I agree with much of Stowe Boyd says in his post about PR Spam but I am going to be the devils advocate here and I am hoping we can agree on what I am about to say.

If you are a professional journalist, or editor covering a particular industry or topic then part of your job is fielding PR pitches for products in that industry.

Think of it like a buyer working for a major department store. Let’s say they buy mens clothing. That person’s job is to buy things from people they know, and people they don’t know. In fact a good buyer is actively searching for, and appreciatively receiving unsolicited emails and cold calls from people they have never met who are trying to sell them some new line of clothing they have never heard of. Why?

That new line of clothing just might be the next big thing.

It is that buyer’s job to diligently review that line and listen to that sales pitch to decide if buying that line would give his company a competitive advantage.

A buyer who only buys from his friends and buys lines he already knows about is lazy and should be fired for not doing his job.

In Journalism and PR it is the same thing. Journalists and editors should be actively seeking new stories, from new companies about new products and learning about them with enthusiasm to give their publication an advantage by breaking stories before their competitors.

Will you occasionally get pitched something that is irrelevant to you or that is personally uninteresting to you? Of course. Too bad. Get over it or get a new job. Now if the same PR firm keeps sending you irrelevant information it is entirely appropriate to contact them and politely ask them to knock it off. If they keep “spamming” you then you should complain about them publicly until they get a clue.

Now here is the difference and the fine line between bloggers and “real” journalists. If blogging is a hobby for you and you don’t really consider yourself a journalist, or you don’t really know what journalism is or means then it is understandable that you might be offended when you receive an email from a stranger pitching some product you have never heard of.

Stowe offers some great advice in his post:

I also suggest to bloggers and journalists to do as I have done, and post a persistent link on your blog called ‘How To Pitch Me’ or the like, and state how others ought to — and ought not to — pitch you.

By the way small companies are the ones who are most hurt by being ignored. Big companies will always find ways to get their message out. They have the money and resources to change tactics and to kiss and make up to whoever they have offended. And don’t try to tell me that publishers don’t forgive when they are adequately sucked up to after being offended.

Small companies do not have access, do not have the resources or the cash to pursue every single media outlet in the world that might cover their product individually. It is impossible. So if you get what you consider to be “spam” from a small company take a moment to send them a polite email and explain that you don’t like the way they pitched you and offer them some free advice. Most likely they will appreciate the advice and you might just get the inside scoop when that company makes it big.

If the polite approach doesn’t work you can always blacklist them. It’s your blog you can do whatever you like 8).

**update**

Todd Defren defends his ably defends his firm and his profession.
Infopinions points out the difference between Lifehacker’s reaction and Chris Anderson’s.

Jeremy Pepper prefers OG PR.

PR Interactive says They aren’t teaching this kind of stuff in school:

While I can’t speak from the professional side, I can agree with him from the academic side. As a recent grad, I can tell you that I have had minimal exposure to pitching the media. This is, obviously, very difficult to do in the classroom setting, and most of my internships would let me pitch only when everyone else was swamped with bigger clients. For many of my peers, ,

Brian Solis says:

>Nowadays, any mistake made in PR is really an occupational hazard where one wrong move can cause a domino effect that has the potential to eradicate months or even years of hard work.

What Brian says is true but it is also wrong and shame on bloggers who hold PR professionals to an unreasonable standard. Show me a blogger who hasn’t posted inaccurate information one time or another or flamed someone and later had to apologize for it and I will eat my hat. We all make mistakes.

Btw Brian nails it in defining SPAM. It is not any email you deem to be unwanted.

Broadstuff disagree’s with Brian’s definition…..He’s wrong.

more to come I am sure.

SxSW interactive officially opened registration yesterday morning and had some preliminary panels yesterday afternoon but today things really kicked off when the BlogHaus (sponsored by AMD, b5 media, and Podtech) opened. The blogeratti was out in force and social media gurus were elbow to elbow in the jam packed room. Robert Scoble, Chris Heuer, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Liz Straus, Jim Turner, Maggie Fox, Jeremy Wright, Hugh MacLoud, Wendy Piersal, Jason Falls, Darren Rowse, Kris Smith and far too many others to name.

What is a BlogHaus?

Just as blogging, podcasting, et-al is the future of media think of the Bloghaus and other iterations like it as the future of the old fashioned press room. Mogulus is live streaming interviews the lounge.

Stephanie Agresta AKA Internet Geek Girl and Valerie Cunningham from Podtech did a fantastic job organizing the lounge.

