This weblog attempts to shine a brighter light on the subtle role public relations plays in politics, popular culture, journalism, business/finance, entertainment, technology, social media, consumer marketing and sports.
I recently had conversation with a New York tech entrepreneur about the growing ability of the top venture capital firms to drive media coverage for their portfolio companies.
He not only validated my sense that many tech and business journalists take their cues from prominent VCs, but explained that a company like Andreessen Horowitz directs its partners to reach out to "their friends in the media" when they ink a new deal. "PR is paramount there."
I ran these observations past the founder of one of the more esteemed gadget sites at an event this week in New York. He nonchalantly said that many of the more influential reporters attend the same parties and events as the VCs, which provide a fertile ground for story leads. Nothing unusual here. This is the way it has worked for years in business, politics, entertainment and any number of industries.
Still there's something gnawing at me about this dynamic, and specifically the advantage the better-known VCs have in gaming the startup PR game. It's not just catalyzing and amplifying media coverage of their portfolio companies, but it's the VC firms' execs' appearances as authorities in the same media coverage featuring the companies from which they stand to gain financially.
I don't blame the VC for wanting to do all they can to propel media buzz for their investments. And frankly many VC execs have media klout in their own right through their own social channels. But I do get the heebie jeebies when journalists give the VC a platform to wax subjective about the startup, even if they do disclose the fiduciary relationship.
Could it be that a good reporter can't find an independent expert or academic who can offer up an unbiased view of the startup's technology that's about to receive a moment in the media sun?
2012 SXSW (Photo: AP)
The VC's ability to catalyze a media meme initially caught my eye a week before South by Southwest when TechCrunch founder-turned-venture capitalist Michael Arrington tweeted about a new "prioximity" app in which his firm invested. Robert Scoble picked it up from there, and Highlight became the highlight of this year's SXSW. (Now there's an effective anti-PR strategy for you.)
Union Square Ventures' savvy founder Fred Wilson has used his blog and Twitter feed to tout his firm's portfolio companies. Wouldn't you do the same for your investments?
One can reasonably argue that the portfolios of elite VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Draper Fisher Jurvetson or Union Square Ventures actually merit the unabashed media attention they receive. But where does that leave the myriad other startups who have a meaningful story to tell, but who lack the editorial entry offered by the top VCs and a (shrinking) number of seasoned PR pros to the bandwidth-challenged group of the most influential reporters?
Fred Wilson's Twitter Avatar
This imbalance may get worse as the startup economy kicks into high gear with the passage of the jobs bill and its crowdfunding component.
I don't take issue with VC firms using their "owned" spheres of influence to advance the interests of their interests. It's only when news sites take up their cause as was the case when Lost Remote editor Cory Bergman wrote about Airtime based on its funding pedigree in a piece titled "New social video startup ‘Airtime’ draws big names"
"Beyond the founders, the effort has attracted big-name backers, as well: Founders Fund, Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, SV Angel, Yuri Milner, Ashton Kutcher, will.i.am, Scott Braun, and Michael Arrington. Definitely, a startup to watch."
Or when The New York Times published a lengthy business feature on another Andreessen Horowitz-funded startup Factual, an admittedly ambitious company with a purpose and a neat back story. In it, Mr. Horowitz praised the founder of his firm's investment:
"Gil is pretty far ahead of the rest of us, the one entrepreneur where it takes a few meetings before I really understand everything he is talking about," says Ben Horowitz, a venture capitalist who backed Factual through his firm, Andreessen Horowitz. "Three years ago, he thought Factual was his biggest chance to change the world. Over time, the world has moved his way."
Maybe I'm just being naive. This is the way both early-stage companies and the news stories that inflate them incubate nowadays. The VCs are the new kingmakers, and the PR professional is given relatively short shrift. Most disconcerting was a comment another entrepreneur I know recently made to me last week when we talked about PR for his latest startup:
"My board read the Mark Cuban post [mis]advising startups against hiring a PR firm. I need to convince them of the value PR will provide."
"I’m worried that in all the hype, in all the “we launched our company” events, and “we changed our name again” parties, and “we redid our website – come celebrate!” shindigs, and the SXSW parties, and the hoodies, and everyone who is “killing it!”, that we’re losing sight a bit of the really hard work that is creating and building a business...So by all means, lets keep having fun. But let’s also remember that the goal is to build great companies. And please – my fellow venture capitalists – can we take it down a few notches and remember that our role is a supporting one. If you wanted to be the star you should have become an entrepreneur."
