which is NOT an NDA) or you don't. Not this "Well, I sort of trust you, but send me an e-mail, so I can really trust you."
If you don't trust us, why are you contacting us in the first place?
Instead, there's the cutesy, time-wasting exchange of e-mail. Reminds me of the passed notes in grade-school with the multiple choice check boxes.
For the (gasp) first time, I'm going to leave comments open.
Should I stop accepting embargoed press releases? Should I just delete every piece of mail that uses the phrase "embargo" and the abused phrase "NDA" and move along? I've NEVER received an embargoed press release that was as actually important as the pretend-important effort that went into protecting it for 24 hours.
Besides, if I really wanted to burn somebody's rear, I could do it anonymously on a blog and nobody'd be the wiser -- what, going to do a witch hunt on a list of a couple hundred PR people?
Posted by dmohney at May 14, 2007 03:56 PM