Embargo Breakers: Who Exactly Do You Write For?

It seems that recently the problem with embargoes and breaking them has grown acute again. I for one have seen at least 3 embargoes broken this week only and I can imagine there are others where I am simply unaware of the embargo time.

One of the latest examples made me particularly angry when I myself was writing the post to go live at the embargo time and saw the story on one of the major blogs 2 hours before the embargo was lifted. The saddest part of it was that the startup was still working on the new service they were releasing at the time that post was published. The readers of that blog immediately noticed that the service described was not available and started asking questions since the post did not even contain any references about when the readers were supposed to expect to see the service working (sure, 2 hours may look like time not long enough but the blogosphere is pretty fast and such things are inevitably noticed by readers soon).

This situation made me angry enough to vent it on Twitter (without naming names because I did not want to enter a public discussion about it with the blog in question and get myself an enemy in this pretty small web 2.0 blogosphere world) which resulted in quite a lengthy discussion on FriendFeed. In the message I asked a simple question: “Is it really impossible to run a blog without breaking embargoes these days?”

And while the majority of those participating in the thread on FriendFeed were mostly interested to know the facts about this particular incident, it also inspired Louis Gray to write a post about the nature of embargo and why it is still needed. In the post Louis admitted one thing that we all suspected: that the embargo process is broken. But at the same time he addressed why it is still needed.

So I have decided to share my own thoughts on the problem - even though I see it from a little different perspective. My idea is that breaking an embargo often results in damages that could very well outweigh the value that the embargo breaker receives by doing so. And the damages are beyond how the announcement can be spoiled for the company by being announced earlier than it is supposed to. And this is why it is not particularly fair to look at an embargo as only involving two parties: a company and a media person (be it a blogger or a journalist).

The most obvious damage done is for the company distributing their news under embargo. Normally the time that is chosen for the embargo is the time when the press release hits the wires or the service announced becomes available. Companies demonstrate a certain level of trust to media people by giving us an early preview of what we could share with our readers at a certain time later and I completely agree with Allen Stern that embargoes should be viewed as a gift of trust and be respected as such.

Unfortunately, when such a gift is not respected, a single embargo broken heavily damages the image of the entire blogosphere, not only of the blog or mainstream media outlet responsible for it. Sure, some PR firms have a mailing list with certain remarks to show who can be trusted and who should get the announcement when it is safe already. But in the vast majority of cases for a company it does not really matter which particular blogger breaks an embargo for some short-term gains, what matters is that the company had chosen to share the story with all bloggers and it was live before the company wanted it to be. So the next time this company will most probably choose another approach:

-          only briefing journalists from traditional media outlets in advance and sending the story to bloggers when it can already be published (and is already published by some of those journalists briefed)

-          never briefing anyone in advance and simply going for a press release and contacting both bloggers and journalists when the press release is already live on some of the distribution services

-          simply publishing the news on the company’s blog and hoping some of the bloggers and journalists subscribed will pick it

-          publishing the news on the company’s blog and contacting everyone afterwards with a link

In the last two cases the company’s blog serves as a media outlet itself by scooping story and this is exactly why we often see corporate blogs getting leads on Techmeme. I believe it is absolutely understandable that we see certain companies changing their approach to distributing their news in order to increase the level of protection. But I am still uncomfortable that the image of the blogosphere is damaged and voices are heard that bloggers should not be trusted.

But even this is not the worst part about broken embargoes, I think. The worst part is that those bloggers that constantly choose to break stories early simply demonstrate that they don’t really care about their readers. Yes, do not care because they do not write for their readers, instead they write for Techmeme leads and the first links on Google News if they are lucky enough (or anywhere else they can get traffic from, like Digg or ay other similar news-oriented service). But do these bloggers write for their readers? My opinion is that no, they don’t.

Let’s take a situation when I receive a piece of news about a totally exciting web application to go live tomorrow with the link and password for the early preview. I am realistic enough to know that I am hardly the only blogger to get this and at the same moment there must be a few of us checking the new application and writing our reviews to have them published tomorrow. I am fine with it and it will be interesting to witness new reviews published and compare my thoughts on the application with what other bloggers think about it. And what’s even more fascinating is to see our readers starting to try the application out and share their impressions in the comments or in blog posts of their own.

But imagine that I decide to break the embargo and write a post titled “Tomorrow a new startup … is launched to…”. Ok, some people may think I am the most knowledgeable blogger in the world, I may get on Techmeme and I will be sure to spoil the launch date to the startup I review. But what will my readers get from the story? Some of them after reading the post may be interested enough in checking the application out but since it’s only “tomorrow” first they will be disappointed and then they will forget about their initial intention to check it out (can you imagine someone actually scheduling a task in a calendar to check some interesting application out?). So I get disappointed readers and the application loses some potential users.

Or let’s take another scenario: I decide to publish the post some couple of hours early so that I don’t look particularly bad but I am still the first to break the story. And not to look particularly bad I’ll be sure to omit the information that the service will only be available in a couple of hours after the post is live. So my readers are compelled to try the application out again and when they arrive to the website they get absolutely nothing in there (well, until the embargo is lifted and the service is live, of course). This time I have disappointed readers complaining in the comments.

As a summary, this is what happens when an embargo is broken: everyone is damaged to a certain extent while the blogger enjoys the attention, the links and Techmeme position (or whatever) as well. I know that bloggers are not supposed to worry about their competition or even the companies/services/applications they cover. But are they also not supposed to care about their readers? Is the status of the first one in the know more valuable than what you actually deliver to those for whom you are supposed to write? I think every blogger who intentionally breaks embargoes from time to time should ask himself (or herself) this particular question and if you actually care about traffic and ad revenue only, go ahead and keep breaking it.

Photo by Mel B. used under Creative Commons.