A tweet from @ODwyerPR caught my eye this morning. It linked to a Forbes.com-contributed piece by New York PR pro Lindsey Green originally published in The Daily Muse, a site that describes itself as "a rapidly growing community of women who believe that kicking ass and taking names is all part of the job."
It contrasts with the dashed expectations that Mark Cuban set for startups who also are weighing whether or not to hire a PR firm. His diss of the PR industry first appeared in his book, and then in a blog post that as likely prompted by my having called him out. I followed up his explanation with another post on which he posted a comment. Last week, Business Insider resurrected Mr. Cuban's POV whose title speaks for itself: "Startups Shouldn't Hire PR Firms."
Here are some highlights from the two pieces:
Lindsey Green: "...PR is no substitute for having a great product. Nor is it a guarantee of sales, sign-ups, or funding—if anyone promises you otherwise, be wary!"
Mark Cuban:"...I have no doubt that a smart PR person can add value to a startup. The problem is that all things considered, it’s not enough value."
Lindsey Green: "...don’t use PR to try and be something you’re not. Spend your time and energy getting to know your audience, and be honest about who that audience really is. The more honestly you can share this information with your publicist, the better they’ll be able to get you placement in the right publications that will actually help you build on your early success."
Mark Cuban: "The thing about PR people is this: while they may have great contacts and they can get articles placed, they are not capable of doing a vulcan mind meld. They don’t automatically know all the elements about your business that you want to convey to media, partners, customers, potential employees and even potential investors."
Lindsey Green: "...with so many new companies, and only so many spots to get media coverage, it’s tough out there. A good PR rep should be able to tell you early on how the press is responding to outreach before launch."
Mark Cuban: "...there is no way for a small company can break through the clutter to get the attention of media. If you are a startup that incorrectly thinks it needs to get on Letterman or Good Morning America in order to be a successful company, then they are right. But the reality is that for the vast majority of startups, particularly tech related startups, most of the media that is going to benefit you out of the gate is trade related or local media. And these people are ALWAYS looking for stories to write. They want to hear from unique companies."
Lindsey Green: "I’ve seen unexpected clients have smash launches, and I’ve seen star clients be met with little interest. It’s important to be prepared for either outcome—and to not get too excited (or too discouraged) by your first press. After all, launch day is just one day in the life of your company."
Mark Cuban: "It’s amazing how often a simple email to a writer for a trade publication or local media will get a response. The key to getting a response is being short, sweet , hyperbole free and to the point. You have to sell your differentiation in a paragraph."
Both of these pieces offer a much-needed reality-check on how challenging the discipline of media relations -- especially in the digital startup space -- has become in recent years. Digital beat reporters are besieged by overtures from way too many startups, while at the same time, have at their fingertips too many other sources for story ideas. (I won't mention the myriad misguided pitches in their inboxes that only serve to diminish every other PR pro's prospects for meaningful engagement.)
Nonetheless, Ms. Green's and Mr. Cuban's portrayal of PR for startups was surprising in its narrow (1980s?) focus on just the "earned" media part of the media equation, i.e., they made no mention of "owned" or "paid" media. Mr. Cuban went so far as to craft a sample "pitch letter" to school the profession on how journalists should be communicated with.
The New York Times's Jenna Wortham
While generating editorial coverage still remains a primary client-deliverable for most PR firms, media fragmentation and changed media consumption habits have diluted the impact of even a boffo piece in The New York Times. (That is if you can get Jenna Wortham to even notice your carefully crafted email among the hundreds she receives daily.) Even so, today there are very few, if any, stand-alone stories that have the singular ability to propel a startup toward profitability.
Hence, a better PRescription for startups should entail the constant and strategic application of selective media engagement over time, coupled with content-creation and an appropriate social and event speaking strategy. Together, these dimensions should ultimately pave the way for (differentiated) startups to build a wider digital media footprint, and eventually a healthy bottom line.
BTW, I'll be moderating a panel titled "PR at a Hot Startup" featuring the internal PR reps from Buddy Media, Foursquare, Etsy and Zynga as part of PRSA's "Digital Impact" conference April 2 in NYC.
