Death to the embargo
Arrington says tech media are increasingly releasing embargoed stories early, which gains them traffic via Google News and Techmeme, and public relations firms are too desperate to punish them:
As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.
He says it is a race to the bottom:
We’ve never broken an embargo at TechCrunch. Not once. Today that ends. From now our new policy is to break every embargo.