One of the weirder parts of car journalism, at least from the perspective of a reader, is the embargo. You may wonder why your favorite car publications push out reviews at 3 a.m. when most people in that publication’s market are sleeping. Often, automakers have journalists agree not to publish anything until a certain time, and that time might be seemingly random.
I wrote an explanation for why, from the publication side, we might publish car news or a car review at a strange time of night or morning. Sid Bridge, one of our readers on the Public Relations side of things, gives fascinating input:
PR Guy here. About to weigh in to explain the PR side of an embargo. One caveat: Mercedes is 100% right here. The consistent use of weird times of day is, well, weird. Here’s why I make use of them:
If I have a piece of news that I feel is top tier, or even medium top tier, an embargo gives us the opportunity to shop it around to the publication with the best possible reach without breaking the news too early. It’s super helpful to know that the Wall Street Journal is a “no” a week before you’re able to release your news.
Side note: For me, this is most useful if I’m shopping an exclusive. In other words, a publication agrees to publish the news from my release under embargo, and I agree they get to publish it first. Everyone else gets it later and can decide whether they want to publish it or not.
It’s possible that the weird times are because the news was shopped exclusively to some major publication (more major than The Autopian? Blasphemy. I guess somebody things CNN will cover their new RV reveal?). Technically embargoes don’t work that way – once one publication puts the news out, it’s fair game, but it’s possible some of these companies are trying to give a big publication a head start.
I’m already seeing plenty of comments throwing shade at embargoes, but they are very helpful when it comes to avoiding an absolute clusterf*** of rushing and insanity when it’s a juicy piece of news and you just put it out there for public consumption on a Tuesday morning.
With the embargo, interviews can be scheduled in advance, pressing questions can be handled, lawyers can get involved and tell us what follow-up questions we can answer… and all of this mess can be done when it’s not the last minute.
When I’m sending a press release out, there’s usually a ton of legal constraints we have to clear before we can make the news public, so it’s also possible the embargo is designed to avoid any news getting out before the ink is on the paper and nobody will get sued. I’ve made a career as a communicator out of learning to work with lawyers and doing my best to accommodate legal concerns while still making sure the news publication gets a story that’s worth publishing.
There’s my two cents. I’ll go back to making joke comments on other articles now.
This might be Sid Bridge’s first COTD nomination for a comment that wasn’t a joke!
TheDrunkenWrench:
Does Argo ever do embargos?
Does Winnebago called theirs the “Winnebargo”?
What about shippers?
Do they have to embargo their cargo?So many questions! So few answers to be released at an agreed upon date and time!
Mechjaz:
Thanks for this low-key Exhaust Leak. It’s a good primer/reminder that something that seems as seemingly straightforward as words on a website has a whole lot of machinations behind it, and that’s before you even get to actually picking the words and putting them in a hopefully nice order, or if you’re from the Torchinsky School of Journaltastic Writification for the Especially Erudite and Hirsute, at least a memorably unsettling combination of words.
Finally, Matt wrote about how Jeep will reportedly help Land Rover build a pickup truck in America. Rhymes With Bronco:
“If only there was a truck with Stellantis quality and Land Rover reliability,” said no one ever.
What rhymes with Bronco? Bronco II? Also, earlier today, you readers said that you would like it if blockquotes weren’t in italics. I have discovered that it’s a forced feature that comes with the blockquote function, but I will discuss it with the team tomorrow.
Anyway, have a great evening, everyone!
Speaking of block quotes. They are indented WAY too much on mobile.
Off the Florida coast
There’s a place called Puerto Rico
That’s where you wanna go
To release an embargo
Bodies in the sand
Press release burning up your hand
We’ll be waiting at 3 am
Back on the US mainland
Release the embargo
FYI – your link indicates that it should be linking to the article about embargoes, but instead links to your article from the Tacoma press trip.
Puerto Rico?
reads article
Puerto Rico?
I don’t know if this was addressed in the article and the illuminating COTD, but it might fall under the “pressing questions” they mentioned:
A news outlet has embargoed material poised for release, but that doesn’t mean they can’t look at it, right? Which means they could come up with follow-up or clarifying questions, which in the break between receiving the material and when the embargo lifts, the source can flesh out such details, or else (hopefully) provide good reason why they haven’t been revealed.
Yep. That’s exactly how it works. Apologies – I did try to make that clear in the comment. Most of us PR folks understand that what we THINK the story is about isn’t necessarily what the reporter will fixate upon, so follow-up questions and clarifications are common. Also, sometimes there’s a bit of relevant information that the lawyers just won’t allow to be mentioned and usually that comes up as a question where we have to get all sheepish and admit “I really want to tell you that, but the legal department won’t let us.”
Fun side note – when I went to Union Station to cover Hagerty & Ford announcing the World’s Fair Mustang’s induction into the National Vehicle Register, I finally got to be on the other side of this equation, and you bet your ass I fixated on information I thought Autopian readers would love rather than focus directly on everything in their press release. Don’t get me wrong – it was a good press release, but I figured the readership here would be more interested in the technical details behind how the Mustang became part of the ride and what modifications were still left on the car, as well as the car’s weird equipment configuration.
