And You Can and Will Quote Me On That (Even If I Didn’t Say It)

In October 2008, my team sent selected media an article about using email as part of a cross-media marketing campaign. In January 2009, extractions of that article (a few sentences worth) appeared in Business Strata. The article “quoted” our client (which is very nice, don’t get me wrong) and also “quoted” Marketing Sherpa, apparently based on a press release that I remember receiving from that fine organization. Thus, the Business Strata “story” didn’t really incorporate interviews with people, though it sure looked like it. Instead, the "story" used press releases for the origin of quotes. This happens a lot, I've noticed, and traditional journalists get very upset with this "easy-out" approach. It's not inaccurate, exactly, but it does imply a process that never happened. It also goes to show that, on the Internet, when somebody says they "said" it, maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.. or maybe they just sort of said it, like, well, they would have said it, if you'd asked them.