Free Media Database for UK Media

Here's another free online database of journalists, covering the UK media: journalisted.com

It's pretty simple: just go to that page, type in as much of the name as you know, and get a set of matches. For instance, here's a link to a search for Smith.

And here's a page for one of the journalists on the site, Nick Parker of The Sun. They post whatever contact info they have, as well as links to recent articles and other similar journalists.

For a free resource, it's pretty cool.

Top Tech Products of the Decade Were All About Communications

HuffPost has a "top 11" list of tech products of the decade, and I was stunned at how many of them were communications tools that radically reshaped the way we think, interact, and entertain ourselves.

Among HuffPo's top 11:

• iPod: little needs to be said, except, do you remember your life before having gigabytes of music in your pocket to listen to on demand?


• iTunes: made digital music downloads mainstream


• TiVo: the neutron bomb that hit TV. Do you remember when you had to watch TV in the order it was presented, or pop in a VHS tape to "time-shift"? How last millennium!


• Blackberrys/crackberrys/iPhones/PDAs in general: a computer on your belt or in your purse that is way more powerful than the computer you used to have on your desk, and it's a phone and it's connected to the web too!


• Kindle: still on the upswing, but do you remember where you were when Gutenberg invented the printing press? (don't worry, it was 1439). You'll tell your grandkids about seeing the first e-book. Yes, it's that big.


• USB flash drives: flash memory in general is an absolutely revolutionary tool, as it allows us to record visual images (photos, video) on tiny devices that can go anywhere and record anything (which can then be uploaded on the worldwide communications platform we call The Internet). It also allows us to carry up to 300GB of data in our back pocket and hand it (say, nuclear secrets) to anyone we want.


• HDTV: 50 years after the commercialization of TV, the next step in picture quality, opening up all sorts of possibilities, but mostly, allowing men to watch football on giant screens.

Huffpo's list is mainly "gadgets," in other words tech hardware with some nifty software inside. What about things that were either sold or used only as software, on existing hardware? No diff really, but Huffpo skipped those, so here are a few I'd add:

• Google: came out in 98-99, but it didn't gain popularity until 2000. Changed web search from a frustrating and incomplete exercise into an extension of our brains and thoughts.


• Facebook: changed online personas from sock puppets/imaginary selves to real people knitting their lives together.


• Twitter: it's the first wave of the 'real time web' where information is shared almost as soon as it is created


• Blogging/content management systems: Took the creation of web content away from computer professionals and put it in the hands of everyone.


• Wikipedia: the open documentation and organization of all the world's information


• YouTube: the first major step toward moving TV/video content onto the web. Trust me, by the end of the next decade, you won't use a satellite dish or cable or rabbit ears to get TV content. It will all come over the Internet.


• Skype: buh bye, copper phone lines. Hullo, cheap voice and video phone calls over the web.


• BitTorrent: An amazingly simple way to share huge files containing entertainment (movies, concerts) over the net. I can now download a three hour, 1GB Springsteen show in about 15 minutes. At the beginning of the decade I was trading audio tapes by mail with people. How easy will it be in another decade?

The Ugly Truth About Tiger Woods and All His Enablers

So it turns out that Tiger Woods has been a carousing, hard partying guy, both as a bachelor and as a married man. In essence, this doesn't surprise me one bit -- in fact, it makes a lot more sense than the partial stories that were coming out the first week about his "transgressions." I believe that one of the unexplored tensions in our society is the tamping down and frowning upon mens' natural desires for the attention of women.

What does stun me is all the media and sponsor handwringing and clucking that has ensued now that the stories about Tiger's wild party life have burst into the open. Where were you, golf media, when Tiger had a bottle of Cristal in one hand and a babe on each arm? Were you partying along with him? Were you up in your rooms playing Nintendo? Or were you just flat out clueless?

And sponsors, starting with Accenture: you mean to tell me that you didn't check out Tiger's behavior before or while you employed him? You didn't do any due diligence to find out if the image you were buying was real? And you want me to trust you (Accenture) with my corporate consulting work?

It seems clear to me that the media, sponsors and the PGA tour all turned a blind eye toward Tiger's behavior, for one good 'ol fashioned reason: money. The man has made billions for all the parties above, boosting ratings and selling soap. He was their cash cow, their golden goose. To call him on his behavior would have been commercial suicide.

