Long Weekend

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Labor Day 2008

Road Trip Careerists

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In the rush to tie up loose client ends before the Labor Day weekend, I've been hindered in bandwidth to pop out a pithy post.

So I checked out what others in the PR punditry were up to and stumbled across (or is it stumbled upon?) Kevin Dugan's link to Prof. Robert French's OpenMic Project connecting PR students, teachers and practitioners in a Ning-powered micro-focused social network - to borrow a term from Chris Anderson.

Summer has ended, and thanks to our lame leaders in Washington, the job market for new college grads stinks. In fact, if my memory serves me well, I bet many are feeling a tad panicky right now as August slips away.

If it's any consolation, it took me six months after graduating before landing gainful employment -- if you call it that. I lasted three years (a record) at a NYC PR entertainment boutique over which time I had a total of one week's vacation. (Be careful what you wish for.)

Nevertheless, I thought the timing was ripe to resurrect a previous post in which college grads will find a number of helpful links to PR-related job boards. Happy hunting:

It was good seeing Council of PR Firms Kathy Cripps at the PR Week Awards dinner last month. For the uninitiated, the Council is the trade association for the PR agency business.

As such, it tends to tend to the pedestrian needs of that still-flourishing piece of PR'dom. While not every agency belongs, those that do represent a sizable chunk of the industry's billings.

The Council's website contains some decent information on industry ethics and issues, advice for selecting an agency, and other tidbits, including, as of yesterday, a new jobs database for those contemplating a PR career or PR career change.

The Council is not alone in the PR job board game. PRSA has one, as does , PR Week, Bulldog, PR News, Work in PR... I'm partial to (via mediabistro.com) and Paidcontent.org (for the digitally inclined), and I'm sure I missed a bunch. Feel free to add links in the comments section.

A quick scan of the myriad job postings tells us something about the vitality of the industry: it's booming! So with college graduations fast approaching, the entry-level crowd has few excuses for not finding a niche in the PR biz.

If you're feeling especially antsy, visit my buddies Nate & Mike at Road Trip Nation or Penelope Trunk, that Brazen Careerist, for inspiration. Tell them I sent you.

Wag the Immigrants

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As if we needed another reminder of how closely aligned Senator McCain is to the Bush Administration, yesterday the Bushies threw the McCain camp a big wet one.

In a political maneuver straight out of Wag the Dog, the Feds chose the first day of the DNC to stage "the largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history.

And trust me, "stage" is the most apt verb to describe the timing for this little headline grabber. We already learned earlier today how "a SWAT team of Republican operatives dispatched to crash Senator Barack Obama’s party was reveling in its accomplishments."

And now the Feds, in a total Rovian meneuver, have revved the incendiary immigration pedal to detract from Denver. The Times described the escalation on the first day of the Democratic convention:

"...it was clear that this year will break new ground, with each side planning a full-bore run during the other’s convention. Matt McDonald, who is overseeing the Republican effort, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by the party’s success in inserting itself into the biggest week of the Obama campaign. “Any time we can get our side of the story out,” Mr. McDonald said, “that’s a good thing.”

We're at a nasty inflection point between red and blue. I only hope that Sen. Obama pays heed to the growing crescendo of pleas to take the gloves off and smack down the Republicans for what they've done to our beloved country these last seven years...and will continue to do if re-elected.

Sen. Joe Tynan

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Back when I was toiling in the Hollywood PR game, from New York no less, our boutique entertainment firm had the fortune of working with M*A*S*H star Alan Alda as he segued from the small screen to the big.

The first film he wrote, directed and starred in, "The Seduction of Joe Tynan," cast him as a popular Senator with Presidential ambitions. The well-received pic featured a relatively unknown actress in only her second supporting role, Meryl Streep.

Alda's next film "The Four Seasons," an ensemble comedy featuring three couples on vacation set to the music of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, also drew positive reviews. The reviews, however, paled in comparison to Mr. Alda's media ubiquity that ensued. He had a prominent presence in many of the most sought-after media properties of the day.

