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.

Social Media Feeds Iran Resistance

If Czechoslovakia 1989 was the Velvet Revolution, Iran ‘09 is the Twitter Revolution.

This is when Facebook is more powerful than the Ayatollah, when YouTube replaces CNN, when the Twitter stream #IranElection replaces Associated Press. With tape recorders, cell phones, video cams, cameras, and computers Iranian protesters are battling tear gas and truncheons and bullets. Mousavi’s willingness to embrace martyrdom  was conveyed via Twitter - his moves are transmitted through his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/mousavi 

Great single source for constantly updated news from Iran aggregated from multiple social media channels:  The Lede, The New York Times News Blog.

Twitter: @nytimeskristof All hail the Iranian photographers braving the streets! Great pix at http://www.demotix.com/iranelection

See Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned, NYTimes, 6/21/2009

Update NYTimes, The Lede, Saturday, June 20, 4:54 p.m. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Roger Cohen was out on Tehran’s streets on Saturday and has filed this account of what he witnessed. Here is some of what he reports:

I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her.

There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad. [...]

Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election, but on Saturday it seemed stronger.

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 04-12-2009

So grateful for the Dead- Brilliant social media play by The New York Times this week, soliciting Grateful Dead photos from readers to celebrate an upcoming tour by the band (sans Jerry Garcia, of course).  The Times is also polling readers on the greatest Dead show ever. Of the 2,350 estimated Dead shows, so far the May 8, 1977, show at Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York is in the lead. That concert coincides with the date many Deadheads agree was the bands’ “peak.”

I was grateful to be there for the ‘peak’ years - I experienced 14 Grateful Dead concerts between 1967 and 1978/1979 - my first in a converted movie theater in Brooklyn ($2 admission, free if you didn’t have it), to the Anderson Ballroom on the lower east side (tickets were $10 - a benefit for the Hells Angels), the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey (see Scarlet Begonias’ 4-27-77 on YouTube w/Keith & Donna), to the arena in Seattle.

One of my favorites was the final show at  Winterland in San Francisco, New Years eve, December 31, 1978. My friend was the San Francisco stringer for Rolling Stone and I got to hang with the Blues Brothers (Belushi & Aykroyd), the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the late great Bill Graham, who fed us all breakfast at dawn. The Dead rang in the new year at midnight and they didn’t quit until dawn. They often gave more than you could take - until Garcia died in 1995 at 53 years old.

Like many, I am ambivalent about this Dead ‘reunion.’ The Dead simply are not the Dead without Garcia. But I love what the Times is doing.   We’re still a Tribe, no matter how old we are, and all those pictures confirm how important the Dead experience was, and always will be. There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert was the prevalent bumper sticker on VW micro buses in the ‘peak’ years. See a taste at the end of this post.

Bob Pearson, former VP of Communities and Conversations at Dell, is named President of the Blog Council.  blogcouncil, along with gaspedal, sponsors BlogWell, at the Chelsea Piers, NYC, April 29, 2009.  BlogWell is about how big companies use social media. Eight case studies, one afternoon, $250. Nokia, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Tyson Foods, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Turner Broadcasting System share case studies on social media.

Jane Fonda is blogging her thoughts, with celeb photos, on starring in ‘33 Variations’ on Broadway. Whether she is writing posts herself, or this is a clever PR gig, her blog has received a lot of attention and is definitely helping the show. Who is sending her flowers? What movie did she see on Easter break? Is that the President of Brazil in the audience? Jane Fonda has taken control of her news and distribution - somebody in her circle is thinking smart social media.

Whatever happened to Jakob Nielsen, the web usability pioneer? Thanks to Serena Ehrlich’s Twitter about Nielsen’s new eyetracking study on how users read web pages. There is a definite ‘way’ to present information on the web that is radically different than the printed page.  Nielsen, through the Nielsen Norman Group, breaks it down: the ‘About us’ section, including PR & IR areas. 

Can the AP Out-Google Google? To compete with what it deems Google’s “misappropriation” of its news, the Associated Press wants to fight back by building its own news aggregator. See BusinessWeek story. (Did I misappropriate this news?)

 

‘Birdsong’ - the Dead tribute to Janis Joplin

PR/Media Week in Review 03-22-2009

It was a shock to see the Seattle Post-Intelligencer fold this week after 146 years of printing a newspaper.  Worse than the demise of the newspaper is the web replacement seattlepi.com - atrocious, a mess, no chance of success, an insult to the journalists who toiled at the newspaper for generations and the Pacific Northwest readers who deserve much better.

