Chris Anderson, the Editor in Chief at Wired magazine, this week posted in his blog about his frustration with PR people. He is tired of getting "spammed" by PR people - receiving hundreds of emails daily with announcements, press releases and product introductions that are not relevant to what he would ever include in a story. Fair enough. We've all heard this complaint before from various editors.

Where the post gets interesting is when Anderson posts a lengthy list of email addresses from people in the last month who he believes have spammed him. The list is long and includes mostly PR people, identifiable by their email address (@sspr, @5wpr, @webershandwick, etc), who are forever on his blocked email list. Obviously, publishing this list of spammers provides actual spammers with a new set of email addresses. Needless to say, the people on the list are having a bad week - complete with maxed-out inboxes and junk folders.

The comments to the post are varied - some agree with Anderson's retaliation and others find it childish. I don't want to comment on his actions, but I do want to comment on what caused him to post in the first place. As you will notice, BLASTmedia did not make the list. We rely on relationships over press release spamming. In fact, we rarely even send press releases. While we do use a PR database to identify media contacts, we do our research and verify that a specific editor does indeed cover a certain beat and read that editor's recent articles to get an idea of coverage trends.

However, I must admit that it is a challenge to consistently keeps tabs on editors when you are working with a consumer product that appeals to a broad audience. There is a ton of turnover in the media and it is difficult to keep up with changing beats and editor status when you are making outreach to everyone from the Today Show to the tech editor at the Albuquerque Journal. That being said, we have worked hard to form relationships with key members of the press in our respective client industries at BLAST and it this relationship-building that makes our career fun on a daily basis. I have built friendships over the years with members of the press, and it never would have happened if I initially approached the tech editor at Playboy with a calorie-counting book.

Take a look at Anderson's post - what are your thoughts?