Online PR Mistakes: Spamming Wired

Posted by Mihaela Lica as Featured, Public Relations

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Chris Anderson. Spamming the editor-in-chief of a popular online magazine is wrong. Being the editor-in-chief of that popular magazine and choosing to destroy the reputation of the people who made the mistake of trying to contact you on your public email address with news of interest for the magazine you are running is even worse.

The PR world never ceases to amaze me. At The Long Tail the comments got wild when Chris Anderson decided to take a shot at the PR people who consistently “spammed” him over a period of time. His post Sorry PR People: You Are Blocked relates the spam saga he had to live recently and amazingly the apparent solution to his problem: publish the email addresses of the PR people who “spammend” him. This action alone, instead of solving his problem, will just feed the lists of the spammers with even more email addresses.

I do respect Chris Anderson and I totally understand his frustration.

But what I don’t understand is: how can someone who hates spam so much become the very cause for more? I am puzzled.

Some of the commentators said that the PR people listed on this page have got what they deserved. But as a PR person who has always been hostile to spam of any kind, I have to say that Mr. Anderson himself made a wrong, unethical move.

Creating a list of emails belonging to PR people who send news to the editor-in-chief of the Wired Magazine is not really good PR for Wired itself. Not that the PR people signed any non-disclosure agreement with Mr. Anderson or Wired, but because he is using a public email address.

As I already wrote in one of my older articles, if we give a too general definition to the word spam, we end up taking for spam perfectly legitimate emails. Not “any” unsolicited email is Spam. Spam means unsolicited bulk email.

If a message is unsolicited that doesn’t make it Spam. The same goes for bulk. A message is spam only if it is both unsolicited and bulk. When you receive an unsolicited job enquiry, you do receive an uncalled-for email. But is that spam? No.

As the editor-in-chief of one of the most popular eMagazines on the Web, when you receive unsolicited news at the public email address you freely published on your site, you are not being spammed. Public email means “open for contact” – as a journalist Mr. Anderson should know that.

What Mr. Anderson fails to tell us is how many Viagra emails he’s getting every day. And certainly we see none of those blocked emails on his list.

Destroying PR peoples’ reputation is not the best approach in the fight against spam. A polite message to each of these professionals, a warning of a kind, would have solved the problem more elegantly. That’s only if Mr. Anderson didn’t need some buzz of a kind and his blog entry is only meant to trigger controversy.

Note: No, I, Mihaela “Mig” Lica have never contacted Wired in any way. I have stayed away from sending unsolicited emails to online publications since 2002 when I first approached the online world as a field for my PR expertise.

The reason I am trying to defend the “guilty” PRs is that… well, they are not that guilty after all. Who else but the editor in chief decides what goes into a publication? Now, my advice for the banned PRs: there are so many other important online magazines on the Web. And if there are not, you are powerful people: make one!

10 Responses

Alina Popescu

January 12th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
1

Seriously? They are spammers? Well, the next thing I expect right now is someone to say that PR people are spamming email addresses listed for press releases to be sent. Editorial staff’s emails are public on most magazine sites. Yes, some spam will flood such email accounts. But emails from PR people seen as spam? From the same PR people who are supposed to try to build a relationship with the editorial sites and are most likely to use those email addresses?

I won’t even start to comment on the fact that those email addresses were published! I get a few hundreds spam messages on a daily basis. I’d triple that in such a case…
Alina Popescu

January 12th, 2008 at 8:06 pm
2

I wanted to say - build a relationship with the editorial staff and are most likely to use those email addresses?
Mihaela Lica

January 12th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
3

Well, basically he said that the PR people are spamming the editor-in-chief with press releases. LMAO!
Alina Popescu

January 12th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
4

Hey Mig,

I read his post and all the comments…It still is blurry to me…I still think publishing the emails was wrong. Not necessarily because it will harm those people, simply because it is unethical. The eye for an eye thing does not have such a good return on investment.

Yes, you should try finding the person covering a beat. Still, what if that person has never written anything on a product or service similar to yours. Who would you write to?

Plus, I remember once finding discrepancies in what was written to be a journalist’s beat and what his/her beat actually was. I did email to the right one when his colleague was nice enough to tell me it was a mistake…

Another issue: freelancers. I see it in every magazine. You contact them, because they are covering your beat and get redirected to the editor in chief or someone else because the decision is not theirs.

There are lots of shades of gray out there. Trying to see it all in black and white simply does not work.
Mihaela Lica

January 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
5

You said it girl! The man is simply “too important.” Let’s just ignore him from now on. He forgot where he comes from really. That’s the worse kind.
Johan

January 13th, 2008 at 1:49 am
6

I agree, a polite/tactful message to the PR people should be the first thing that should be done. If they continue, then lay the hammer down.
Mihaela Lica

January 13th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
7

Welcome to eWritings, Johan. You are right. We all make mistakes after all. Politeness can be the solution for many problems.
Martin Welch

January 14th, 2008 at 2:56 am
8

I understand why he gets mad for those kinds of emails, but unfortunately, that was a wrong move for Mr. Anderson to publish those “spam emails” that he receive. He can do it in nice way.
Mihaela Lica

January 14th, 2008 at 3:06 am
9

Yes Martin. You are right. I get similar messages every day - sure, my list doesn’t sum 300, but nevertheless it is a big list. I will not go around publishing people’s emails on the web. Some of them might be private. Honestly, I hope that Mr. Anderson realizes his mistake and apologizes to these people.
Soli

February 28th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
10

I’m sorry to say this, spam means unsolicited email (not bulk email), at least that is what we are being fed with, it is hard nowadays to even know which is which. An example is the case of the editor, to him all unsolicited email is spam.