VentureBeat’s policy on embargoes: We’ll take ‘em

September 25, 2009 | Matt Marshall | Comments |
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embargoIn the news business, there’s something called an embargo. That’s when a company, usually through a public relations person, gets an agreement from a writer not to publish a story until a certain time. The writer is then allowed access to people and information to craft the story prior to the time the embargo lifts. A writer might spend all day Monday writing a story that’s embargoed until Tuesday morning, when more people will read it.

In the horse and buggy days, there was a clear understanding about the ground rules for these embargoes.

On the Internet, though, the real-time nature of publishing and the rise of self-published bloggers and Tweeters has led to what seems like an infinite number of publications, each with different policies about how they deal with embargoed news that lands in their inboxes. So I think it’s important to explain VentureBeat’s policy on embargoes very specifically.

We embrace embargoes, and we hold to them fastidiously.

Why? Because the lead time granted to writers by an embargo gives companies an easy way to get their news published at a time that works for the company, while also giving writers a chance to research the story and write it well. The embargo period gives writers a chance to interview the company, do some quick fact-checking, and take some time to review their work.

If companies simply releases news with no care to timing, writers attack the news like a pack of piranhas. That often results in blood everywhere: Writers scramble to hit the publish button within five seconds (and I’m not exaggerating here; writers want to get credit for having the earliest story, and it gives their stories more juice among search engines and other news aggregation services, such as Techmeme). End result: Mistakes are made, and companies feel misunderstood, frustrated or burned.

What’s not to love about the embargo?

At the same time, I can understand why TechCrunch and the Wall Street Journal have abandoned embargoes. They are making calculated gambles that they can be the biggest players in their game, and they see little to gain by sharing the story. Their no-embargo policies are meant to force companies to give them stories as exclusives, rather than risk having TechCrunch or the Journal not publish their story at all.

For a majority of news events, though, companies can get the maximum distribution by sharing news with a number of different outlets. The most effective way to get this broad distribution is by setting an embargo. To be clear: VentureBeat loves to get scoops, and we’ll continue to devote more resources to stories we know we carry exclusively. But this doesn’t mean we reject embargoes.

Despite our acceptance of the embargo, we’ve made some silly mistakes in our short life as a publication. Last year, we didn’t realize that our WordPress software didn’t adjust to account for Daylight Savings Time. So we posted a few stories at 9pm, and only later realized they were actually showing at 8pm. (Yes, we really did post an hour early for a few days. We’re that dumb.) And there have been three or four times we’ve broken an embargo either by misunderstanding or sheer human error (for instance, we broke the Microsoft Hohm story when one of our writers forgot the embargo time). However, in each of those cases, we’ve immediately pulled the story (the Hohm case included), and we’ve apologized to our sources.

The odds of these mistakes happening are pretty small, though. We’ve held to literally thousands of embargoes. And when an embargo agreement is clearly stated by the company, and accepted by our writer, the chances of a misunderstanding are almost zero.

Finally, there are times when a PR person initially shares news with us under embargo, but then the story shows up on a competing publication before the embargo’s end time. Sometimes, this results from an honest mistake. These mistakes have happened at every publication I know.

But other times, it’s clear a PR person or company executive has broken the embargo on their end, by giving one publication the go-ahead to publish ahead of the embargo time to which we have already agreed. Here’s our policy: If a PR firm or company shows repeatedly that it can’t be trusted to hold other publications to the same embargo time given to us, then we won’t accept embargoes from them anymore.

For everyone else, we’re happy to honor embargoes, for the simplest reason of all: We end up with better stories.

[Image credit: Colostate]

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About the Author, Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Great post Matt, a lot of head nodding here on my part.

    One point that I would add though, is that the readers lose in a world of no embargoes. If it's a free for all where the most read story is just a case of who can type the fastest or be the most vague and under-researched, the most popular story (which got the most eyeballs) is the most useless.

    Also, the readers miss out if a company gives the exclusive to TC or WSJ because they are going to get the news from one angle, and one reporter's perspective. Also, the outlet that is chosen to get the exclusive will want to reward that consideration, and is less likely to approach the subject with due skepticism.

    Long live the embargo!
  • "At the same time, I can understand why TechCrunch and the WSJ abandoned embargoes... They’d rather force companies to give them the exclusives; that way they can stay ahead."

    This isn't the whole story. TC held to embargoes for a long time after becoming one of the largest tech blogs. The fact of the matter is that by last winter, the entire embargo system was in shambles. It wasn't a question of if a story would have its embargo broken, it was by whom. It became something of a daily cycle: I, who covered most of our embargoed stories, would tell one of our editors that an embargo had broken. We'd have some harsh words for the companies/PR involved. And nothing would change. We just got sick of wasting our time.

    From what I can tell things haven't gotten much better since we stopped regularly dealing with embargoes. You can still count on most major stories breaking early, and the PST/EST 'mistake' is alive and well.

