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Embargo the Embargo

Today I read a plaintive tweet from Martin Bryant, UK Editor at the popular tech blog The Next Web. I could almost hear the beseeching in his voice as he begged: "Seriously, can we just scrap news embargoes? I'm happy to honour them but it's clear they don't work when not everyone follows them."

That's the problem. It just takes one journalist to decide not to toe the line and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. As a PR, you instantly lose control of the flow of your message. As a journalist, you may win a very temporary feather in your cap for ‘breaking' the story, followed by heaps of opprobrium from more obedient rivals who suddenly find themselves scooped.

As one of those poachers-turned-gamekeepers, I meet hundreds of PR professionals in a consultative capacity every year, and the subject of embargoes invariably comes up. So here's my 10p's worth.

Don't use them.

There is a place for the embargo. But it's very specific. The most valid circumstance is when police impose a news blackout because of an active investigation. One of the most memorable examples of this was the notorious Stephanie Slater kidnap in February 1992; all media knew about it but adhered strictly to the blackout imposition because to have broken it would have seriously impeded the police work and could have had fatal consequences.

In the world of PR, the word ‘embargo' has been cheapened in much the same way as the word ‘exclusive' has in journalism. And when an account executive slaps an embargo across a press release about the launch of a new air freshener, he or she might as well be waving a red rag at a bull.

Mark Templeton, Assistant Editor of the South Wales Argus, agrees. "We get 10-15 embargoed press releases a week. The first reaction, as a news person, is to instinctively think ‘this may be good'. Then you read it and it's just nonsense.

"It's quite insulting a lot of the time because many releases are embargoed for 1pm in the afternoon, so they're clearly aiming it at the lunchtime news, without a thought for print media.

"But this is a 24-hour news environment now and like every other newspaper we have an online product.

"Embargoes make many press releases look more important than they are, and that's intensely annoying."

Martin Bryant's desperate tweet was prompted by another organisation breaking an embargo.

He sighs: "When someone else breaks an embargo, there's a panic. You have to rush to print with the article that you had been working on.

"I can understand why companies do it - to achieve a co-ordinated run of coverage - but the effect can be counter-productive, with people rushing to print rather than spending time producing a fuller piece.

"On the other hand, an embargo can be useful because it gives us time to get the story together properly. But if just one person breaks it, then it's panic stations."

Martin's point about a "co-ordinated run of coverage" is valid. But a tried and tested way of achieving the same thing without winding up legions of journalists (who may be less disposed to look kindly on your offering next time) is to release your material freely, to everyone, at the same time.

Distributing a piece to the regional and national print media, for instance, in the morning, does not mean other media will ignore it throughout the day - in fact quite the opposite. The days of media pooh-poohing a story because it has appeared elsewhere are long gone. Media owners know that the fragmentation of the market means people take their news in many different forms and may take a ‘repeat prescription' throughout the day, as conversation and opinion grows around a story.

Putting an embargo on a press release (if it's a good one) is like telling a journalist a really, really funny joke, watching them laugh, and then announcing: "Oh, by the way, you can't tell anyone else that joke until 1pm on Thursday March 4."

Annoying.

Written by Jay Williams

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