A few days ago I wrote a post that received quite a bit of attention, most of which was negative. The post, entitled "Exclusive: Startup Launch Ruined By Careless Blogger" was meant to stir up conversation about embargoes, how they go wrong, and how precarious working with the tech press can be for startups making major product and launch announcements. And while it certainly accomplished that, it also became an easy target for those wishing to attack me for writing it and TechCrunch for publishing it. And while I don't regret writing it, if I had to do it again, there are a number of things I'd probably do differently.
This is a postmortem for that post, for those who are interested in or care about how the sausage is made. This is a list of things that I should have done differently that might have cleared things up for some readers, or at the very least could have deflected some of the criticism I've received.
I should have chosen a different headline. In retrospect, this seems like a no-brainer. My intent wasn't to throw anyone under the bus, although it sure seemed that way to others, and I understand why thanks to the headline. I made a few conscious decisions in writing the post because I didn't want this to seem like an attack on my former employer, which published the original embargo-breaking article, or one of their new writers. I didn't link to them, didn't name names, etc. Yet, it was taken as a passive-aggressive dig, and that's totally my fault.
I don't know the full circumstances around the embargo break, although I've heard the startup's account and have read the publisher's side in the comments. Frankly, I don't think it makes sense to assign blame in this situation, as what's really broken is the process. But the headline does just that.
The headline should have been "Exclusive: Startup Launch Ruined By Broken Embargo," which would have taken the blame off the writer and placed it more on the process, since that's the point I actually wanted to get across. It's likely some would have still taken the text as an attack, but again, that wasn't my intent. In fact, I'm going to change the headline as soon as I'm finished this post. Hopefully it's better late than never.
I should have done a better job of explaining why tech bloggers shy away from broken embargoes and 12-hour old news. I don't think a lot of people understand why I wouldn't want to cover a piece of news like Lyft's product launch, after an embargo like this is broken. So please indulge me for a minute while I explain some of the reasons why writers like me would pass in a situation like this.
When an embargo breaks, a writer has a few choices: He can either choose to publish right away, as soon as another outlet breaks that news, or he can choose not to publish, or spike the story. When making that decision, there are a number of factors at play: How big is the news? What's the writer's relationship with the company announcing the news or the PR firm that pitched it? Who broke the embargo? (More on this later) And how long ago was it broken?
Many times, a writer will already have an article prepared, and that decision is made easier -- you decide whether to publish or not, based on the factors above. But this was kind of unique case: The article was published immediately after the event, when other writers believed they wouldn't need to have our stories ready for several days. In that case, I think pretty much everyone else was caught flat-footed, and the decision was no longer, "Do I publish or not?" The question was, "Do I take the time to write a story that has already been out there for x number of hours?"
Tech bloggers are a busy lot. Many of us write several posts a day, and so we have to choose wisely which make the cut. We look for reasons to say no. Furthermore, we have to decide whether or not we can sufficiently differentiate our coverage in the case that our story is late to the game. This is the so-called "second-day take." The first question my editor asked me when I explained the situation was, "Do you have a different angle?" If the answer is no, then in most cases it makes sense for us to move on to a different story, one that is more timely, or one that we can provide a better angle on.
A lot of the criticism I received was along the lines of, "If you have nothing better to bring to the table than being first, you should find another line of work." But in a situation like this, it's not about writers being first -- otherwise we would have never agreed to the embargo in the first place. It's about time and resource management, deciding when to cover a story in a situation like this and when not to. For many writers, not just me, the default is to say no and move on. But I can see why the reasons weren't sufficiently clear in my post.
I should not have made myself look like a huge douche. See above.
I should have done a better job of explaining TechCrunch's historical approach to embargoes and how its current staff operates. A lot of the negative reaction associated with my post was linked in part to TechCrunch's historical take on embargoes. Several years ago, Mike Arrington famously declared death to embargoes on the site and warned that the staff would no longer accept embargoes -- or at least, that it would accept embargoes but would not abide by them, and would feel free to publish their articles at any time they wished.
