Newswise Blog

Monday, February 07, 2011

Leaks, Embargoes, and Hard News

Embargoes are an important news phenomenon, and they are important to public relations professionals as well.  It’s not often that you actually read about embargoes in the news media, but in the recent New York Times Sunday Magazine, Bill Keller executive editor of the New York Times, discusses how and why his newspaper deals with embargoes.

“… such embargoes — agreements not to publish information before a set date — are commonplace in journalism. Everything from studies in medical journals to the annual United States budget is released with embargoes. They are a constraint with benefits, the principal one being the chance to actually read and reflect on the material before publishing it into public view.”

Keller went on to explain some of the psychological and/or marketing issues at play.  “…embargoes also tend to build suspense and amplify a story, especially when multiple news outlets broadcast it at once. The embargo was the only condition WikiLeaks would try to impose on us; what we wrote about the material was entirely up to us.”

Actually, the situation Keller described is more of an exclusive with a negotiated publication date than the typical embargo arrangement.  The embargo in this case is secondary to the exclusive showing of Wikileaks data to a limited number of newspaper who agreed to the sources terms.  However, his explanation highlights important points about embargoes, especially the opportunities and heightened excitement.

We’ve studied and shown at Newswise that embargoed news is more attractive to the news media.  They pay more attention; an embargo is iconic for “hard news”.  They also write more frequently about embargoed news.

If you have news that is embargoed for a legitimate reason, such as publication in an upcoming journal or presentation at an upcoming scientific or medical meeting, it serves the interests your institution (and of reporters) to release the news under embargo to journalists.

How do you do this?  You can’t simply distribute it widely to any journalist because you cannot assume that they will honor your embargo or know what that means if they have not explicitly agreed to such a contract beforehand.

Newswise is one of only a few news release distribution services that provides the capability to manage embargoed news.  Journalists who subscribe (free) to receive news, or access to news on Newswise, promise to honor the embargoes, and they do.  Most traditional wire services do not provide the technology for delivering embargoed news, but journalists really prefer embargoed news because it provides privileged access to the hard news in a much more fair, rather than exclusive, arrangement.