Very Bad PR: You Don't Want to Be on This List

Chris Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief at Wired is fed up.

He gets about 300 emails a day, most of which, apparently, aren't meant for him, many from PR people who can't be bothered to find the right editor or writer on the Wired staff to receive their pitches. Bad move.

In desperation, Chris announced that he's blocking hundreds of these wayward emailers from his email - and listed their email addresses in his blog post.

Ouch.

While I wouldn't do the same - I'd block them and not bother telling them; to hell with their pitches; but I wouldn't publish their email addresses - I can understand his frustration. So can you, if you read some of the many comments. While many agree with him (although not too many agree with his action in publishing the names), there are a lot of replies from angry PR people who seem to think he has a DUTY to take their pitches and redirect them to somebody on his staff who might be interested - the PR people are just too busy to be able to do their own research.

Guess what, folks? He doesn't have a duty to do your job for you. You have been warned.

I've written about this before. Reporters are going to - at best - ignore you if you don't do your homework. If you're not relevant, if you don't know their beat and know what they write, you're an intrusion and will be treated as such.

Good comments from both Peter Shankman at PRDifferently and Kevin at the Bad Pitch Blog.