I understand that too. But spare me the holier-than-thou statements now generally along the lines of "we didn't know" or "he doesn't represent the right image for us." Puh-leeze. How about "we knew all along but we didn't say anything, so we share the blame for this unfortunate situation, and we'll do a better job next time."

PS -- And then there's his wife, Elin Nordegren. She knew before she married Tiger that he was a major ladies man, yet she jumped on the gravy train as well. Here's People mag, via the NY Daily News:

Nordegren's friends tell People she knew about Woods' extracurricular activities but that he promised before their marriage that he would change.

"Elin had talked to other golfers and their wives about Tiger's wild parties," a friend told the magazine. "When she asked Tiger about it, he said he would stop doing it. And she believed him. But he never did."

Death of E&P is a milestone worth noting

Neilsen announced yesterday that it was shuttering Editor & Publisher, the iconic newspaper industry trade magazine that has chronicled the newspaper business for 108 years.

I'd been wondering about the relevance of E&P in past months, so after getting over the initial shock, this decision comes as no surprise. E&P played an essential role in the newspaper industry in the pre-computer and pre-Internet days, but those days are gone forever. And like most of the media is covered, E&P had no real clue how to change with the times. Organizations like Media Bistro simply ate their lunch.

i just wanted to take a moment to note the passing of this trade magazine. It certainly signals the end of an era, amid the continuing death watch for major American newspapers.

Tiger Woods Caught With His Pants Down, But He Keeps His Guard Up

Uh-oh. It turns out that where there was Thanksgiving Day smoke, there was definitely fire. Tiger Woods has been caught red-handed being a philandering adulterer. Goodbye pristine reputation, maybe goodbye marriage.

But is it goodbye golf game and goodbye endorsements? No and probably not.

Woods issued another statement today, this time saying he "let my family down and I regret those transgressions." [Full text of Tiger Woods' statement here.]

But just as Tiger redefined golf, he may be in the process of redefining celebrity scandal-mongering. His statement goes on to say:

No matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy... Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions.

That's right. He hasn't been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, betting on the game, animal cruelty or physical violence. Those are the types of things that derail sports careers.

He's one of the world's sexiest men, he probably had and has woman propositioning him constantly, and he took some of them up on it, even after he was married. That makes him a fool and a cad, but that's all. No evidence yet that he paid for it, a la Eliot Spitzer, who after all was an elected official, and a sanctimonious one at that. Unless this saga goes into one of the above-mentioned areas, I think it tarnishes him but doesn't really afffect his public life.

Further, I really like that he shot back at the media mongrels who are demanding more information and confessionals. Tough. If you want information, go dig it out. He owes you absolutely nothing.

"Who Will Pay the Messenger" Is Indeed the Question

I am not a believer that print media is all but dead. But I am a believer that the highest profile print media, namely big city newspapers, are, in fact, all but dead (with one notable exception, the New York Times).

This is not, as many assume, simply because the Internet came along and took away a lot of the advertising base, although that certainly has hastened their demise. It is, in my view, because the managers and journalists who run the nation's big city newspapers got fat, lazy and complacent, well before the popularization of the Internet. They have only now really and truly woken up from this slumber, and it is probably way too late. Sorry guys.

The fact is that, even today, virtually all of the journalism on big city media web sites is subsidized, one way or the other, by the print side of the house. Even if the print side is losing money, it is still employing high-paid veteran journalists, whose articles are then posted on the paper's web site. There, despite robust online traffic, those articles won't generate nearly enough revenue to pay the salary of said journalists.

At some point, this model will become unsustainable, and those veteran journalist jobs will be gone. They will either not be replaced or they will be replaced by much, much cheaper labor.

I took the title of this post from an august conference at Yale Law School a few weeks back called "Journalism and the New Ecology: Who Will Pay the Messenger?" As the rest of the title of my post says, that is indeed the question.

I would have liked to attend the conference, but I only learned of it today, and besides, I don't fly across the country for such things, unfortunately. But in a semi-ironic twist, I may very well wind up watching some of the proceedings from the comfort of my home or office, because they have posted video of the panels.

Two main forms of advertising supported the newspapers we know today: display ads from regional retailers, and classified ads, largely from auto dealerships and employers. These forms of advertising skyrocketed after the Second World War, as new and expanded metropolitan areas developed.

