Embargo: Do not read this before 5.01pm precisely

Ping. Two emails drop close together this morning, both with excellent material — proper data, good quotes — on matters close to the heart of the Evening Standard.

One would have made the basis of a news story, the other would probably have been used as part of a feature we are working on.

Instead, both went to the Bin.

Why? Because they were embargoed till midnight, so might as well be headlined “We hate the Evening Standard”. (A midday embargo is fine).

It’s odd when London centric stories are embargoed against the London paper. In some cases, the stories are so London centric that the daily nationals would probably reject them on exactly those grounds.

I’ve questioned before the wisdom of embargoes. For sensitive material, they obviously serve an important purpose.

Newspapers use them all the time. If we get the heads up on a court ruling or the gist of an important statement to the stock market, we go to considerable lengths to make sure the piece doesn’t appear on line before it should.

But I think the PR trade overuses them. Sometimes the embargo time is strange/not explained.

The flak, or the client, thinks the embargo enables them to control and increase coverage.

Quite often, as per today, they have the opposite effect.