This policy caused mayhem for a good long time for startups, for PR people, and for other reporters. For startups and their PR people, that meant you could either give TechCrunch an exclusive, or run the risk of it running early anyway. If TechCrunch did run early, that meant pissing off everyone else who was pre-briefed on the story, and who was faced with that publish-or-not-publish situation above.
As a result, there was a lot of schadenfreude associated with someone from TechCrunch complaining about someone else breaking an embargo. That's due in part to the belief among many that "TechCrunch breaks embargoes all the time."
That may have been true at Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, but there is no longer any kind of systematic no-embargo policy at the publication. Frankly, most of the news staff at TechCrunch today has been hired in the past 12 months and doesn't abide by whatever old rules Mike set. (Which, to my knowledge, were only arbitrarily followed anyway.)
The bigger point, though, is that today's staff is a collection of writers who have their own relationships with startups and PR people and make their own decisions about how to deal with these things. And as far as I know, every writer on staff today accepts and honors embargoes. The TechCrunch that I work for doesn't break embargoes all the time -- in fact, to my knowledge we accept and honor pretty much every embargo that is sent our way.
Caveat: There are PR people and startups who sometimes tell staff at TechCrunch that it's "ok to run early," despite a given embargo time. Frankly, having been on both sides of the fence, I advise against this, as whatever favor you might curry with the staff or bump you might get from us running first isn't worth the headache of half-a-dozen other pissed off bloggers. Other people at TechCrunch might feel differently about this, though.
I should have explained my own feelings about embargoes and how I've dealt with them, both at TechCrunch and at GigaOM. Working at a competing publication while TechCrunch had its no-embargo policy in place was a maddening exercise. I would routinely accept embargoes, pre-brief with execs, and prepare a story for the next day, only to find TechCrunch writers running their stories early.
Most times, those breaks would happen within an hour of the embargo time. That put me and other writers in an interesting quandary: Do we publish anyway or spike the story?
Many times in that situation, I personally would spike the story and advocate for others to do so as well. But as noted above, there were a lot of factors at play: How big was the news? What was my relationship with the PR firm or person who pitched me? Sometimes news was too big to ignore, like a large funding round. Sometimes I didn't want to lose the relationship with the company I was talking to.
The case for spiking was simple: Don't reward bad actors for breaking the embargo. Create friction in the system. If a PR person went through the trouble of pitching me, and an executive got on the phone and spent the time to talk with me, only to have coverage pulled at the last minute because someone else broke the embargo -- well, that was a lot of wasted energy for all involved. That friction could be alleviated if people known to break embargoes weren't pitched.
I'm not sure how effective the strategy was, frankly. But I for sure know what it's like to have an embargo broken on me by TechCrunch and can see why it still carries that legacy reputation.
I should not have claimed that every writer has broken an embargo at one time or another. This is a point of pride for many reporters, and I shouldn't have claimed something that is categorically false. It was stupid and massive flamebait.
I should have written more about Lyft and its upcoming launch a little more. In the effort to "go meta" and report on why others wouldn't be writing about Lyft, I gloss over the news part of the piece. I should have done a better job of actually talking about Lyft and why I like it. Reading over the comments and a few Twitter conversations with folks late on Friday night convinced me that the launch deserved its own story after all, which I wrote about yesterday.
I should not have assumed that TechCrunch readers would see the news elsewhere. When you live in this bubble, sometimes you lose site of the fact that not everyone else in the world is totally tapped into every tech new blog and Twitter feed. My colleague Steve O'Hear wrote somewhere in the comments (and I'm paraphrasing), "We don't operate in a vacuum and neither do our readers," and after thinking on it a bit, I think that's only partly true.
