#iranelection update

 The battle in Iran has progessed from a dispute about election results to a fight for for liberation that needs the support of all bloggers and social media communicators.

Foreign governments cannot interfere in the internal workings of Iran but the worldwide blogging community can. Sooner or later information will break through, if it is pushed through enough channels.

• Watch this eloquent, passionate video appeal from Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the great Iranian filmmaker who spoke from Rome on Tuesday to Iranians abroad (in Farsi with English subtitles): “We need to work collectively to spread information coming out of Iran … we have found each other again”

Re-purposed from THE LEDE, The New York Times: 6/24/09 Update | 6:56 p.m. On the New Yorker’s Web site, Laura Secor argues against the theory that there is a fierce battle for power going on behind the scenes in Iran, and that only the fights between clerics matter. This is interesting.  Later in the day the Times published a news story arguing the opposite - that Iran has been taken over by militarists and clerics have been pushed aside. Does anybody really know what is going on in Iran? It is the new “Iron Curtain.” Ms. Secor writes:

The struggle in Iran, we are hearing, really comes down to a fight among the élites inside the power structure.

It is clearly true that Iran’s élites are disunited, but to place great emphasis on this fact is misleading. Factional differences have riven the Iranian political establishment since the Islamic Revolution itself, and sometimes quite dramatically, as during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, from 1997 through 2005. As for Rafsanjani, about whose possible role much has been made, he has been a rival of Ahmadinejad since losing the presidency to him in 2005; this has increasingly driven him toward the reformist camp, where he has been accepted only partially and reluctantly. None of these cleavages are new. In a country that does not tolerate political parties or associations in its civil society, the contest for power, and over the future of the political system, has been largely confined to the establishment itself. Khamenei has spent much of his twenty years in power checkmating his rivals inside the system and discrediting them with their supporters outside the system.

What is new today is not that cracks have opened inside a monolithic system, or even that particularly powerful figures, like Rafsanjani, have broken onto the side of the reformers. What is new is the fierce mass movement from below, which is not confined to students and intellectuals but seems to span demographics and age groups. Even while exercising legal rights, nonviolent methods, and issuing constant appeals to Islam and to the ideals of the revolution, this movement has openly defied Khamenei, the Basij, and the Revolutionary Guards, by ignoring the threats of bloodshed and mayhem. Nothing like that has happened in thirty years.

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A-Rod Set to Return to Yanks Amidst PR Blitz

When you have a $250 million property, you go to great lengths to protect it.

Alex Rodriguez, who many admit is the best player in baseball, has a battery of lawyers, agents, and flacks who seek to protect and further the image and career that A-Rod himself assiduously seeks to diminish. The New York Yankees, the most successful and drama-laden sports franchise, occasionally spawn tell-all/shock books like Sparky Lyle’s Bronx Zoo, and Joe Torre’s Yankee Years, along with endless news stories, sports columns and blog posts.

When you’re A-Rod, secretly cavorting with Madonna, or Joe DiMaggio, marrying Marilyn Monroe, the stories spill from the sports section to gossip and celebrity - every word is dissected and analyzed, even silence becomes a statement.

A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez by Selena Roberts was released recently. It is the catalyst for the latest A-Rod mania, following his admission of steroid use (a story that Roberts broke). Selena Roberts is obsessed with Alex Rodriguez and she is no fan. As a sports reporter for The New York Times before she jumped to Sports Illustrated, she wrote probing, elegant, albeit negative pieces insinuating that the Yankees would be better off without A-Rod, the preening, self-aggrandizing, over paid diva. These days you can become a pseudo celebrity just by writing about A-Rod.

Yankee manager Joe Girardi lashed out against the A-Rod book  with an aw-shucks if you can’t say something good about somebody, why say anything at all attitude, thereby cementing his legacy as the anti-Billy Martin. Other sports bloggers have come to A-Rod’s defense: Why I’m skeptical of Selena Roberts’ new book, from SysterBall |  Selena Roberts’ Poison Pen, from the Yankees Republic | In defense of Public Enemy No. 1 , from Sports-Illustrated writer Jim Caple | Roberts’ book on A-Rod should be questioned, from KansasCity.com.

All this falls in the ’any publicity is good publicity’ category as A-Rod returns to the team this week, maybe as early as Friday.  The Yankees are slumping along without him.  Can he lift the team by way of his awesome talent and unfortunate personality? Nothing like the heated glare of the avaricious New York media to pump some life into a listless sports franchise - or drive it further down.