Guess what happened next: the world changed. The metro areas got developed, and the Internet came along. Both types of advertisers no longer needed the traditional regional newspaper to spread their message, and so they largely stopped advertising in them.

It was those revenues that supported the newspaper journalism we know today. And now they are gone, and they ain't never comin' back.

That doesn't mean the practice of journalism goes away. But the cash cow that underwrote it has run out of milk. And for the most part, the managers and journalists who run big city newspapers are still flatfooted. It was probably never likely that they would lead the next revolution, but it's always hard to watch people struggling with their economic mortality.

I'm going to end this stemwinder with a few thoughts about how the messenger might get paid:

• The non-profit model: There's no reason why a non-profit can't be the publisher of a newspaper. It is in this case (the St. Pete Times), and has been for years.


• Non-profit, part 2: Free-standing non-profits, such as Pro Publica, can also raise money, pay journalists and distribute their stories.


• Cheaper labor: pipe the City Council meeting to India. Have a writer there watch it and write the story. Fire or reassign the rumpled reporter who used to sit there to do more in-depth pieces.


• Change the advertising-to-content mix: It's amazing how much stuff publishers are posting on the net, with so little advertising around it. Spread the content a lot thinner, and get more ads.

Tiger Woods Takes the Right Media Relations Tack

As the Tiger Woods car accident story was becoming known and starting to be covered in the media, my other half passed along an article talking about "what Tiger should do," and suggesting that I weigh in. In the moment, I have to say that I had a hard time forming a strategy, partly due to Thanksgiving overload and partly because I was at a loss as to what I would recommend.

In the meantime, on Sunday, Tiger released a statement that, I thought, hit all the right notes.

Here's the statement:

As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries. I have some cuts, bruising and right now I'm pretty sore.

This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again.

This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.

The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

This incident has been stressful and very difficult for Elin, our family and me. I appreciate all the concern and well wishes that we have received. But, I would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be.

Here's what I like about the statement and the strategy it implies:

1. He gives some helpful details at the beginning


2. He shifts the story back to its core -- a single-car accident, mostly on private property, minor injuries, my fault. He went on the offense instead of playing defense.


3. He clearly states and repeats that he wants his privacy, as would any of us, famous or not, in such a case involving a minor accident.


4. He praises his wife, signaling a united front with her.

The fact is, none of us -- the general public, his fans, the police or the media -- really needs more information about this situation. I think the police acted irresponsibly in showing up at his house twice for an interview, thereby giving TV a fresh shot to air, when they could have called on the phone and been told whether or not he would speak to them. It looked to me like the cops were seeing this case as a possible gravy train rather than focusing on doing their jobs.

Is Tiger having an affair? Was his wife whacking him with a golf club as he ran out of the house and jumped in his car? Who knows? If you care, go to TMZ.com and get your fill.

Here's a blessedly sane media story with the headline "Tiger doesn't owe us an explanation."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Acts Like a Complete Jerk in a Media Interview

I'm always on the lookout for good on-camera examples of spokespeople doing a terrible job. It's a great teaching tool -- seriously. So if you've got any examples, by all means forward them to me.

Playboy SF Mayor Gavin Newsom has made a dandy contribution to the archive with his interview on CBS 5 here in the Bay Area. Newsom dropped out of the California governors race a few weeks ago, and the conventional wisdom is that he has been pouting and avoiding the press, who he foolishly blames for his early demise. (Note to Gavin: look in the mirror for the true culprit).

He came out of hiding to start giving interviews now that San Fran is facing a half-billion-dollar budget deficit. But does he make nice and try to get his messages and position across? Would we be talking about it if he did?

Opening line from reporter: Let me start by asking, where have you been?

Newsom: $522.2 million.

That was his answer. The amount of next year's deficit. He then went on to ridicule, lambast and generally shit on the media and anyone who thinks he has been a bizarro character since he dropped out of the gubernatorial race. Finally, when the reporter wants to talk about the deficit, Newsom has already lost his cool and walks out on the interview!

The cherry on top: as he is leaving, he says, "Off the record, I'm amazing disappointed, amazingly. I just am. Professionally, you know."

He says this on camera! Off the record, are you kidding me?

Thanks for the classic what-not-to-do interview clip, Gav.

