Marketing Begins At Home

Every year the New York City Press Corps lampoon the shenanigans of New York’s political elite at the Inner Circle Dinner. You may remember the pictures of Rudy G in a dress. What I remember most are the lyrics of the closing number. The assembled journalists address the audience of New York’s greatest movers and shakers with a rousing chorus along the lines of “You need us, we need you.”

Yep. Journalists telling politicians (and their assembled flacks) that they need each other. Because without the politicians, the journalists would be out of their jobs.

So the latest dust up between A-list bloggers and PR flacks has taken the form of Gina Trapani, editor of Lifehacker, against a rouge’s gallery of agencies she’s decided to blacklist for the sin of, among others, emailing her directly instead of using the editorial email address.

So for the crimes of a few ACs, she’s blacklisting whole agencies.

Gina, do you honestly believe that nothing good or on topic will ever come from Edelman? Or any of the other agencies you have blacklisted? And is the onslaught of email really so bad that hitting ‘delete’ is too difficult?

What Gina, and most other full-time bloggers, have to learn – assuming they want to be treated like journalists – is that they are always going to need sources for good stories. Those sources don’t grow on trees – some of them might even come from PR agencies.

In the meantime, good luck writing all of those blog posts every day.

Bonus link: More smarts on the subject from Geoff Livingstone and Jason Falls.