“A news outlet has embargoed material poised for release, but that doesn’t mean they can’t look at it, right? “
Nope! You have to handle it blindfolded… and then you have to stay blindfolded because ▼ ▼ ▼▼・ᴥ・▼♥
I also requested way back that visited links in light mode not be gray. it blends in with the black text too much. Make link bright red, visited link orange or dark orange
Italics help me know whether or not to read it in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
COCOTD
I don’t mind block quotes in italics. Makes them easier to skip over. Oftentimes on this site, they are used too much in blocks that are far too long. Just summarize the quote already!
I should like to have a harrumph on your behalf of the idea at being forced to put possibly very long quotations, or indeed any quotations, in a style not of your choosing. It also definitely shouldn’t default to italics; making that the default is a headscratcher and eye-twister.
“Honcho” kinda rhymes with Bronco. Some similar phonemes in there, anyway.
“Stellantis quality with Land Rover reliability” – hey, that sounds like a reincarnation of the Jensen FF.
Sid Bridge is 100% on point. PR work is a lot more careful and intricate than anyone imagines. At least *GOOD* PR work is. Sounds like Sid is good at it. (I say this as a co-proprietor of a podcast that covers messaging, marketing, and media praxis together with an excellent ex-GM PR guy…)
I once had to finish typing final copy of an interview that wasn’t even scheduled until that night, on a manual typesetter, while the editor reminded me the presses were waiting for my copy, by gently banging on my chair.
No pressure though
Did you get it done? I mean, “DNF” right there in your username, I gotta wonder.
Oh boy, Lino! MMm that tasty smell of hot lead.
Managers still lurk uselessly in virtually every field. They do it because that’s all they can do when someone else is cranking away. They feel powerless. I mean, I’ve done it. You’re all full of nerves and can’t get your anxiety under control. It sucks.
Aw. I might be blushing right now. I’ve been in the industry since I graduated college in 1997 and I’m an APR. I’m one of those guys who started out as a PR person and wasn’t a journalist first, which is good and bad at the same time. And yeah, intricate is a fair assessment. Sometimes, dare-I-say, stressful.
Then there’s the old “hide it in the website code and leak it to The Autopian” approach to breaking news.
[This comment thanking Mercedes will be unveiled at 9am GMT(GalpinMechanicTime)]
“A Reader In PR Explains Why They Might Have A Publication Publish News At A Weird Time Of Day”
Puerto Rico! It’s always newsOclock somewhere!
+1 came here for this!
I also read it as Puerto Rico, and thought there was some secret news cabal that had to be appeased.
It is true. Only people from Puerto Rico can draft and pitch press releases.
I find that the italics make it very clear what is the quote and what isn’t. Much easier than looking for quotation marks. That’s just me. Not the end of the world either way.
Even in the comment section, when I’m quoting a section of the article, or even someone else’s comment, I use quotation marks and I italicize the quoted text.
That makes it easier for me to read as well.
I’m the dude, quoting the dude, commenting as another dude!
Hey Dude, don’t make it bad
Take a sad quote and make it better
Remember to take it into your heart
Then you can start to make it better…
It ain’t me, it ain’t meee,
I ain’t no Billionaire’s son,
It’s ain’t me, it ain’t meee,
I ain’t no quotable oneee no.
Me too. I like the way quotes appear, and it matches with what I read and write in the boring real world.
“I’m with you fellas.” – Delmar O’Donnell, O Brother Where Art Thou?
I want italics to stay.
A better format (and I think the one folks are asking for here) would be a block quote, which is irrespective of using quote marks or not. It indents and usually frames the quoted content so it is clearly separated form the author’s content, but just as easy to read.
The formatting options here in the comments has the same problem, but at least when composing it looks like a proper block quote!
Edit: I thought the nice indent and line showed up in published comments… nope! Just when you’re drafting.
I’m going to push back on these comments, not because I think any of the folks in this thread are making them in bad faith (and a lot of you might not have the context of the original comment about this, which I made), but for the benefit of site management, whose responsiveness so far has been commendable.
This is an accessibility issue. If you present something to two people and one says, “I like this,” and the other says, “I can’t use this,” whose feedback should you be listening to? It’s also just a basic principle of good design. Because whatever you do to fix the problem for the second person will probably be just as acceptable as the first solution, if not better, for the person who didn’t have a problem as well.
As a disabled person who has difficulty advocating when I need accommodation, it’s really disheartening when the response is, “well, it’s not a problem for me.” That doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
I would also echo another comment elsewhere here, though, that another good practice for the site to consider would be to reduce the length of/reliance on block quotes in general and digest some of that information better within articles. Sometimes a quote from an old press release is fun and gives useful context that might otherwise be lost, but sometimes too many long quotes just add up to too much extraneous information and verbiage.
If it’s a problem for someone, I absolutely think they should drop the italics. I didn’t mean for my comment to be exclusionary, only to say that I personally find them helpful, but as you say, it’s more important that the site be accessible to everyone.
Well explained.
From my user experience background, your comment that “whatever you do to fix the problem for the second person will probably be just as acceptable as the first solution, if not better, for the person who didn’t have a problem as well.” rings true and I’ve seen it play out that way multiple times.