PR Blog Spat

I love the Internet in general and blogging in particular because you can engage in intellectual prize fights without a printing press or podium.

PR Watch, published by the Center for Media and Democracy, posted an item called “Edelman’s Rescue Plan for the PR Industry.” Bob Burton slammed Edelman and claimed that his post in his blog about “500 influencers” proved that he was little more than a propagandist.

I took exception in a reply. Burton replied to my reply and Sheldon Rampton countered and I came back with a solid left hook. Before I knew it we were in round four. What irks me about the PR Watch attitude is that they really don’t know how the PR business operates. It is not all big agencies spinning news to the detriment of the masses. Individuals, emerging companies, any legislator, and even PR Watch employs elements of PR. PR is not about evil manipulators behind thick curtains bending minds and limiting choices (at least not all of it).

My point is that the Internet is opening up communication like never before and the PR industry is being forced to alter its practices. Big PR agencies, like big companies, can no longer maintain absolute control over their internal or external communication. Journalism is also experiencing a parallel revolution as “citizen-journalists” and bloggers redefine how news and opinion is delivered. PR Watch is operating on an old model and its criticism is staid and confused.
See Mark Rose Bio

Citizen Journalists Arise

Amy Gahran, a self-professed “info provocateur” is beginning something called I Reporter: The Citizen Journalism Project. Why?

I’m drawn to this field because I’ve grown to realize that traditional versions of news, journalism, and journalists are no longer enough. The cult of officialdom has reached its limits. There is more than one way to gauge relevance and credibility. We need more kinds of news, from more kinds of sources, to adequately serve the information needs of our communities and the world.

Citizen journalism is an emerging field that is growing in credibility. Perhaps the largest source of citizen journalism is OhMyNews, a Korean news organization that employs 50 staff reporters and editors plus 38,000 citizen reporter volunteers who submit 200 stories a day. Much of the professional staff time is spent on editing and fact checking these stories before they are posted. The citizen reporters must be verified through government registration numbers, and then sign onto a strict code of ethics including a promise not to write a story for personal financial gain and to tell the truth in each piece.

OhmyNews has embraced the philosophy that every citizen can be a reporter. Others act as sources for fellow volunteer reporters or for OhmyNews professional staffers. OhmyNews is a laboratory for the future of on-line communication. | See Mark Rose Bio

Major In Blogging?

Today, A group from Tupelo, Mississippi, opened what they say is the first Blogging recruiting agency. See Bloggeropoly . There is evidence from sources around the Net that blogging is now becoming a career path.  See: Blogger Jobs. According to the Pro-Bloggers Association  the need for professional bloggers is growing.

May 31, 2005, The Wall Street Journal ran a story called “Blogging A Corporate Job; Digital ‘Handshake’?” Christine Halvorson was hired as chief blogger at Stonyfield Farm., a Londonderry, N.H., organic yogurt company. She writes four blogs and earns in the mid-$40,000s, she says. Stonyfield’s CEO says he plans to hire one or two additional full-time bloggers within the next two years, according to the Journal.Powered By Qumana

Developing Your Voice

If you are a writer you know that the most difficult and essential task is finding your voice. The good news about blogging is that it is forcing business people to rediscover (or discover) writing. The bad news is that you may never have had a voice or lost it so long ago that you’ll go crazy trying to find it.

There is help. A group in Canada is trying to establish a genre of “professional bloggers” and they have Tips on developing your blogging voice. They are also developing a new blogging platform called Qumana that will be released today. If Qumana delivers all that it promises it will be a very promising development. I have been investigating more robust alternatives to blogger (WordPress, MovableType, Drupal) . Qumana may be the way to go. Let’s see.|
See Mark Rose Bio

Got Your Attention?

She is not the most popular blonde searched on Google (Madonna, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears) or the most popular woman (Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson) but Russian tennis star Anna Kournikova is definitely one of the most familiar figures on the Internet. She doesn’t have the staying power of Pamela Anderson (currently #3 on the Lycos Top 50, with 301 weeks on the chart) but she is ranked 10th on the Yahoo! Buzz Index in the “Sports” category.

Anna K. is not worshipped because of her tennis play. “Why do we like her? More like why do we love her? This Russian tennis player is only a backhand away from making us drool when seeing her do virtually anything,” says AskMen.com, which names her one of their 99 most desirable women. Why? “I’m beautiful, famous and gorgeous,” says Anna K.