It is really great to see companies like AMD understanding the value of engaging the blogosphere and investing in the space so I thought it was appropriate to interview Scott Carroll the PR Manager from AMD who coordinated AMD’s involvement in the BlogHaus.

If you plan to attend the Blog World & New Media Expo, are you planning to live blog your experience?  I ask this because I learned something new in the convention and trade show business today.  While discussing a completely non-related convention with its planners and directors, I was trying to find out if I could live blog the event for a client.  “You want to do what?”, was the response as I made my way through the maze of red tape before I was finally told I would probably not be able to cover the event in this way.  It seems that they consider live blogging or posting the experience live through a blog, “siutcasing.” 

Suitcasing refers to businesses or sales people working the show floor selling their services or products without actually purchasing a show booth.  I tried to explain that I wasn’t there as a sales person or there to sell anything on behalf of my client, I was there to report on my client’s blog the experience of attending the show and who was there, what was the buzz, and what were the hot presentations and what was the breaking industry news.  I was a citizen journalist.  Somehow I don’t think they understood the idea behind a blog, or what posting was or how that played into their “No Suitcasing” policy.  I think it is safe to say that the Blog World & New Media Expo welcomes as many bloggers as possible to create a buzz about the show experience.  If you intend to live blog the event let us know and we can do a page of all of those that are posting their experience.  I would love to hear about those that will be podcasting from the show, livecasting the event and reporting on their experience!  I’ll let you know how it turns out with the other conference and whether I actually have to gain press credentials.  Bloggers get no respect!

That’s what Stowe Boyd says:

For those who have missed the idea, a social media press release is supposed to be a webbish/bloggish version of old timey press releases. These will incorporate elements of the now commonplance blog motif: links, tags, comments, and trackbacks, for example.

This all begs the question (which I raised early on in the evening): Why not just use blogs? Why do we need these so-called “social” press releases?

I never really got a deep or usable answer to that question. What I did hear, however, was a widespread misunderstanding of what social media is.

I can understand where Stowe is coming from but I try not to get too worked up over what companies, marketing flunkies and PR flacks do while trying to trick us bumpkins into buying their crappy stuff.

Heck I run a business myself and try to get people to buy my no so crappy stuff (at least I think so) every day. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

In the end if a marketing or PR professional writes good copy, or tells a good story particularly when it is selling a good product it tends to cut through all the clutter no matter how the message is delivered.

I love new media but I don’t have this naive view of what it is. Some of it is good, some of it great, and some of it is crap just like every other product in the world.

Others blogging: Robert Scoble agrees with Stowe

Stowe Boyd speaks out against social media press releases and other lame ideas. He’s right. I hate that idea too. Just give us a damn demo of your product and tell us about it

Chris Heuer has a rebuttal at his blog:

If you had done a bit more research you would understand that the term social media release is the presentation layer, and that the concept we are supporting technically is the hRelease. The reason behind supporting Microformats are many, but the simplest is that it is intended to primarily be distributed through RSS on BLOGS!

The interesting thing about proposing a Microformat for it is the structuring of the information in the press release to make it more findable, which both Brian’s previous comments hints at. Additionally, I believe it is a way to distinguish everyday blog posts, from official corporate announcements, such as those that accompany a product launch, and to bundle all the facts/information in a way that will let other people tell the story - whether journalists, bloggers, raving fan customers or haters.

For you to harp on us for the one ot two uses of the word audience is not fair nor accurate and quite honestly feels more like an attempt to nitpick for the purpose of creating controversy.

Chris also says he tried posting a comment at Stowe’s blog yesterday and it hasn’t shown up yet, so I guess I will repost here what I left in comments at Stowe’s blog as well. It wont be word for word as I didn’t save it anywhere nor remember exactly what I wrote but you will get the gist.

Big companies may be able to just post their news on their blogs because traditional journalists hang on their every word but if a little company posts it’s latest product release on their company blog it is going to have the same effect as a tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it.

Smart little companies will use press releases, blogs, wiki’s and every other way they can think of to get their message out to the world. If their message or their product is great the world will cheer and hopefully buy their stuff. If its crap the world will respond accordingly.

Stowe also takes issue with the broad use of the term social media. In my personal experience people who are actually creating it call it new media. People who are trying to sell me something call it social media. At CES someone insisted the real term is digital media (I rarely hear that one). John Battelle recently called in conversational media ( I like that term a lot). Call it whatever you like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, wikis, internet radio are all cool and as they get more eyeballs and ears they will continue to attract more and more companies to the medium who want to sell stuff.