One of the biggest surprises in the whole mess was the number of readers who commented that TechCrunch is their sole source of tech news. That's really humbling, and bears keeping in mind as I think about situations like this in the future. That's not to say I will be able to cover every damn thing from every startup, but I might be more inclined to write about news after an embargo breaks, when I think the company is doing interesting things and has a cool team. You know, put that pride aside a little bit, for the reader's benefit.
This is a postmortem for that post, for those who are interested in or care about how the sausage is made. This is a list of things that I should have done differently that might have cleared things up for some readers, or at the very least could have deflected some of the criticism I've received.
I should have chosen a different headline. In retrospect, this seems like a no-brainer. My intent wasn't to throw anyone under the bus, although it sure seemed that way to others, and I understand why thanks to the headline. I made a few conscious decisions in writing the post because I didn't want this to seem like an attack on my former employer, which published the original embargo-breaking article, or one of their new writers. I didn't link to them, didn't name names, etc. Yet, it was taken as a passive-aggressive dig, and that's totally my fault.
I don't know the full circumstances around the embargo break, although I've heard the startup's account and have read the publisher's side in the comments. Frankly, I don't think it makes sense to assign blame in this situation, as what's really broken is the process. But the headline does just that.
The headline should have been "Exclusive: Startup Launch Ruined By Broken Embargo," which would have taken the blame off the writer and placed it more on the process, since that's the point I actually wanted to get across. It's likely some would have still taken the text as an attack, but again, that wasn't my intent. In fact, I'm going to change the headline as soon as I'm finished this post. Hopefully it's better late than never.
I should have done a better job of explaining why tech bloggers shy away from broken embargoes and 12-hour old news. I don't think a lot of people understand why I wouldn't want to cover a piece of news like Lyft's product launch, after an embargo like this is broken. So please indulge me for a minute while I explain some of the reasons why writers like me would pass in a situation like this.
When an embargo breaks, a writer has a few choices: He can either choose to publish right away, as soon as another outlet breaks that news, or he can choose not to publish, or spike the story. When making that decision, there are a number of factors at play: How big is the news? What's the writer's relationship with the company announcing the news or the PR firm that pitched it? Who broke the embargo? (More on this later) And how long ago was it broken?
Many times, a writer will already have an article prepared, and that decision is made easier -- you decide whether to publish or not, based on the factors above. But this was kind of unique case: The article was published immediately after the event, when other writers believed they wouldn't need to have our stories ready for several days. In that case, I think pretty much everyone else was caught flat-footed, and the decision was no longer, "Do I publish or not?" The question was, "Do I take the time to write a story that has already been out there for x number of hours?"
Tech bloggers are a busy lot. Many of us write several posts a day, and so we have to choose wisely which make the cut. We look for reasons to say no. Furthermore, we have to decide whether or not we can sufficiently differentiate our coverage in the case that our story is late to the game. This is the so-called "second-day take." The first question my editor asked me when I explained the situation was, "Do you have a different angle?" If the answer is no, then in most cases it makes sense for us to move on to a different story, one that is more timely, or one that we can provide a better angle on.
A lot of the criticism I received was along the lines of, "If you have nothing better to bring to the table than being first, you should find another line of work." But in a situation like this, it's not about writers being first -- otherwise we would have never agreed to the embargo in the first place. It's about time and resource management, deciding when to cover a story in a situation like this and when not to. For many writers, not just me, the default is to say no and move on. But I can see why the reasons weren't sufficiently clear in my post.
I should not have made myself look like a huge douche. See above.
I should have done a better job of explaining TechCrunch's historical approach to embargoes and how its current staff operates. A lot of the negative reaction associated with my post was linked in part to TechCrunch's historical take on embargoes. Several years ago, Mike Arrington famously declared death to embargoes on the site and warned that the staff would no longer accept embargoes -- or at least, that it would accept embargoes but would not abide by them, and would feel free to publish their articles at any time they wished.
