The Gobbledygook Manifesto

Readers of this blog know that I am not only an author, blogger and consultant but I publish BoomerCafé, the popular online magazine for baby boomers with active lifestyles. As such, I have gotten on a bunch of PR lists, and receive hundreds of unsolicited press releases and PR pitches every week.

In these competitive times, people in the media are paid to write original stories, not to recycle the promotional stuff in press releases. Very few releases, however, are written as news stories. Nonetheless, the PR industry continues to lazily follow an old-fashioned style of attempting to get media coverage for their clients, not by helping the media to develop timely and relevant stories but by pushing out more meaningless press releases by email, seemingly oblivious to what the media needs.

I recently had a call from a young-sounding woman at a Chicago PR agency. She said her agency represented Australian tourism in the U.S., and she was updating a media list.

Her first question was, “What’s the name of your Web site?”

I thought, how unfortunate for Australian tourism. But I told her, and suggested that she visit the site where she would find details on submitting stories by clicking the top tab, Story Submissions. I told her that we welcome stories but no press releases, please.

She responded, “Oh, we only send out press releases.” I thought to myself that Australian tourism deserves better representation.

Why am I so down on press releases? First, because it’s not what the media wants; the media wants stories. Second, most press releases are jargon-laden, hype-driven nonsense.  I am reminded of a blog posting on this subject, written by David Meerman Scott, called The Gobbledygook Manifesto, an analysis of gobbledygook in over 388,000 press releases.

Category: Featured, Media Relations