In December 2006, I posted a piece titled "The Nouveau Niche Media" about all those new blogs and their growing influence over more traditional media, and commensurate allure to PR pros. Below are some of the sites I listed back then. They appeared on myriad blogrolls and in many an RSS reader:
"...as someone who's toiling in this new media reality, I'm finding that certain "outlets," which didn't exist five years ago, have supplanted many of the aforementioned in terms of PR desire. Forward-thinking pros view these new "influencer" outlets with the same envy as The [Industry] Standard (bearer) before them. They have names like TechCrunch, engadget, PaidContent, micropersuasion, perezhilton, TMZ, Blog Maverick, TV Newser, Scobleizer, TechDirt, Huffington Post, Gawker, the Moderate Voice, Daily Kos, Buzz Machine, and way too many others to list here."
I'm happy to report that most of these new media influencers continue to thrive in some form or another. Yet, a whole new nichified generation has emerged for those of us wallowing in the tech/media/digital startup bubble. Let's take a look at a dozen that either weren't around or were just ramping up back then:
PandoDaily founder (and TechCrunch alumnus) Sarah Lacey (aka @sarahcuda) described why she started Pando Daily this past January:
"We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle. That sounds simple but it’ll be incredibly hard to pull off. It’s not something we accomplish on day one or even day 300. It’s something we accomplish by waking up every single day and writing the best stuff we can, and continually adding like-minded staffers who have the passion, drive and talent to do the same."
BusinessInsider/SAI - Henry Blodget has found his true calling in this most influential NYC-based chronicler of all things business with a particular penchant for the digital economy. In October 2007, the site wrote:
"Welcome! Business Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. The flagship vertical, Silicon Alley Insider, launched on July 19, 2007, led by DoubleClick founders Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan and former top-ranked Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget."
The Verge, founded in 2011, Joshua Topolsky and his team already are making their mark on the rich tech media landscape. Here's how the site describes itself:
"The Verge is a technology-focused news publication founded in 2011 by Joshua Topolsky and Marty Moe in partnership with Vox Media and its CEO Jim Bankoff. The Verge's mission is to offer breaking news coverage and in-depth reporting, product information, and community content via a unified, modern platform."
The Wrap - Sharon Waxman covered Hollywood for The New York Times. In 2009, she started The Wrap with back from Starbucks' Howard Schulz among others. Here's how The Wrap describes itself:
"The Wrap News Inc., founded by award-winning journalist Sharon Waxman in 2009, has established itself as the leading news organization covering the business of entertainment and media. As a multi-platform media company, The Wrap News Inc. is comprised of TheWrap.com, the award-winning, industry-leading outlet for high-profile newsbreaks, investigative stories and authoritative analysis; ItsontheGrid.com, the most current, relevant film development database; ThePowerGrid, an algorithmic, data-driven ranking system for every person, project and company in the film business; and TheGrill, an executive leadership conference centered on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology.. The Wrap News, Inc. is backed by Maveron, a venture capital firm based in Seattle, Washington and co-founded by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Dan Levitan."
"The Authority on Digital Media, Marketing and Advertising. Digiday is a media company and community for professionals who work in the digital media, marketing and advertising industry. Our mission is to connect the industry with insightful analysis and perspective, as well as each other. We provide key insights and information through our online publications and conferences that cover the changes, trends — and why they matter. The focus is on quality, not quantity, and honesty instead of spin. We cover the industry with an expertise, depth and tone you won’t find anywhere else. The entire team at Digiday is driven to produce the highest quality publications, conferences, and resources for our industry."
The Awl - I think The Awl's co-founder Choire Sicha once interviewed me for a piece on The Astor debacle for the New York Observer. Here's how his soon-to-be three-year-old site is described:
"Thank you for stopping in at The Awl, a New York City-based web concern established in early 2009. The Awl intends to encourage a daily discussion of the issues of the day—news, politics, culture (and TV!)—during sensible hours of the working week. We believe that there is a great big Internet out there on which we all live, and that too often the curios and oddities of that Internet are ignored in favor of the most obvious and easy stories. We believe that there is an audience of intelligent readers who are poorly served by being delivered those same stories in numbing repetition to the detriment of their reading diet. We believe that there is no topic unworthy of scrutiny, so long that it is approached from an intelligent angle, but that there are many topics worthy of scrutiny that lack coverage because of commercial factors. We believe that the longform essay has a home on the Internet, and that the idea of "too long; didn't read" is exactly as shortsighted as its TL;DR acronym."
