Adweek takes an in-depth look at the HARO phenomenon, and does a little calculating to figure out that Shankman makes more than $3K every day selling ads on his two daily HARO emails, that go out to more than 30,000 flacks and other wannabe media sources. For an hour and a half of work. Okay, that's kind of slick.

But you know who thinks HARO sucks? The people at Profnet! HARO's deficiencies:

• It's not from a neutral source—Shankman is a PR guy with his own clients, and gives them first crack at the good media requests.
• Other reporters can totally monitor HARO and steal your ideas.
• Profnet is the recognized leader in masturbation advice and smelly genital information.

I used Profnet many times in my former life as a trade mag reporter; when you needed to round up five geographically disparate sources with slightly different takes on the pluses and minuses of PR agency day care plans, there was really no substitute. But I have to admit that the real takeaway from this debate is probably this, from Sheldon Rampton of PR Watch:

"We're living in an environment where reporters are less and less willing to do independent research, so that's created an opportunity for PR people to step in and do the research for them," Rampton says...

"My personal take on ProfNet is it's not all bad, but there's more bad than good in it," says Rampton, who is less familiar with HARO. "It's one of various ways that the news product is getting cheapened."

We laughed at useless rich girl Brill for her dramatic(-ally blogged) declaration that "even my weekend in bedford wasn’t entirely restful because i still felt ‘on duty’ because i knew i’d be writing about it." Ha! But! Consider this from taser-loving, reporter-helping, cult-like-following-inspiring professional PR man Peter Shankman's long new blog post about how much he hates hearing the phrase "Why Don't You Do Some Work?":

Was having a conversation the other day with someone via IM. She asked me where I was, and I told her I was talking from the lobby of the W hotel in Times Square, waiting to have a drink with someone who runs a marketing firm.

“The W Hotel?! What a tough life! Will you please do some work?!” she IM’d back. It was around 3pm. She didn’t know I’d closed two deals, brought three new advertisers to HARO, and gotten one client onto CNN. Not bad for someone who, according to my friend, had to be nagged to “do some work.”

Shit. Do we really want to open this floodgate? Can you already see where Shankman is prepared to go (at incredible length) with this? That's right, into an exposition of the awesomeness of Peter Shankman and his awesome work-play life balance!

I’ve heard virtually identical comments resulting from Facebook or Twitter updates that have included “Driving from LA to SF, stopped to get gas outside some wind farm,” “Sitting in the lounge at Gatwick, munching on a bagel,” “Singapore–>EWR flight delayed, hitting Duty Free, anyone want anything?” “Sitting on the hood of my rental car, watching the sunset from the desert outside of Eloy, Arizona,” and of course, “working from the Ranch, waiting for them to fuel the plane,” which of course, is code for “handling a client issue via conference call, with my skydiving rig on my back, hoping I’ll finish the call before the next load goes up in the air.”

Just in case you didn't catch his Twitter updates: he goes skydiving! Have you ever been? No? Well some people just aren't born adventurers, don't feel bad.

So Let’s translate “why don’t you do some work” into what it really is: “How come your job lets you fly all over the place, and have meetings in really cool places, and why can’t mine? Your job certainly doesn’t seem like work, why does mine?”

My answer to them? Because you don’t want it badly enough. If you really did, you’d have it. You’d take the risk, and play the game. (In actuality, that’s all it ever is - one giant game.) Face it - Having a job where you’re not the boss is, well, safe.

Peter Shankman thinks you're a pussy, no disrespect intended.

Like to read thousands more words about how Shankman can close client deals on his cellphone immediately before parachuting out of a plane and Twittering about it on the way down and, upon landing, running a road race that ends in a TV studio where he is doing an on-air interview? Read all you want!

"An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind."
—Walter Bagehot

"Everybody's talking trash these days, so why not keep quiet?"
—Dennis Rodman

Find him and interview? - O.
——- Forwarded message ——-
From: Chaela Volpe
Date: Jan 7, 2008 1:35 PM
Subject: Gary Krakow joins TheStreet.com newsroom as Sr. Tech Correspondent, Reports Live from CES in Las Vegas

After a couple moments of silence, Shankman says, "This is the most surreal moment I've ever been witness to." Then, of course, he writes it up. Thanks, buddy.

By the way, Krakow has this to say about his new job:

Valleywag: Why'd you leave MSNBC?
Krakow: MSNBC wanted to go in a different direction. I needed more artistic freedom.
V: Does TheStreet still exist? Have you been paid yet?
K: Don't worry about my paycheck. The new, redesigned site will be up within a few weeks with a focus on video.

Search engine optimization experts told PR blogger Peter Shankman that if Laermer isn't a violent sex fiend, he either copied his code from a porn site or he doesn't have effective security in place to keep porn "bots" from writing over his HTML to boost their search rankings. (Photo by It'sGreg)

Shankman titles a blog post: "Sunrise: Not just for those who stayed up all night anymore..." Hmm, can this be? He has me baffled. He writes:

Drives most people I know crazy, but I'm all about getting up at 4:30, 4:45am, and getting a jump on the day.

Let alone the early morning exercising thing - that's a given - and I won't preach on that this morning.

What's the first email they're going to see this morning when they walk in and are looking for sources? Yup.