Publicists Behaving Badly - FooBooz Highlights A Situation That's Typical In The PR Industry

[DonRocks]

"Here's How To Get Your Restaurant Publicity On AroundMainLine.com, Or: How Bad People Ruin The PR Industry" by Victor Fiorillo on phillymag.com's foobooz blog.

My problem is that Fiorillo reports this as some type of statistical outlier; it isn't. How is this any different than saying, "if you give me $2,000 a month, I'll make sure to ...?"

Some PR reps already hate me - one day, I may give them good reason to.

[lperry]

Don, I think this person has a blog and is not a PR professional.

[DonRocks]

Don, I think this person has a blog and is not a PR professional.

Well, but she made herself into one. And there blogs - people who bill themselves as running pure, straight blogs - in the DC area who do the exact same thing, also accepting cash instead of family dinner.

If you think about it, this isn't very different than PR, so this person has "backed into" the PR industry by being a blogger. It happens *all the time*.

And, at the risk of damning myself and every other publication ever published, every TV station, every radio broadcast, etc., this is really just another variation of accepting advertising. There's something slimy to the way she does it, but the concept, in general, is still a distant cousin. That's why it's important for your content providers to stay separate from your advertising department.