Mediaite - It wasn't that long ago that ABC News legal analyst Dan Abramslaunched Mediaite and a handful of sub-sites soon thereafter. (What happened to Mogulite anyway?) The original and aggregated media news site seems like it's been around much longer than its 32 months. Here's how it describes itself:
"Mediaite is the site for news, information and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media, offering original and immediate assessments of the latest news as it breaks. Mediaite’s “Power Grid” objectively ranks media professionals across a dozen categories based on their real-time relevance. Power Grid rankings rely on an array of metrics, including anything and everything from circulation to Twitter followers to Google buzz depending on the category."
BetaBeat - The New York Observer's owners were smart to bring on Elizabeth Spiers as its editor who was even smarter to start a section devoted to the vibrant New York Tech scene:
"Our Mission. A decade after the dot-com bust, it all seems like a hazy dream, doesn’t it? Like maybe it never really happened at all? Look around: The New York tech scene is as exuberant and as wild-eyed as ever. What in God’s name are we all thinking? The last thing a scene like this needs is another tech blog rushing to aggregate the same overinflated hyperbole you can read all over the web. Betabeat isn’t here to bring you the fifth take on the day’s funding news or another rundown of the cool new features in the latest mobile app update. We’re about the characters who make this scene hum: the ambitious young angels, the eccentric hackers and the non-stop networkers. We’re here to take you behind closed doors for an inside look at how the deals really get done."
VB - Venture Beat's been around longer than most on this list, but it continues to exert influence in the media and social spheres. Maybe the new VB acronym on the home page contributed? (It worked for The Hollywood Reporter.) Great having former BetaBeat editor Ben Popper as east coast editor. Here's what they say about themselves:
"VentureBeat is a media company obsessed with covering amazing technology and why it matters in our lives. From the most innovative companies and the incredible people behind them to the money fueling it all, we’re devoted to exhaustive coverage of the technology revolution. You can read our ethics statement here. Led by Founder and Editor-in-Chief Matt Marshall and a team of experienced journalists, VentureBeat has grown into the leading source for breaking news and in-depth reporting on a range of technology trends — from social to mobile, small business to enterprise, clean tech, cloud services, games, and more. We also bring the community together several times per year through our own executive-level conferences, such as MobileBeat, CloudBeat, GamesBeat, and the VentureBeat Mobile Summit."
The Next Web has really ratcheted up its U.S. staffing and editorial output in the last year. Tech media vet Courtney Boyd Myers is the NY-based features editor for this UK-based company, which grew out of a 2006 tech conference. It describes itself this way:
"Founded in 2008, The Next Web is one of the world’s largest online publications that delivers an international perspective on the latest news about Internet technology, business and culture. With an active, influential audience consisting of more than 5.1 million monthly visits and over 7 million monthly page views, The Next Web continues to expand its global presence on its website with the addition of new channels and content partnerships, as well as through events in North America and Europe."
Vator.TV - I remember VatorTV founder Bambi Francisco when she worked as guest booker for Lou Dobbs "Moneyline" on CNN and her subsequent work for Dow Jones Marketwatch. I also remember when she started Vator.TV. I never knew her as Bambi Francisco Roizen, Mom to three kids. One could say she was ahead of her time by glomming onto entrepreneurs and the startup culture as early as she did. Vator is less of a media outlet and more of a community site/resource for entrepreneurs with a news section.
"Vator (short for innovator) is a professional network for entrepreneurs. Founded and run by veteran and award-winning journalist Bambi Francisco, Vator consists of Vator.tv, VatorNews, and Vator competitions."
Social Media Today -- If social media's your thing (isn't it everyone's?), then you'd be hard-pressed to find a more informative site than Social Media Today. SMT features some of the best thinkers covering a subject that pretty much envelopes the way we shop, vote, invest, market, mate...
"Social Media Today is an independent, online community for professionals in PR, marketing, advertising, or any other discipline where a thorough understanding of social media is mission-critical. Every day, we provide insight and host lively debate about the tools, platforms, companies and personalities that are revolutionizing the way we consume information. All of our content is contributed by our members and curated by our editorial staff."
