Thou Shalt Not Print – Embargoed Post

Originally uploaded by evissa

There’s been a good bit of talk on Twitter regarding the misuse of embargos by PR firms and corporate bulldogs. Journalists HATE embargos, or rather, hate their overuse by PR types. Yes, an embargo is a useful tool when an important or highly interesting announcement straddles a publication deadline. It means that info a publicist wants to be seen in the morning papers, but which won’t be announced until after the 11pm news deadline, gets into print. Used correctly, it’s a handy covenant between journalist and publicist. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

In the wrong hands, however, it does nuthin’ for nobody.

When someone slaps an embargo on something ridiculously trivial, it screams incompetence. Part of the marketeers function is knowing where their product or announcement ranks in the grand scheme of importance. Marketeers need to be strong with their clients, know the media to which they are pitching the product, and tailor their means of presentation accordingly. Obviously, to a client, the ‘announcement’ of a new flavour of cat chow is the dawn of a new era in feline cuisine. To any journalist bar those writing for ‘Your Cat Magazine‘ (who have a monthly deadline anyway, so run a lower risk of falling foul of deadlines) it’s kitty litter. In the bin it goes, and if you can avoid touching it directly, so much the better.

Our generic newsdesk email address in Metro used to get upward of 350 emails a day, all vying for attention, many of them with hilariously ambitious embargos. If you’re fighting off 349 other releases to get into a paper, an embargo certainly won’t help your cause, and neither will being guarded and coy on the other end fo the phone. You may think it makes your product more exclusive, or even mysterious. But journalists don’t want to be sleuthing (read: wasting time) for the sake of a paltry product release – that’s not really the nub of investigative journalism.  Publicists, before using the word in an email header again, do yourself a favour, grab a copy of the Oxford dictionary of Etymology, and look at the roots of the word embargo:

embargo: prohibitory order on the passage of ships; suspension of commerce, etc Sp., f. embargar, arrest, impede

It shares a linguistic root with the word barrier, and sits tellingly between emasculate and embarrass, a few words either side of it in the dictionary. Embargos are a hindrance, to be used sparingly, if at all, unless you’re a journalist on Twitter and you’re being sarcastic. Ahem.