A common theme runs through most calls for new business.  “Our company [or organization] wants to get more attention for ourselves and our work. We want to create buzz, get noticed,” they say.

The twittersphere was all atwitter today about a public relations firm that sent out an email to a ginormous list of social media and other journalists who erupted in anger over the fact that they were spammed. Not sure what was worse–the stupidity of the email or the wronged recipients who then hit reply all to create a thread of ire.

The other day I was in the office all day and had many lively conversations and not once did I open my mouth. All of those conversations were through Twitter, Facebook, and conventional email. And while I was productive and shared ideas, it was all a bit unsatisfying.

I recently came upon a great post in TechCrunch about the 10 words writer Robin Wauters would like to see banned from public relations and press releases. He’s right–there are a lot of mindless, vapid press releases out there that are really nothing more than marketing puffery rather than conveyors of useful and important information that in the old days we called “news.” And while it’s easy to dump on PR folks, instead of saying what shouldn’t be, maybe we should look at how it ought to be.