Exactly. I also remember reading allegations (on news.yc, I think?) that TC has refused to run stories because they weren't contacted before their competitors.

The motive seems to be to give TC every possible advantage. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I don't know if there's anything worth applauding.

Edit: just had a thought. If TC is going to (openly) start lying about respecting embargoes, what's to stop sources from lying about giving TC exclusivity?

If another site runs the story first then TC can choose not to run it themselves. And they can immediately reject any stories from a company that lied to them in the past.

Of course, companies and PR firms can choose to not bother with TC, but they're the 800 pound gorilla of the tech media. But would four 200 pound gorillas be better than one 800 pound gorilla?

Really a Gorilla game. Seems like PR firms & outlets hate each other & need each other. What's to stop outlets screwing PR companies? They stop working with them. What's to stop PR companies screwing outlets? Not working with them.

It makes sense to threaten retaliation but actual retaliation does not. At least not without Robert Aumann weighing in.

I actually find it be laziness. There different calibers of PR firms that I spoke with that say they ignore TC altogether because of the horrible type of traffic they have -- as in, mostly international, mostly incompatible with their client's need, mostly RSS readers, and mostly non-convertible. They rather go on the hunt of finding the right writers in the right fields/markets to get them to prep for a story.

If your PR firm's first, second, or even third, suggestion for you is to pitch to the biggest tech blog: fire them.

Oops sorry, I think alaskamiller's comment was in response to mine, which I deleted because it was a duplicate of ph0rque's, then re-added because ph0rque edited his to reference mine.

What a mess. My bad.

We still love you.

> If TC is going to (openly) start lying about respecting embargoes, what's to stop sources from lying about giving TC exclusivity?

A startup could do it once before going on Arrington's black list, I suppose... although you'd have to get TC's competitors to agree to embargo the "exclusive" post until TC does theirs.

edit: what tlrobinson said

that's a pretty interesting insight that i think casts this activity in a different light than it was presented. good find.