SORRY PR PEOPLE: YOU'RE BLOCKED
I've had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn't spam (Cloudmark Desktop solves that nicely), it's PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of Wired because they can't be bothered to find out who on my staff …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wired Editor-in-Chief's decision to block PR senders outright is the sharpest escalation yet in a running friction between bloggers and flacks: Doc Searls argued back in October 2005 that PR folks get at least as much flack as they give, and by mid-2007 the complaints had turned operational — Dave McClure catalogued why PR doesn't work for geeks, while Robert Scoble showed what the dream pitch looks like when someone actually does the homework.
First-order effects
- PR agencies that blast untargeted releases lose direct access to a top-tier outlet's masthead — the block makes misdirected email a permanent, not temporary, cost.
- Cloudmark Desktop gets an explicit endorsement from one of the web's most-read blogs as the tool that already solved the spam half of the inbox problem.
Second-order effects
- Agencies serving tech clients face pressure to replace volume blasts with staff-level targeting, since the biggest targets are now demonstrably willing to cut off senders entirely.
- Other high-volume bloggers gain a template: publicize the blocklist and the burden of relevance shifts onto the sender rather than the recipient.
Third-order effects
- If blocking spreads, the spray-and-pray press-release model erodes at exactly the outlets that matter most, pushing PR toward smaller, verified contact lists and personal relationships over mass distribution.
The trend: Tech publishing is moving from passive filtering of unwanted PR to active enforcement — named blocks and public call-outs — forcing the industry toward precision targeting.