Jan 16, 2012 Beth Monaghan
I was thrilled to see Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda) launch PandoDaily (@PandoDaily) today. We, at InkHouse, have been following Sarah from the business journals of the Valley to BusinessWeek to TechCrunch (as well as her book writing along the way) and are thrilled to see her launching her own venture. Since I read the rumors last month, I’ve been eager to see the official launch. Read Lacy’s post about why she started PandoDaily for the full story, but here are the important takeaways for PR people:
- The focus is startups. Lacy’s goal is “To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle.”
- There will be three full-time writers. Two are yet-to-be-named, and the other is Trevor Gilbert.
- An all-star cast of regular contributors will include Michael Arrington, MG Siegler, Paul Carr and Farhad Manjoo. Check out the authors page, which has a full list.
- Lacy is banning writers from investing in startups. I’ve written about the issue of conflicts of interest and recommend that you always consider the source. I believe that Lacy’s approach is the right one. As she wrote, “I won’t be investing directly in startups, nor will the staff-writers of PandoDaily. But we have plenty of contributors and opinion columnists who do, because frequently those people are informed enough to write the best stuff.”
Embargoes have become the bane of PR and journalists’ lives alike. It’s been a sticky subject, beginning back in 2008 when Michael Arrington famously announced that TechCrunch would not honor embargoes. We are thrilled to see that Lacy is taking another route. On how PandoDaily will operate:
- They will honor embargoes. An important note about coverage from Lacy: “We’ll honor any embargo to put a piece of relevant news in the PandoTicker. But if you want your news in the main blog, you have to give us something exclusive.”
- Each post will be one paragraph long, reserving in-depth coverage for “Exclusives, edgy opinion posts, stellar product analysis, insightful people and culture stories and *real* breaking news, which we define as something someone doesn’t want you to write, not re-writing a press release faster than anyone else.”
At a time when the technology blogsphere was shrinking, it's great to see a new site, led by one of the industry’s most respected authors (and a big cheers to a fellow entrepreneurial mom!) We’d love to see more blogs launching and certainly see room for competition. While I was watching the Patriots/Broncos game on Saturday, I saw a tweet from Ben Parr, which might signal another? Read into it what you will:
