Going out on top - happy new year

I’ve always been a sporadic blogger so it’s not that big a stretch to become a non-blogger - at least in this forum. Business has been booming - taking an increasing portion of my time. We’ve re-designed our website, re-calibrated (I love that word) our business and I can’t pay attention to this blog anymore. But, everybody likes to go out on top, so I find some small degree of solace knowing I am STILL the #1 Sidewiki comment on the Twitter homepage!

Blogging less here means I have more time to read blogs I enjoy. My favorite blog: 3QuarksDaily.

Blogging less here also means I can pay more attention to my theatre blog, where my heart is these days: markrosenyc.com

All bloggers should support the struggle for freedom in Iran. Image below from Tehran 24 | also check FRONTLINE: Tehran Bureau for updates and THE LEDE, The New York Times

Five PR bloggers worth following, derived from random scans of intelligence, original thinking and personality in the PR blogosphere: #1 tomforemski - leadoff batter | #2 occamsrazr - the Leonard Cohen of PR bloggers | #3  [chrisbrogan.com] - the merry prankster of social media | #4 Richard Edelman - the Philip Roth of PR | #5 Loren Feldman - incendiary pupeteer

Some favorite posts:

• Alex Rodriquez Comes to His Senses - What Next?
• MLK & RFK Brothers In Battle
• Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer
• Kristen Revealed
• So you want to break into public relations?
• What is Your Wikipedia PR Strategy?
• Mahatma Gandhi & Business

HAPPY NEW YEAR. Peace. Health. Freedom. Prosperity.

PRBlogNews, launched June, 2005. Archived, December 30, 2009.

Zenophon Abraham is Not a Shill for Chevron

Back in May I blogged about Chevron’s bare knuckle PR battle with the government and indigenous people of Ecuador. It was (may still be) an ugly PR battle. Chevron was buying bloggers in its bid to mold public opinion in fighting a “the largest environmental lawsuit in history,” potentially a $25-$35 billion judgement. 60 Minutes did an episode, Andrew Cuomo, New York’s over achieving Attorney General was filing suit - it’s politics, oil, pollution, big money, international intrigue. A juicy story. They’ll write books about this one. Excerpt from my blog post:

Smack in the middle is a blogger called Zennie62, who, ChevronToxico claims, is a paid shill for Chevron. ChevronToxico offers no proof and Zennie Abraham, the blogger, does not confirm or deny payments in his blog posts. He posts prodigiously about the case and seems to have a wealth of information that would only be available to an insider. His blog posts and YouTube videos rank high in Google searches on keywords Chevron, Texaco (acquired by Chevron), and Ecuador. 

A couple of weeks later Zennie wrote to inform me that he has denied being a shill for Chevron and nobody paid him for his vigorous defense of the American oil company over the evil, opportunistic Ecuadorian politicians. Hence, the headline, a belated acknowledgement.

Who is Zenophon Abraham? Hard to say. Where is Zenophon Abraham? Everywhere on the web, on the ground he’s firmly East Bay/Oakland based. He’s covering contentious city council meetings, he’s in the streets after riots, he’s at wine tastings, jostling with backpackers on BART.  Zennie describes himself as ”relentlessly unconventional.” Zennie is a social media addict who loves being in the middle of a story - and capturing it on video, audio and in words.

Check Zennie out on Facebook, with links to his many sites: http://www.facebook.com/zenophon.abraham

PRNewser Blames Victim in Mugging by Journo

It’s not quite on the scale of Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust, but PRNewser ganging up on a wounded PR pro smacks of waterboarding for a minor offense.  See Former Lord & Taylor Publicity Manager Confronts Forbes Reporter Via Blog

The thumbnail: Out of work PR pro Judith Lederman cooperated with a Forbes reporter on a story called When Work Doesn’t Pay For The Middle Class. She was either mis-quoted, taken out of context, or ‘un-quoted’ - treated badly by a reporter who basically used her to support his storyline (never happens, right?) - and she called the reporter out on her blog.