    Also, the idea of pulling a story as soon as it's published to 'fix' a broken embargo is silly. It's probably already in everyone's RSS reader, and every blog that wasn't briefed that sees it is going to write something up ASAP. If you're REALLY quick, you can catch it, but after around five or ten minutes it's a lost cause, especially with all the immediate retweeting going on these days.
  • Jason, good points. In particular, the point about pulling a story being silly. We'll explain the RSS thing to our source, but for any number of reasons, the source may ask that we pull it anyway (who knows, they may have partners that want them to hold them to an embargo, and asking us to take it down shows that they've done what they can do to hold to their partner agreement). And since we'd agreed to hold it, we'll do what we can to live by that original agreement.
    Also, regarding the system being in "shambles," we went through considerable heartburn too, with all those embargoes being broken left and right. But often, when we followed up on the reasons, it appeared the PR firms weren't being very clear about the embargoes, or vigilant about making sure they were held to. A whole generation of PR reps had to learn what embargoes in the Internet age means. I don't think companies should be punished irrevokably for those mistakes. So instead, we decided to write down in an internal doc which PR firms could be trusted, and which ones could not. For those PR firms that are vigilant, we'll keep their embargoes. But for those that aren't, we won't.
  • Brian Nicholson
    Great post, Matt. VentureBeat is a class act.
  • TennantX
    We live in a world where PRs are working desperately to mould the press into extensions of their own marketing. I think you need to ask yourself what the entire concept of the embargo actually is, and why it is there in the first place, and whether - as journalists - you are taking the right approach with the final written work.

    Bottom line is that "embargos" are just one element of a system of control designed to offer you a carrot in exchange for becoming part of the marketing campaign: the irony being that before "embargos" came into effect with anything like the frequency they have now, you would have got that carrot (be it "access" or whatever), any way.

    Let's be honest - nine times out of ten this extra access you get for holding to the embargo is a couple of choice quotes that could've been in the press release any way. I rarely see difficult questions being posed, let alone substantive answers.

    Why do I read VentureBeat? Because a lot of DeanTak's previous work, like all of his Microsoft exclusives, were genuinely great stories that put the reader's interests first. I moved here because of him.

    Why isn't the site a must-read for me any more? Well, I think you need to re-read a lot of what you produce and decide how much you are writing a story the readers will want to read, and how much you are producing the "extended PR" that the "system" wants.
  • TenantX, it's actually the opposite. See Michael's comment above. If a company decides not to have an embargo, and gives its news to a single publication, it will give it to a reporter it feels will write with positive bias. There is enormous pressure on the reporter to stroke the hand that feeds him.
    Back in the heyday of the WSJ, was it any surprise that whenever it broke a story on its front page about a merger or acquisition that it was a glowingly positive piece? It was clearly being fed scoops, and the puffy pieces reflected that.
    So regarding the "extended PR machine," yes, if you want, you can see the reporter being "used" either way. As a news organization, you're certainly in trouble if your writers are sitting back and covering only what companies bring them.

    As I mentioned in the post, we spend more time trying to get scoops. But there are times when we want to cover news on our beat, even when other publications are also covering it. So when a company is making an an important announcement, and they're treating us fairly with an embargo, well, there's a lot of reasons for us to consider covering that. And since we're usually being included in the embargo because of our credibility (and not because we're usually puffy in our coverage), then we feel considerable freedom to write critically -- and we often do.
  • There's nothing wrong with PRs wanting to control the press the client receives. Publications know this, but I doubt they are being used. After all the relationship is symbiotic. Pretty much the same as most other relationships in business.

    I'm not really fussed one way or another but I do see where VentureBeat are coming from and agree with how they intend to manage embargoed stories.

    In the end as a reader I just like good reporting and by and large VentureBeat delivers. As an entrepreneur, who doesn't employ a PR firm I know that managing publicity is all about getting our own ends. However, I'm quite sure that any publication that runs a story on us is benefitting in some way IF there's a NEWSWORTHY angle.
  • I am neither a journalist nor a PR so have no real knowledge of the intracacies or dirty tricks associated with embargoes

    Nonetheless - I enjoyed the sincerity of the post.

    Taking the morale high ground at the expense of a few page views is a dignified strategy which will no doubt bear fruit in the long-run
  • bethmonaghan
    Matt,

    Thanks for this post. The PR industry is also navigating this changing landscape of round-the-clock news. It's disturbing to hear that some PR people would ask reporters to honor an embargo and then let another outlet break the news earlier. If we cannot hold to our principles about embargoes when it's tough, what good are they?

    I certainly respect decisions by media outlets not to honor embargoes. But the truth is that few companies announce negative news, so taking the time to research a company announcement in advance provides opportunities to uncover different angles to that news and to get the full story.

    Thanks for furthering this discussion.
  • Makes me go all vawncast inside,
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