Libelous Liddy

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At the recent Time Warner Politics 2008 Summit here in New York City, it seemed like every panel eventually touched upon media bias and the responsibility mainstream news organizations have to ensure objectivity.

At one point, Vanity Fair's progressively minded editor Graydon Carter proclaimed that The New York Times is the greatest newspaper today and we'd be lost without the balance that The Times seeks in its reporting (or something to that effect).

I was tempted to ask a question that's been gnawing at me since the beginning of the election cycle. What responsibility does the business side of broadcasting have in validating the veracity of the political advertising it accepts? Maybe I'm being naive, but shouldn't television's "standards and practices" departments reject a TV spot when it clearly crosses into fiction territory?

Take for example this latest spot from Senator Dole of North Carolina (pictured). In it, she calls her Democratic opponent "Godless" and even dubs the sound bite "there is no God" over her adversary's photo as if it was said. North Carolina's local TV stations accepted Senator Dole's dispicable and malicious spot...in spite of the fact they her opponent is a Sunday school teacher and serves as an elder in her church.

Sure, I know TV stations are in desperate straits nowadays and need to suck in as much ad revenue as possible before the political windfall ends. But where are the standards here? Where is their integrity? What is their responsibility to their viewers?

In business, when a company has been maligned by a competitor's ad campaign, it can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. In politics, and especially during a recession, there is apparently little recourse. Do Americans have only the free media on which to rely to separate fact from fiction?

But you know something? Maybe there is a God. The Internet will eventually disintermediate these spineless local TV news operations.

Embargo This

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Nowhere is the demand for exclusives stronger than among the handful of media that control the fates of the latest and greatest personal tech products. From Pogue and Mossberg to Gizmodo, CrunchGear, Engadget, Mashable, and of course, the elephant in the early adopter room, TechCrunch.

All invariably ask to be the first to break the new gadget news, but typically the product's PR team will offer advance test drives to a few with the hope of catalyzing subsequent coverage. The only caveat is that they agree to embargo their reviews until a set date and time.

I therefore found of interest the following tweet posted this evening by Tech Crunch's Michael Arrington:

We've notified a few PR agencies that we won't work under press embargoes any longer - just the ones that have proven to be unreliable. 8 minutes ago from web

This post has shades of Chris Anderson's public blackballing of certain PR persons/agencies for their transgressions in dealing with Wired. At least, Mr. Arrington didn't publicly "out" those who rubbed his site's news noses the wrong way.

Then again, maybe he should have. What do you think?

Shades of Tawana

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Have you been following this desperate and bizarre story? It centers around a twisted 20-year-old Texan who went to Pennsylvania to throw her support behind the McCain campaign, and instead may have thrown the campaign.

Apparently Joe the Plumber's distant cousin concocted a story in which she was mugged and mutilated by a "6'4" black man" for supporting McCain. She claimed the mugger carved a letter "B" (for Barack) in her cheek and released a photo to prove it.

The ethically challenged McCain communications camp apparently cried eureka! This was just the ruse they needed to emerge from the political pits. Their strategy: feed Drudge the exclusive, ask both McCain and Palin to call the woman to lend support, then put the PR team to work in Pennsylvania. Greg Sargent reports for TPM:

"John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

The McCain spokesperson's claim is significant because:

"...it reveals a McCain official pushing a version of the story that was far more explosive than the available or confirmed facts permitted at the time."

TPM continued:

"A source familiar with what happened yesterday confirmed that the unnamed spokesperson was communications director Peter Feldman. Feldman was also quoted yesterday making virtually identical assertions on the Web site of another local TV station, WPXI."

This is the same Peter Feldman who recently accused New York Gov. Patterson of playing the race card:

In comments to The New York Daily News, Peter Feldman, a spokesman for Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, called Mr. Paterson’s remarks “disappointing.” He said that Mr. Paterson was “playing the race card” by suggesting that Ms. Palin’s comments about Mr. Obama’s career as a community organizer were a kind of coded racial appeal. “This is a tactic that the Obama campaign has used before, and which McCain campaign manager Rick Davis correctly called ‘divisive, shameful, and wrong,’” Mr. Feldman told The News.

Shame on Mr. Feldman for his lies and hypocrisy. What's sad is that there are people who still believe Tawana Brawley was telling the truth, which tells me that many likely give credence to this young woman - something I'm sure the Republicans won't disavow.

