I would say that is very unethical. A lot of people rely on media to stay informed about the latest and they assume what they are reading is true. How can you cheat people in order to get publicity. And remember, a lot of times this strategy can backfire.

Its not cheating.

Relentless resourcefulness is the phrase.

Bull! I'll phrase this in pragmatic terms, since you seem uninterested in ethics.

If you're pushing the boundaries of ethics, you have to realize that what is considered acceptable in one (sub) culture may be grossly unacceptable in another.

What is considered "business as usual" in one culture or industry will be seen as corruption in another culture or industry.

Now, there are a lot of inconsistencies and hypocrisies in our cultures. So, if you look around, you're bound to find strange inconsistencies. That's normal.

In short, for any culture, there are some forms of cheating that will be mostly tolerated or even glamorized, and others that will be seen as despicable.

What you've described is despicable, from a mainstream US / Canadian / Anglo perspective. It does not appear resourceful, at all.

Every company I've worked for has lied either outright or by stretching the truth further than I'm comfortable with. It isn't right but that is the real ethics he will be dealing with in the US/Canadian/Anglo arena.

My point is that what is an acceptable "stretching of the truth" is culturally relative. Also, I'm not speaking to what companies try to get away with, but rather the public reaction if they get caught.

I.e. is it "cool, those guys are smart and they're bucking the system" or is it "these guys are slimy and I never want to do business with them."

Again, I'm not condoning unethical behavior, nor am I so naive to believe that it isn't widespread. I'm just stating that what is a "nudge-nudge-wink-wink-everyone-does-it" infraction versus what is a "omg, you lying bastards" is culturally relative.

The OP's example falls into the "lying bastards" category for me, and for most of the companies I've worked for.

Making shit up isn't resourcefulness, it's lying and in this case cheating.

I can probably rob an old lady of her purse and get away without getting caught. This isn't exactly being 'relentlessly resourceful.'

Not all methods are equally ethical.

For the 31 emails I sent out to the bloggers, 4 replies and only 2 really spent time looking into it. Only 1 blogged about it.

So how did you get hold of them in the first place? Why won't they simply ignore you?

Your mail should offer some insight to them. They must feel that your comments/viewpoint adds to the story.

I've had lot of success after sending intelligent comments to articles in mainstream media. Journalists respond back, more often than not.

Were they form emails or did you specifically target the journalists/bloggers you were talking too?

Form letters get ignored - personal emails less so.

Choose your words carefully when approaching these guys. It might take a extra time, but the end result is worth it.

Just work harder.

How could you get 'personal emails' of the mainstream journalists? I seem to be outside of the 'media circle' at this moment.

Also, what would you suggest to do with the bloggers I've already contacted? Maybe I could use the "new version launched" as an opportunity to contact them again?

With bloggers, I always find it's better to try and push your content to the smaller bloggers first - everyone's always trying to get promoted on the techcrunches or the mashables.

As for emails - really, just look for journalists who've written on your subject in the past. They usually have contact details up there.

Mainly "form emails".

> "Choose your words carefully when approaching these guys." That's the hard part. Any examples? Or reference to articles that I could read and improve?

Honestly? Whenever I've shot off emails to people as introductory emails it has always been fairly informal but always targeted.

The best advice I can give is make sure you know who you're writing too, what their blog is about. Perhaps include a link to a relevant article in their blog (always use it in plain text form, bloggers love having their ego's stroked)

If you need an example, I guess a very rough one is something like.

----------------

Hi there .....

My name is ..... and I'm from ......

I've been reading your blog for ..... months and an article of yours that caught my attention was the one about .....

(link to article in plain text form)

My company does ..... and this is along the same lines as ......

I thought this might be of interest to your readership.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this email. If you would like to get back to me my contact details are in the footer.

Thanks!

Name

To add to me previous comment - You should send targeted mails to journalists with intelligent comments about the stories.

It should be so insightful that they should feel that it would have been a better article had they spoken to you before writing it.

> "targeted mails to journalists with intelligent comments about the stories." So you mean "before selling them your service, you should try to setup relationships with them by leaving intelligent comments on their posts"?

Why is that downvoted?