As communicators we have to marvel at the transformative nature of the moment. When you expect gloating, Obama chooses humility.  When you expect forcefulness, Obama chooses deference. We know that politics will never cease (enter Rahm Emanuel, the enforcer) but within that is a larger agenda - we all share the same planet, our experiment in democracy never ceases to evolve and survives only by the will of the people.

Today, the day Obama visits the White House of the most unpopular U.S. President on record, a President who has raised government secrecy and intransigence to a new level, the transition team unveils Change.gov, a web site meant to support the open flow of information from the government to its people, and a means for the people to interact with the Federal government.

Does this mean that we can send an email to the federal government and expect an answer? I doubt it. But the intent is there, and a blog, and a method to apply for a goverment job, and the understanding that we are living in the digital age when school age children and middle age executives rely on the web to get their information and stay connected.

The thrill of Obama is that we don’t know what to expect from him. He has the ability to surprise in a way that seems measured and logical, in the moment and playing to history. If we at least have the sense that government is listening to us we believe that our involvement in government has value and can be reciprocated. That is the art of public relations.

We are all obsessed with “The Dow” right now although few of us know what it is or why it is so important. DJIA - The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of 30 “Blue Chip” stocks that are supposed to be an indicator of the broader stock market (thousands of stocks). “The Dow” is broadcast across the world, transcending geography, language barriers and market highs and lows. Even rival media companies, such as The New York Times (above, left)  post “The Dow” on its home page. PR doesn’t get better than that.

May 26, 1896 Dow Jones published its first “Industrial” average, DJIA, consisting of 12 stocks closing at 40.94. DJIA is occasionally re-jiggered to reflect our changing economic landscape. Manufacturing companies in DJIA such as U.S. Steel have been replaced by tech companies such as Microsoft. Standard & Poors, Wilshire, and Russell all have stock indexes that are broader, more specific, and, many investment professionals would argue, more accurate indicators of trends in the stock market. But none are more recognized or accepted as DJIA, which has become synonymous with “the market.” That’s a big reason why Rupert Murdoch was obsessed with acquiring Dow Jones and its media properties Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and MarketWatch.

See What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? from How Stuff Works - includes video on stocks currently in the DJIA.

The PR business has been slow to recognize this trend and to capitalize on its potential. We have yet to transition from pitching media to becoming the media.  Crafting a pitch, writing a press release, disseminating to the press and following up is the old way - labor intensive, perennially frustrating, expensive - for questionable result.

Developing web-based digital assets is key to any communications program that will penetrate and have legs in the digital age. Make it visual, make it immediate. Create news that media wants to cover - simultaneously create news that all constituents can access through the web. Above all, make it visual.

Business Wire has partnered with Digital Citizen Media to produce PR content that will establish and manage digital media assets, promote and track it. You look at some of the video annual reports they develop - they are engaging, clever, informative (there are always disclosure issues), and critically important in this time, you see the faces behind the numbers.  This is a time when people are enormously distrustful of corporate executives and financiers. We need to see business people and hear them to be convinced that they have constituents best interests in mind.

The New York magazine cover story by Kurt Andersen captures the mood of the city - fear, uncertainty, deep foreboding that as bad as it seems it is only going to get worse. I was talking to a top-tier real estate broker/appraiser in Manhattan (he appraised Madonna’s apartment) who is convinced that the bottom of the New York real estate market will drop with a sickening thud beginning January 1, 2009, when a temporary impediment to foreclosures will be eliminated. He foresees 150,000 foreclosures in New York State, with 10% of them in the city.

The economy dominates talk at parties, work, everywhere; even if it not spoken you can feel it. What else are we going to talk about? Theatre, clothes, restaurants all cost money and nobody is spending a dime they don’t have to - including our PR clients. Coverage of finance and the implications of the sour global economy dominates all media these days. If you are not directly addressing the economy, offering usable insight and advise (and what can you really say - even an unusually sedate “Mad Money” Cramer says get out of the market) then reporters won’t bother with you.

Oddly, this has been a unifying time for Americans because the pain cuts across demographic, geographic and cultural boundaries. The Presidential race almost seems like a sidebar to the main story - how do we survive this and what will life be like on the other side?

