Michael Arrington’s announcement that TechCrunch would agree to honor and then break embargoes from PR contacts has caused a lot of upheaval recently. I can sincerely understand his frustration. However, whether you agree or not with him, it is a fact that the embargo is being misused by a lot of PRO’s and companies nowadays as a PR tactic. Let’s have a look at some of the basic the rules on engagement for using an embargo as they were meant to be.

An embargo is an agreement that a news organization refrain from reporting certain information until a specified date and/or time, in exchange for advance access to the information. Note this: it is an agreement made in advance, so sending out the information under embargo unsolicited to press without prior agreeement means the receiving end does not need to respect the embargo.

Secondly an embargo should have a mutual benefit for both the organization as well as the media. Most of the times the embargo serves to give both parties enough time to reflect on the information provided, research it, conduct interviews or contact additional sources, and so on. In these cases the embargo serves to digest complex and/or a vast amount of information.

Thirdly it is up to the media to accept an embargo or not. If they don’t, don’t be angry or mad, it will just mean that they feel the information you would like to provide is either not worth it, or is too important for the media to postpone publishing.

Read on at Shel Holtz’ blog on what has happened to the embargo due to the rise of blogging and citizen journalism.