A-Rod Archives:

• A-Rod Bunts in PR Press Conference, PRBlogNews, 02/18/2009
• Rubenstein PR Fingerprints on A-Rod’s Ass, PRBlogNews, 02/13/2009
• A-Rod Slams Media in PR Home Run, PRBlogNews, 02/10/2009
• A-Rod Needs Good PR Bad, PRBlogNews, 02/09/2009
• BorAss Reamed in the Bronx, PRBlogNews 11/04/2007
• PR Drives A-Rod & BorAss Money Show, PRBlogNews, 11/01/2007
• BorAss PR Stunt Spits on Baseball, PRBlogNews, 10/29/2007

Media Thrives Covering Death of Media

The rapid demise of traditional media is fueling a new media stream, most notably on Twitter, chronicling day-by-day media death blows. The merciless axe fell today on Conde Nast’s slick business mag Portfolio, launched two years ago during boom times with lots of fanfare and a big budget. Peter Kafka, wsj.com ‘All Things Digital’ MediaMemo blogger got a jump on the competition with his as-it-happens tweets (http://twitter.com/pkafka) about the end of the print & web-versions of Portfolio.

• May issue, out now (Tim Geithner cover), is Conde Nast Portfolio’s last. Web site to close “in the second quarter” http://bit.ly/1517il about 2 hours ago from TweetDeck
•  Conde Nast publisher David Carey : “The company is deeply grateful to Portfolio’s readers ” http://bit.ly/1517il about 3 hours ago from TweetDeck 
•   Conde Nast declines to comment re: Portfolio shutdown. http://mediamemo.allthingsd… about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
•    Source tells me Conde Nast is shuttering Portfolio and is informing staff right now. Posting ASAP about 4 hours ago from TweetDeck

Also see http://twitter.com/themediaisdying

Matthew Bishop of the Economist says: “After tweeting for a week, I am already convinced that Twitter is the “killer app” for journalists, and will hasten the end for newspapers.” Follow him @mattbish

According to the latest semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Wall Street Journal is alone among the top 25 U.S. newspapers in reporting higher weekday circulation for the six months ending March 31, 2009, than for the same period a year earlier. Its circulation of 2,082,189 constituted a 0.6 percent increase. The New York Times (-3.6 percent), the Washington Post (-1.2 percent), the Los Angeles Times (-6.6 percent), the Chicago Tribune) (-7.5 percent), Newsday (-3 percent), New York Daily News (- 14.3 percent),  New York Post (-20.6 percent).

PR/Media Week in Review 04-04-2009

This week The New York Times reported that the The New York Times Company was considering ‘closing’ the Boston Globe. There’s an interesting twist to the story as reported:  “The Times Company chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., and Catherine J. Mathis, chief spokeswoman for the company, each declined to comment …”

So, the Times reporter, RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA, is boxed out by the Times‘ head flack and the guy who owns the company (the Times is a publicly traded corporation in name only, it operates more like a family business managing ‘the paper of record’ for the good of us commoners.)  What can the reporter do?  He’s not about to launch an investigative piece on the guy who signs his paycheck.

Still, PÉREZ-PEÑA digs and gives the appearance, at least, of reporting on his employer at arms length by citing an unnamed source:  “The New York Times Company has threatened to close The Boston Globe unless labor unions agree to concessions like pay cuts and the cessation of pension contributions, according to a person briefed on the talks.”

These are extraordinarily precarious times for journalists.  Reporters covering media are like spectators at their own wake. The Sun-Times Media Group, including the Chicago Sun-Times, filed for bankruptcy last week, joining the Chicago Tribune in bankruptcy court.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased printing a few weeks ago and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News folded in February. MediaNews Group Inc., publisher of the Denver Post, San Jose Mercury News,  and St. Paul Pioneer, agreed this week to a restructured debt repayment plan that will keep the newspapers printing, for now.

Media consolidation in the digital age is not surprising - this has been in the works for some time. But the pace has accelerated in recent months as the economy sinks deeper. These days, when I am pitching stories to the media I am also fielding inquiries about possible employment for out-of-work or soon-to-be-laid-off journalists.

See hilarious Colbert Report video below that illustrates, in typical Colbert fashion, why the newspaper business is dead.