I immediately admire Judith for this. We get paid to be aggressive advocates for our clients - that sometimes means confronting the media. She is willing to do it publicly for her own news.  A legitimate blog post is treated as news by Google. She is using the power of her blog to be on par, in this instance, with Forbes. Maybe it’s because she’s willing to stand behind the courage of her own convictions, something you rarely see in the PR business, that so offends PRNewser.  What about all this warrants such snide editorializing. Does the author know the PR business?

There are a few things worth noting here. First, is it worthwhile to publicly challenge a reporter on your blog, and do any positive results come out of this practice? Second, if Lederman is looking for a PR job, what does it say about her PR skills that she couldn’t properly handle her own media relations and personal image? Yes, the reporter could have very well taken things out of context, but it was Lederman who agreed to have the conversation in the first place. Perhaps should would have been better served to decline the interview or at least halt it when she felt things weren’t going in the right direction? - By Joe Ciarallo, PRNewser, on Sep 18, 2009 09:47 AM

PR/Media Week in Review 04-26-2009

 Die! Twitter! Die! Die! Die!  Twitter Twaddle amps to record level last week - is the end near?

Over three years ago Tom Foremski fomented social media revolution with his seminal post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die! - confirming and articulating a mass perception and setting many of us on a mission to find the next stage of public relations. Blogs, RSS, widgets, video - we could get information, entertainment and news straight to constituents and ‘relate’ to the ‘new’ media in a much more efficient manner through a myriad of free distribution channels.   A blog post can be a press release, Brian Solis said.  He was/is right. Then came Twitter.  Annoying, invasive, addictive, self-destructive Twitter. I didn’t think Twitter would last - then I didn’t think Barack Obama could win the election.

The obscene pervasiveness and inevitable flame-out of Twitter should be evident. What is not is how Twitter corrodes our communication. There are now two kinds of Twitterers: 1) inane 2) self-promotional. I am in category 2 (at least that’s my self assessment) and follow other self-promoters, whether they are journalists, news oraganizations, shills for products or services, consultants, flacks or flack service providers. My Twitter stream is like a Times Square news zipper with tips and news I can hopefully use. It has some value for time wasted sifting through the dreck.

It is category 1 that frustrates and will be the death of Twitter. Many social media gurus fall into this camp. ‘Just stopped into Starbucks for double soy latte.’ ‘Tied my shoelace and buckled my belt.’ ‘Bought a magazine - wow.’ Most of Twitter falls into the “Too much information” category and the rush to build ’followers’ leads to silly behavior, blatant prostitution (link whores have ceded to Twitter sluts), and obsessive non-sensical Twittering. Twitter is not about communication - it is Ashton Kutcher trying to build his brand and infiltrate as many minds as possible with the least effort.

 Tweetle dee and Tweetle dumb:  The week’s Twitter news roundup

• Maureen Dowd tweets a big one in her NYTimes Opinion piece: To Tweet or Not To Tweet 
  (Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
  The Tweets of outrageous fortune
  Or to Twitter against a sea of troubles)
• Land Rover Pays for Tweets - Is tweetola the new payola? from Advertising Age
• Which celeb will dominate the Twitosphere? http://tweetrace.com/
• Twitfit! Restaurant reviewer calls in lawyers to claim Twitter identity - NY Times 
• Twittering a recipe is now a twecipe
• Twitter now accepts telepathy - scrambled brain on Twitter, The Escapist
• Oprah pumps Twitter traffic - USA Today

Web Video of the Week / Evil Side of Twitter

The Seattle P-I online edition dropped off the top 30 list of newspaper sites in March, according to Editor & Publisher magazine. There are all sorts of prognostications about why this has happened - they no longer have a print edition to support the online presence - but the reality is that the online P-I is a poor excuse for a news source. Hearst eviscerated the P-I news bureau and essentially turned the seattlepi.com into a bottom feeding web aggregator, not a ‘news’ source. The P-I web edition illustrates the difficulty of grafting a new media venture on to an old media property.

