The coming (Tech)Crunch of Tech Blogs

There is a fascinating story on TechCrunch today about how they are changing their approach to news embargoes (where you are pre-briefed about a story that is due for release at Time X.). The issue ostensibly is about the heinous tactics of the PR Flacks and Other Blogs:

As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.

One annoying thing for us is when an embargo is broken. That means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they’ve promised not to. The benefits are clear - sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first.

And so, to stop this Bad Practice, TechCrunch will righteously refuse to take embargoed news from hereafter - except if it is offered exclusively:

We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won’t be any mistakes. There are also a handful - maybe three - people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes (if you are a PR person and wondering if you’re on that list, you’re not).

In other words, this has got absolutely nothing to do with embargoes per se - it is to do with jockeying for pole position in the inevitable coming consolidation of the Tech Blog-for-Money game, and its quite a clever play by TC.

What they are bidding (in game theory terms) is that they will play by the rules - and use their extensive reach - if they get near exclusivity. What they are also bidding is that if anyone wants non exclusivity and an embargo they miss out on thet TechCrunch reach (and - mention it who dare - the story may not be so favourable)

Whats a poor PR hack to do - TC is a One Transaction bullseye, but if you don't hit them you have to flap around getting a bunch of lesser blog mortals together for the same bang (ie more bucks) and know you may get trashed by TC.

Play by TC rules, and TC gets all the GoogleJuice, the other blogs wither on the GrapeVine.

So, what are Mashable, Ars Tech etc going to counterbid? We wait with eager anticipation

Update...and here it comes - ReadWriteWeb will respect embargoes. So, good news for the PR flacks - except of course that RWW is no kingmaker. If I were "the bunch", I would put some form of common policy so that the PR people could place once with similar reach to TC.

Update 2 - Kara Swisher's BoomTown also puts in a counterbid:

....it is increasingly less important as the economy withers and a lot of the less sustainable start-ups fade away. There are big important stories happening in tech right now about major public companies, the state of innovation and the future of the industry, which require more serious journalism.

She also goes on to say that big echo chamber blogs will be outmanoeuvered by smaller blogs who know what they are talking about....hop for us yet!

(Hat tip to Drew B for link)