Defending the press release

Steve Rubel, senior vice president at Edelman, “the largest independent global PR firm,” aka MicroPersuasion, is spared Nicholas Carr’s verbal thrashing the likes of which “instant journalist” Andy Abramson withstood last week (see “Instant journalism: Who needs grammar?”).

Bummer. I found Carr’s linguistic acrobatics in defense of linguistics quite entertaining. Carr’s mild rebuke of Rubel’s willful rebuke of ZDNet’s business model is reasoned, but not impassioned.

Fellow ZDNet blogger Phil Wainewright comments at MicroPersuasion:

Shock! Horror! Media people getting compensated based on the popularity of their output! Whatever next? PR companies being paid according to the coverage their clients get?

Would that were true! The favored PR fee schedule is an upfront one; Marketers typically pay public relations firms, such as Rubel employer Edelman, on a monthly retainer basis with little assurances beyond “best efforts.” No press “clippings,” no fee? No way!

Is Rubel’s principal “beef” a public relations one?:

Will a blogger favor writing a sensational post that is likely to get more clicks over one that perhaps is less sexy and is based on, say, a press release?

Rubel also decries the plight of the corporate “little guy” pondering if “this system may make it harder for smaller players to get coverage.”

Rubel has raised a righteous rallying cry for the rights of business “underdogs” before, in his post entitled “Techmeme is a blog country club.”

I rebuked that Rubel “cause” in my post entitled “Edelman blogs: Exclusive country clubs?”:

Rubel is taking a stand not only against Techmeme’s alleged xenophobia, he is is outraged with the entire blogging community…What has Rubel done for his part in the past week to foster “a global conversation” with a “lot of voices” from abroad, so that we are not "turned off" with MicroPersuasion or Edelman?

 

Rubel has indeed reached out to European bloggers, two. Rubel has linked to:1) PR 2.0 Blog: New blog on the future of PR from Edelman in Germany and 2) PRwordSmith: New Edelman blog in the U.K., by Edelman London CEO.