If my memory serves me well, Alda appeared alone or alongside his wife Arlene on NBC "Today," ABC "GMA," and the syndicated "Donahue." He had cover stories in three of the seven sisters (Redbook, McCalls and Good Housekeeping) on both Parade and Family Weekly, in People Magazine, in The New York Times and Daily News Sunday magazines, on the cover of Harper's Bazaar and others.

The press clip book was a certifiable piece of hyperbolic art for which my boss Bobby Zarem treated me to a cashmere cable knit sweater from Andre Oliver, the tony E 57th Street store where his brother Danny presided. It was a quantifiable (in impressions) PR success, and it may have even put a few boohineys in seats. Who knows?

Since those days, I've never stopped wondering whether it's the quantity, quality or paucity of publicity that creates the desired desire. A few years ago in this space, I called to the red carpet a famous Hollywood publicist for his "success" over-exposing Jennifer Aniston for some lackluster film of hers.

On Friday, Reuters asked "How Many Obama Magazine Covers is Too Many?" In addition to his seven TIME covers in 2008 (versus McCain's two)...

"Obama and his family were featured on the cover of People magazine this month and he has also been a cover boy for GQ, Vanity Fair, Men's Vogue and Rolling Stone, among others."

Claudia Parsons, who penned the media "analysis" for Reuters, astutely wondered whether "any publicity is good publicity." She quoted Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism,

"Survey data is beginning to identify what some people are calling Obama fatigue. He may have predicated too much of his campaign on biography," Rosenstiel said. "That only takes you so far in a general election. The coverage may be too much about Obama and not enough, for Obama's cause, about his ideas."

Could it be that the strategy to leverage Obama's celebrity to open media doors may in fact be having the reverse affect? Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment, saying, "We're not here to be media critics."

(Not) Ready for Prime Time PR

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PR people often advise their start-up clients to make sure their ducks are in a row before the big public reveal of their new product or service.

The "is-it-ready-for-primetime?" Rorschach Test should probably also apply to media sneak previews.

Case in point: Microsoft's "first broad consumer Web service, called Photosynth [which] turns multiple photos of a scene or site — say, an art gallery or a building — into a 3-D scene you can virtually “walk” through on the Web" (as explained by Walt Mossberg).

The Redmond, WA company's PR reps aggressively courted a number of the leading consumer tech columnists for an early look at the new service. Several took them up on the offer since first-look status nowadays is often the price of admission for gaining editorial traction in the personal tech space.

But in spite of an in-person deskside briefing, one prominent newspaper columnist decided to pass up the opportunity. (Hey, you can only lead them to water...) In this case, the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro was glad he didn't. He also shared in a blog post his rationale behind the decision that started with a PR courtship:

"I opted not to do that, thinking at first that Photosynth might make more sense as a blog post, not a column in its own right. I was also reluctant to try out this Web service -- or any other company's -- in a pre-release state; as recent events have shown, a site's scalability and performance issues may not surface when only a selected group of testers can play with it."

Apparently, curiosity skinned the cat after Pegoraro caught two other prominent personal tech columnists waxing effusively on the service:

"Anyway, after seeing the headlines on the NYT and WSJ sites, I clicked over to the Photosynth site to check it out for myself and discovered, as many of you may have, that it was out of commission. An apologetic notice confessed that the site was "a little overwhelmed today" and would not allow any photo uploads 'while we're reviving it.'"

Ouch. To his credit and for some added insight into the journalist's thought process, Pegoraro ended his column with a short questionnaire (from a colleague's "You be the Editor" game):

"What would you have done, not knowing ahead of time if the Photosynth site would crash or not?

A. Reviewed it in its pre-release state;

B. Held off on that topic to write about deep packet inspection;

C. Written about some other subject altogether.

If you choose C, you have to say what the other subject would be! The comments are yours..."

On the other side of the coin, some will argue that after reviews by the media-catalytic dynamic duo of Pogue and Mossberg, what else matters (at least in the MSM).