Ron, Andy, Henry and Will

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As we head into the weekend, ask yourself this. With whom would you really rather align yourself come November 4: Joe the Plumber or Ron Howard? I mean, they're both bald.

View this clip from Will Ferrell's "Funny or Die" site and decide. As for Ferrell...if you were glued to the (yawn) Phillies-Devil Rays game last night, you probably missed this must-see video.

PR Critical Issues Forum

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The Yale Club in New York City was buzzing today with a packed room of buzz agencies, or rather, members of the PR agency trade association The Council of PR Firms.

Scoping the table tent cards, most of the big marquee firms were on hand including Ketchum, Weber Shandwick, APCO, Fleishman Hillard, Porter Novelli, Burson-Marsteller, Wagoner Edstrom, Hill and Knowlton, as well as other industry comers including Peppercom, Coyne PR, The Horn Group, Text 100, Cooper Katz and too many more to recount here.

Council executive director Kathy Cripps and chairman Ray Kotcher of Ketchum have made the "Critical Issues Forum" an annual and always thought-provoking event. Today opened with a video that asked the simple question: “What is the Most Dangerous Idea in Public Relations Today?”

It went on from there. Ketchum prexy Rob Flaherty kicked things off by introducing John Hancock CEO Dave D’Alessandro who proudly shared his roots in PR (agency and corporate). He then offered a very astute assessment of the paradigm shift in media consumption habits and the affect it’s having on the PR biz:

“Traditional media are feeders, stringers. [They] no longer lead the pack. [They] are no longer the end game… there’s a good case to be made that social media sites and YouTube are today the dominant media…”

D’Alessandro believed that the opportunities for the industry are vast, e.g., “this territory is completely up for grabs.” The floor as soon opened to questions. Ketchum CEO Kotcher and B-M prexy Pat Ford took first dibs on questions with Ford asking how D’Alessandro would go about rebuilding reputations in the financial services sector.

After calling the executives of these firms "arrogant" and "unethical" for putting their respective enterprises at such risk (worthy of "jail time"), D’Alessandro advised Wall Street's surviving firms to work hard to "assure the public that their money is no longer at risk."

The event then moved on to an eclectic panel that featured Weber Shandwick CEO Harris Diamond, Siemens corp. affairs and marketing chief Jack Bergen, head of corp. comms. for Macy’s Jim Sluzewski, and former GM communications chief and now consultant to F-H John Onodo. The effusive president of Babson College Len Schlesinger moderated.

Schlesinger threw a series of questions to the panel, the net take-way of which had Harris Diamond seeing the industry as a glass half-full with buoyant prospects ahead:

"…the proliferation of all these new media platforms is a wonderful place to be… this is a great time for PR…"

Onodo, on the other hand, saw it as half empty with limited prospects (absent significant changed behaviors):

"…if I don't see a radical readjustment, you might still be large, but largely irrelevant... The PR industry could be gone in a minute. GM sat in this position ten years ago, and now look at them."

John Hancock CEO Dave D’Alessandro seemed to share Diamond’s positive outlook by observing:

"The world has presented the PR industry a grand piano with a full scale of keys, and a fantastic opportunity to play."

Finally, the Wall Street Journal’s Suzanne Vranica put Kodak’s chief marketing officer Jeff Hayzlett on the hot seat, but the folksy Hayzlett (who’s originally from South Dakota) quickly disarmed Vranica’s staccato probes. Some of his notable quotables included:

• On cutting back: "I don't need three PR agency staffers accompanying me to a Fox TV interview."
• On selecting agencies: "What is your promise to me? What will you deliver?"
• On PR metrics: "Just give me two tablets with five bullets on each."
• On the agency’s promise: "Agencies spend too much time saying what they've been doing, not what they're going to get done."
• On the economy: "To quote my new friend Jim Cramer, this is like waking up the morning after a frat party."
• Biggest “bonehead” viral video: "The Extended Stay Hotels viral campaign that shows an attractive woman licking things in a hotel room to show how clean the room is."
• On marketing through social media:
  -- "Just because the kid is good at online, does not make him a good marketer."
  -- "You may be good at getting noticed, but you may not have any practical knowledge about marketing. "
  -- "The day my CEO gets an avatar is the day I go on Second Life."
  -- "I'll twitter or yammer every five seconds if it gets me more sales."
  
