Some firms will stop talking to us (yeah! less email), but we’ll find other ways to get the news. Others, who haven’t read this post because they don’t read TechCrunch, will be unpleasantly surprised. Maybe if we cause enough pain then PR firms will start to take action against those publications who break the rules.

There will be exceptions. We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively, so we know there won’t be any mistakes. There are also a handful – maybe three – people who we trust enough to continue to work with them on general embargoes (if you are a PR person and wondering if you’re on that list, you’re not). But for the vast majority of news we get in our inboxes, we’re just going to fire it off to our readers ad hoc whenever we please.

Many have suggested that Arrington is ticked off because his site, one of the most popular tech blogs in the blogosphere, isn’t the only big dog in his space anymore and that he’s just looking for ways to trump the competition.  I think it’s just part of a blogger backlash I’ve noticed recently against PR people.  The problem I see is that PR people don’t know how to pitch bloggers.

Fact is that PR people should follow many of the same rules about pitching blogs as they SHOULD be following when they pitch traditional media.  First, read the publication and read articles by the person you’re pitching.  Second, don’t pitch anything irrelevant.  Third, personalize your pitches for the publication and person you’re pitching.  That seems simple, but what’s happening more and more (particularly since companies like Cision have included bloggers in their media directories) is that PR people are just blasting releases blindly to bloggers like they’ve been doing with the media for years.  It’s called the shotgun approach and it’s a very poor PR habit.