The Great Firewall

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When this blog first visited the subject of how China would handle a sharply focused media spotlight, it recognized the immense public relations challenge that lied ahead for the Chinese authorities, the IOC, and their respective outside agencies.

Thus far, the series of gaffes and misdeeds have by and large been washed away by the fluidity of 24/7 news cycles (and the public's short attention spans).

We've seen the Chinese avoid a full-throttled public backlash from fake fireworks and that Milli Vinilli moment at the opening ceremonies, the dissolution this week of daily media briefings, and the ill treatment of dozens who filed formal applications to protest in government-designated protest areas.

Most recently, this includes two 70-something women that the government stiffed after demolishing their homes as part of the Olympic whitewash. For their transgressions, the authorities will ship them off for "re-education."

But after 12 days of pomp and pageantry, the cumulative effect of China's efforts to command and control its image -- at the expensive of civil liberties -- may finally be getting its come-uppance.

The straw that may just break the camel's back involves the incongruous confluence of two of the planet's biggest brands: China and the iPod. Huh?

Today, we learn that the country that built the Great Wall has erected an even Greater Firewall by banning access to iTunes. From Huffington Post:

But the latest wrong move will be harder to cover up, that of course being China's decision late Tuesday to block iTunes in China. News of the blockage surfaced first in a discussion on Apple's site, and later in a blog by F.X. Leach on Students for a Free Tibet's website but as yet there is no official comment on why Itunes [sic] got the cyber-shaft by the Great Firewall of China.

There is a silver-lining for those charged with managing China's image. The media spotlight focuses elsewhere with this Sunday's closing ceremonies. Did you hear today that a Russian general threatened to attack Poland?

Dan 'n Liu

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I got a kick out of seeing the Nautica sweatband on Misty May's forehead, but others most assuredly weren't too pleased. The Nautica folks smartly figured that NBC's anointment of two-women beach volleyball to a prime time sport (night after night after night...) merited a small investment, and there you have it.

Nautica trumps Nike, and Adidas while they're at it. Of course there's the issue of whether Misty May and the Nautica brand are even in sync, but heck, boffo ratings prevail.

There's nothing new here of course. Companies have successfully ambushed the Olympics for years, bypassing the tens of millions of dollars the official sponsors shell out. I remember one client, a toy company, put in the hands of every U.S. Olympian the year's hottest doll to donate to the host country's needy children -- no top-tier sponsorship required. The story, captured in an airport departure photo op, blew out big time.

I also remember the year Charles Barclay matter-of-factly quipped that he "had a million reasons" not to wear the Reebok-designed U.S. Olympic uniform. That was the year when Reebok pinned its entire Olympics campaign on two prominent decathletes whom it dubbed "Dan 'n Dave," for which this blogger toiled on the PR.

One problem: Dan O'Brien faltered in his final pole vault attempt at Olympic Trials and didn't make the team. Oops, and this after New York Magazine agreed to an exclusive story on Reebok's big plans for the decathletic duo. Sound familiar?

This go-around in Beijing, Nike was among the sponsors that saw its swooshy hopes suddenly sideswiped. Following Reebok's lead, Nike stood by Chinese track and field sensation Liu Xiang. From today's WSJ China Journal blog:

"In terms of advertisements, Nike was quick to respond with full page ads in domestic papers. Here’s the Chinese version: translated from a version of the ad running in today’s English-language China Daily:

Love Competition
Love risking your pride
Love winning it back
Love giving it everything you’ve got
Love the glory
Love the pain
Love sport even when it breaks your heart"

New York Magazine wound up writing the Reebok decathalon piece, folding into the story line the abrupt change in strategy. Dan O'Brien went on to win Olympic decathalon four years later.

Dem Past Mistakes

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To engage or not to engage...that is the question. For as long as I can remember, good crisis managers stressed avoiding knee-jerk reactions to unpleasant characterizations in the media of your company or person.

Crisis pros advised: "Why draw attention to something that will disappear with the next news cycle?" "You'll only make matters worse." "Time heels." "The problem will eventually go away."