 For several yeas I reviewed web sites for the the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, the group that produces the annual Webby awards (the Webby award ceremony this year is June 1-8, closing out Internet Week NYC). I critiqued sites based on Content, Structure and Navigation, Visual Design, Functionality, Interactivity and Overall Experience

Donning my site reviewers hat I would give seattlepi.com a failing grade. The lead story is Joel Connelly’s lame piece on Seattle restaurants (they deserve better than his perfunctory attention). The home page goes on forever - a mishmosh of soft features you can find on dozens of other sites. I can go on but it’s not worth it. What a shame. What was Hearst thinking?

“We look at this as a great experiment to launch a fully digital local-media company in Seattle, taking advantage of the great brand and the great talent that we have,” Steven Swartz, president of Hearst newspapers, said in an interview. Shira Ovide chronicles the collapse of the paper and the grand, misguided Hearst experiment in her story in the Wall Street Journal.

Can PR Save GM?  Automotive giant General Motors Corp. is nurturing a whole new image in cyberspace, defined by tweets, blogs and one-on-one conversations. See General Motors public relations exec Tom Wickham uses online tools to spread good news about automaker from MLive.com.

“We’re so deep into social media, we have our own team specializing in this,” Wickham said. He’s a newcomer to one of the hottest sites, twitter.com. Just this month, Wickham enrolled as TweetingTom. “I’m out there tweeting, sharing information,” he said. “That’s how PR is evolving, connecting with people one on one on one.”

 China military trains first public relations team. An initial class of 51 officers graduated this week in an effort to “raise the opinion-forming ability of the force’s foreign propaganda team and advance the innovation and development of the military propaganda work,” the official People’s Liberation Army Daily reported Friday.  Frightening! See Associated Press story.

Penn. Gov. Ed Rendell is paying an old political hand $100,000 to spearhead a publicity campaignfor programs financed with billions of federal economic-stimulus dollars. Rendell’s hiring of Ken Snyder as a subcontractor comes at a time the governor is calling for spending cuts and tax increases to avoid a state budget shortfall of more than $2 billion. See Rendell Hires Publicist to Tout Stimulus Money.

PR/Media Week-in-Review, 07-20-2008

Loren Feldman Goes Too Far

“How do you know you’ve gone too far until you go there?” - anon  |  This quote should be on the 1938Media web site. As we know, Loren Feldman, the ganza macher of 1938Media, likes to push the edges. Technigga, his digital trilogy to racial stereotypes and the vacuity of social media, was perhaps his boldest stride into comedic social commentary. The whole “black tech” issue came back to haunt Loren recently with a dustup with NPR - he’s like a heat seeking missile for controversy.

What’s to become of Loren Feldman? There was buzz of a C-Net deal, Verizon signed him up for a day or two before they realized his content could not be controlled, he tried integrating into Mahalo like a MTV V-Jay (NO!), he floated the idea of charging for “premium” content (apparently 99 cents was too much for most people), and he hobnobbed with Calacanis in Brentwood and Arrington in the Bay area like Blanche DuBois relying on the kindness of strangers. He even gave up pounding on Shel Israel and absolved Julia Allison - still he could not go mainstream with the digerati.

Read more

Review of the Jew - so long ‘07, hello ‘08

EPIPHANY OF THE YEAR - You Don’t Need to Blog

November 19, 2007 broke like any other morning with one big difference - the thought of blogging made me ill. I had plenty to say, just didn’t feel like saying it, at least in this forum. And so it was for more than a month, a blissful break that could reactivate at any time. During my hiatus I discovered that we as Jews involved in the grand conspiracy to control the media, entertainment and banking businesses of the world, sometimes need to take a break, especially after such a fruitful year. I need to read the Talmud and go to shul, I don’t need to blog. So what I need to do right now is to celebrate Jews (and a couple of goys) who have had an exceptional year in creative and clandestine media manipulation.

VICTORY OF THE YEAR - Feldman Defeats French in Epic Battle

Loren Feldman is not only a Jew, he is a New York meshugenah who enoys good food and women with ample bosoms. His 1938media videos were entertaining and often hit on uncomfortable truisms driven by the force of Feldman’s Stanley Kowalski personality. In 2007 Feldman was making his mark in a tight little circle, and then he unknowingly picked a fight with the Frenchies and took the whole thing to a higher level.

For a few days in December as Loren banned the French from his site (you can ban country-specific entry to your site) and the French Seesmic people tried to ban Loren in some pathetic display of ‘retaliation,’ we were witnessing real time prime video theatre that showed why unabashed French baiting is now a divine right of all Americans. It also showed that Loren is one tough Jew.

