Well if this isn’t the neatest idea I’ve seen in quite some time…

TechCrunch has waged war on PR firms and their increasingly disturbing trend of news embargoes. I applaud them for their position, but unless other blogs and publications band together for this, I see it as a lost cause and only hurting them in the long run.

I was actually just thinking of this same subject as it relates to the gaming industry. Embargoes are bad for journalism. Publications, whether print or blog, professional or enthusiast, lose integrity because of them. Instead of writers working to break a big story, they are held hostage by PR firms for that next potential exclusive, only carrying out the message when and how the firms see fit.

I got the link for this story from Dan Hsu’s Sore Thumbs blog, and it gave me the idea of how Hsu used to make pacts with fellow publications. The current keepers of the game press should follow suit for something like this. They should all band together to stop the PR firms from running the press, and the quality and credibility of the game journalists would increase as a result.

Source: Death To The Embargo