Standard procedure consisted of keeping an eye on a negative story's germination and only take action if the harsh spotlight became too unbearable for one's key constituents, e.g., employees, shareholders, regulators, consumers... Even today, that anachronistic approach remains largely intact, in spite of the disappearance of daily news cycles and an empowered consumer who can spark a viral following with but 140 characters from his or her keyboard.

The New York Times "Week in Review" yesterday took a look at the new realities in crisis management, as percolating in the political realm. Paul Vitello's piece "Ease that Smea..." acknowledged the digitally induced wake-up call to reputation managers: Don't wait. Strike back right away.

For a long time there was a debate in the world of political professionals about when, and how much, to respond to the other side’s brickbats.

But the very notion of viral marketing, a phrase that describes the exponential multiplication of e-mailed campaign messages sent to one network of people who send it on to another reflects the answer that has emerged from that debate: Never wait. Everything is moving at warp speed.

Vitello cites Univ. of South Carolina visiting journalism professor Sid Bedingfield, a former CNN domestic news chief:

"The viral marketing we are seeing is simply fascinating." The speed with which the Obama campaign can respond to allegations has been quite impressive, for example."

The writers notes that: "Everything is moving at warp speed," while Bedingfield offers: "The lesson of the last 20 years is to respond immediately and aggressively, and across a broad front.”

So when does it make sense to pause before pouncing on a rumor or nasty innuendo? Apparently never in politics:

"The unending news cycle, the explosion of the blogosphere and the freelance work of independent groups like the Swift Boat veterans of 2004, whose campaign severely undercut John Kerry’s bid for president, has made every campaign entourage a kind of road crew cum paramedic team."

“When the Swift Boat ads hit us, it was obviously a serious matter, aimed straight at John’s character,” said Tad Devine, Mr. Kerry’s campaign manager. “We had a difficult decision to make.” The question at the time was, do we spend money in August to fight this thing, or do we hold onto it until October, when people really make up their minds?”

We can pretty much guess which route Mr. Kerry and company ultimately chose.

Thinning Press Cred

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If you thought Ari Fleischer and Dana Perino were/are liars and apologists for this failed and deceitful administration, get ready to deal with Brooke Buchanan (pictured at left).

The McCain mouthpiece (and former Bush Cheney comms. director in Nevada) already is in Bush-style deception mode, if her quip to an AP reporter seeking comment on the libelous new piece of fiction that Senator McCain has tacitly endorsed is any indication:

An Associated Press reporter tried to ask McCain for a comment Friday in Aspen as journalists were being escorted from a brief photo opportunity. McCain smiled and said, 'gotta keep your sense of humor.' Campaign spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said McCain did not hear the question, and the campaign had no comment.

To truly get a sense of her style, take a look at this video of her trying to command and control her way through a local TV interview...on a Fox station, no less.

Senator McCain's refusal to denounce this racist book whose author we have learned is one of those 9/11 conspiracy nuts, should provide enough of a glimpse into the candidate's flawed character to withhold your vote. His press secretary, a 2003 graduate of UNLV, is another.

"Reasonable Promotion and Publicity''

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So what constitutes reasonable promotion and publicity: a pop on ET, feature in the LA Times, an OK magazine spread, all of the above? That's the question the lawyers for the company that produced "National Lampoon's Pledge This" want answered as they sue Paris Hilton for non-performance...of her PR duties.

No one can accuse the blonde bubblehead of shirking her PR and promotion duties when it came to exploiting her own exploitation by that gray bubblehead John McCain. But I digress.

Back to the lawsuit and Ms. Hilton's contract that obligated her to promote this chihuahua of a film:

The Miami-based concern said it paid Hilton and her company, Paris Hilton Entertainment Inc., $1 million for "Hilton's acting services" and for "reasonable promotion and publicity" for the movie, which was released in 2006 and featured Hilton as the president of an exclusive sorority.

Typically, stars will agree to avail themselves for a certain length of time, e.g., two media days, or a defined number of interviews -- sometimes by medium, e.g., one TV, two print, one radio....