  

A Web 2.0 Social Media Meme

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Chris Brogan may regret turning over his online real estate to guest blogger Dennis Howlett, a fellow Social Media Today contributor, who used the opportunity to rant on most things Web 2.0.

His post "Web 2.0- Was it Ever Alive?" calls into question the lofty prognostications on the value that "social media" (a term Howlett abhors) has for the enterprise.

"At best, the benefits I’ve seen brought about by web 2.0 adoption are marginal. The notion that ground up business adoption would sweep the earth hasn’t happened. And it won’t."

These caustic meme struck a disresonant chord with Tim O'Reilly, whose O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in 2004 is often credited for codifying the term. It prompted a prompt O'Reillian retort:

"Frankly, Dennis, this post demonstrates a shocking ignorance of what Web 2.0 is really all about. It’s the move to the internet as platform, and the rise of applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. Social media is a tiny part of that.

And you’re kidding yourself if you think that hasn’t affected business, or delivered tangible ROI. The companies that have learned how to leverage networks are outperforming."

Howlett cites the receipt of anachronistic press releases as just one indication that things have not changed so much:

"After three years of listening to definitions of the term I can guarantee that 99% of the press releases I see are exactly the same as those I would have received 5, 10 or even 20 years ago. They’re still dopey, riddled with double speak and wrung dry of useful content. So where’s the value in all this socmed stuff? Show me how customer service has radically improved as a result of applying web 2.0/social media services?"

As if on cue, Guy Kawasaki this morning tweets a link to "the mother of social media examples" in business courtesy of Peter Kim via Ray Schiel’s Blog on Marketing a Business Through Social Media.

As O'Reilly concludes:

"Yes, businesses want to know what’s in it for them. But that starts with understanding what matters. The network as platform (Web 2.0) does matter. Any particular application may fail, but the trend lines are pretty darn clear. Figuring out the networked enterprise is critical."

A most worthwhile exchange (and decent list of case studies).

The Juiced Up News Release

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This week one of my clients issued a news release on one of the big paid wire services. The Google News Alert showed immediate and impressive results: Dow Jones Marketwatch, Yahoo Finance, and dozens of others including, for whatever reason, Earth Times.

Yet, when searching for the story on the Marketwatch site, nothing popped. Huh? Where's the "pick-up?"

No biggie. Most agencies will include the link to the "hit" in their client wrap-up reports. But it's a fallacy. The presence of my client's unedited release on Yahoo Finance is a result of feed agreements that the paid wires have with the portal and dozens of others. This includes countless local broadcast TV stations' companion websites.

So when PR Newswire called me several weeks ago to talk about a new study that "demonstrated" its greater prowess for generating media "pick-up," my first question was whether that pick-up included the negotiated usage agreements it (and the other paid wires) have made with scores of sites to "use" their nationally disseminated releases. PRN prexy Dave Armon assured me it didn't.

"Our entire team is gratified that an impartial review of our industry has verified that there is a significant difference in newswire services," said Dave Armon, president of PR Newswire.

Of course, the subject of news release efficacy has weighed heavy on PR pros' palates for some time now. We probably could thank Todd Defren of Shift who first recognized that the news release must adapt for it to be effective in an age when digitally driven, direct-to-consumer communications has taken hold. The social media news release (SMNR) was thus born as a means to enhance a client's digital footprint (and Google juice).

Nowadays, we have limited expectations of the news release serving as the catalyst for producing real news coverage, unless of course the news reports actual news.

Earlier this year, Defren compared the SMNR offerings of several of the major paid wires, which admittedly have evolved since his post. Also around that time, the inimitable and ubiquitous Brian Solis added his take. More recently, Daniel Durazo published his assessment of the free press release distribution services in his "Guide to Cheapskate PR."

When going the free route, don't expect the wide negotiated "pick-up" one gets with the premium services. But then again, try finding those stories when searching the sites on which they allegedly popped.

Live from NY: It's Sarah Palin

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Say it ain't so, Lorne Michaels. You invented and then re-invented television's most valuable piece of youth-oriented programming, and I hear you're poised to betray those who've made it so.

We all know how Tina Fey's artful, yet scary take on one vice presidential candidate has opened America's eyes to the real Sarah Palin, even more so than any of the interviews her handlers have permitted.

And by so doing, the 34th season of SNL has struck such a resonant chord with its link-happy, socially networked audience that the show today rightfully revels in its game-changing role in the upcoming elections. Moreover, SNL's success in the audience and advertising-challenged broadcast medium stands in contrast to cable TV's reigning youth-influencer kings: Stewart and Colbert.