Finally, let's not underestimate the influence of those VCs with big Twitter followings. You saw my post on the send-off Michael Arrington gave to (his investment) Highlight in the week before SXSW. I was reminded of it when I saw Bloomberg's Emily Chang's tweet today:
@emilychangtv Taking a stroll through the Ferry Building with @Highlight CEO @pdavison http://www.bloomberg.com/video/88525362/
And a day doesn't go by when we don't see a tweet from one of Kickstarter's investors:
@fredwilson Kickstarter May be the Most Disruptive and Transformative Idea in our Entire Portfolio
The "media/influencer" landscape continues to evolve...for better or worse.
Pretty much anyone tooling in the PR biz is keyed in on the latest chapter in Goldman Sachs' extended trial in the court of public opinion.
James Gorman
What is it about this particular company that compels the media, regulators, legislators and general public to pounce on it at every turn? Are Goldman's standards and culture any different than those in its peer set? Is Lloyd Blankfein less ethical than Jamie Dimon or Jim Gorman? Is the company more deleterious to the future health of the nation than let's say Koch Industries? I doubt it.
In fact, anyone who knows anything about the business world -- in both the private and public sectors, academia too -- will tell you that Goldman Sachs is the gold standard among all financial institutions. It's the hardest finance job to land coming out of the nation's most competitive colleges and universities (even with the softness of the last couple of years).
Sure, the digital-social-startup economy offers college grads more options than ever before, but if it's banking one wants, Goldman is the ticket. (Startups still need financing, right?) And let's not forget that the financial services sector employs 300K+ in New York City alone.
The Poison Pen-Man
So one has to wonder why such an incessant media barrage against this one company. Why hasn't Goldman been able to claw its way out of this reputational rut? Time heels, right? Well, not for this company. Was Goldman too smart for its own good when it emerged relatively unscathed following the financial meltdown?
And how big a factor was the allure of fame in motivating the disgruntled (career-shorted) Brit who penned the caustic op-ed in The New York Times? (Its publication did calibrate so nicely with his resignation letter.)
Still, I'm scratching my head wondering why hasn't Goldman been able to shake this? Back in late 2009 when navigating another media onslaught, the firm pledged a half billion dollars (!) to help small businesses recover from the shattered economy. It made little or no impact on forestalling the anti-Goldman forces.
This time around, the firm finally decided to can its long-time PR chief who, while generally well-regarded, may not have been the most media-accommodating corp comms guy around. His Beltway-bred replacement didn't have time to smell the coffee before The Times bombshell hit. Talk about trial by fire.
Frankly I don't know how Goldman will break free of this PR-debilitating yolk around its neck. If I were a betting man I'd say that a change at the top may ultimately be necessary - a la Mike D'Antoni or Tony Hayward -- in spite of the fact that Messrs. Blankfein and Cohn have done pretty darn well for the firm's many stakeholders over the years. Taking one for the team tends to be an effective remedy.
When I started penning this post earlier today -- before some burp across the Internet erased all of it -- I really didn't wish to re-hash what every media outlet so gleefully echoed. I actually hoped to segue quickly out of Goldman mode and into the tech realm where I've observed certain companies wallowing in the same reputational rut as Goldman.
Consider these headlines and leads:
TechCrunch on RIM: "Clueless: RIM Releases The $120 BlackBerry PlayBook Mini Keyboard" Research In Motion announced the PlayBook 17 months ago. Then, eleven months ago, the company actually launched the product. It took them another 10 months to finally bring a native email and messaging app to the product. Now, almost a full year after the product hit stores, RIM is releasing a keyboard folio case for the struggling tablet. Oh, and it costs $120.
BusinessInsider on AOL: "The Real Reason Everyone Is Suddenly Quitting AOL Again" AOL CTO Alex Gounares is leaving the company. So is the top engineer in the Huffington Post Media Group, Tim Dierks, according to a report from Peter Kafka.
An ex-AOLer speculates about the timing and says we should expect more departures:
Forbes on Groupon: "Whither Groupon And Merchants' Appetite For Daily Deals?"
Despite differing opinions about the long-term prospects for its business model, Groupon has made a ton of money for its early financial backers. So whom do they have to thank for their newly found largess? Not the kind of people one might assume would be scouring their emails for daily deals ranging from cut-rate hamburgers to bargain Botox.
Wasn't Microsoft once known as the "Evil Empire?" Yet between its bloggers, the XBOX and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, it somehow managed to break free of that yolk and (re)achieve a reasonable modicum of respectability.