SHORT TAKES: Police Working With PR Firm in Shift Toward More Communication - Washington Post | Evidence and PR spin collide in Vioxx courtroom battle - The Australian | Negative press hurting Kaylee’s family, PR rep says - Jason Wallace and his public relations consultant lashed out at the media yesterday, saying negative publicity has threatened the family’s financial stability, globeandmail.com, Canada |

Online Newsroom Practices to Attract and Satisfy Journalists, Investors and Analysts - Thurs, Apr 30, 1:00 PM EDT, Bulldog Reporter’s PR University, $299 per phone site. Seems relevant. Productive?

PR/Media Week in Review 03-15-2009

 R.I.P.  P.I.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 146 year old newspaper, is set to die this week and may turn into a web-only publication. The Seattle Times, the other newspaper that serves the city, may also fold soon, leaving a major U.S. city without a daily newspaper.

Newspapers are not simply paper, ink, words and images. They take on the personality of the city they cover, they become part of the cultural and political fabric, they span generations, house the archival memory, keep politicians and corporations honest… and they create jobs.

Most blogs echo what qualified news organizations report. With no ‘original’ reporting that adheres to an accepted, established code of responsible journalism we are left with hacks, charlatans and opportunists to promulgate ‘news.’  There is a road to survival for U.S. newspapers, argues David Carr of  The New York Times, although it will involve a radically different approach not likely to find traction among regulators or publishers.

A press statement issued by Chicago’s Daley administration announced the cancelling of $55 million in city public relations contracts, which represented the jettisoning of “non essential services.” Now we know. The contracts were terminated with extreme prejudice as an “absurd” waste of taxpayer money. See Sun-Times story. There are several ironies in that story. 1) The statement was issued by the press (PR) office. 2) By slashing PR contracts politicians and government workers are left to communicate without assistance, a dangerous proposition that threatens to undermine public discourse.

See YouTube video below on Wells Fargo and its use of blogs. Wells Fargo gets ‘it’ - they have bloggers and editors on staff. This is a good video on what it takes, step by step, to use a blog up front for PR benefit during a crisis. It is good to remember that a blog is simply an easy to launch, simple to maintain web publishing platform. You can fill it as you wish, regulate it, take the pulse of the public, adapt accordingly, respond when necessary.

PR/Media Week in Review 12-27-2008

Good riddance to the holiday season. Soon it will be good riddance to 2008, a bad year ending with the promise of a worse economy to come. First in a series of reflections & predictions.

Is this guy really President? How did this happen? He’s young, has a big smile and a thoughful demeanor. A steady hand on the wheel in a choppy sea. Even the most venal right-wing Republican pundits are keeping their powder dry and cautiously adhering to a tacit cease-fire. Rush Limbaugh says that the choice of Hillary for State is “brilliant” and he wholly supports it? Be wary when your enemies praise you, but be thankful. Camelot may be sweeter as a sequel. Will we be let down six months into the new administration because all our problems will not magically disappear? Hope takes self-renewal, the basis of America’s experiment in democracy. Can he inspire us after the election as much as he did during the campaign?

Caroline Kennedy won’t be NY’s next senator:  She doesn’t impress me, she has no experience in politics or government. If she woke up one day and decided she really wants this then let her run in 2010 and prove it. There are are plenty of other heavyweights who can tag team with Schumer and approximate the gravitas of Hillary. To be New York’s Senator she has to pay her dues.

New York will resemble Blade Runner: The city won’t be run by replicants, or maybe it already is and we don’t know it. Residential and commercial real estate still has a ways to drop, the MTA is a disaster, schools and essential services are being slashed, the city is begging to the state which is begging to the Feds, which is bailing out industries and perhaps soon municipalities. We will never re-visit Summer of Sam but New York on the skids can be dirty, dangerous and borderline overwhelming, separating the survivors from the realists. 

