Some have railed against the press embargo (Michael Arrington, most loudly and notably; see TechCrunch stories Death to the Embargo and The Last Has Fallen; The Embargo is Dead).
The embargo is an agreement between news sources and the media to hold off on publishing a story until a specified date. It is generally tendered to multiple news organizations at once (otherwise, if the agreement is made with just one outlet, the correct term would be "exclusive").
Embargoes help those looking to get attention for news via a coordinated effort that ensures that the news appears on the desired date to maximal effect.
Detractors say that embargoes can compromise editorial integrity because they are essentially serving the interests of the source and hold the outlet captive to certain conditions (journalism purists argue that reporters should report news when they learn about it period, and not go through some negotiation that forges an all too cozy relationship between the outlet and source).
Others, like Arrington, rail against the unfairness of embargoes as sometimes they are broken, say when one news source decides to ignore the embargo and goes out first with the news. In most cases, there are no repercussions to the offender, and the media that followed the rules suffer because they lag with the story.
Practices vary from industry to industry, however in general I think it is safe to say that embargoes remain a fact of life in PR and journalism.
You don't have to look too far to see where they are used. Just consider the movie industry; reviewers generally hold off on their reviews until they see the advance screening just before the movie is released, so that the articles appear when the movie comes out.
They are still done in tech, the area that we work in and Arrington reports on.
The primary challenge from a PR practitioners standpoint – and the other side of the Arrington complaint – is that it is getting harder and harder to keep information under wraps so that the embargo does not get prematurely broken. The increased transparency driven by social media makes it likely that someone in the trusted information chain will publicly blab before the agreed upon date.
One illustration of the power of the embargo (and a beautiful if controversial example of upstart new media cooperating with big guns media) is the deal that Wikileaks cut with major news organizations like the NY Times regarding Afghanistan war intelligence reports. The story somehow managed to stay under wraps until three large publications simultaneously went live, and Wikileaks got much more attention for it (and for Wikileaks in general) as a result.
