Guardian tech editor Charles Arthur has made headlines in the past week by stating that he will no longer use email, and instead,
only accept PR pitches via Twitter. This isn't the first PR stunt Charles has staged along these lines; I went to a
Full Run talk he gave years ago where he claimed he never reads press releases, so Twitter is just another quicker way of getting news, in Charles' eyes.
I agree with Charles in that pitching via Twitter is a wonderful thing, when the information in question is already public and/or has already gone out over the wire. It keeps things concise, to the point, brief. It forces us to keep things simple. But it has a major flaw. What about pitching information that is not yet a part of the public record?
There are some inherent problems with only using Twitter to pitch PR stories:
1. Most good stories worth printing, and therefore worth journalists knowing about, are pitched in advance, when it's still confidential
2. In order to use Twitter for a private conversation you need to be able to DM someone
3. Twitter is absolutely dreadful when it comes to updating DM so even though I have 600 followers, I can only DM about 125 of them. I have chalked this up to a Twitter bug; if anyone knows it is caused by something else, let me know. In a nutshell, Twitter is a game changer but it's not without its (major) service faults
4. If the person doesn't follow you back, and I know Charles doesn't follow most PR people back, the DM process is hopeless, leaving your only option a public Tweet
5. No PR person in his or her right mind would ever pitch an exclusive over a public Tweet. Otherwise it would be called an 'inclusive'
Charles, as well as many other journalists, want to do things quicker, better, easier. But even they can't change the fact that a large part of the PR process is hinged upon client confidentiality and restricted by NDA agreements and this will never change. Most good stories are restricted in terms of timing due to good reason (for instance, because the new service you're pitching hasn't yet gone live). Exclusives are a critical part of the pitching process and if you really only accept Tweets, it pretty much means you don't want exclusives.
Lots of journalists want to change this balance of power, but frankly, companies will always control their own newsflow and 'timing is everything.' If journalists still want the holy grail of exclusives, I don't see how you can ignore email altogether, unless you want PRs to start showing up on your doorstep to tell you about a story in person and hand you a printout or go back to the 70s and start faxing you text. They can Tweet it first: "On my way to Guardian towers!" Giving you just enough time to alert your security staff.
I'm not a stick in the mud, and I'm usually fine with embracing new ways of doing things, but I respect NDAs and confidentiality like a priest respects the Pope, because otherwise, I'd be grossly infringing upon the trust of my clients, not to mention the legal implications of our contracts.
Comments very welcome on this post.
Avid Twitter fans know the link between Twitter, and its bedfellow liberal paper The Guardian, so won't be surprised to learn a study has suggested the group of Twitter users, as a whole, are the 3rd most liberal group in the UK just behind liberal democrat voters but ahead of the traditional leftist group of 16-34 year olds.