What does this have to do with the subject of this blog? Let me answer that with a question. Stipped away, so to speak, what does all effective advertising really come down to? I offer a snap of this billboard of Anna K. from the Netherlands.

Publicist Leads To Pulitzer

How can you resist a story that begins like this:

“Publicists have a dreary and emotionally exhausting job. Daily, they must cold-call and suck up to journalists in attempts to forge relationships that are built, fundamentally, on dysfunction.”

Matt Smith’s piece in San Francisco Weekly “The 2005 Pulitzer Prize For Distinguished Public Relations” finally gives the harried and under-appreciated publicist her due. The distinguished Pulitzer went to a Sacramento Bee writer for his editorials that, Smith says, were instigated by a publicist for an eco group called Environmental Defense. The publicist should be given credit for her work by the Bee writer and the Columbia University Pulitzer nominating committee, says Smith.

Imagine that, a journalist actually acknowledging the importance of publicists in the generation of important news. Writes Smith:

“In an ideal journalistic world, you see, publicists wouldn’t exist. Journalists would be resourceful, hardworking, and freethinking, never needing the press releases, story tips, staged interviews, and other “on-message” news that publicists provide. But because they often lack these qualities, reporters eventually wind up accepting at least some of the fare that publicists pass out, albeit with resentment and suspicion, even contempt.”

Those of us who have toiled in the publicity pits know precisely what Smith is talking about. We are expected to know the media, know journalists and how they operate, know our clients story inside and out. In the best case, we are a secret weapon for the media, their invisible research arm. We are satisfied to remain behind the scenes, with no attribution. But often we are derided by journalists because they don’t want to admit that they need help with a story.

We are long removed from the day when a journalist will share a Pulitzer with a publicist. But the day when a journalist writes a detailed, investigative story about a publicist’s work leading to a Pulitzer has arrived. | See Mark Rose Bio

Edelman In The New World

Eight months ago, Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Worldwide, started a blog called 6 AM. In weekly posts he has addressed ethics in PR, education, innovations in online communication, his travels and other topics on his mind. Edelman Worldwide is the world’s top independent PR firm. As can be expected, PR Watch took exception to some of Edelman’s ideas in a post called “Edelman’s Rescue Plan For The PR Industry.” I recommend that you read the post and my response to it.

Edelman’s blog is significant for two reasons. One, it is rare that the PR industry would willingly expose itself to public criticism, especially in an uncontrolled forum. Second, as head of a firm with over 40 offices worldwide and 1,800 employees, Edelman is a CEO who is willing to become more than a figurehead to his clients and the people who work for him. The Internet in general and blogs in particular allow the brave and the willing to offer their views to the widest possible audience, understanding that a post lives forever and anybody at anytime can take a shot at you.

The public relations industry is at a major crossroads, steeped in peril and opportunity. It is widely understood, especially in the upper echelons of the ad business, that mass marketing is dead. The question is, can public relations practices adapt to the new open-source, open-forum world of communication and learn to influence constituents through dialogue that is not available to traditional advertising, or traditional public relations. Public relations cannot manipulate or co-opt the blogosphere. The repercussions can be swift and merciless.

What is especially intriguing about Edelman’s blog is that he has much to lose. He needs to protect his franchise, assuage employees, and not agitate clients - like any CEO. What can he say that is not deemed self-serving or excessively inflammatory? His firm will soon release a new policy on ethics, as a response to recent scandals in the PR industry involving masking sources of “news” (Ketchum) and inflating billings (Fleishman Hillard). He is calling for industry-wide standards on ethics, beyond the much-ignored PRSA credo.

The public relations industry does not have a culture of innovation or risk. It has operated essentially the same for the past 50 years. As we are forced to take baby steps into the new world of communication, can we find a way to lead by example? Edelman, at least, is trying. | See Mark Rose Bio

The Parameters of Corporate Blogging

As more companies allow blogging by their employees they are adopting useful public communication guidelines. Sun has it right in their Policy on Public Discourse when they encourage employees to speak to the world without management approval but caution that “quality matters” “be interesting” and “write what you know.” Hewlett-Packard encourages technical and executive blogs. A H-P technician learned about the reality of blogging early when he deleted a post with a negative comment and was deluged with protests. He apologized to his audience and re-posted the comment. In the blog world, you’re either in all the way or you’re out, he says he learned. It is a huge cultural shift for large companies to learn that they may be able to control their written materials but in the age of instantaneous two-way communication there are few secrets beyond deep, proprietary information. | See Mark Rose Bio