PRBlogNews Week in Review 11-02-2009

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PR/Media Week in Review 10-11-2009

Letterman started the week on a guilt-trip with his wife about all the creepy things he has been doing, including ‘the women’ - not just ‘woman’ -  he has been sleeping with. His on air confession/campfire funny story was widely seen as a PR masterpiece but it was his subsequent stumbling and bumbling and fear - will I lose my job? Lose my marriage? - that played like a real life serial drama, fueled by media speculation, that boosted ratings and kept advertisers in place. Remember Johnny Carson also had brief - very brief - moments of on air intimacy, a breaching of the late night show game face, that played well.  It doesn’t help Letterman that the protagonist in this story, the would-be extortionist, has a pit-bull media hungry attorney who is avery aggressive about spinning ‘the rest of the story.’ Meanwhile,  Letterman is virtually muzzled by his position and, presumably, his wife. How many times can you say you’re sorry?  It’s been reported that Rubenstein is representing Letterman, of course. It’s now in the stage of PR for a highly-public legal case. Maureen Dowd nailed it in her op-ed column Men Behaving Madly.

So much of baseball is PR. On field quick interviews. Long, post-game press conferences. Crisis communication - the latest steroid story, moving a team to another city. New York is the media capital of the world and the Yankees are the #1 sports franchise in history and they have been supplying drama, making news, all season long and now big-time in the post season. Manager Joe Girardi calls Yankee Stadium, and by extension any ballpark the Yankees play in, ”the big stage.” We’ve been waiting for A-Rod take take his star turn on the big stage and this could be the year.

This year A-Rod has learned that despite the $25 million a year he gets to work, his pimary obligation is to HAVE FUN. He learned that from Mark Texeira, who is an aw-shucks, hard running, uncomplicated, un-pretty home run banger who is also a dazzling fielder - a guy who full-throttle loves playing baseball. And Texeira does all this for a measly $180 million over eight years, $2.5 million a year less than A-Rod. As long as the Yankees play like this, nobody will quibble over those salaries.

The real story is that you can now Twitter the Yankee game right from the MLB site. Always be Twittering, pitch to pitch, that great swell of Yankee tweets if you can’t pay $1,000 a ticket to be there in person.

This week we launched Who is Worth Following, a continuing PRBlogNews series based on random scans of intelligence, original thinking and personality in the PR blogosphere: #1 tomforemski - batting cleanup | #2 occamsrazr - the Leonard Cohen of PR bloggers | #3 #4 and #5 coming next week.

P.S. - There in no truth to the rumor that Barack Obama is up for the Cy Young Award, based on the pitch he threw out opening day.

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PR/Media Week in Review 09-27-2009

Yeah Clayton’s big spread in The New York Times!  It was a joy to see Clayton Patterson on the front page of the Arts Section of The New York Times this week. I met Clayton back in the ’90’s when I did a story on him for New York Press and dubbed him ‘The Mayor of the Lower East Side.’  He introduced me to Daphne Hellman and a host of other interesting characters (Vali Myers in the Chelsea Hotel?) and some who were downright dangerous. Clayton has a remarkably neutral view on the world that does not differentiate between saints and sinners, gang bangers or Rabbis.

John Strausbaugh does a great job in capturing Clayton for the NYTimes piece. Clayton the obsessive archivist, the chronicler, the Weegee of his time. And theNYTimes does us all a public service by chronicling the photos from Clayton’s exhibition, along with Clayton’s exhaustive knowledge of history and culture of the lower east side. Clayton loves the street and all the people who walk on it.  That’s what makes his work so important.

I lost touch with Clayton over the years and we re-c0connected on Facebook a few months ago. He and Elsa have lived in the same cramped and sprawling walk-up on Essex Street forever.  

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was capturing the last of the wild, free, outlaw, Utopian, visionary spirit of the Lower East Side,” he said recently.

• From Clayton Patterson, The Lower East Side, Before It Boomed, New York Times, Sept. 24, 2009.
•  On Homelessness, Street Style and Drugs - Clayton Paterson, a photographer, discusses history of the Lower East Side, New York Times multi-media presentation.

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Hyatt Hell - What the hell is Hyatt doing standing up to Governors, Unions, transportation workers, customers - basically telling them to go to hell, they’ll fire whoever they want, damn the brand or any loyal customer base? Did management possibly envision these actions would cost the company so dearly? Sometimes they best long-term offense is near-term acquiescence. Belligerence with the government, the media, your employees is not an effective PR strategy, unless you’re an oil company and you have unlimited funds to mitigate liabilities.

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I had a bit of a tussle this week with Joe Ciarallo at PRNewser. He maligned a struggling PR who bravely stood up to a bully reporter and I called him on it. See PR Newser Blames Victim in Mugging by Journo. Ciarello’s PR cred was offended, and he accused me of snide editorializing by…snide editorializing, which, I thought, was snide. We can go on but PRNewser is not significant enough to meddle about. In the height of Hyatt Hell (above) Ciarallo contacted a reporter who told him that Hyatt PR was not taking his calls. That was his story. Wow.

