Not so fast, AdAge: ‘RIP, the press release (1906-2010)’

Communicator blasts magazine’s declaration of death for the oft-maligned release

Dear @SimonDumenco:

What a great whoosh of hot air to jumpstart my cool, gray, damp Seattle day!

You wrote:

Next, your use of the pejorative, “spin,” implies that press releases—or tweets—are inherently nefarious, deceptive and suspect. You wrote:

Legend has it that early PR man Ivy Ledbetter Lee issued the very first press release in 1906 on behalf of the Pennsylvania Railroad, after a derailed train plunged into a creek in Atlantic City, resulting in 53 passenger deaths; The New York Times printed it verbatim.

If the same thing happened today, we’d all be looking for @nytimes to RT @PennsylvaniaRR’s real-time spin.

Any corporate, celebrity, political or government communication—press releases, tweets and Facebook pages/updates, press conferences or interviews with muckety-muck execs—could be engineered with deflection or deception in mind. Technology is agnostic. Motives lie with people.