Early word this morning has it that Mr. Michaels has agreed to turn over his most vaunted stage to Ms. Palin, and thus create an opportunity for her campaign to re-humanize her sagging public persona. Her expected appearance this weekend will no doubt boost buzz and show ratings, in spite of the potential political consequences that will alienate SNL's legions of loyal fans.

Who can blame Mr. Michaels for exploiting the campaign for a pop in the ratings? (Hey, a celebrity is a celebrity. Right?) The network brass no doubt will be pleased. And didn't Letterman, an Obama supporter, yuk it up this week with Sen. McNasty for the very same reason? Obama on Leno should as well.

All I can say is that I hope SNL recognizes the influence it yields and stays true to its audience by sticking it to Palin. (I'm sure the humor will go over her head.) I was relieved to see that Letterman didn't give McCain a free ride. If there's one saving grace, it's the L in SNL. No command and control for Ms. Palin here.

Twitter and Media's Atomization

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We all know about mining the online conversation and the value it has for individuals, institutions and enterprises trying to get a read on their online reputations.

This increasingly vital PR function also provides an early-warning system for potential PR peccadilloes, as well as an opportunity to engage and catalyze brand evangelists.

Yet, I sit here mesmerized by a special Twitter feed on the elections...contemplating its barometric possibilities and what it portends for the PR pro. Is this what TIME's Richard Stengel had in mind when he spoke earlier this week of "the further atomization of the media."

Scanning the revelations that scroll by in these 140-character posts, some with TinyURL links, one begins to grasp just how much the mainstream media is missing in its daily (recycled) news reporting. This goes well beyond the already granular blogosphere.

Eventually, I believe we will see little that distinguishes mainstream and citizen media. Add all these micro-blogging Twitterers to the mix, and the democratization of the media ecosystem will be complete... or at least until the next media-driven technology captures the public's imagination (e.g., RSS-enabled mobile application that grabs and feeds video content).

Politico's Jim VandeHei touched on it when he said that in a "blizzard of media, brands are more important....a ton of different brands matter..."

Where does the lone @Twitterer fit in the branded media hierarchy? And how can he build his media brand to attract (and monetize?) more than just hundreds of followers? Finally, what does it mean for the PR pro who's still compensated for building a client's presence in the "ever-fragmenting" and expanding media universe? Ahhh, just consider the scalability of it all....

Wall Street and Kitchen Sinks

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As the stock market plunges to its biggest one day loss since 1987, an enterprising producer at CBS "Early Show" crowd-sourced this query on Profnet:

[Limited to New York] We are doing a high-tech kitchen makeover in New York City for the CBS Early Show. I need someone who will let me re-do their kitchen with high-tech appliances, including an oven and refrigerator. Must be in New York and must own their own home so that we can install appliances. Must also be willing to be on camera to unveil kitchen. Contact: Name/Contact info withheld (to protect the innocent)

Do ya think she'll find any takers?

Pres. Obama's Policy Base

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Of the several sessions I attended at the Time Warmer Summit: Politics 2008, it was the last one, "The Candidate and the Media: Creating the Brand, Maintaining the Brand, Preserving the Brand" that held the most resonance for the PR/marketing set.

It featured Mark McKinnon, vice chairman, Public Strategies, former strategist, George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, Joe Trippi, Democratic Strategist, Edwards 2008, Ian V. Rowe, SVP, Strategic Partnerships & Public Affairs, MTV: Music Television, Robert A. George, editorial page writer, New York Post;, and Andrew Rasiej, founder, Personal Democracy Forum. Fast Company's Ellen McGirt moderated.

There was a generous discussion of what's more important in a campaign: organization or message? Obviously, Obama has stayed on message while his campaign built an impressive, if not unprecedented grassroots organization (partly because of the resonance of his message.) McCain started off with a strong compelling message, but proceeded to completely muddle his "brand" identity by pandering to divergent Republican interests.

As far as organization, all agreed that the McCain campaign was/is nowhere nearly as ubiquitous as Obama's. Still, it was comments like these that really got me thinking:

Joe Trippi: "The Dean campaign [for which he served as campaign manager] was like the Wright Brothers [in terms of digital sophistication]. In contrast, the Obama has bypassed the Mercury program. They're at Apollo 11 and will land in the White House."

