One of the major challenges the Internet poses for PR practitioners is that it removes many of the barriers that traditionally protected information. Protected it, that is, until you were ready to release it. But now information has a life of it’s own and your ability to control it is much reduced. Look at this story in Wired about how this Wall St. Journal conference issued embargoes to all attending journalists, but forget about the bloggers in the audience, who reported on the event in real-time.
“We’re trying to figure out what to do next year,” he said. “It’s an interesting issue. You just have to have a better definition next time. Maybe we’ll change the rules. We don’t know.”
One of the issues for everyone in PR moving forward is identifying how stories and information move around the weblog community. The folks at Microdoc news have researched how a number of stories propogated around webogs and the web.
The New York Times isn’t the only newspaper with some reporter-related issues. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a sports writer and movie reviewer for the Sedalia Democrat has been fired for plagiarism.
Spam isn’t killing e-mail. If you target the right people, with the right information at the right time, e-mail is still very effective.
Murphy's Law 