PR/Media Week in Review 06-28-2009

If you’re news junkie like me it doesn’t get better than last week. We started out with “Neda” and a bloody crackdown in Iran, Farrah Fawcett finally succumbing in Hollywood, quickly eclipsed by Mark Sanford in South Carolina confusing Argentina for the Appalachian Trail (”Buenos Airhead,” the cover of the NY Post said) - all trumped by Michael Jackson’s ultimate Hollywood ending.

News events last week re-defined and strained the limits of social media. Twitter, blogs, and Facebook proved to be a valuable if inadequate resource in Iran. Twitter crashed a few times under the deluge of Michael-mania, proving that nothing resuscitates a career like death.  Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of the previous ‘King,’ shared her thoughts of marriage to Michael and the premonition that he would die like her Dad, on her MySpace page. TMZ.com, the ultimate insider Hollywood news source, first reported Michael’s death.

More and more, social media transforms how news is created, packaged and disseminated. Increasingly, traditional media follows social media in breaking news, and then reports on reaction through social media channels. It is demoralizing to see that Twitter could not topple a government in Iran - it will take more time, chipping away at the blockages of a totalitarian regime. We thought that 20 years ago Tiananmen Square was the beginning of the end for the Chinese regime - but that was before Twitter and Facebook. For now, guns, batons and the apparatus of repression trump cell phone cameras. #iranelection news on Twitter is moribund but it exists.

The Michael Jackson news will play out through the week. Remember the long line of white Cadillacs for Elvis’ funeral? I’m sure that Michael, who took showboating to a grander level, will top that. There is the suspect doctor, the drugs, another autopsy, toxicology, the battles over the estate, the talk show appearances and the revelations that will be packaged in books. The world has a large appetite for Michael Jackson news.

Today, we hear that Mark Sanford will not resign as Governor of South Carolina. Sure, what else can this bozo do but be a politician? Now that he has been found we see how lost he really is.

Video of the Week

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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PR/Media Week in Review 05-03-2009

New York is the great stage and the Yankees are the most dramatic sports team on that stage. On that stage  there is always one, and only one, player who is the big star, the media magnet, the conflicted soul who demands attention and is tortured by the public scrutiny and vilification that inevitably comes with it.

Alex Rodriquez - A-Rod - is the guaranteed modern-day Yankee Adonis of controversy, even when he is recovering from surgery and not on the field (although A-Rod is always present in some form, always  playing some angle).

A-Rod is a huge PR issue for baseball and the Yankees, and constant fodder for the mercenary New York press. The new book by the A-Rod obsessed Sports Illustrated reporter Selena Roberts has amped up the A-Rod gag-o-meter to a new level. Roberts portrays A-Rod as a crass, womanizing, steroid-using, ego-maniacal douche-bag who is a bad tipper at Hooters, a liar and a cheat. None of this is particularly shocking or entirely unexpected but it has left Yankee manager Joe Girardi walking a tightrope.

The A-Rod show would be a lot more entertaining if the Yankees were having a terrific season. Instead, they are once again running hot and cold, failing to coalesce all that monied talent into a winning team. Now, of course, the perfect scenario is set for A-Rod to return and carry the team to the playoffs. This is precisely the sort of pressured situation he usually fails at.  All of it leaves some fans to wonder - is all this A-Rod agita worth it? Can his talent overcome all the bad PR baggage that comes with it?

Time for Yankees to Say Goodbye to A-Rod, Huffington Post |  Alex Rodriguez: Wiping His Butt With the Fabric of America - great post from Bleacher Report | Rubenstein PR Fingerprints On A-Rod’s Ass - PRBlogNews

CONNECTING

Mandy Stadtmiller (right), that ultra funny NY Post columnist, stand up comedian (although she often sits), and general gal about town and country is desperate for fans, like she wants to everybody in NYC to be her fan. So fan Mandy on Facebook here http://tinyurl.com/cto7lq and Twitter her here http://twitter.com/mandystadt so you can become a peep of Mandy’s and get the inside skinny when she needs a source for a story or asses on seats for a gig.

 blog: edit30, insight for business communicators - Richard Miles takes this stuff seriously| blog: Silicon Valley Watcher: Every company is a media company - I couldn’t have said it better|  Twitter: @serena - she has a clue, she’s fun and she streams useful biz/PR connections | Reading | MediaWeek Is Twitter the next Second Life? A mere 40 percent of new visitors return to site … A new study by Nielson Online found that 60 percent of people who sign-up for Twitter do not return after one month. That means only 40 percent of new visitors return, which is up from 30 percent, Nielson reported. MediaWeek suggested these numbers make Twitter similar to the over-hyped virtual world Second Life, which enjoyed much press attention a couple years ago. |  chaimhaasRT @JohnAByrnePRWeek media survey data: 58% of media pros are now on Facebook, 51% LinkedIn, 28% MySpace, & 22% on Twitter. Only 22%? | White House new Flickr photo stream:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/ | Matthew Bishop, The Economist, enjoys his Twitter: @MattBish |  Reasons to reconsider the social media release; tips for getting there

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 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

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