If you've been keeping tabs on this blogger's Twitterstream, you're (painfully) aware that I finally made my way to Austin for the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive Festival. No longer a Newbie, I earned the 2012 SXSW Sophomore Badge on Foursquare upon arrival at Austin Bergstrom Airport.
Whooppeee! Let the games begin.
At last year's SXSW, I waited until the final day to opine on the single trend I felt permeated the world's premier gathering of entrepreneurial technologists. It was 2-D barcodes (or QR codes as they're now known). They were everywhere - from the Chevy Volts and pedicabs that shuttled attendees around downtown Austin to the coffee cups, t-shirts, mousepads and bodysuits with which festival-goers interacted daily.
I don't know just yet what cool product or killer app will emerge this year, though I did see that my friends at (the soon-to-be CNN sub?) Mashable are keeping tabs on the most buzzed-about SXSW startups. The list included Highlight, a geo-location mobile app that attempts to tackle the problem of capturing in real-time one's FB friends in physical proximity to the user. (It also allows randoids using the app to know your coordinates.)
The app benefitted from the Arrington-Scoble Effect. Mr. Arrington, the founder and former editor of TechCrunch -- and now venture capitalist who's invested in Highlight -- used his klout to set Twitter tongues-a-waggin a week before SXSW started, which include that of Mr. Scoble who took a more judicious approach. I'm sure others startups with competitive solutions are crying foul at the media kickstart Mr. Arrington heaped upon his investment.
No matter. Highlight is not highlighting this blogger's time here in Austin. Frankly, I was impressed by the prospects for LISNX (local instant social network) whose developer I recently befriended. It attempts to tackle the some of the same challenges but it is not at SXSW, nor publicly available...yet.
As for this year's winner, I would only ask one question: What would SXSW be without Foursquare?
The geo-local check-in service launched at the New York Tech Meetup in 2009 and then took SouthBy by storm. Back then, 4Sq and Austin-based Gowalla were going head to head. As of this week, however, Gowalla is no more. Don't feel sorry for them. Facebook just bought the company and swallowed their talent...just in time for FB's IPO.
Foursquare's Dennis Crowley Doing What He Does
This year, Foursquare is everywhere at SXSW. It is the perfect dopamine-releasing app that melds the physical and virtual worlds in real time. It's the ideal way to keep track of the whereabouts of SXSW's movers & shakers as they navigate the cacophony of panels and parties that abound.
Company founder Dennis Crowley joined Shira Lazar and Zappo's Tony Hsieh on stage in Samsung's Blogger Lounge yesterday:
"We're part of the fabric of what goes on here. It's our third year here. We now have 100 employees and 20 million users. We're on a rocketship course."
The company also throws the hottest party at SXSW, which may or may not be relevant to its future prospects - but it sure can't hurt. Here are some of my 4Sq check-ins thus far (in reverse chronolgical order):
Guess what? The Internet is full of b******t and its volume is rapidly replicating - mostly unchecked. Much of the spurious info we find on the Web originates from amateur "we the media" types. However, more and more mis/disinformation is purposefully propagated by partisan entities, some with nefarious agendas. A Google search on "Martin Luther King" produces a top five result, "Martin Luther King Jr. - A True Historical Examination." It was created by a white supremacist organization.
What's worse, the identities of those bankrolling the dissemination of such digital propaganda often are hidden...legally.
As the November elections draw nearer, the online explosion and public consumption of factually challenged news and information threatens the very foundation of our democracy. (Thank you, Justice Roberts.)
Craig Newmark & Colbert's Speaker Flag
With the (Herculean) goal of exploring remedies for an increasingly untrustworthy digital media environment, I ventured to Harvard Law School yesterday to participate in the first Truthiness in Digital Media conference.
Joining me were a who's who of media pundits, legal scholars, hackers, media watchdog and public advocacy groups, nearly all of whom were painfully aware of the dangers digital delusion holds in a democracy.
Craig Silverman, formerly of Columbia Journalism Review who's toiling since November for the Poynter Institute, re-posted the conference description here:
This conference will focus on exploring the many facets of this complex issue with an eye to crafting tools and strategies to ameliorate the negative impacts of deception, bias, and inaccuracy in the digital media ecosystem. We hope to come to a better position to take advantage of the benefits promised by digital media while appreciating the positive aspects of creative media-making and probing the blurred boundaries between nefarious and beneficial media shaping practices.
This blogger at left. (Photo: Craig Newmark)
And Cambridge-based Nieman Journalism Lab live-blogged the event here. More here on the Truthiness blog.