This week a conversation kicked up on the LinkedIn Public Relations Professionals group on the usefulness of the press release. I thought this was an issue put to rest a few years ago but apparently not. I am decidedly in the anti-press release camp. Here is my two cents: 

The death of the press release has been chronicled extensively on the web. Traditional press releases are necessary for public companies. Otherwise if you are not crafting news to be optimized on the web and to build digital assets that can be managed, then a ‘press release’ is a waste of time and it frustrates and angers journalists. If you have news to share with journalists it can be done informally, unless there are compliance issues and you need a ‘formal’ release. Writing and following up on press releases is probably the single most time consuming, useless activity that PR people indulge in. Yes, Tom, a summary is great. Look at CNN. Their news stories start with summaries. Write for the web. You can distribute through your own news channels and impact search results - how most people find their news.

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PR/Media Week in Review 03-15-2009

 R.I.P.  P.I.  The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a 146 year old newspaper, is set to die this week and may turn into a web-only publication. The Seattle Times, the other newspaper that serves the city, may also fold soon, leaving a major U.S. city without a daily newspaper.

Newspapers are not simply paper, ink, words and images. They take on the personality of the city they cover, they become part of the cultural and political fabric, they span generations, house the archival memory, keep politicians and corporations honest… and they create jobs.

Most blogs echo what qualified news organizations report. With no ‘original’ reporting that adheres to an accepted, established code of responsible journalism we are left with hacks, charlatans and opportunists to promulgate ‘news.’  There is a road to survival for U.S. newspapers, argues David Carr of  The New York Times, although it will involve a radically different approach not likely to find traction among regulators or publishers.

A press statement issued by Chicago’s Daley administration announced the cancelling of $55 million in city public relations contracts, which represented the jettisoning of “non essential services.” Now we know. The contracts were terminated with extreme prejudice as an “absurd” waste of taxpayer money. See Sun-Times story. There are several ironies in that story. 1) The statement was issued by the press (PR) office. 2) By slashing PR contracts politicians and government workers are left to communicate without assistance, a dangerous proposition that threatens to undermine public discourse.

See YouTube video below on Wells Fargo and its use of blogs. Wells Fargo gets ‘it’ - they have bloggers and editors on staff. This is a good video on what it takes, step by step, to use a blog up front for PR benefit during a crisis. It is good to remember that a blog is simply an easy to launch, simple to maintain web publishing platform. You can fill it as you wish, regulate it, take the pulse of the public, adapt accordingly, respond when necessary.

A-Rod Bunts in PR Press Conference

In his anti-climactic press conference yesterday at Yankee spring training camp in Tampa, Florida, Alex Rodriguez released some new information and hedged and maneuvered to put this all behind him. He chose to bunt instead of swinging for the fences - another lost opportunity for a high profile athlete to come clean and set a real example for contrition and re-birth.

The New York tabs have not been kind. See He Must Think We’re All Fools and The Truth Be Told, A-Roid Just Can’t (NY Post - graphic below right) — Alex Rodriguez Needs Dose of Truth Serum and A-Rod’s presser a laugher that wasn’t funny (NY Daily News - graphic left)

The tone of the press conference was set by Yankee media relations director Jason Zillo who would not allow follow-up questions from reporters. The press conference lasted a little over a half hour, far less than the 55 minutes Andy Pettitte was grilled at last year’s Yankee steroid shame-fest.

According to Tyler Kepner, The New York Times:  “Ben Porritt, a former spokesman for John McCain’s presidential campaign and a partner in the crisis-management firm Outside Eyes, sat off camera as Rodriguez explained and apologized.”  Add one more to the A-Rod coterie of PR consultants/image makers/handlers and agents. You wonder if Alex Rodriguez is capable of an honest emotion or thought that is not filtered through consultants.

The press conference was streamed live from several sources such as ESPN, MLB, and YES. What was the point, then, of the live blogging from many news organizations that amounted to a blow-by-blow of what we saw live?  The best live blogging on the event came from Alan Schwarz at The New York Times Bats blog. Schwarz added bemused color commentary that portrayed the event as a highly manipulated media circus.

1:52 p.m.
Yankees PR chief Jason Zillo just announced, “There will not be any follow-up questions … to keep this as efficient as possible.” That does not bode well for any revelations, folks. A lot more Q than A.

2:13 p.m.
Freudian Slip of the Decade: “I’m here to take my medicine.” Alex Rodriguez, Feb. 17, 2009

2:19 p.m.
First really good question (and a form of follow-up) came from Mike Vaccaro of The New York Post, who asked Rodriguez why, if he didn’t think what he was taking was wrong, was he so secretive and so reluctant to ask about proper procedure during the 2001-3 seasons. Rodriguez paused for a while, clearly cornered, and said: “That’s a good question. I knew what we were taking weren’t Tic Tacs. I knew that it was, potentially could be something that perhaps was wrong.”

