In the time BW (Before Web), there was a broad spectrum trading off timeliness for analysis, from dailies to weeklies, to monthlies. With vicious generalization, you might say that a new product announcement was timely for a daily while a thorough review was in a monthly. It takes an auto company years to develop a vehicle, tool the plant, ramp up production, etc. If they show a preview a year ahead of time, there’s lots of time to get a review published before the launch and there are not too many ways a competitor can copy a differentiating feature in time.

Marketing and PR then kicked in. Showing a car a year before it’s available is a lot less effective with consumers than a big launch with the product on the dealers’ lots. Product launches thus got to be a bigger deal. This led to the “lead time” timing you discuss, Bobbie, and embargoes. But note that that also significantly takes away the trade-off of timeliness for analysis: the daily gets very little value add over the monthly that comes out a day or two later… with a full review.

The Web then undercut this further. Why choreograph a bunch of dailies when you can simply post your press release on the Web? As Rich said, the dailies are not adding a lot of value anyway (unless you view snarky self-aggrandizing commentary as valuable). Couple that with the highly compressed time-to-market cycles of today… years for cars have been replaced by mere weeks for apps.

That then gets us to where we are today: there’s a lot of low-value “news” and some high-value analysis (e.g., Ars Technica). And I think that, in turn, answers the embargo question. While you’re quite right, Bobbie, that a **news** embargo is a relic of the past, I’d argue that a **review** embargo still serves a useful purpose in the lead-up to launch.