Chris Anderson attempts to fend off PR spam

Chris “Long Tail Guy” Anderson lashes out at lazy PR people in this post, going so far as to list the email addresses of those he’s blacklisted. The comments to the post are interesting: Some criticize Anderson for leaving the addresses out there for spam bots to harvest. And one guy explains how he spends thousands of dollars to by email lists to promote his photography business. (As the replies note, that money may not be well spent if the lists include people like Anderson, who as editor in chief of Wired is not a relevant contact.)

I’m sympathetic to Anderson’s point of view, in that I get a ridiculous amount of PR email from people who clearly have no idea what I write about. In fact I recognize several of the addresses on his blacklist. I try pretty hard to be accessible because I like hearing from readers, and actually I like hearing from anybody who has a good, relevant idea for me. And I’m not slagging everyone in PR here — I do have regular contact with some very clever people in that line of work, who actually understand what I’m interested in.

The trouble is figuring out a way to be accessible without being overwhelmed by static. I used to publish an email address in the Times Mag for Consumed, but I had to have them take it out, because basically the address was getting added to so many PR blast lists it became useless, drowning out the feedback from real readers in a sea of off-point flackery. Pretty sad.

So I don’t know if Anderson’s post is the best solution to the problem, but I do think it’s a problem.