Not since the wave of lawyer jokes hit some years ago has a profession been so reviled as PR. As much as PR professionals work to conduct themselves ethically and, moreover, not make pests of themselves, journalists and now, some holier-than-thou bloggers have become INCENSED that we DARE to sully their inboxes with press releases and PR materials.
Granted, a number of newbies, overeager entrepreneurs and even some big agency people who should know better have angered journalists such as Wired editor Chris Anderson and blogger Tom Coates. Perhaps Chris Anderson is being a bit disingenous, since Wired Magazine is basically a compilation of items about new tech gadgets (and where, I might add, would he have heard about them, if not from PR people?) interspersed with a few articles. And even stranger is Coates' rant...it seems that his blog appeared on a list of MOST INFLUENTIAL blogs (the NERVE!) and since that posting PR people (or so he says) have been sending him masses of unsolicited product information. Again, a bit disingenuous.
Apparently, these folks have not heard of 1) the delete button or 2) the practice of sending all unsolicited emails to a folder to be sorted out at leisure, if at all. Another idea: don't provide your personal email address if you're going to be so offended. Send it to a favored few. Trust me, we don't want to send you an email if you're going to get all cranky about it.
Also,it might be well advised to provide PR people with a list of the correct contacts for specific sections of your publication. Sometimes it's not clear from the publication or the web site, and often we can't get through to anyone at your office to find out who we need to contact.
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