In this case, and incredulously, it appears the movie's producers have claimed Ms. Hilton didn't generate sufficient buzz, and therefore is in breach of contract. Good luck. Maybe they should hire Elle Woods to argue the case.

PR-Less Pitches

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Robert Scoble has a worthwhile discussion on his blog. It sums up how he likes to be pitched story ideas. Hint. It's more geek-to-geek than PR to journo, with a little crowd-sourcing thrown in for validation. It's also "PR-less":

This is the way I love to learn about a company.
No, not from a PR firm.
No, not from a CEO (or anyone else from the company) calling me up or writing me email.
No, not on some junket.
No, not on stage at Techcrunch 50 or Demo or Under the Radar or some other conference.
No, not by reading Mashable.
No, not on Twitter. Or FriendFeed. Or Facebook. Or MySpace. (I really hate direct messages, by the way).
No, not in an advertisement.

The Scobleizer prefers some beta-tester (developer) to give him a sneak peek, then he asks the Twitter and Friendfeed crowds what they think:

"Go slowly. Built PR by building a great service and turn your users into your PR agents. Oh, yeah, and blog and podcast about it to get to this point (but look at how they built a community, they didn’t get all “pushy” about what they were doing — they just were informative and inclusive)."

On Monday, The New York Times's David Carr referenced colleague Brian Stelter's Tweet that resulted in a front page story in the paper. In Carr's words:

"On Saturday, Mr. Stelter’s wonderful article in The New York Times on how people were working around the blackout on the Olympic ceremony began as a post on Twitter seeking consumer experiences, then jumped onto his blog, TV Decoder, caught the attention of editors who wanted it expanded for the newspaper and ended up on Page One, jammed with insight and with plenty of examples from real human experience."

Are journalists discovering that PR people are expendable? Will the crowd ultimately displace the PR pro as the trusted primary (or even secondary) source for story ideas? What, if any, industries will be immune from this trend?

Call Any Vegetable

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Do you like this blog? If so, take a second and cast a vote here. If you find it totally annoying, please disregard.

(<-----Frank Zappa as Uncle Sam)

Russia's Olympic Surprise

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With the world media fully invested in Beijing (e.g., "...the press workroom is the largest in Olympic history with 971 broadband-equipped workstations, 680 high-speed network connections and an additional 206 for photographers..."), the Russians gambled that the court of public opinion would be sufficiently sidetracked to permit a brazen attack on Georgia, its pro-Western, NATO-allied former republic.

He may be right. How could a Russian assault on a sovereign nation possibly compete for media consumers' attention against the Olympics' opening ceremonies?

In addition to the PR-driven strategy to attack when the world was not looking, the Soviet (I mean Russian) propagandists widely availed themselves to the media to hammer (and sickle) home the notion that the Georgians are the true aggressors. The despotic former KGB'er Putin took a page from Dick Cheney's Iraqi playbook to propagate on state-controlled "Russia Today" that Georgia is Goliath and Russia is David:

"I'm amazed by their skills to see black as white, to portray aggressors as victims, and blame the real victims for the consequences of the conflict. As we all know, Sadam Hussein was hanged for burning down several Shi'ite villages, but now the situation is different. The Georgian leaders, who in a matter of hours, wiped out South Ossetian villages, who ran over children and the elderly with tanks, who burned civilians alive, now those people have to be protected"

Reuters Moscow bureau reports that each side in recent days has retained outside PR representation to help tell its side of the story:

"Both sides are employing Brussels-based public relations specialists who arranged a succession of conference calls for the international media in recent days, with senior government figures striving to put their side of the story across first."

Yet Georgia's PR guns are no match for Russia's.

Across Russian television channels, big headlines have appeared decrying a "genocide" in South Ossetia, with images of wailing women, bombed buildings and frightened children edited together in quick succession.

In Georgia, only one television channel was operating at the start of the conflict and all .ru Russian Internet sites were briefly blocked, though they were available by Sunday evening.