PR Blunder of the Week: You Know Chrysler is Toast Because … Mark Cuban flames the company on his blog and generates a windstorm of bad publicity for the beleaguered U.S. auto maker. Chrysler was so ecstatic that the government is throwing it a couple billion that it took out full-page thank you ads in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and USA Today.

On his personal blog, Cuban called the move “idiotic” and asked, “How does it make the next unemployed Chrysler worker feel that their entire year’s salary just went for a single, ridiculous ad?”

Chrysler’s statement on the Cuban maverick post: ”With the recent announcement by the White House, Chrysler LLC has the initial injection of working capital necessary to help bridge the liquidity crisis the industry is facing and help return the Company to profitability. The ad thanks America for this investment in Chrysler. As the process evolves, many individuals will have opinions. The Company has no higher priority than to satisfy the loan conditions laid out last Friday by the Government. As a result, Chrysler will not comment on individual opinion.” 

You have to pay those internal PR people to say something.

Images this week thanks to Waltz with Bashir, an Ari Folman film perhaps even more relevant this week due to the escalated conflict between the Israelis and Hamas.

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PR/Media Week in Review 11-30-2008

Whether it was the bloody siege in Mumbai or the Wal-Mart worker trampled to death by crazed shoppers on Long Island, this year Black Friday - the first and busiest shopping day of the holiday season - lived up to its name. November 28, 2008 will be remembered for its post turkey indigestion and a sense of dread that perhaps things are even worse than they appear.

The inanity of broadcast TV news was obvious during this made-for-social-media terrorism event in India.  Indian CNN newscasters are well-schooled in tactics of American counterparts - when you don’t know anything talk faster and louder so people don’t know that you are repeating the same supposition over and over. On the ground bloggers, tweeters, texters, videographers and photographers beat out the mainstream media this time.

So who died. Well my city, Mumbai. Armed gunmen and terrorists held the city to ransom, randomly shooting and killing innocent citizens for no rhyme or reason while the administration and other citizens helplessly watched. Kinda like the school campus shootouts we read in the news that happens in US of A. From Deeply Deeps blog by Deepa Prabhu, Mumbai, India. She “is licensed to tweet” at DDeeps

The Wal-Mart worker trampling on Long Island was the big news buzz around New York on Black Friday.  A mob killing at five in the morning for 20% off on a plastic tub is local socio-economic brutality that trumps events in the sub-continent.  Although a CNN online poll showed that 2/3 of all respondents are in total spending lock down for the holidays, maniacs were still camping overnight in cardboard boxes to get into Best Buy on 6th avenue.

The stock market - inured to worldwide economic and political catastrophe - actually posted strong gains for the “holiday-shortened week that saw investors increasingly confident that much of a dire economic outlook is already priced in,” according to MarketWatch. Meaning good times ahead, the economy is back on track, go buy a condo, find somebody who will give you a loan.  Yes, there are bargains out there - in stocks and real estate - but who has the money to buy?

Story of the week:

GIANT JERK SHOOTS HIMSELF

BURRESS FUMBLES GUN AND NAILS LEG

 ”Mercurial head case” Plaxico Giant Idiot Burress accidentally shot himself in the leg in a New York night club ( goes from hero to zero). The “Giants’ Super Bowl hero currently in the process of punching his ticket out of town, goes from being an accident waiting to happen to an accident that actually did happen.”

Edelman Wins PRWeek Blog Competition

If there’s any validity to this competition, that would be the headline at the end. Alas, that’s not going to happen, so we will announce the real winner now.

All other PR bloggers are nibbling at the edges, Richard Edelman is square in the center, week after week, post after post. He deserves recognition for the most important, insightful, useful and consistent blog focusing on public relations.

When Richard started 6 AM four years ago “blog” was still a new term. As the namesake of the world’s largest independent PR firm, he was a visible and vociferous proponent of social media and the “new” PR. He staked his ground early with “Pioneer Thinking” and Edelman flourished because of it. Along the way Edelman made some very public mistakes; they were also taking the biggest risks. Through the mistakes, apologies and corrections, we all learned.

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