Scoble refuses the Pitch
Earlier this week, Robert Scoble wrote about being overwhelmed with pitches:
Don’€™t send me more email pitches please. Don’€™t beg for me to try out your software. Don’€™t wait for me to blog about your company or your team or your product or you. That’€™s what comments here are for. You have direct access to anyone who is reading this post. Pitch in the comments! If your stuff is good, someone will try it out and say so. Maybe even me.
Shel Israel is to be thanked for this post since he wrote about how to pitch him. You know this world is getting nuts when even the ex-PR guys are getting pitched!
Scoble goes on to talk about how he’s backed away from memetrackers and other blogs in the so-called “A-List” and digging into some other bloggers that many haven’t heard of. In the end, I end up liking Scoble’s post.
But whole thing about not sending email pitches irritates me.
We may be in different blogging circles – Scoble writes about technology, blogging, and Microsoft, and I’m here to report on blogging news and opinion. I live for tips, Scoble doesn’t.
If I hadn’t gotten an email from Marco yesterday talking about his newly designed iPod Nano sleeve for “Do Not Disturb”, I probably wouldn’t have blogged it. I had seen a post on Boing Boing about it and skimmed right over it – but his email made me sit up and take notice.
Some of what I consider to me our best posts from our various blogs start out as email pitches or other tips from readers and others out there in the market’s we’re targetting. This is part of listening to your audience – besides, there’s always the ‘delete’ key for the email that you don’t want to read.
Something to think about.. and our address for pitching a story or your product is tips [at] blogmedia [dot] biz.
Scoble’s complaint reminds me of how actors complain about celebrity and media attention. Successful actors wouldn’t be where they are if it weren’t for the media. And it goes both ways. Print and broadcast journalism need unsolicited press releases and pitches in order to generate content.
My site barely shows up on the blogosphere radar, but every now and then I would get an email from someone asking me for a review or interview. But, I have no obligation to accept these pitches; nor does my writing need to be favorable. This is what journalists do. We can’t live in a bubble, shunning the suggestions of our audience. Oh, but I forgot, bloggers aren’t journalists.
*snicker* Bloggers operate on a higher level than journalism. *snicker*