Andrew Rasiej: "Obama will be the first person to go into office with a 10 million-person email list [and the ability to instantly garner support for his policies]."

Joe Trippi: "The next campaign is going to make Obama [his digital acumen] look ridiculous."

Rasiej's quote was especially provocative. We've certainly seen how companies and organizations have used digital and social media to create dialogue with (and empowerment of) their constituents. What if the executive office of the United States of America was able to advance its policies with similar tactics applied to the wired masses of qualified supporters?

Some will argue that this is exactly what Bush-Cheney-Rove insidiously perpetrated on the American public, i.e., bypassing the media filter to deliver controlled direct-to-consumer messaging. But I would say that the prospects of a direct line of communications between an Obama presidency and the American public takes a much different, and ostensibly more positive turn...so long as the channel remains two-way.

While the Bushies used top-down programmed surrogates, fabricated news, and sympatico media to advance their policies, President Obama, it seems, is poised to create a transparent exchange of information with those who elected him (and presumably others). As a result, the dynamics for securing public support for a policy will never be the same.

Media+Politics@Columbus Circle

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What a great idea. Hand it to the folks at Time-Warner (and to Digital Hollywood's Victor Harwood) for pulling off this impressive gabfest with many of today's most prominent political pundits.

As company CEO Jeff Bewkes noted in his welcoming remarks to the Time Warner Summit: Politics 2008, what better place and time than in The Time Warner Center's Columbus Room on Columbus Circle on Columbus Day.

The speakers included a veritable who's who at the intersection of politics and journalism. Details here, but suffice to say, it was cool to hear their insights without the manacles imposed by some of their news organizations.

Also, it was great seeing so many familiar faces in the overflow crowd including Fenton Communications' namesake David Fenton, Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici, BusinessWeek's Jon Fine, BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis, The Times's Saul Hansell, HBO's Richard Plepler, Time-Warner's Ed Adler, Beet.TV's Andy Plesser, Huff Post's Rachel Sklar and the MPA's Howard Polskin, among others. After cavorting for while, I did manage to tweet several of the sessions. Here are some highlights. More tomorrow.

The Media Landscape:

CNN's Candy Crowley: "What's hard. The line is so blurred between commentary, analysis and reporting...there's something very different between what I do and what let's say Roland Martin does."

On access to the candidates:

Burson-Marsteller's Mark Penn: "I think Hillary was pretty well accessible...she held a lot of off-the-record meetings...I think we were out there more often than opponents..."

TIME's Mark Halperin: "You have reporters who've covered McCain for months who've never met him."

On success in breaking ties to the Bush years:

The New Yorker and CNN's Jeffrey Toobin: "It's not just Bush...think about Obama's successful campaign...he has captured something...I remember seeing a photo of Senator Obama with the headline: 'Cool the Fuck Out. I Got This.'"

Was Sarah Palin a mistake?

Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall: "Palin was a mistake; emblematic of McCain's shoot from the hip, histrionic approach...within 2-3 days of her selection, there was speculation that she may be pulled from the ticket..."

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan: "Palin's performance over last 5-6 weeks... it's been very up and down...great acceptance speech...disastrous interviews."

Jeff Toobin: "If he wins, no, if he loses, yes."

On McCain's prospects for overcoming his deficit in the polls:

Jeff Toobin: "...the macro forces are so much aligned against mccain - because of republican legacy..."

Peggy Noonan: "Obama seems older, steadier...since the economic crisis began..."

CBS-TV's Jeff Greenfield: "...this campaign...bugs bunny defeats daffy duck. bugs is cool, daffy is always in a state; maybe not daffy, maybe more like yosemite sam..."

The National Review's Byron York: "McCain's drama is in extreme contrast to how Obama behaves..."

Josh Marshall: "McCain's dug a hole; her has lurched in so many different directions....that any campaign proclamation wouldn't help"

But Jeff Toobin summed it up by saying that what the candidates say right now means nothing, ..."unless there is an event - eg, another vice presidential choice, nothing matters..."

Other coverage from day one of the Summit can be found here:

• Mixed Media
• FishBowl NY
• UStream
• HuffPost Eat the Press
• Alana Taylor
• HuffPost's Sam Stein
  

*Pictured (l. to r.): Frank Rich, Byron York, Jeffrey Toobin, Jeff Greenfield, Josh Marshall, Peggy Noonan

PRtroopers

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We awake today to news of a 21-page novel published last night by the McCain campaign to pre-empt what's expected to be a negative report on Mr. and Mrs. Palin's efforts to abuse the Alaskan governor's office.

