Dear Foodblogging,

I am the group internet manager for a publications group that
specializes in food industry periodicals including Restaurant Business.
We have recently launched a new website for Restaurant Business,
http://www.restaurantbiz.com, and a series of four weekly eNewsletters
that promotes the content on the site. At the moment, our eNewsletter
subscriber base is in excess of 7,000 people and over 50% of that
subscriber base actually clicks into at least one of the editorial
stories present on the eNewsletters.

Included in the editorial content of both Restaurant Businesses’
website and eNewsletters is a component that promotes food related
blogs. We update the blog features on the RB website and promote them
through the eNewsletters on a weekly basis.

My purpose in contacting you is to see if you may be interested in
having your blog featured on RB’s site and eNewsletters. The
arrangement that we have worked out with our existing blog partners is
one whereby our editorial team pulls the lead stories off of each blog
and copies/ paraphrases them to the online deliverables of RB. No money
changes hands, but we believe that everyone involved benefits from
increased exposure to quality food related blog content.

If you would be interested in this situation or have any questions,
please let me know and I appreciate your consideration. I will look
forward to hearing from you!

Chris Beck
Internet Manager
Ideal Media LLC

Here was my response:

Chris-
Thank you for your note.

You are more than welcome to link to our site and excerpt our content. I would prefer that you do not repost our content in its entirety.

Regards,
Jonah

To which Chris repsponded:

Jonah,

That is great and we will only use a limited amount of text from each of the stories that we post on our eNewsletters and site.

The eNewsletters just have about a 5 word teaser about each of the stories content and the same is true on our home-page. We also have a landing page for our featured blogs and generally we will paraphrase the stories there to a limited detail. Sometimes our editors get very busy and just copy a few sentences out of the stories on the blogs.

Anyhow, la.foodblogging is now featured on Restaurantbiz.com. Thank you very much and I hope that we flow a portion of our traffic to your blog!

That was the last contact I had with them. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no different than anyone linking to our articles, it happens all the time.

Here are almost 1,500 other links to this site.

I considered commenting on Jonah’s post after I first read it more than a week ago, but I was so incensed by his arrogant tone and the utter lack of understanding about the way the media industry works I didn’t want to dignify his post with a response. I’m especially irked b/c of the site’s relationship with Restaurant Business - a trade publication that largely depends on PR people to inspire their content. A featured post from LA Foodblogging is included in the magazine’s weekly e-newsletter every week.

RESTAURANT GUY!!!

(clap clap )

In answering the final question of your post: How do you deal with it? How do you think bloggers should deal with it?

You just deal with it. Simple as that. Delete it, answer it, embarrass flacks by posting up the poorly written ones, whatever your little heart desires. The pen is still yours, writer. So what if we think your opinion is important enough that we might want to bombard you with press releases? That’s the hardest part about being in PR rather than advertising. We can’t pay you to write what we want — the choice is always yours.

Jonathan Gold, my personal hero, is notorious for never talking to PR people. But trust me, that doesn’t stop ANYONE from sending him press releases. He does read them though, and more often that not, we will eventually see our clients in the Weekly — along with 100 other places he tries. At least he doesn’t discriminate against restaurants with PR companies…

Sounds like you have been added to the same topical mailing list I have, I was particularly surprised to see the wording at the bottom of the email:

“This e-mail was sent to xxxxxx@gmail.com because you are subscribed to XXXXXX-XX’s mailing lists.”

Funny, I don’t remember subscribing, at least there is an unsubscribe link.

Have you ever considered writing back to a PR company and politely asking them to take you off their media list? It takes about two seconds, same as unsubscribing to a newsletter.

Sure, I do it often. Sometimes I get a nice response, sometimes silence, and sometimes I get emails from someone else in the same PR company.

(And if you’re wondering, you are not on our media list, and have never been.)

OK, what restaurants or companies do you represent?

That’s fine, as long as you spent money at my client’s restaurant, I could give two hoots about whether you write it up or not. At the end of the day, it’s still a business for them.

You might give two hoots, but the vast majority of PR emails I get seem to give three hoots that I do write about their restaurant. I’m not one to tell you how to do your job, but why would you contact food blogs and not want them to write about your client?

on the other hand, a mass-mailed press release about a kosher steakhouse in manhattan? not so much.

And as for this comment:
I have to tell you though, that my general policy is to not mention a place where I get PR notes from, even if I do end up eating there.

That’s fine, as long as you spent money at my client’s restaurant, I could give two hoots about whether you write it up or not. At the end of the day, it’s still a business for them.

Another thing…If a PR person is sending you spam and they don’t have a removal option, I would report them to their host for not following the rules according to the Can-Spam Act. There is no reason why they can’t do this (unless they are spamming).

I like your blog, I found it randomly. I will add you to my lfavs. Have a great one.

Mr. Diner.