Ubiquitous Marketing

While I’ve technically been away from these parts, the more accurate explanation is that I’m doing most of my work here and here.

But, a quick link and comment: People are apparently complaining that TechCrunch will only cover stories if it is given the exclusive. Michael Arrington denies such a policy and discusses here.

Exclusives: We never require them and are often offered them. I know how the game works - the PR firm tells everyone an embargo, then tells us we can write early. Then they tell everyone else we broke the embargo. But we’re being accused of demanding an exclusive or we won’t write about the company. That’s ridiculous and it would only hurt ourselves. Now sometimes companies come to us for the first time after they’ve gotten a lot of press from others. We may choose not to write in that situation because the company is already known. They and their VCs often get pissed off. But they can’t tell the real story (that they forgot to ping us on a story) and so they say we demand exclusives instead. They are lying.

I don’t think a blog, even one as successful and established as TechCrunch, can ever have an exclusive-only policy. It runs counter to what blogs are: the place to find the most relevant information, no matter the source or entity that “broke” the story.
Magazines and newspapers are quickly adhering to the same principle (read: NYT’s The Lede, AdAge’s Out of Site, PRWeek’s The Cycle).