Lately there has been a move by some of the perceived leaders in the tech blogosphere to set the terms and conditions for you - or PR firms - to approach them. Whether it be an individual or a company with a story or idea pitch they want you to now approach them using a proscribed set of conditions that they have blogged about at some point or another.

I can understand that some of these blogging elders are very busy people and are constantly being inundated with emails full of Web 2.0 type buzz words. I can understand that for this elite bunch time can literally be worth money. What I couldn’t understand is why when Stowe Boyd set out the guidelines for approaching him something about it really bothered me.

Then I read a post by Louis Gray this afternoon that coalesced my thoughts on the matter. In his post Louis outlines the three main bloggers who have gone this route of having guidelines for getting their attention. It amazed Louis that people like Stowe Boyd of /Message, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb and Robert Scoble would do the very thing that the Web 2.0 ethos of openness and transparency is against. In short these folks are throwing up communication roadblocks. As Louis points out:

We have three prominent bloggers with three very highly differentiated, inefficient ways of soliciting engagement with public relations and companies. While it’s extremely popular these days to dish on old media journalists and claim print is going the way of the dodo, even the biggest reporters at the high-profile media outlets can still be reached by phone or by e-mail. They’re not making you jump through hoops to get their attention.

Granted bloggers at this level are trying to simplify their lives the fact is that they are instead making it harder for the very people who have helped make them what they are in the blogging world. People like you, me and anyone who has an idea they want to promote. As far as I am concerned; not that it will matter to them of course, this does nothing more than increase a feeling of elitism.

Like Louis says at the end of his post … "Do you really think companies are going to remember to pitch Marshall at ReadWriteWeb via RSS and Stowe Boyd by TwitPitch and Scoble by Facebook?" .. I doubt it. If anything it could lead to a backlash by companies and people against bloggers.

When you start throwing roadblocks into the conversation; whether it just is PR or not, the only losers will be the bloggers and then our readers. You know them .. they’re the people who at some point might come to you with an idea or God forbid a pitch but now they might just think twice about it. As such the only feeling you leave with them is that bloggers are just getting too big for their britches.

Conversation Tags: popularity, fame, communication, twitpitch, roadblocks