Understanding NY Media

You want to ‘get’ New York City media? Then you have to understand the New York Post. This video will help:

New York’s Funniest Reporter … Again

5th Annual New York’s Funniest Reporter Show Will Raise Money For Humane Society

The 5th Annual New York’s Funniest Reporter Show is Thursday, August 19th at 6:00 pm at Gotham Comedy Club (208 West 23rd St).

It will feature eight media professionals each doing five minutes of stand up comedy in order to raise money for the Humane Society of New York . At the end of the night, a winner will be declared. (RELATED: See Media Comics Plunge PR Guy at Comedy Fest, PRBlogNews, 8/4/2007)

Appearing on the show this year will be: Wendy Diamond (Animal Fair Magazine), Cooper Lawrence (Cooper Lawrence Show), Ellis Henican (Fox News & Newsday), Meredith Daniels (Newsday), Lauren Sivan (Fox News), Marlaina Schiavo (CNN), and Robert George (New York Post). 2009 NYFR Winner Marianne Schaberg will be performing in the show but, will not be competing.

Judging the competition will be: Judith Regan (Sirius / XM), Jeffrey Gurian (Comedy Writer / Filmmaker), and Tasha Harris (Founder & Editor-In-Chief of StageTime Magazine). The show emcee will be comedian Ryan Reiss.

“In five short years, the show has become a New York tradition. We’ve been so honored to have over twenty six media professionals participate in the event and raise money for worthy charities.” Said New York’s Funniest Reporter Show Co-Producer, Ryan McCormick.

The cost of admission is $15 in advance and $20 at the door. To make a reservation, please call (212) 367-9000.

The 5th Annual New York’s Funniest Reporter competition is produced by Goldman McCormick Public Relations and is part of the 8th Annual New York City Underground Comedy Festival.

Since it’s inception in 2006, New York’s Funniest Reporter Show has featured over 26 media professionals performing stand up comedy in order to raise money for worthy charities that include Operation Uplink and the Humane Society of New York. Participants have come from: NBC, WPIX, Good Morning America, CBS, NY1, Fox News, Star Magazine, ABC, News 12, MSNBC, CNN, The Resident, New York Post, and New York Daily News.

For over 100 years, the Humane Society of New York has been a presence in New York City, caring for animals in need when illness, injury or homelessness strikes. In 1904 they were founded to protect the city’s horses against abuse. Members fought for laws to punish negligent owners and place watering troughs in streets and parks. As funds allowed the Society to expand, a free medical clinic and a small adoption center for cats and dogs was included. Today their hospital and their Vladimir Horowitz and Wanda Toscanini Horowitz Adoption Center help more than 34,000 dogs and cats annually, and their numbers continue to grow.

Content Grid Good PR Tool

The people at Eloqua are on to something.  Their new content marketing Infographic ‘The Content Grid‘ demonstrates what I’ve been talking about for a while - all communication can now be broken down into two broad components: content creation and content distribution.

When we understand that we are able to behave like news organizations that develop a story (a content element), and distribute it through multiple sites, print publications, Twitter teasers, Facebook, et al. This requires a new way of thinking that optimizes digital assets.

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

The Greening of Social Media for Iran Democracy

‘Neda” is her name (left) - she has become the rallying cry for Iranian protestors and a martyr for the cause. Videos show her with her father, like thousands of others, at a demonstration in Tehran.  Then she is on the ground, bleeding profusely and dying, her father holding her, others screaming. Who shot her? In this ‘unverified’ news world we now live in, no one can say for sure. Neda now qualifies for her own Twitter hashtag #Neda.

Street demonstrations are looming today in Iran to pay respects to Neda and other martyrs of the Twitter Revolution in Iran.

Where can you follow the news?

• Mashable How to Track Iran Election With Twitter & Social Media
• The New York Times The Lede
• The Huffington Post Live Blogging the Uprising

How can you show support?

• Green overlay your Twitter avatar with 1-click - http://helpiranelection.com
• Post your green Twitter avatar on the Green Wall: http://iran.greenthumbnails.com/

Social Media Sustains Resistance in Iran

 Can social media help spark and sustain a revolution?

