Blogging And the Media - Lessons From Iran

Last week I was a panelist at the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, in New York on ”Blogging’s Role in Today’s Media”  

“What is the most important thing Twitter has done?,” someone asked at the event. “Iran,” I said, without hesitation.

That was last Thursday, before Neda bleeding to death before our eyes, before Allah o Akbar careening like an eerie screech for help through the Tehran night (see YouTube video above), before the tear gas and the clubbings and the brutal robocop security forces.

The topic at ASJA was blogging but Twitter and other social media tools naturally entered the discussion. It’s all connected and all media, established and emerging, traditional and new, singular and organizational, is hooked to the web and pushed out through various social media channels.

The traditional media was easily corralled and controlled by the Iranian government - the ’wild’ media is in the streets with cell phone cameras and filming from their apartments. In Iran, twittering is a revolutionary act. Security forces pursue the citizen with the cell phone camera as if they are a criminal with a lethal weapon. 

If we need clear proof of the radical shift in media - here it is. Bloggers trump ‘journalists’ getting first-hand news in Iran. Mainstream media nurtures reliable blogging sources, as they call them, to get the news while ‘real’ journalists are holed up impotently in hotel rooms.

Iran is not about Islam vs the West, Persians vs the Jews, old vs new. It is about the hunger to know, to have a free flow of information, the right to speak out. We are also a revolutionary society. We fought and died for our freedoms and suffered a brutal civil war. Freedom of the press and the right to assemble and express our opinions is deeply ingrained in our consciousness - we take it for granted. That is why the Iranian people cry out at night - they want their voices heard. That is why social media is so important - it gives them the platform, the megaphone. Somewhere, someone hears them. And that gives a small measure of comfort that their voices can build to a powerful chorus for change that cannot be denied.

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?

So you want to break into public relations?

This is a difficult and confusing time to break into the public relations business.  As  traditional media continues to disappear at unprecedented speed, and the acceptance and use of social media increases exponentially, the PR landscape becomes radically altered.  How do you promote a service, product or person in 2009 when the rules of engagement have shifted so far that nobody can say for certain what they are? How do you judge success when you have no verifiable way to measure it? Why on earth would anybody want to break into this business now when there are no jobs and nobody can agree what public relations is anymore?

I faced a room full of mass communications students last weekend at VCU and tried to answer these questions. The short answer is:  Uncertainty brings opportunity and this is a thrilling time to be in the communications field.  It begins at the top, as Barack Obama re-defines how government communicates with and interacts with its constituents.  And it comes down to us - never before have the methods of communication - the ability to package and distribute news and information on a mass scale - been in the hands of ‘the people.’

All the news and info distribution sources we now have at our disposal - including web sites, blogs, Twitter, Flickr (or any web photo platform), YouTube (or any web video platform), RSS, widgets - are absolutely free. All it takes is imagination and time and you can shout to the world. 

The PR business still treats social media as a curiosity, an add-on. They generally still don’t get that  PR needs to lead the communications mix (PR/marketing/advertising) and PR needs to follow media into an Internet-based, digital distribution system. Instead of pitching the media we become the media.

Writing has always been an important, and sorely under served, element of public relations. Now that we can’t complain about lack of avenues for publishing, writing is even more important.  Check out Emily Valentine’s blog Cultural Anthropologist. Emily was one of the 50 or students from the 10 colleges and universities at the VCU PRSSA event last weekend.  There are also links to writing samples on Emily’s blog, including Microfinance: social networking meets social enterprise on the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy web site. Coming into the ‘new PR’ landscape, Emily is honing her writing and social media skills, and engaging in socially optimized PR. It make take some time for PR employers to understand the value of writing, blogging, and social media literacy - but the smart ones will soon enough.

See The Future of PR (SlideShow) | Mark Rose LinkedIn