I guess it all depends on what your definition of “was” was. 

2:27 p.m.
Joel Sherman of The New York Post tried to tie Rodriguez down on the matter of how in the world a $252 million athlete who otherwise takes great care of his body could be, if Rodriguez’s account is accurate, so foolhardy as to not know what he was taking or how to take it. Rodriguez repeated his “young and stupid” defense.

And what is this ‘bole’ that A-Rod said he injected into his body? From Brian’s blog:  “Bole” is clearly the Dominican slang for Primobolan.” A-Rod repeatedly said that his cousin secured the drug and they were both young and foolish. I guarantee that several reporters are in the Dominican Republic right now hunting for that cousin who A-Rod would not name.

This story will go on and on, and the damage will continue. A-Rod stepped up to the plate yesterday and struck out. I have a horrible feeling that for all their talent and all their money the Yankees are in for a miserable season, to the delight of baseball fans outside of New York. 

A-Rod Slams Media in PR Home Run

Alex Rodriguez’s interview yesterday with ESPN (see video below) was a masterstroke of PR message and obfuscation. A-Rod was clear that his use of PEDs  (performance enhancing drugs) was contained to a “naive, stupid” time of his career with Texas when the culture of baseball was “loosey goosey.” He has been clean since he joined the Yankees and he implored us to look at the consistency and longevity of his career and not judge him harshly for an anomaly he regrets.

Since this is A-Rod he always appears to be holding back more than he is revealing and he is jockeying to enhance and protect an image clean enough for a Wheaties box (at least he didn’t get caught smoking pot like Michael Phelps). New Yorkers like honesty and they like winners, A-Rod said. All true enough, but what’s this bit about Selena Roberts (top,left) , the Sports Illustrated reporter who broke the A-Rod PED story, stalking him and spreading lies?

Selena Roberts is a highly accomplished sports reporter. When she was with The New York Times she wrote insightful stories about A-Rod and his damaged psyche hurting the team. She is coming out with a book on A-Rod in May that apparently he will not like since he consistently referred to her as something of a journalistic svengali. 

Sports Illustrated published a Q & A with Roberts, in which the reporter talks about the process of breaking the story and her efforts to speak with Rodriguez. She also calls the slugger’s claims “absurd” in an interview with MLB Network.

“”I’ve never set foot in the lobby of Alex’s New York apartment. I’ve never set foot on his property. It’s pure fabrication,” said Roberts, who did say she drove by Rodriguez’s house after receiving permission from Miami Beach police to drive on public property near A-Rod’s house. The Miami Beach police have a “miscellaneous incident” report of that conversation, but Roberts was not cited for anything.

Roberts also asked for and received permission from security at the University of Miami to enter the school’s workout facilities and talk to Rodriguez on Thursday. “I think it’s a diversion, a shoot-the-messenger type of thing,” Roberts said.

 

Up or Down, PR Drives The Dow

A great feat in public relations is to create a deeply penetrating brand that is accepted broadly and perpetuates unquestioned credibility for its creator.  Is there a better PR brand than the Dow Jones Industrial Average?

We are all obsessed with “The Dow” right now although few of us know what it is or why it is so important. DJIA - The Dow Jones Industrial Average is an index of 30 “Blue Chip” stocks that are supposed to be an indicator of the broader stock market (thousands of stocks). “The Dow” is broadcast across the world, transcending geography, language barriers and market highs and lows. Even rival media companies, such as The New York Times (above, left)  post “The Dow” on its home page. PR doesn’t get better than that.

May 26, 1896 Dow Jones published its first “Industrial” average, DJIA, consisting of 12 stocks closing at 40.94. DJIA is occasionally re-jiggered to reflect our changing economic landscape. Manufacturing companies in DJIA such as U.S. Steel have been replaced by tech companies such as Microsoft. Standard & Poors, Wilshire, and Russell all have stock indexes that are broader, more specific, and, many investment professionals would argue, more accurate indicators of trends in the stock market. But none are more recognized or accepted as DJIA, which has become synonymous with “the market.” That’s a big reason why Rupert Murdoch was obsessed with acquiring Dow Jones and its media properties Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and MarketWatch.

See What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average? from How Stuff Works - includes video on stocks currently in the DJIA.

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