Today Wachovia reports a record-setting $23.9 billion loss for the 3rd quarter, with tens of billions expected to be written off in successive quarters. The numbers don’t compute anymore, superlatives fail. How much shock can you take until you become numb? I think we are about to find out.

So seldom do we motley millions all think and talk about the same thing at the same time—let alone two great big things, let alone intensely and continually for weeks at a time. Welcome to the extraordinary fall of 2008. As the imploded financial industry is nationalized, and we prepare to elect—can it really be?—an African-American intellectual the next president, New Yorkers are in a kind of breathless, Twittery mind meld about matters of huge historic consequence. Because Wall Street is (excuse the expression) ground zero for the present cataclysm, we are probably experiencing financial vertigo more acutely than most of our fellow Americans. - Kurt Andersen, New York magazine

Yesterday, when the market skyrocketed nearly 1,000 points I felt like celebrating. The world economies banded together and found a way to stave off catastrophe, at least for the moment. How many billions is it costing? I lose track, but I am sure that the cost will exceed the financial hit we took with the Iraq war.

Can we absorb all these humongous outlays? No, of course not. In order to fix our excesses and greed we must embrace excess and regulation. According to David Brooks, columnist for the The New York Times who is uncannily right most of the time, we are headed for real hard times. It is unavoidable no matter who wins the election. See today’s Brooks column Big Government Ahead. 

What does the financial whirlwind mean to us poor PR shlubs? First comes the hiring freeze, already in effect in most large agencies. Then comes the layoffs. It has been impossible to break through to most financial/business media in the past three weeks. Clients start reviewing contracts, scrutinizing all marketing/PR outlays. It is tougher to make a living in PR today than it was three weeks ago and it will get tougher still.

The future is more uncertain because we are living in the NOW - the vagaries of the U.S. markets minute-to-minute, and the foreign markets preceding our market over night. I don’t know what to say. Thanks to Al Sutherland for long comment on 9/17 post “Is Financial Media Aiding Wall Street Collapse“.  Al still has some words to offer.

The worse the financial markets become, the more financial issues are pushed to the fore, especially in the heat of a Presidential race, the more more we rely on financial media to report and analyse critical issues. This week the Wall Street Journal online rolled out a radically new look with several intriguing social media tools - just in time for our greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Nobody has ever accused Rupert Murdoch of not being canny, propitious or just plain lucky.

The Wall Street Journal Community is Murdoch’s attempt to offer the Journal audience a taste of MySpace, with message boards and interest-related groups, profiles, etc. This might work for business people who don’t find value in Facebook-like social communities and professional-level job hunters who want to participate in social media media without tarnishing their cred - or it might be one ‘online community’ too many.  Also, see All Things D. - meaning All Things Digital, from the Journal,playing to the natural geek tendencies of Wall Streeters and the high demographic Journal audience.

Murdoch moved rapidly to remake the moribund Journal print edition and online offering. Both desperately needed it. I suspect that the following weeks will be just as dramatic as the last - hundreds of billions of taxpayers dollars are at stake, the final days of the Presidential campaign are approaching, the stock market will likely react with wild swings, and we’ll rely on the financial media to explain it all. Rupert to the rescue!

I am now following NYTimes, L.A. Times Travel section and CBS Early Show on Twitter.  Mainstream media is beginning to catch on - and I may be seeing some value in Twitter beyond knowing that blah blah had a double macchiato in Seattle at 10:32 this morn. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/markrose

MarketWatch also extensively reports that a money market fund “breaks the buck” - a frightening development that indicates a wider, deeper impact of the credit crisis on “safe” investments favored by conservative retail investors. 

MarketWatch is an excellent source of financial news that goes deeper than mass outlets such as The New York Times or even Wall Street Journal (MarketWatch is a Dow Jones property). As the name implies, MarketWatch is focused entirely on market moving news and is sort of the people’s Bloomberg, geared to retail investors and traders. Jon Friedman consistently writes incisive columns that de-mystify financial news. He has strong opinions and backs them up with the flair of a tabloid reporter.

Floyd Norris at NYTimes gets a little wild on his blog today with Socialism, 21st Century Style, arguing that the government takeover of AIG is akin to nationalization of the largest insurer in the U.S. (Didn’t Harry Truman fail when he tried to do this with the steel industry?). The business news these days is scary but this is what financial reporters live for.