[jsrfded]

btw, when the WSJ broke our embargo, I was on my way into the office. We were planning to get there around 3-4pm for the 9pm PT launch. Some folks were already there and turned the site live since the first press had gone up.

But techcrunch has a policy of not posting their story if an embargo is broken, so we didn't get the TC story that we had briefed them on.

[andre3k1]

TechCrunch goes one step further. Often Arrington will get the PR firm handling the press release to allow them to publish their story a solid 10 minutes before anyone else. If the embargo is set for 9pm PST, TechCrunch often shoots for 8:50 and most of the time they are allowed. As a result, they break the story and get a ton of inbound traffic.

[andre3k1]

Not sure why anyone would shamelessly downvote me. I wasn't lying. This sort of thing happens every night.

Just look at Brightcove 5's launch that happened a few hours ago (9pm PST). TC posted their story at 8:50pm, everyone else followed at 9pm PST.

[patio11]

PR makes me yearn for the simple, honest world of SEO.

[rsingel]

So what's the news on how/why the WSJ broke the embargo? What was their excuse?

[jsrfded]

(I'm posting a comment I initially was privately drafting for ryan in an email.)

I posted the article - and included the embargo paras, which my co-founder and I nearly cut - because I thought the backstory would be useful/interesting to the folks there, who seemed to be unaware of the pr process during the prerelease of blekko. I wanted to open that up for them.

Your comment was spot-on good advice for the ycomb co's though. I voted it up.

Really irked that wsj broke our embargo. Irritated that I wasn't in the office when our site went live after 3.33 years, irritated that we didn't get to do the last bug-fix push to production, irritated that I knew TC wouldn't post, irritated that other journos would be irritated with me, irritated that it flatted the temporal curve on the launch pop. And for what?

Time-sync on stories is actually a good thing for the news stream. I don't see why journos don't get that.

[jkincaid]

FYI, The Wall Street Journal stopped honoring embargoes last year. Your PR firm knew this.

[evansolomon]

Jason, to be fair so did TechCrunch but you still honor embargoes often. Glass houses, ya know.

[jkincaid]

This is true, though to my knowledge if we agree to an embargo (as in, you ask, I actually say "Yes" as opposed to you just blasting a press release to my inbox) then we don't generally break them. At least that's my policy.

[evansolomon]

Not saying you lie about honoring them (I can personally say you never have lied to me about it), just that a public "we don't honor embargoes" stance isn't always a valid indictment.