As someone who's made a career out of trying to wrap his arms around what makes a story meme catch fire in traditional news media, and more recently in the blogosphere and social channels, I had more than a passing interest in the conference's theme and purpose.
I also may have been the only PR professional there other than the PR Director for the Ford Foundation and Wendell Potter who outed an unfortunate side of the industry with his PR-antagonistic book about his work spinning for a giant health insurer. Most everyone else in that room were intensely smart and committed activists. Needless to say, many held the PR industry in relatively low esteem.
Fortunately, I still subscribe to PRSA's code of ethics (and Harold Burson). I firmly believe that quality journalism is even more essential today in an increasingly polluted news ecosystem. (Maybe it was my past work for The New York Times and The AP that cemented my stalwart POV on this.) Conference attendee Micah Sifrey said it like this:
"If the media is the immune system of democracy, as Craig Newmark likes to say, then the act of asking questions of the powerful might be thought of as the mitochondria, the energy source that powers the immune system."
Attendees heard from a range of esteemed presenters and were encouraged to hit the red button to liven their microphones to chime in. Some of the presentations that resonated for me included:
Wendell Potter, Cigna's former PR chief-turned-whistleblower who wrote Deadly Spin. He noted that the diminished news ranks have given corporations an upper hand in propagating their messages. He also acknowledged the increasingly important role fact-checking orgs play in the new digital/social media ecosystem.
What Influenced SOPA/PIPA's demise
Berkman Center's Yochai Benkler analyzed the underpinnings of the SOPA/PIPA defeat, and gave considerable credit to TechDirt and other influential tech media sites, though it was clear that they didn't act alone. Other "action-oriented sites" made important contributions to the demise of the proposed bills.
Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), took her five minutes to (rightfully) castigate astroturfing king and PRSA ethics violator Richard Berman who serves as "executive director" of 25 non-profit stealth advocacy organizations, one of which purchased an anti-union commercial...during the Super Bowl telecast!
Next up was Filippo Menczer from Indiana University, which developed Truthy as means to understand how memes spread online. If you like this, watch Jake Porway's presentation on Cascade from The New York Times's R&D department.
Filippo was followed Tim Hwang whose presentation on the use of bots to influence the online conversation frightened the heck out of me.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson of University pf Pennsylvania's Annenberg School kicked off the next session titled "Elusive Objectivity: Finding the Truth is Hard," by showcasing FlackCheck.org, a sibling of FactCheck.org but focused on misleading political advertising.
I asked her why the term "flack," a pejorative term associated with PR (and the name of this blog). She explained its association with FactCheck and that its connotation would be readily understood. More importantly, she told me that TV stations airing misleading if not downright false advertising have no legal or regulatory obligation to not air them. Her hope is that public awareness and pressure will prevail in getting these ads pulled.
From one Ivy to another, Emily Bell of the Tow Center at Columbia Journalism School, formerly with The Guardian where she played a pivotal role in bringing the UK's most esteemed newspaper into the digital age, opened by showing the Guardian's Three Little Pigs video on the state of journalism today:
She then made a couple of observation that resonated with me:
"Allowing people to interact with news content will 'sustain journalism'"
and
"Very few news orgs have guidelines for consumer engagement, ability to analyze large data sets."
Dem & GOP Orientations (via Chris Mooney)
In the next session "Biases Abound: You Can’t Handle (or Don’t Want) the Truth," author Chris Mooney introduced the audience to the term the "Smart Idiot Effect" or ""There is a science of why we deny science." He shared research that demonstrated how the views of educated political conservatives will not change when faced with cold hard facts that directly contradict their intractable point-of-views.
Furthermore, facts alone for this particular demographic makes them even more emboldened in their thinking. (Not that birthers are educated, but I understood his point.)
He penned a post today on his experience at the Truthiness event in which he questioned whether there is an easy way to fact-check the vast amount of misinformation out their in the digispheres. He alluded to the above graphic of where these fact-checking orgs reside in relation to one another. He also penned a second post that sums up some of what was discussed yesterday.
I enjoyed hearing UMichigan's Paul Resnick present the Fact Spreaders and NewsCube tools, and Gilad Lotan demo SocialFlow, which purports to take "a scientific approach to measurably increased engagement."
