Archive for October, 2004

Dan Gillmor’s latest post is illuminating. I recieved a similar note from a different PR firm pitching their blog ‘manipulation’ – sorry, ‘influencer’, and measurement services. It’s in the round file on the floor.

We would all be wise to spend time understanding what the blogsphere actually is. It’s a conversation. And a rich one at that. It requires listening as much as it does ‘speaking’. If you can alter the debate by participating in it – more power to you. But I fear that the communications tool-kit used by most to shape and respond to online debate is going to be of little use in this new world. I’m more and more convinced that you don’t manage the blogsphere – it’s unmanageable. Your only hope is to embrace the sphere, participate in the dialogue or watch from the sidelines.

Media tracking services are as much a commodity as blog tracking services – with a difference. Blog tracking services are actually less valuable in that the dialogue moves at light speed. Your tracking is out of date before your report on what is happening. Aside from that, tracking is much less valuable than participating.

Just as traditional journalists (thanks for the link Dan) point to their role as the gatekeepers of news, I hear more and more PR people complaining about their declining role as the transmitters of the news. Get over it. We’re at about an hour before daybreak for a new era in public relations and news reporting. It will be interesting to see the impact on traditional news wires as we reach the inevitable tipping point where news comes to us first through the blogs in our RSS reader.

This new era is going to place a greater onus on PR folks to really know their content, position and evidence. It’s going to require that they have a point of view – not just their executives or product people (maybe they’ll align, maybe they won’t – maybe it would be nice if they didn’t from time to time?).

And, I don’t say this lightly, it’s going to require agencies really raise the bar. To participate in the blogsphere they will need more than experience, executional savvy, content and writing skills – they will need content and subject matter knowledge. Agencies will then need to free their pros from the tyranny of hourly billing rates to engage in the dialogue – not just for their clients, but for themselves. What a new business tool that is going to create.

OK, so now I’ve upset a whole lot of people off I’m going to get back to work…

The game is afoot.

Awhile back Dan Gillmore made an interesting suggestion. Steal a leaf out of the playbook of Don Rumsfeld and post all interview transcripts to the web. This was a terrific move on his part and I think sets the standard for all public officials.

Aside from delivering total transparency on what actually happens in interviews – which, surprise, surprise, generally bears no relation to what gets printed in the article – this would have the added benefit of leveling the journalistic playing-field. So to speak. And we get to see not just what the media what to print, but also what the interviewee wants to say.

Quick segway – what will also happen is the slightly less savvy PR pro will alter transcripts and post them to the web as the official record – as Mr Rumsfeld’s team did – thereby creating a whole new news cycle and story. (thanks to my old colleague David Chamberlin for shooting over the link).

Now, nearly every journalist I’ve polled on this idea has been vehemently opposed to it (except Dan of course). No surprises there. What is surprising to me is some of the more the extreme views. For instance, you can’t post the interview even after the article has been published because it’s (and I quote), “my intellectual property”. Um, yeah, right…

Pissing off journalists is generally bad PR practice so I’m not sure who will make the first leap to doing this, but it will happen. I’m definitely more keen on recommending it to our management team and here’s why.

An article by Glasser in the the latest issue in the Online Journalism Review (and Tim Porter’s blog) has an interesting piece that points to the attitude of traditional journalists. Seems Mark Cuban felt a little hard done by given an article published by Kevin Blackistone, a Dallas Morning News sports columnist. They’d exchanged emails in March about Cuban’s basketball team, the Dallas Mavericks – part of which was published… Mark felt Blackistone quoted him out of context (that’s never happened to an exec before!), so Cuban published Blackistone’s original email to him… And the story goes on.

Glasser asked Blackistone what he thought of this…

“I didn’t think much of being surprised by having what I thought was a private exchange with Mark Cuban posted on a public Web site. That is a reason I stopped responding to readers years ago, because I discovered they started posting my personal responses to them on message boards.”

As Tim rightly points out this was a public exchange so he shouldn’t have been surprised. What this really points to is a general reluctance by traditional media to open the window to the reporting process and expose their bias towards the story or the subject matter. Why not let the facts shine – someone once said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Today, blogs and web make it incredibly economical and easy to shine sunlight on stories.

This is where publishing transcripts could get really interesting. It would be much better to simply publish all transcripts post publication than selectively address stories that somehow piss you off. Or, here’s a novel idea, why don’t the publications make the entire transcript available on their web site – in raw form.

Nixon was wrong, the press isn’t the enemy. Lack of transparency is.

This is one of the more popular topics in the blogsphere these days. Tends to peak with every election and then dies down. Now, as a PR pro, anytime I talk about media bias or point out acts of sloppy journalism – which are generally far exceeded by acts of sloppy PR – I’m pretty quickly dismissed, heckled, or ridiculed. In this respect, Bloggers are quickly becoming my people (OK – not really, but you get the point).

Pressthink got me on this train of thought, focusing on Chris Satullo’s, editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, story on bloggers… Cries of ‘media bias’ hide sloppy thinking (Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 26, 2004).

Rather’s mistake was sad, but no watershed. This aging anchor is no more the embodiment of journalism than Paris Hilton is a typical farm girl. Mainstream media is a term so loose as to disqualify any assertions that follow it. Let’s, by all means, discuss how journalism falls short. Let’s explore how it can flourish in media new and old. But let’s see the screaming about media bias for what it is: at best sloppy thinking, at worst Orwellian poison.

But spare me the chatter about bias. Of course the media is biased. Get over it. Journalists, bloggers, and even PR pros should revel in it.

Media conglomerates are not a synonym for journalism. They employ some journalists, and many who only pretend to be. They enable the craft, but also inhibit and cheapen it.

The great journalists rise above the fray. They report. The product might be biased, doesn’t mean all journalists are. And this is where PressThink’s manifesto is right on. We need to rise above media and fully comprehend the importance of Press.

Satullo is right ~

Journalism, done right, buoys democracy; hence its place in the First Amendment.

This point is going to play out in the blogsphere. I wonder how many executives are not blogging because they lack the rights to speak freely and pursue absolute transparency? In fact, any enthusiasm they might have for speaking openly is being restricted by new legislation.

Andrew Gordon in PR Week hit on this in a story regarding Siebel –

SAN MATEO, CA: Siebel Systems is defending itself on First Amendment grounds against a charge of violating Regulation Fair Disclosure – claiming it violates companies’ rights to free speech.

The enterprise-software maker raised the defense in its mid-September motion to dismiss a charge brought in June by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Regulation FD works an unprecedented and remarkably sweeping infringement of corporate speech,” the Chronicle quotes the motion as stating.

Other PR Pros seem to think this would set a dangerous precedent by allowing companies to hide behind the First Amendment. I think the reverse is true. There is less chance of anyone hiding today than at any other point in the history of business. Hide where? Transparency is the new watchword and the requirement of any legislator should be to foster it by encouraging free speech, not limiting it… So to steal and reframe from Satullo:-

Business, done right, buoys democracy; hence free speech for executives should have an equal place in the First Amendment. Or, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.