Bnet's Catching Flack Doesn't Catch Query Posting Problem

When I posted about HARO queries being posted on a blog, I guess I must have hit a nerve, as both Mediabistro's PR Newser and Bnet's Catching Flack picked up on it. (Must have been a slow news minute in the blogosphere.)

Unfortunately, I think that Jon Greet on Catching Flack didn't catch what was really going on. First, he seemed to take exception with Shankman's taking exception with the PR person taking the queries and putting them on a blog:

For starters, email is Internet content. It may not be de facto ok to republish it, but you can’t just tell people no. What’s to stop the offender from resubscribing via another email account and reposting the emails via an anonymous blog? Nothing, really. Or, what’s to stop a HARO subscriber from forwarding a HARO email to any number of their friends? Again, nothing.

A variation on the argument could be made that just because it's illegal to rob a store, what's to stop someone? Because it is illegal - and immoral and unethical. Similar to Profnet emailing queries, the HARO emails are copyrighted compilations, and the individual queries are copyrighted by the reporters.

Under both international and US copyright law, as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, people do not have the right to take copyrighted material and post it on the web, absent a fair use argument. Posting something in its entirety on a commercial site as a way to attract traffic could be a textbook example of something that was not fair use. And the person whose copyright has been infringed has a number of legal remedies, just as the shop owner who has been robbed has.

In addition, Greer called the letter a "hissy fit." However, he happened to have left out its middle - the part about openly posting the email addresses of reporters, which makes them subject to the harvesting of spambots. (I'd have added that open posting also presents competitive problems for the writers and publishers looking for sources, because it starts identifying which publications are looking at particular stories.) By leaving out that part, I think he badly and unfairly mischaracterized Shankman's reaction - and the reaction of the writers I know whose queries were posted.

This post isn’t about ethics. I could argue both sides of the ethics debate. What its about is that the Internet is a super-powerful communications tool and you can’t take for granted that pre-Internet rules of engagement automatically apply. You have to anticipate how the power of the Internet may impact what you are doing or want to do, and adapt. You just can’t make assumptions.

When you ridicule someone for objecting to a practice, you are talking about ethics in more ways than one. The issue in question was one of ethics, and by slanting the appearance of the letter, there's an entire other aspect of ethics that comes into play.

Finally, Greer argues the following:

So if Shankman wants to make HARO a strong and viable service that will survive, he’ll have to think through some of these implications and adapt or change the service. Otherwise, HARO is going to flame out, as journalists abandon it because they no longer find it to be an efficient and credible source of information.

Quite the opposite. To embrace having everything posted openly would be the kiss of death. Many writers got leery of Profnet when someone started posting those queries, and I know a number that had a similar reaction when the HARO ones appeared. You might argue that the reporters are being unreasonable, but then why not extend that to everything private, and have all of our information, no matter what, posted? Because that would be nuts, and just because something is possible doesn't mean that you should tolerate it. And that's exactly the point here.

Help a Reporter Query Service Getting Posted Online

You may remember the mini-furor of the other week when someone subscribing to PR Newswire was reposting all the queries onto the Internet. For a number of reporters who had become disenchanted with ProfNet, its new interface, and the quality of leads they thought had declined, this seemed the last straw, or close to it, for ProfNet. Then PR person Peter Shankman started his Help A Reporter service, which has been gaining quick traction. Ah, but now those leads are getting posted.

Independent PR person Nicole Lascelle has been posting the complete feeds to her site - certainly without permission, as I found one of my own queries on the list and no one had asked me whether I minded having such materials put out in the open. She's including email addresses, so if you find yourself on even more spam lists, this might be why.

When will PR people realize that journalists have lots of reasons not to make their queries generally available to the public - like not wanting to tip off what they're working on and for whom. I'll be dropping a line to Mr. Shankman to let him know what is happening. So much for common sense confidentiality.

Update

I received a reply from Peter Shankman literally within four minutes of my emailing him. He copied me on an email he sent to Ms. Lascelle and on the phone gave me permission to post it:

Subject: NO. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO POST MY EMAILS ON YOUR SITE

Nicole:

You’re posting my HARO emails on your site without my permission.

REMOVE THEM NOW.

This is not subject to negotiation. You’re putting reporter emails up for Spam-bots to harvest. Have you lost your MIND? And you wonder why reporters hate publicists?

I notice that you put your own emails in (parens) so they’re not harvested, why would you not have the basic decency to do the same?

Take EVERY SINGLE ONE DOWN NOW, and NEVER post another one of my emails.

Peter Shankman

He also mentioned that he knows of PR people who, to curry favor from reporters, will pass on entire ProfNet lead transmissions, and noted that if someone gets the text version of the ProfNet emails, they can pass it on undetected by PRNewswire, which owns the ProfNet service.
In short, folks, if you don't want anyone else ever to be able to see a query, don't use one of these lead systems, because there is no way the owners can prevent the information from being passed around.

Prospect Resuscitation

You send a query or a letter of introduction to a prospect. You researched the market, tailored your approach and bio, and made sure you were sending it to the right person. Hitting the send button, you wait. And wait. And wait. Nothing happens for days, and then weeks, and then a few months.

You could write it off, but you don't have to. Don't assume that the potential client looked at what you send and thought, "Oh, give me a break! Who would ever want to hire that person?" It's far more likely that an email went into spam, that you got lost in a flood of other entries, or that the recipient took note and then forgot.

What you should do is dig out some of these old letters and queries as an experiment. Instead of writing again, telephone. Say that you had sent something and realized that you had never followed up, so you're getting in touch. At worst, the person ends up saying, "Send something again," without remembering you. At best, the contact may be far more satisfying.

I did this yesterday with an introductory email I had sent in either June or July. The editor remembered my name (maybe he was getting me confused with someone else, but that was fine because I was top of mind) and explained what they were doing. He requested me to resend the info, and I used what I learned in the conversation to further tailor it. He also explained that they give new writers a test assignment that should be easy to do - and I showed my understanding of the market by noting that it would probably be something easy for them to recover from should the writer mess up. He agreed - and I branded myself at least partly as a professional who understands the custom publishing (in this case) business.

I choose appropriate content - both multiple assignments from one custom publisher and an example from another that correctly suggested that I had done ongoing work, all of which will make me more palatable. At the end I said I'd be interested in a test assignment, because I had enough information to know this was the next step, and so I wanted a targeted call to action.

I'll be doing this with other leads that have fallen to the wayside. In fact, I emailed another editor who said that he still doesn't have budget to hire, but to check with him near the end of the year. Not all of this work will turn into assignments, but some portion will, and that's what counts.