The truth behind the PR Blackout

There has been a lot of discussion and even backlash to the idea that was formulated last Friday night when a group of mom bloggers discussed “bloggy burnout” on the Momdot Friday Night Live radio show.

And let me tell you…I was the other voice on the line talking to Trisha about how I contemplated shutting down my blog and joining the Carnival to free myself from my stress. But don’t jump to conclusions, I listed a bunch of other things stressing me out too, but that show led us to try and address the one we have some real control over.

The discussion prompted my post about bloggy burnout that I published to the admin blog on Momdot and that discussion also resulted in something we are calling “PR Blackout“.  In order to truly understand the motivation and intention behind the PR Blackout, you need to listen to the Friday Night Live episode that is available for listening at Blog Talk Radio at the link above.

Let me start out by assuring PR that we value our relationships with you and this “blackout” is not meant to infer that we are disgruntled with you, especially those of you that we work with regularly and whom we have fantastic relationships with.  It’s not about you really.  It’s about us re-evaluating our priorities, going “back-to-basics” for a week and blogging for the enjoyment of sharing our lives, not for the purpose of promoting products.  I have met so many great PR pros, bloggers who work in PR, small business owners and more whom I greatly VALUE my relationship with, and those relationships are not going to change as a result of me taking a week to blog only about my life.  Who doesn’t need a vacation?

This also has nothing to do with any of the controversy surrounding review bloggers and the talks of regulating blogs who provide product reviews.  Those of us involved in the “PR Blackout” are ethical, believe in disclosure and have never intentionally misled our readers for the purposes of getting “free” stuff.

Speaking of “free” stuff, to make this as brief as possible, I just want to say that something I receive in exchange for hours of my time testing, reviewing, organizing and communicating with reps, readers, and contest winners is not FREE, in fact if you did the math, I’d probably make more money playing a harmonica in the subway.  And I don’t play the harmonica.  But I digress….I just wanted to make sure that people understand that there are responsibilities attached to “free” products, and those of us involved in the PR Blackout take that very seriously, which is one of the reasons we have been feeling so overwhelmed.

I also want to take a moment to defend my friend Trisha because what started as an idea to help relieve some of the stress in the lives of not only herself, but her blogging friends as well, has turned into some kind of weird, angry backlash with people making negative assumptions about her motives.  Until you have spent over a year with her, talking to her every day, benefiting from her knowledge and her generosity DON’T YOU DARE JUDGE HER or anyone who is a part of the Momdot community.

And that brings up why people have gotten their panties in such a wad over a group of bloggers deciding to take a week off to only blog about personal stuff.  Why does this bother people so much to bring them not only to write about it, but to become defensive and judgemental?  Why are other bloggers so concerned about what other bloggers are doing on their own blogs?  If you don’t agree with it, don’t do it.  We won’t judge you – you obviously have different goals for your blog than we do right now, or are at different places in your blogging life.  What is it about this that angers you so much?  It causes you no harm, so what is your problem?

Somebody please explain to me why this is getting such negative press (ironic eh?) and why it has led to personal attacks on Trisha and even members of the Momdot community as a whole?

Because while I am angry that there are “haters”, more importantly I am sad that we don’t support each other as a community of mom bloggers.  We are preparing for the biggest mom blogging conference of the year, we will all gather and talk about improving our blogs and improving our relationships with brands and with each other.  We will finally get to meet the people we have become good friends with and form new friendships – in real life.  Yet, there will be tension and, I fear, negative emotions that go even deeper surrounding the event.  We should be celebrating our roles as mom bloggers and what it has meant in our own lives and exploring the diversity around us, not tearing each other down.

Before I get off my soapbox, I have one more thing to share, and that pretty much is a summary of what I wrote in the “My Bloggy Burnout” article over on the Momdot blog.  I have made a change in the way I will run my blog, and that is that we are cutting back on reviews and giveaways in a major way.  For PR, this means you will receive a copy of our media kit via email when you send us a pitch that we are interested in, but it also means that we will no longer be responding to every request we receive.  It has gotten to be too much.  For those we have established relationships with (you know who you are…or aren’t) we will still work to maintain those relationships but realize that we are cutting back and our “no thank you’s” will be more frequent than our “love to’s”.  For our readers, this means fewer giveaways, if any, each month and I apologize if that disappoints you but I believe that in the long run, it will make us stronger and better.  We want to be proud of the products and companies we choose to represent, and not take a review or giveaway simply for greed or traffic.  In the end, I believe this is a win-win-win scenario for all of us – the blog, the readers, and the companies.

Because I am a blogger, and if I can’t find the time to exercise my voice, then all I am is a commercial.  And everyone has Tivo nowadays….

I have put a Mr. Linky below for those who have written articles about this issue to share their links.  I want to hear your take on it so please leave your link if you wrote something about the PR Blackout.