Having succeeded in portraying the Georgians as the genocidal aggressors, we learn today of Mr. Putin's true intentions: regime change in Georgia. This morning the Russians bombed targets in Georgia's capital of Tblisi. Where's Charlie Wilson when we need him? As for Putin, why let a few facts get in the way? They certainly didn't for this Administration.

News Hole Partisans

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Presidential politics was on the menu at Michael's (alongside the $34 cobb salad) during a recent gathering of our men's lunch group of PRs, journos and one special guest, the head of a magazine publishing company.

The day's topic explored the variables that might still make a measurable impact on the candidates' respective fates. It included the choice of vice president, and questions of age, race, and public finance.

One factor that surfaced, which I believe has the greatest potential to influence the election, involves those well-funded (and unrestricted) third-party groups, which advocate/propagate for one candidate or the other. This phenomenon led to the adoption the term "swift-boat" as a verb.

Taking this theme to the extreme, Salon today reported on one such group called Vets for Freedom, which somehow secured the U.S. military's support (and your tax dollars) to advance Senator McCain's Presidential prospects. The mechanism involves a "journalist"-embedding scheme in Iraq, with one exception: the journalists are members of this group, which has:

"a remarkable number of ties -- some previously unreported -- to Republicans generally and John McCain's campaign specifically. And it has run attack ads against Barack Obama."

In his piece titled "Embedded Reporters or Republican Activists?", Salon's Alex Koppelman writes:

"But what about sending political activists and GOP operatives to Iraq in the guise of journalists, with the cooperation of the U.S. military and on the taxpayers' dime, so that the activists can come home and proselytize for the Republican presidential candidate's position on the war?"

After seven years of this Administration's deceptive and PR industry-damaging practices -- think Armstrong Williams, tainted military expert-spokespersons, official obfuscation, Jeff Gannon, Iraqi media pay-for-play, and too many others to recall -- we've grown almost impervious to these repugnant Republican PR tactics.

Salon rightfully observes that this latest "campaign" to influence the court of public opinion -- and ideally the election -- appears to break new, and dangerous ground. What's sobering is that it may just work.

Battle of the Social Nets

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Lisa and Julia, you gotta appreciate Keith O'Brien. Here we are in the slowest (and hottest) month of the year, and this former tech reporter now editor-in-chief of our industry's leading weekly conceives this idea for a PR Blog-Off.

"As part of its 10th anniversary celebration, PRWeek is honoring one of the most important technological advancements in content distribution of the past 10 years: the blog."

But instead of just listing a bunch of blogs and asking people to rank them, this clever editor (and friend) took a page from the NCAA Final Four to pit 32 bloggers against one another. It included the requisite grid but lacked the betting pool. You know, those boxes for which you pay $5 to insert your initials.

What's especially astute about the whole affair, at least from Haymarket's perspective, is summed up in the rules:

"Bloggers have agreed to participate in the tournament, and were allowed to promote their participation on their blogs and elsewhere."

And sure enough, most have. In essence, PR Week created a dynamic where some of the more authoritative blogs have taken to their social networks to garner votes and by so doing, draw attention (and links) to...PR Week. How smart is that?

I suppose if I have any chance of prevailing over a most worthwhile opponent in Lois Paul, I too need to mobilize my Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Friendfeed friends and followers. Well, it is August, so what else is doing? As Keith says: "...we hope all enjoy the spirit of the tournament - and have a little fun with it."

Blogs Beget Broadcast

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Years ago, when a story popped on a network morning show or evening newscast, invariably it had its origin in some daily newspaper somewhere. Any quick Factiva or Lexis-Nexis search could confirm that.

And we all know those longer-form psycho segments on ABC's "20/20" or CBS's "48 Hours," featuring some Lothario with many wives, some murdered, almost all initially appeared in print.

Yesterday, the former standard bearer of the digital age advised "publicity-starved tech companies" to: forget TechCrunch and GigaOm. Try instead placing your client on a broadcast TV morning show to gain some buzz.

