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PR/Media Week in Review 04-26-2009

April 26, 2009 By 1 Comment

Mark Rose, Editor, PRBlogNews, Week in Review 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

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?

Filed Under: Blog news, blogging, Media, News, PR Week in Review, social media Tagged With: , , , , ,

Bye Bye P.I.

March 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Ceases Print Publication Tomorrow I first went to Seattle in 1971. Fresh out of high school, looking for adventure, escaping New York City, everything about the Pacific Northwest was new, including the local newspaper we all read – the Post-Intelligencer. You come to rely on a newspaper to inform, entertain, capture the personality of the region and to give you the tactile pleasure of ink on newsprint, an essential morning ritual. You read the P-I on the ferry to Bainbridge or the Halfway House in Brinnon. It was (and may still be, on the web only) an essentially Northwest newspaper.

Tomorrow is the last print run of the P-I. A victim of the brutal economy, especially for print media, the P-I will become the largest daily newspaper to shift to a web-only product. That’s sad and unfortunate but maybe there’s opportunity for seattlepi.com to lead the way for a leaner, nimbler, web-savvy established news organization – based on the pioneer spirit that lead to its  founding 146 years ago. Can these old white guys blaze new digital trails and shed generations of print-based baggage? It’s going to be an interesting experiment. I am rooting for them. I just changed my homepage to seattlepi.com - they need the traffic.

Why we need the P.I. … really need it … Recently, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer spearheaded a national expose on the Boy Scouts of America titled Chain Saw Scouting (See Profit trumps preservation for Boy Scout councils nationwide). Reporters from Hearst newspapers around the country worked on that story for a couple of years, they shared resources, connected the dots, followed the leads and a disturbing national pattern emerged. We need that kind of deep investigative reporting that requires professional time and resources. We need the P-I to keep watchdog over the Chief Seattle Council of the Boy Scouts of America. 

The P-I wrote the first stories on the Pulali Point landowners banding together (SavePulali.org) to force Chief Seattle Council to respect the property rights of its neighbors and the sanctity of the land bequeathed to them.  The P.I. deserves an award for the Chain Saw Scouting series. And they deserve our allegiance.

How the P.I. can survive and thrive:  Go totally innovative and ‘web-ize’ reporters so they can transmit to the web instantly from the scene. The Chain Saw Scouting series has interactive features, video, maps, slide shows – and hundreds of virulent, off the charts comments by rabid right wingers who are giddy with glee that the P.I. print has failed.  That’s the kind of fighting media property we need in the Northwest. 

The P.I. now needs to reinvent a major city newsroom. That can be thrilling … or impossible. Maybe the out-of-work P.I. reporters can start their own publication without the baggage of a print-based parent. Ah, the beauty and terror of the web.

Filed Under: Media, News Tagged With: , , , ,