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.

PR Flocks to The Audience Conference

Are there signs of life in the moribund old line PR business?

Porter Novelli and PRNewswire have signed up as sponsors of The Audience Conference, November 5th & 6th, Hudson Theater, New York City.  David Binkowski of MS&L is speaking , along with Jeremy Pepper and David Dunn, founder of velocidi, formerly COO of Edelman Digital, and Joe Jaffe of crayon. Since Loren promises no wi-fi and a Twitter-free zone for the conference it will be interesting to see what these PR gurus learn and how they churn it back to us minions who cannot attend. 

Who is Worth Following #5

  The continuing scan for signs of intelligence and fun in the PR blogosphere 

#5 Loren Feldman

Loren Feldman, the ganza macher of 1938 Media, is a pupeteer, satirist, performer in search of an audience, anti-Web 2.0 fixture in Web 2.0 circles, videographer and other things. He’s not in PR (although he is a PR master) and he’s not a blogger but he is definitely worth following, if nothing more than for entertainment… although you do get valuable information from Loren. As much as he will rail against it, he is addicted to this social media thing, otherwise he wouldn’t have an audience.

In the old days, a couple of years ago, I would hang with Loren at the Friar’s Club or a Deli somewhere on the east side as he was trying to find his place in the new social media world order. I don’t know if he’s found it but he did find Michelle Oshen - they got married, settled down like a nice nebbisha Long Island couple with shiny cars and a small dog and together became an anti-Web 2.0 power couple.

Although Loren has been thankfully domesticated he thankfully has not mellowed. He still could be the last Jew in the Warsaw ghetto lobbing a hand grenade - leading the symbolic if largely futile assault against repression. In his first event, The Audience Conference, New York City, November 5 -6, 2009, Loren is finally commanding the big stage where he is the lead player. I can’t figure out what The Audience Conference is, other than a day of fun and catharsis with some well-connected Web 2.0 types, but it is not, as Loren insists, about Twittering, Facebooking, YouTubing, blogging and all that - except that’s what all The Audience Conference speakers and performers do (even the music people are probably heavily involved in web promotion). 

Why follow Loren? Because he makes all this serious stuff fun and proves that we are involved in a visual medium that requires performers to reach out to an audience.

THE AUDIENCE CONFERENCE: The speakers range from large traditional media organisations with Dan Farber of CBS, though the recording industry with Warner Bros. Music CTO Ethan Kaplan, advertising with Crayon’s Joe Jaffe, HR and internal audiences with Frank Roche of iFractal and new media players like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, not to mention Musicians like Adam & Mia and Writers like the inimitable Andrew Keen of “Cult of the Amateur” fame with more being added. 

Who is Worth Following is a continuing PRBlogNews series based on 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

PR/Media Week-in-Review, 07/27/08

Jew on Jew Violence

My first day in grade school at P.S. 244 (correction: it’s P.S. 277) in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, a tall Irish thug named Patrick Selkirk introduced himself by sharing his favorite joke: “What’s the fastest means of transportation?” asked Patrick. I shrugged. “Throw a penny and hop on a Jews back,” he said and Patrick and his gang of thugs cracked up and boasted of making raids into ‘Jewland’ (neighboring Marine Park) to beat up on kids like me. Patrick and his boys made good on those boasts.  Enticing and evading the Irish gangs was a favorite activity back then until we developed our own brand of thuggery, albeit much more subtle.

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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.

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