Here are a few more tweets emanating from my Macbook Pro yesterday:
@PeterHimler @niemanlab's @jbenton cites @NPR's new ethics policy #truthicon News orgs need to make debunking a core purpose.
@PeterHimler @SunFoundation's @ellnmllr shows Poligraft, a way to see interconnections of entities in news articles. #Truthicon
@PeterHimler Regret the Error's editor @craigsilverman, formerly @cjr now @Poynter: U.S. newspaper errors at highest level #truthicon
@PeterHimler @Mlsif recommends @cjoh's new book The Information Diet. Also, ask better questions [to quell misinformation]. #Truthicon
Today, the conference moves over to MIT for a hack day, according to MIT Media Lab's Ethan Zuckerman, designed to take a "more experimental approach" to the problem versus Harvard's "more systematic approach." "We'll focus on 'tractable' vs. 'intractable' questions, i.e., little experiments that can measurably thwart disinformation."
As for me, I'd love to be there, but I'm tied up disseminating fact-based information to the many influencers in the digital spheres on behalf of my clients. Thanks Colin Maclay and the Berkman team for putting on a most elucidating day.
So it's settled (or so I thought). The forward-thinking marketing maven's media universe was neatly divided into three categories: paid, earned and owned. This was codified in a Forrester post a couple of years back, and updated (by me) to include "shared" media - not as a fourth category, but rather as the desired outcome of an optimized mix of any or all of the previous three.
So this train of thought was cool for a while, until Facebook decided to take a bite of the Big Apple yesterday and in so doing throw a giant monkey wrench into a marketing paradigm that many of us finally thought we had our arms around.
The company gathered its many friends, fans and followers from the tech, media, PR, and advertising spheres for something called fMC where its top execs, and a few clients, unveiled Facebook Premium and a few other newly branded products.
(So much for the SEC's pre-IPO "quiet period.")
Here's the mantra with which every Facebook executive presenting sought to inculcate the live and online audience:
"We are in a revolution from ads to stories."
Hold it a sec. No more ads on Facebook? And doesn't story-telling firmly live in the PR pro's domain and serve as the primary reason the industry has a leg up on its marketing brethren in the "owned" media category? Is Facebook now insisting that social advertisers get on the story-telling soapbox if they expect to play in the company's 800+ million-strong walled sandbox?
As Clickable writes in a post today:
"Facebook appears bent on shifting the focus to Page stories and is providing Timeline features that draw attention to prime content. These features include the ability to pin a post to the top of Timeline, the ability to highlight posts which will expand to occupy the width of a Page, and highlighted friend activity surfaced on the right side of Timeline. It's clear that Facebook is using Timeline to help businesses craft a more personal, almost human-like, story, which, in turn, makes direct selling much tougher to accomplish."
What's more, once a brand marketer builds its home page and fills it with its own (and its friends') stories, Facebook Premium will charge a premium (get it?) to evolve that story before the eyeballs of 85% of the brand's friends (and their friends and their friends). TechCrunch notes that right now:
"Amongst all the business-related news at FMC, Facebook revealed that the average news feed story from a user profile reaches just 16 percent of their friends. Your actively shared links, photos, and status updates probably reach much higher than 16 percent of your friends, while more inane auto-generated posts about new friendships, wall posts, and articles you read may only be seen by your closest buddies."
So instead of "shared" media as a natural bi-product of a mix of paid, earned and/or owned media, Facebook's plan will take a quasi-owned/paid "story" and collect a premium from marketers wishing to secure a bigger footprint on the dominant social network. CNET said:
"At first-ever Facebook marketing conference, the social network announces three features--Offers, Reach Generator, and Premium on Facebook--to help marketers better connect their brands with customers."
Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg Shares Stories
I have only touched upon a small piece of Facebook's brave new marketing paradigm - and I'm sure I got half of it wrong anyway.
Maybe Facebook knew something we didn't when it chose to hold its confab at the American Museum of Natural History? After all, history has a way of constantly evolving, i.e., nothing is written in stone.
The company smartly posted info and video about its new approach for social marketers here. Finally, I feel bad for Nick Burcher whose new book "Paid, Owned, Earned: Maximizing Marketing Returns in a Socially Connected World" may soon be in need of a revision.
Don't revise just yet, Nick, the New York Observer's BetaBeat titled its piece: "Facebook Premium: Ads Everywhere, Ads Everywhere, Ads: Sorry, Zuck, an ad is not a 'story.'"
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