Chris Anderson Whips PR Folks With His Long Tail
I’m conflicted about how to feel about this.
Chris Anderson just posted on his blog the e-mail addresses of a bunch of people who have reached out to him with PR related inquiries.
I get no where even remotely close to how many he does and even I get a little sick of them if they are anonymous and random without any thought at all. So I completley understand him blocking them and junking them on his end.
Where I am conflicted is on sharing these in the open like this. I’m not sure what positive outcome this generates except to open up people to more spam and to potentially create a black list of e-mails that isn’t appropriate for everyone.
I’ve really got to noodle on this some more, but I wanted to get your opinions on it.
Hat tip to Jeremy Pepper for tweeting this.
I’m on board with how Chris approached this, up until the public posting of email addresses.
I’m not concerned about the potential spam these people might get (no matter how much you try to keep your email address private, you’re always going to get a ton of spam), or the potential blacklisting but the public outing and mild professional humiliation that would likely be a result of this.
A simple shout out to these folks in his post (”you know who you are”) might have been sufficient. When they find that their messages are bouncing, they’ll discover that they’ve been put on The List.
Hmm.
I suppose the thing is if you ultimately work on the web all the time (I do and have for goodness how long) you kind of get real pissed at folks who spam by any means.
Whilst my spam irritants are different to the ones you mention, I still continually get truck loads, mainly because peope want traffic from a reasonably high traffic area(s).
I have publically shamed some of this noise before, even created a forum thread just for that at one point: http://www.audiocourses.com/forum/forum-85.html
I guess something snaps in people sometimes when enough is enough and we fell compelled to fight back.
Unsolicated mails are a FKN pain, I deal with countless daily, link requests, exchanges, it’s just part of my workflow now.
But I did stop shaming, delete is quicker.
Chris
I’m with you on this CC. While Anderson makes a very valid point about lazy PR folks simply spamming anyone who works in media, I think publishing the email addresses is childish. Just block them, blog about why you blocked them, and move on.
I also note that in the comments on Anderson’s post someone claims to regularly receive the same kind of unsolicited bulk email from Wired advertising staff. Those in glass houses…
Personally, I think Chris is overreacting. I understand the frustration with bad PR pitches. I certainly get them as a result of my blog, but much more so now because of the multimedia magazine I started (Cork & Knife). Nevertheless, I wouldn’t block someone after one mistake. For me, it is habitual offenders that deserve to be blocked and perhaps identified.
I also think many improperly classify all unsolicited email as spam. Certainly email sent blindly in bulk should be considered spam, but if I personally email you a bad pitch — even if you don’t want to see it — isn’t spam, it’s just bad PR. There is an important distinction, I think.
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Of course Chris overreacted– he obviously reached a breaking point.
Of course this is public humiliation. Take it as a good way to force better behavior.
I’m not going to whine about what Chris did, but ask questions like: why on earth would you pitch an EIC? Why do people not target and personalize pitches better (I can think of reasons, but not good ones)? Why do people use mail merges to send press releases — good god a press release isn’t a pitch anyway? My hair is falling out as I write this.
So, go Chris, just don’t expect the spam to stop, but I think you did PR folks a favor.
Of course I’m not on the list, so I can say this
Good points all around.
The more I have thought about this, the more I hate the fact that he listed the e-mail addresses. I understand his frustration and think that venting is a healthy thing. But, putting those out in the clear like that does nothing to solve the problem at all.
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I agree, venting would have been great but posting the email addresses was over the line.
Does Chris think he has never made a mistake, a social faux pas himself? How would (will?) he feel when that error is used to humiliate him in public?
The word for what he did is simply “uncool.”