Jason Calacanis thinks so.

I’ve gotten more press than any entrepreneur could dream of–certainly more than I deserve–and I’ve never had a public relations firm working for me. [source]

Ok, fair enough, and I agree with Jason for the most part. I don’t think that all start ups need PR. What’s pissed me off about Jason’s article is his overall perception of the industry.

You must realize that journalists are constantly getting banged by lazy, clueless PR folks who fire first and don’t understand what the word "aim" even means.

Now, while that can be true, not all of the PR people in the world are lazy or clueless. In fact, painting all of the PR people in the world with that same brush is like a Canadian (yes, that’d be me) saying that all Americans are fat and ignorant.

When I was doing PR full time, I was adamant about doing it right, not being clueless about anything I pitched or the way I pitched it, when I made phone calls, who I pitched, what they covered etc.  Even more important, now as a journalist, I want to be pitched properly. I’ve written about this in the past, and I suspect it won’t be the last time.

So, yes, take a look at Jason’s tips for doing PR for your startup, but make sure that if you’re pitching a reporter, that you’re doing it right! Don’t ask if they got your release. Make sure you know the beat your target is covering and for the love of god, don’t get upset if they say no.

Like I said, I’m sure that I’ll revisit this because, well, I’m still getting shitty pitches, so until that changes, I’ll keep harping on it.

In an article posted on Aug 10, the New York Times asked, essentially, if they should be worried about Google turning into a content provider.

They draw comparison to the fact that their own site Knol, ranks it’s Buttermilk Pancake recipe higher than that of the domestic queen, Martha Stewart. (Knol also ranks #4 on Yahoo!)

There seemed to be a lot of bluster back and forth from the Times, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo and a co-chief executive officer from Martha Stewart’s OmniMedia.

“If in fact a Google property is taking money away from Google’s partners, that is a real problem,” said Wenda Harris Millard, the co-chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

The Times quotes Calacanis as saying:

“Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case,” said Jason Calacanis, the chief executive of Mahalo, a search engine that relies on editors to create pages on a variety of subjects. “They are competing for talent, for advertisers and for users” with content sites, he said.

Google has always promised it will never compromise the objectivity of its search results and the thought that the search giant is ranking one of its own pages higher than any other is still rattling some folk.

“When you see Knol pages rank high, they are there because they have earned their position,” said Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for Google.

Knol has been called a potential rival to Wikipedia and other sites whose content spans a wide range of topics, including Mahalo and About.com, a property of The New York Times Company that uses experts called “guides” to write articles on a broad range of topics.

I’m not exactly sure if this is News or not. It’s kind of an opinion piece, kinda, and it’s also a bit of bluster. You know, like when your cat falls off the back of the couch, jumps up an walks away casually, as though saying “I *totally* nailed that landing!”, only this is the NYT saying “we’re so not even worried about this. You know, we’re just pointing out the possible links in case, you know, *you* guys didn’t know.”

Right.

I was just skimming my Google Reader feeds when a post By Nick O’Neill on the Social Times caught my eye.

His headline read “Blogs Turning to Newsletters for Revenue?” and my immediate thought was “What!? Is it 1998 again!?”

Nick writes

An interesting trend has started over the past couple days. This weekend Jason Calacanis announced the he was no longer blogging and was instead switching to a newsletter. Initially he suggested that he was limiting the number of subscribers to 750 but soon enough that number was surpassed and there is no sign that it’s stopping. Then today Caroline McCarthy published that Glam Media would be joining the newsletter market.

Seems to me that we’re going backwards again. Wasn’t there a huge surge of newsletters as revenue streams several years ago?

Nick points to Daily Candy as a successful, revenue generating newsletter, and while that’s totally true, i know for a fact that Daily Candy’s numbers are massive and their loyalty is almost unparalleled. Can Calacanis or McCarthy pull down those kind of numbers and inspire that kind of loyalty? Maybe, but even if he can command those numbers, can he demand that kind of ad revenue? I’m going to bet probably no, so where’s the revenue stream?

Newsletters are infinitely more time consuming to put together and get out the door on a consistent basis than blogging, at least in my opinion.

I dunno, maybe I just don’t yet buy that both Calicanas and McCarty are going to stop blogging all together. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.