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Time for an embargo on embargoes

Home Tomorrow's Business Time for an embargo on embargoes

This embargoing of press releases thing has gotten well out of hand. And mostly it’s doing you no favours.

For a start it smacks of self-importance. The company and the flak is saying: this astonishing development is so newsworthy we are going to get blanket news coverage in hundreds of media outlets.

For a press release about how a company you’ve never heard of has won a new client it hasn’t named.

The favourite embargo time is midnight – so it’s aimed at the morning papers.

Which means it is embargoed against The Evening Standard. So you’re pitching me a story when you have already made it clear you could care less about the paper I work for.

Twice this week there’s been embargoed reports I might well have written about or at least awarded Press Release of the Day.

But they had a midnight embargo, so I couldn’t. They got re-released the next day, embargo lifted, having garnered no coverage whatsoever.

I do understand why embargoes are used and sometimes you’ve good reason to employ them.

Use sparingly, is my suggestion.

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