The Industry Standard, now resurrected in bits and bytes only, seemed to suddenly discover the power of the network morning shows -- in this case, Diane Sawyer's "Good Morning America." In a post titled "Want publicity? Forget TechCrunch and get on Good Morning America," Jordon Golson observes that a pop on "GMA" or "Today" can:

"put a product in front of millions of viewers who might not normally find it on the Web."

Could the PR pendulum be swinging back to the mainstream media? Many will say that the pendulum never truly abandoned the MSM (though admittedly many viewers and readers have). In fact, those morning shows remain the holy grail even for the holiest of the digitally savvy agencies' media specialists.

Goldson concluded by re-correlating the age-old axiom that print begets broadcast. He observed that the big influencer blogs today grab the attention of broadcast morning show bookers:

"...mainstream attention and appeal is needed to help a site truly thrive (for a site missing both of those, see: FriendFeed). That being said, getting noticed by a high-profile tech site is probably the first step on the way to landing a spot on the 'Today Show.'"

So are newspapers a shadow of the broadcast TV catalysts they once were? I wonder.

A More Social SEC?

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Why shouldn't a publicly traded company be allowed to use its blog to break material news? That was the question Sun Microsystems CEO (and blogger) Jonathan Schwartz posed to the SEC nearly two years ago, a subject on which this blogger posted at the time.

Last Wednesday, the SEC finally issued its initial ruling that offered:

"...new guidance to public companies about how to comply with the securities laws while developing their Web sites to serve as an effective means for disseminating important information to investors."

In other words, Jonathan Schwartz may soon be allowed to use his online pulpit to disseminate material news (though he may want to wait given the doings at his company of late). According to SEC chairman Christopher Cox (pictured):

"The guidance issued today clarifies the rules of the road so investors can gain — quickly and in a cost-effective manner — the benefits of Internet disclosure of the latest information on the companies they own or are considering buying."

Here's a video clip from Cox on the ruling. Separately, the ubiquitous Brian Solis offered his insightful take in a post for Tech Crunch:

"Executives and marketing professionals must now weigh whether the company Web site or blog are indeed a recognized channel of distribution and more importantly, whether these online properties meet public disclosure requirements under the new rules Regulation FD."

He also used his star turn to forcefully advocate for the social media news release as the likely beneficiary of the SEC's actions:

"Not only do SMRs socialize content and link conversations across the Social Web, they also help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need."

As Brian dutifully noted, it will take time for the industry' rank and file to migrate away from the one-dimensional, top-down world of the news release. Yet, he was right to observe that with Wednesday's ruling, Mr. Cox and company have finally cracked open the door for what may eventually be a richer and more authentic exchange between companies and their key constituents.

Finally, the ruling is not without its reasonable detractors, including Business Wire, which awaits the SEC's interpretive guidance on whether posting to a public company's blog or website complies with the spirit of full non-selective disclosure. Curiously, it issued a release and posted on its blog:

"...we continue to maintain that simply posting material news on a corporate web site or using blogs does not meet the spirit and intent of Regulation FD because it is neither simultaneous, nor full and fair. It is Business Wire’s belief that this is not what the SEC intended."

We haven't heard the end of this.

Related links here:

• PR Communications
• The MoPR Blog
• New Web 2.0 Blog
• Neville Hobson
• Social Media Group
  

Flack Helps Pack Crack Hacks

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"Don't take the bait."

This was the advice former Bush flack Ari Fleischer gave to a Green Bay Packers gathering yesterday on how to deal with journalism's offensive line. "They [the media] are also going to stir the pot." (Apparently not enough.)

But, Ari, how should one behave when he's caught lying?

And what should you do when your bosses encourage you to deceive the media, and by extension, the American public?

Also, Ari, what happens when your lies lead to thousands of American deaths and tens of thousands of permanently maimed servicemen and women?

And is there any advice you can offer someone who has remained unrepentant in spite of the horrific damage his or her lies may have caused?

Finally, now that you're in private practice and in an area where your ethical shortcomings won't likely lead to our nation's downfall, why suddenly is your own aggrandizement above that of your client's?

Do you think the Green Bay Packer organization derives any benefit from a piece about you in USA Today?