In case you've been out of the country, a bi-partisan legislative task force has been looking into charges of political cronyism by the first family of Alaska. That report will be issued today despite the attempts by legions of highly paid Republican lawyers to quash it.

Instead of waiting for the bombshell to hit and without knowing what the report will even say, Karl Rove's disciples in Bush/McCain-land have created their own version of these sordid events - events that elucidate on Mrs. Palin's character and prospective governing style should the clueless hockey mom ascend to national office.

Personally, I wonder what her high school-educated secessionist oil worker husband was even doing meddling in state affairs. But then again, isn't this the governor who doled out high-paying state jobs for all her high school friends? (Shades of Brownie.)

As for the obfuscators PRopping up McCain, you have to hand it to them. They've created their own history rather than be forced to play catch up once the truth emerges today. They're insidiously effective because they anticipate and pro-actively pre-empt the landmines that lie ahead. These are the same fellows, btw, who produced contradictory TV spots prior to the bailout vote - one for each outcome.

Murphy's Law

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The success of most media-driven PR events is contingent on several factors:

• The quality and timeliness of the story;
• The appropriateness of the journalists whose attentions you seek, and
  
• The state of the news environment.

The first two variables are relatively manageable. The third is a wild card that has been known to derail even the most mediable of media events.

As I write this, we are immersed in a near impossible news environment, one that has likely hamstrung many of you from doing your business. Take heart. You're not alone.

The week before last, we were charged with securing media attention for a high profile two-day business gathering in New York that happened to fall in the eye of the perfect media storm. Our "competition" for New York's bandwidth-challenged journalists included:

• The $700 billion bailout brouhaha
• The stock market meltdown
  
• The Bushes dropping in to the Big Apple
• Sarah Palin in town for her photo-opped foreign education
• McCain at the Clinton Global Initiative
• Dozens of foreign leaders for the opening session of the United Nations
• That wacko Iranian President proselytizing at the UN
• And, not one, but two NYC news conferences featuring the fabulous Google brothers - Sergey and Larry
  

We nonetheless managed to generate some pretty decent coverage, but also had to explain to the client why some 40 of 100 journalists expected were no shows. (I think they understood.)

It reminded me of another news event we handled for Citibank back in the day. It featured Sir Elton John appearing alongside Citi's CEO in Miami to announce an advertising deal with the bank. For the reveal, a local Citibank teller took the stage to present Sir Elton with his first Citicard, measuring 4 x 5 feet.

That photo and video somehow was picked up by every entertainment show, a generous swath of local TV news and newspapers. We can only wonder what might have happened without that day's formidable competition, which included:

• The Pope's first mass in Cuba
• The capture of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and
• The first revelations about a certain young woman named Monica Lewinsky
  

Yikes. Even the best laid PR plans are subject to outside disruption. Best advice in a tumultuous news environment? Take a deep breath, lay back, and try to refrain from pitching. Normalcy will soon return.

Unfiltered Kool-Aid

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Hasn't the mainstream media learned its lesson? Didn't the unquestioned pronouncements that led to this failed administration give practicing journalists sufficient reason to say enough is enough?

Jay Rosen tweets us to a post on The Atlantic's Daily Dish blog:

jayrosen_nyu Sullivan: Until Palin gives a full press conference, cable news should stop putting her road shows in the rotation. Agree?

Andrew Sullivan's post concludes with this:

What the Palin-McCain campaign wants is all give and no take: an indirect propaganda filter and the outrageous precedent of no press conferences in presidential campaigns. This is an assault on democracy. It is closer to Russian or Georgian democracy than American. If cable news continues to enable this chilling process, they will become complicit.

Enough.

In dealing with the media filter, the last thing a PR person needs to transmit is a sense that he or she can somehow control the editorial tenor or content of a journalist's story. The most we can hope for is fairness and balance by a strong, self-assured media. Also, journalists are known to bristle at the thought of being manipulated (or directed) in any way.

I'll always remember a story from an old industry friend about a client with a dishonest employee who stole the client's water filtration product and proceeded to improperly install it in hundreds of homes, pocketing the fees. The client, fearing a potential lawsuit, felt obligated to get the word out to those affected, but in reality, preferred if the story never appeared.