It started with the Seesmic Review, 12/16/07, but the heat of battle lasted more than three days through a torrent of videos on both sides of the Atlantic. Loic Le Meur CEO of Seesmic had run into the Feldman buzzsaw and he was completely Frenched. The lame-o videos that the Seesmic-ites produced to counter Feldman confirmed every French cliche going and created a few more.

Loic made two critical errors: he thought Loren was racist and he thought he was serious. And because of that Loren decided to get real serious and to taunt and antagonize and mock and humilate the French. It was amazing how many others wanted to join in. 1938Media attracts a sometimes rabid gang.

Vinny Says:
December 16th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

I love all the people calling Loren a racist. I know him personally. NONE of you do. The man is OBVIOUSLY not a racist so get the hell over yourselves.

Secondly, he made some valid points in the review. If your stupid asses watched it instead of looking for something to be offended for, you’d realize he was pretty much right. The interface sucks, the quality is dreadful, and the idea of having to watch multiple RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:RE: videos to see a reply.

Oh, and the Flash use on the entire site? SUCKS, and it’s slow as ass.

So maybe all you wounded Frenchmen should pay better attention and stop venting your inferiority complexes as cries of racism.

Pay attention, and learn.

VIDEO OF THE YEAR - Jew Hip Hop /Crank That Kosha Boy

BUG OUT OF THE YEAR - Jason McCabe Calacanis / Goy Wonder 

Baby faced Greek thumb sucking serial entrepreneur and dog face licker JasonMcCabe&Mrs.Miller CalacanisOuzo III (left, at NYC dim sum orgy) bowed out of a scheduled face-to-face one-on-one basketball showdown in a New York City schoolyard with Feldman the Mad Bald Jew. Bloated and surly from a dim sum fest in a dowdy Chinatown emporium with lowlife hackers and blogger wannabes, Calacanis blamed his bow-out on the weather and an over stuffing of kalamata olives.  In ‘07 Calacanis aggressively hawked Mahalo, the first human powered search engine. Can it work? I question the following in its Guide Notes on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto: “Although shots were fired at her, she died of a fractured skull from hitting her head against the sun roof of her car.” Is that true or Pakistani government propaganda? Does the “human” in the Mahalo equation simply cut and paste “facts” from unreliable sources and further solidify a false story? ‘08 will be a dangerous time in Internet communication as questionable sources gain credibility with unquestioning distribution channels. Calacanis is from Brooklyn. He should know about this.

PERSONALITY OF THE YEAR - Brian Connolly & Friends

Actually Brian (right) is runner up, third, fourth, fifth and sixth place in this category. “So, when I get an email from Amanda it’s really Brian?” somebody asked me, perturbed by the various genders and shadings of Brian. “Actually,” I said. “That is one of Brian’s personalities. And then Brian himself has several personalities. These days it’s best to keep a scorecard before responding.” One of Brian’s personalities likes to confront adversaries in postings, email and on the phone. That is the Brian that over-thought Strumpette into oblivion and then resurrection. Where does Strumpette go in 2008? I couldn’t venture but now at least my cell phone minutes are down 50% since I started talking to only one Brian. Despite the name that implies a long line of patronage in the Chicago police force and prominence at St. Patrick’s Day beer bashes, Brian actually claims Orthodox Judaism in his immediate family. Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote about Connolly and one of his personalities in Sex and the Shtetl.

PRBLOGNEWS POST OF THE YEAR - Psychedelia baby 

See PR & LSD - a long strange happy tradition

MOST CHASTENED - Steve Rubel

I apologize for calling Microconfusion blogger Steve Rubel a shiny head Yoda and incorrigible link whore. Now that he has admitted that everything he has been frantically flogging for the past two years is bull he can only be accused of being the latter. 

MOST STALWART - Richard Edelman

Talk about a big shot Jew. Richard has his name on hundreds of doors all around the world. This year he finally admitted that we don’t need the established goy media and we can manipulate the masses directly through social media. My mother Shirley, God rest her soul, would be in love with this man. Plus, he blogs consistently even when he has nothing to say except that he had drinks with a journalist and commissioned a new study that will prove a greater need for his PR services.

MOST IMPROVED - Eric Schwartzman

He got a haircut and picked up his pants. Bravo.  But the goofball video he has on iPressroom looks geeky and dated … but maybe that sort of thing works in L.A. Is he a Jew?

BEST LOBOTOMY - B.L. Ochman

It has to be why she is like that.

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