PC Mag: PR Flacks Shouldn’t Express Personal Opinions, Just Fawning Compliments

Life in the public relations blogosphere can be pretty dull some days, but you can always count on a well placed foot in a mouth to provide some entertainment.

In this case, a casual remark on Steve Rubel’s Twitter stream (saying he doesn’t read his promo copy of PC Magazine, but tosses it in the garbage) caused Ziff Davis exec Jim Louderback to speculate on the possibility of Ziff Davis boycotting pitches from Rubel’s PR firm.

It’s not that he was actually threatening a boycott. Just thinking out loud:

"I started thinking about what this means for our relationship with Edelman. One of the company’s top execs had stated, in a public forum, that my magazine (and by extension, my audience) was useless to him. He wasn’t even interested in seeing whether we’d covered one of his clients. Did the rest of Edelman think like Steve? Were we no better than fishwrap to the entire company?

"Should I instruct the staff to avoid covering Edelman’s clients? Ignore their requests for meetings, reviews and news stories? Blacklist the "Edelman.com" email domain in our exchange servers, effectively turning their requests into spam? If we’re not relevant to Edelman’s employees, then how could we be relevant to their clients?"

This is great. He gets to threaten retribution, but if challenged on it, can always say he was just expressing some fleeting thoughts that passed through his head.

Journalists say they wish PR types would be more open and honest, but not when there’s even a hint of criticism of their media outlets, says Scott Baradell.

For his part, Rubel apologized, explaiming that he was referring to the paper copy of PC Magazine, not the online content from Ziff Davis. Louderback proved once again that saying what you think about the media is great, as long as it’s innocuous and slightly sycophantic.

Oh, and for the record, I just love PC Magazine. What a thrill it was for me to discover today that it’s still being published! I used to read every issue when Bill Machrone was editor-in-chief. I’m sure the current version is just as good!

Tags: pcmagazine, ziff davis, jim louderback, steve rubel, edelman, threats, twitter, editors, journalists, etiquette