This policy caused mayhem for a good long time for startups, for PR people, and for other reporters. For startups and their PR people, that meant you could either give TechCrunch an exclusive, or run the risk of it running early anyway. If TechCrunch did run early, that meant pissing off everyone else who was pre-briefed on the story, and who was faced with that publish-or-not-publish situation above.
As a result, there was a lot of schadenfreude associated with someone from TechCrunch complaining about someone else breaking an embargo. That's due in part to the belief among many that "TechCrunch breaks embargoes all the time."
That may have been true at Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, but there is no longer any kind of systematic no-embargo policy at the publication. Frankly, most of the news staff at TechCrunch today has been hired in the past 12 months and doesn't abide by whatever old rules Mike set. (Which, to my knowledge, were only arbitrarily followed anyway.)
The bigger point, though, is that today's staff is a collection of writers who have their own relationships with startups and PR people and make their own decisions about how to deal with these things. And as far as I know, every writer on staff today accepts and honors embargoes. The TechCrunch that I work for doesn't break embargoes all the time -- in fact, to my knowledge we accept and honor pretty much every embargo that is sent our way.
Caveat: There are PR people and startups who sometimes tell staff at TechCrunch that it's "ok to run early," despite a given embargo time. Frankly, having been on both sides of the fence, I advise against this, as whatever favor you might curry with the staff or bump you might get from us running first isn't worth the headache of half-a-dozen other pissed off bloggers. Other people at TechCrunch might feel differently about this, though.
I should have explained my own feelings about embargoes and how I've dealt with them, both at TechCrunch and at GigaOM. Working at a competing publication while TechCrunch had its no-embargo policy in place was a maddening exercise. I would routinely accept embargoes, pre-brief with execs, and prepare a story for the next day, only to find TechCrunch writers running their stories early.
Most times, those breaks would happen within an hour of the embargo time. That put me and other writers in an interesting quandary: Do we publish anyway or spike the story?
Many times in that situation, I personally would spike the story and advocate for others to do so as well. But as noted above, there were a lot of factors at play: How big was the news? What was my relationship with the PR firm or person who pitched me? Sometimes news was too big to ignore, like a large funding round. Sometimes I didn't want to lose the relationship with the company I was talking to.
The case for spiking was simple: Don't reward bad actors for breaking the embargo. Create friction in the system. If a PR person went through the trouble of pitching me, and an executive got on the phone and spent the time to talk with me, only to have coverage pulled at the last minute because someone else broke the embargo -- well, that was a lot of wasted energy for all involved. That friction could be alleviated if people known to break embargoes weren't pitched.
I'm not sure how effective the strategy was, frankly. But I for sure know what it's like to have an embargo broken on me by TechCrunch and can see why it still carries that legacy reputation.
I should not have claimed that every writer has broken an embargo at one time or another. This is a point of pride for many reporters, and I shouldn't have claimed something that is categorically false. It was stupid and massive flamebait.
I should have written more about Lyft and its upcoming launch a little more. In the effort to "go meta" and report on why others wouldn't be writing about Lyft, I gloss over the news part of the piece. I should have done a better job of actually talking about Lyft and why I like it. Reading over the comments and a few Twitter conversations with folks late on Friday night convinced me that the launch deserved its own story after all, which I wrote about yesterday.
I should not have assumed that TechCrunch readers would see the news elsewhere. When you live in this bubble, sometimes you lose site of the fact that not everyone else in the world is totally tapped into every tech new blog and Twitter feed. My colleague Steve O'Hear wrote somewhere in the comments (and I'm paraphrasing), "We don't operate in a vacuum and neither do our readers," and after thinking on it a bit, I think that's only partly true.
One of the biggest surprises in the whole mess was the number of readers who commented that TechCrunch is their sole source of tech news. That's really humbling, and bears keeping in mind as I think about situations like this in the future. That's not to say I will be able to cover every damn thing from every startup, but I might be more inclined to write about news after an embargo breaks, when I think the company is doing interesting things and has a cool team. You know, put that pride aside a little bit, for the reader's benefit.
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