Twitter sources:

• http://twitter.com/iran09
• http://twitter.com/iran88
• http://twitter.com/mousavi1388  last tweet - I am prepared For martyrdom, go on strike if I am arrested #IranElection
• Follow #iranelection for streaming tweets on Iran battles

RT @grandmatia Many governments worry about guns in their people’s hands, Iran fears computers in theirs! #IranElection #NetRevolution 

Heartbreaking Images From The Iran Green Revolution 6/2009 (graphic images - discretion advised)

 

Tehran Minute by Minute

We cannot underestimate the importance of what is going on in Iran now.  Read The Lede  in The New York Timesfor minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second updates. This is not original, on-the-ground reporting - it is scans of Twitter, Facebook, other news sources, images and sounds being broadcast out of the country through social media and traditional means.

‘Reporters’ are locked out of the news; citizen journalists are capturing events internally and beaming out to the world. A television station in Los Angeles sent 1,000 tiny USB-enabled cameras disguised as pens inside the country. Facebook is now available in Persian, Google is translating Mousavi’s web feed into English. The picture on the left was sent via Twitter.

This is one more example - perhaps the most telling yet - of how social media and citizen journalists are reshaping how we gather and transmit news. Iranians will get smarter about how to get around the government clampdown on ‘evil’ media and the rest of the world, hungry to know what is going on in Iran, will aid them.

This past week has been a revelation. “Where is my vote?” - the repeated message of protesters, in English, is something we have asked in recent U.S. elections (we have a long history of manipulated elections). They speak of Revolution and Democracy and every citizen counting. I cannot pretend to understand the complexities of the Iranian culture but the events of the last week show that we have similar aspirations for justice and freedom and they need to be supported. (Several sources report clashes between the police and protesters).

PR/Media Week in Review 05-24-2009

Twitter scams are proliferating like wildfire on the Net- 100FOLLOWERS A DAY! they promise - and this one, TwitterTrafficMachine, a couple of bozos who say they invented a system to automatically increase your Twitter followers. mytweetfollowers.com is another one that automatically controls your Twitter with re-tweets to their site - @Stock_Tweets is having a hard time turning off those malicious auto-Tweets.

All this supports the false notion that hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers lends you credibility, popularity and the power to influence others. Twitter is easily manipulated and tends to gravitate toward the fleeting inane comment generated by obsessive compulsive Twits whose only purpose is to generate more followers, no matter who they are.

On the other hand - the media is really taking to Twitter and it is proving to be a viable alternative wire service.  Some journalists troll for sources through Twitter: APRealEstateLooking to interview someone who bought or sold a home in the Dallas metro area in April or May. Email asainz@ap.org. Some journalists, who have a conversational style and an underlying mission, manage to convey a real personality in 140 characters or less. My favorite is Nicholas Kristof:

NYTimesKristof @Kholmpartiet Poverty of spirit: people who express themselves not by personality but by displaying the latest i-Pod. 18:15 PM 19th May | NYTimesKristof It’s odd to return to the U.S. from African villages. So much wealth here, yet often accompanied by a poverty of spirit. 16:18 PM 19th May.

Twitter is also proving to be a resource for what journalists are thinking and doing: mattbish Had editorial lunch with JP Morgan ceo Jamie Dimon who was surprisingly upbeat (Matthew Bishop, The Economist). As one client astutely observed- journalists are now openly offering opinions trough social media.

The exploding popularity of Twitter and its usefulness as another information stream is forcing companies to hire in-house or freelance Twitterers. See NYTimes “Tweeting Your Way to a Job“. Wells Fargo is the latest to launch a customer service Twitter stream, complete with several real-life Twitter personalities who answer basic banking questions. Others in the banking business have jumped on the bandwagon: See USA Today story about customer service and banking on Twitter. 

JournalistTweets is the the first (claims Cision) Twitter journo aggregator. You can follow tweeting journalists according to segments - Business | Entertainment | Health | Technology

Follow me on Twitter: @markrose

More and more, my conversations with journalists includes a survey of the PR job market (can’t be worse than journalism!?). This week, editorialists and bloggers debated the blurring lines between public relations and journalism. See Reason magazine column arguing that PR could become the next investigative journalism| And there’s The 21st Century Journalist: PR by Day, Reporter by Night? by Renay San Miguel.

 NYPost: Portfolio.com taken over by American City Business Journals | Worth magazine re-launches June 1. See story here.

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