Debra Nita is a senior crypto public relations strategist at YAP Global.
The media machine remains obscure to most people who consume its products.
Investigative reporting aside, the news embargo is a lesser-known process that generates many stories we read daily.
Robert Holloway’s recent piece, “An embargo is an agreement, not a crypto PR hype tactic,” reignited a heated debate around challenges with embargoes in crypto.
Embargoes are press releases written about an organisation’s developments that are shared with the media before a fixed publication date.
These documents aim to help crypto media professionals accurately report on the industry’s fast-paced and complex technological evolution.
Necessity
The piece sparked the exchange of horror stories about embargoed announcements gone wrong amongst journalists and public relations professionals in the Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists & Researchers (AJCR), the Crypto Communications Collective (CCC), and other groups.
The necessity of embargoes was called into question.
However, removing embargoes would do more harm than good in practice. Embargoes continue to help journalists report accurately about a complex world.
This is especially true given the zeitgeist of shrinking newsrooms that add more pressure on existing journalists.
Until the response to “I work in the blockchain industry” is no longer met with “blockchain is interesting, but I have no idea what it means” by outsiders, embargoes have a well-deserved space in effective crypto journalism.
Embargoes help journalists write newsworthy stories
Imagine a world without embargoes: It’s dark.
A journalist receives a press release, invests time in discussions with founders, and crafts a compelling story with editorial input.
They’re ready to hit ‘publish’, but realise the story was posted by a competitive outlet hours ago, and circulated on X.
The story is deemed old news, and the potential impact of their efforts is diminished.
This only needs to happen a few times before a journalist’s job turns into rewriting press releases. Articles could start to lack the research or fact-checking required due to the pressure of timeliness.
Taking away an intrinsically useful process like embargoes would lead to the deterioration of crypto journalism’s quality.
And thus, the quality of wider conversations.
It is notable that only one crypto publication makes Wikipedia’s list of reliable news sources. Even then, the outlet qualifies merely as “generally unreliable.”
It’s a telltale sign of how crypto journalism is perceived.
A common objection is that many news embargoes do not contain newsworthy stories. However, is the embargo process the problem, or poorly prepared press releases?
Journalists continue to retain the authority to determine what is newsworthy and are never obliged to comply with the demands of PRs.
If an embargoed press release does not check the boxes of newsworthiness, the journalist can and should reject the story.
What is newsworthy is also context-specific.
What may seem like an incremental technological development to one journalist who writes for end users may interest another journalist whose readers are tech founders or traders who place a premium on nuance.
That said, a crucial element of success here is skilled PR professionals who can craft compelling press releases and consistently dedicate effort to understand who they pitch.
Better policing
Embargoes need to be better policed.
An embargo is an agreement, as Robert Holloway pointed out.
All agreements are relationship-based. When two parties engage in a deal, both ascertain who they’re dealing with, asking themselves whether they can trust the other to deliver on commitments.
Bad embargo practices ruin the news reporting “game” for everyone.
On one side, journalists who want to write compelling, accurate and timely stories; and PRs who want high-quality articles published about their clients who develop important technologies.
The solution shouldn’t be to change the rules, but instead change the players who get to play the game.
Experienced PRs are needed to represent projects and collaborate with journalists, acting as the bridge between complex technology and quality journalism.
Some PRs intentionally abuse embargoes — communicating different timelines to different publications, resulting in some publications being scooped by a competitor.
At other times, embargoes are broken by journalists who are at best careless, and at worst irresponsible.
In some ways, these problems are understandable.
Crypto is a new industry. Challenges with embargoes are part of the growing pain. We should build the best practices around embargoes in this emerging space, rather than try to get rid of them.
Better policing would involve PRs advising clients more regularly to use alternative formats like “media alerts” without fixed dates rather than embargoes for developments that may not contain enough newsworthy elements. This requires skillful handling of clients but is crucial to continuing positive long-term relationships with the media.
Journalists already instinctively do their own policing, often ignoring their inbox, and instead dealing with preferred collaborators over direct messages.
What could help is setting clearer expectations with PRs.
Since embargoes enable longer timelines, they could request fresh perspectives or angles tailored to their writing style and audience, instead of blanket pitches they often receive.
To create more transparency, they could ask for more embargo information – such as who else the pitch has been offered to.
Not just a PR tactic
One final objection worth discussing: embargoes put journalists on a leash.
In other words, the claim is that journalists are participating in a PR’s marketing tactics under their conditions.
Embargoes do not undermine journalistic integrity as newsworthy stories under embargo can still be written accurately, objectively, and independently.
Using a promotional strategy is also not intrinsically wrong.
Both media and PRs are incentivised to see a story reach the greatest number of readers. It’s a marketing tactic, not dissimilar to how outlets build the most eye-grabbing headlines and stories to win over readers.
The media have goals for brand building, traffic volume, and revenue generation, so why can’t PR?
A PR’s client receives greater recognition as a result of wide coverage. Equally, a story “marketed” by multiple publications makes it more valuable than if it was only covered by one outlet. It creates network effects, reaches greater audiences, and increases advertising opportunities.
The bigger picture?
More business growth could create more opportunities for better crypto journalism.
Whether we like it or not, embargoes are a must-have for effectively covering the complex and often chaotic crypto industry.
News embargoes aid reporters in remaining organised, and accurately assessing the nuances of a story. They set the table for better reporting, even when both sides of the aisle game them.
Instead of debating the need for embargoes, we should focus on building out more effective embargo practices and holding people accountable to them to continue elevating journalism in crypto.