My friend drafted a news release and sent it to The AP. He then instructed his staff to repeatedly call The AP to "follow-up" to see if the release had arrived and ask when the news organization might run it. The grizzled AP city editor took exception to the pushy and presumptive PR people and told them to take a hike (but not in those words). The story never moved and the crisis never manifested.

While the manipulation of the media by the RNC (Rove Negative Comms) team differs from my friend's AP tale, they both elucidate on the MSM's reaction when confronted with spin. One told the pushy PR people to get lost. The other continues to gulp the unfiltered Kool-Aid. Shame.

Flack Flap

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Apparently the name of this blog caused a little kerfuffle among a few members of the PR Counselor's Academy.

In a string of comments, one Beltway-based "counselor" took umbrage with the idea that PRSA would have the audacity to invite a PR pro who pens a blog with this particular name to moderate a PRSA panel at the National Conference in several weeks time.

"You certainly don't get rid of a bad brand by repeatedly using it even with a disclaimer. I wouldn't tell my clients to do that and certainly advise my PRSA colleagues not to do that either. I am not shy telling my journalist colleagues that I don't want them to use that term."

Actually, this Tuesday yours truly will preside over a PRSA-sponsored teleseminar featuring some of the brightest bulbs in the PR and social media worlds. Here's a link with more details. There's still time to sign up.

Another PR "counselor" from New Jersey picked up on the flap, raising the question of whether the F word is our industry's N word. To add salt to the wound, she added to her blogroll a one-month-old blog, also called The Flack, written by Hillary's failed PR consigliere. It seems that newbie blogger chose the name after applying the same due diligence that Sen. McCain used to hire Gov. Palin.

Here's how his editor at The New Republic explained it to me in an email:

"We have no desire to confuse anyone. Our selection of the name The Flack was a natural one for us for several reasons. The term "flack" is a popular one that has often been used to describe Mr. Wolfson. In addition, we felt the title fit perfectly with the names of our other blogs, "The Stump," "The Vine," "The Spine," and "The Plank."

Truth be told, I'm not sure I would have chosen the name The Flack if I were to start all over again. It is a pejorative, and for some, a deterrent to certain types of clients. But remember, this blog debuted in April 2005 at a time when Gawker was ascendant.

As for the PR Counselor who chose to add to her blogroll the newbie Flack over the original Flack, I would encourage her to read further. There's more to The Flack than just the name.

The Journalist's Tableau

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John Batelle may not agree, but Danny Sullivan certainly will remember: Google once had a competitor in search.

Cambridge, MA-based search engine Northern Light, a client back in the day, happened to produce more relevant results than the fledgling Google (though admittedly not as fast).

We were so confident in the engine's abilities that we prodded our client to mount a Pepsi Challenge on the burgeoning boys from Mountain View. What's more, Northern Light included in its database digitized content that it indexed from traditional publications and journals, which it sold at a small premium.

I loved this client, not only for its ability to ferret out surprisingly relevant nuggets of information, but for its staff of trained library scientists who knew a thing or two about tooling with taxonomies. Periodically, those research librarians would curate the NL database to produce a special section containing the most insightful links about a given topic, e.g., the Olympics, the environment, best millennium sites.

In the last week or so, we could have used these curious curators. Two astute media watchers Jeff Jarvis and David Folkenflik took a deep breath to assess (or rather lament) the quality of the news coverage of the political and economic maelstrom now enveloping the country. Their meme: the tableau on which today's journalists work is simply inadequate to capture and explain these complex and fast-moving events. From Jarvis:

It's not an article, a story, a section, a bureau, a paper, a show. We have to use the new tools we have at hand to create new structures for covering news and informing each other. As I said in the post below, old structures are crumbling and new structures will be built in their place. We need to create that something new now.

What do we call it? I don’t know. The topic table. The beat bliki (ouch). The news brain. We’ll know what to call it when we see it.

From his description, it sounds more like a living, breathing news organism that demands constant curation. From Folkenflik:

"The breakneck pace of developments means a lot of news worth knowing receives the briefest burst of attention before being dropped for something hotter.

Many journalists say they are scrambling just to keep the headlines coming — and are chasing after the explanations, too. For now, the news appears to be outracing both."

Northern Light never fulfilled its great expectations (not as catchy a name as Google, I suppose), but I'm convinced those librarians were prescient in their efforts to aggregate, enlighten and inform.