Here's a link to the clip, so you can watch it for yourself: Gavin Newsom's Terrible Interview

Good Riddance, Lou Dobbs

Buh-bye Lou: The bombastic and misguided Lou Dobbs has finally given up his perch on CNN and quit the network, more than a year before the end of his contract. For now, he will spew his anti-immigration, white-privileged perspective on his national radio show. I haven't looked up the odds, but if I were a betting man, I'd say 5:1 he goes to Fox "News" after a respectful interregnum.

I'm not a big believer in the so-called objectivity of the mainstream media, but for years Dobbs has even crossed that line and used his show, ostensibly about business and finance news, to spout his wingnut opinions. Because CNN's ratings suck so bad, the bigwigs there had little choice but to live with it, because Dobbs was one of their original and top personalities.

He crossed the point of no return when he insisted on keeping the Obama birth certificate story alive on his CNN show, even after the network itself fully debunked the story.

Good riddance to a flaccid corporate cheerleader and megaphone for racism.

What did you do with your summer?

In a sign of things surely to come, a 29-year-old writer has just landed a sitcom deal with CBS to make a show out of his Twitter feed, ShitMyDadSays.

This is not April Fools, and this is not a joke. The Tweeter in question, Justin Halpern, had already signed a book deal with HarperCollins. He's got more than 700,000 followers for a Twitter feed he only started in August.

BTW, what did you do with your summer?

Here are a couple of gems from what is, absolutely, a very fun guy and his son:

• "Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."


• "I hate paying bills... Son, don't say "me too." I didn't say that looking to relate to you. I said it instead of "go away."


• The baby will talk when he talks, relax. It ain't like he knows the cure for cancer and he just ain't spitting it out."


• "Just pay the parking ticket. Don't be so outraged. You're not a freedom fighter in the civil rights movement. You double parked."

How this turns into a PG-rated CBS sitcom is a good question. "Stuff My Dad Says" isn't likely to be half as funny, and "funny stuff that happens in my family" has been done, and done, and done, starting with "I Love Lucy" in the 1950s.

Of course, in today's world, getting the deal, getting to make a pilot and even just getting to make a few bad episodes before being cancelled is an excellent way to a) make a living and b) leapfrog onto other projects.

Per my opening line: this IS a sign of the present and future. Life has moved online (duh) and mainstream, mass market communicators are finally taking notice. Look for more such crossovers on a TV, in a book, or on a movie screen near you.

Is This the West Coast's Top PR Event of the Year?

The PR industry has typically had a serious East Coast slant, mostly for good reason, and that means the biggest PR events usually happen in New York or Washington. Many of the biggest companies in the world are located in the Northeast Corridor, as is the stock exchange, the capital, and the media industry. Here in the West, we have Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and that's about all.

For the past couple of years, I've been involved with PRSA's Silicon Valley Chapter, and our big event of the year is "Media Predicts," a lively dinner, networking opportunity and panel discussion of predictions for next year in technology. It's on Wednesday, Dec. 2 at the Computer History Museum, and it draws 300 people and dozens of top tech PR agencies and corporate PR departments.

This year, we've added two new wrinkles -- an opening stand-up comedy monologue by name-brand comic Will Durst, and a "Student Silent Auction" in which top PR students from San Jose State are auctioning themselves off [proceeds to their school's PR program] to be PR interns at agencies or companies.

As my title implies, I think this is turning into the top must-attend event in PR on the West Coast, assuming you have a business interest in technology [and these days, who doesn't?]. It's a see-and-be-seen opportunity for the tech PR community, which is especially valuable in this Twittering/Facebooking/email world of impersonal communications.

Here's the list of tech media speakers, followed by a list of the companies who have already signed up to sponsor this event and host tables. For more information, go to the PRSA Silicon Valley page or the registration page.

• Ben Worthen, Wall Street Journal & Digits


• Brad Stone, New York Times & Bits Blog


• Byron Acohido, USA Today, LastWatchDog


• Connie Guglielmo, Bloomberg News


• Matt Marshall, VentureBeat & DEMO


• Om Malik, GigaOM


• Steven Levy, WIRED


• Jim Goldman, CNBC (moderator)


• Duffy Jennings, SFGate (emcee)

Sponsors so far:

Premier Event Sponsor:

• Yahoo

Platinum:

• Microsoft


• SAP

Gold:

• Blanc & Otus


• Market Wire


• Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide


• Trainer Communications


• Weber Shandwick

Bronze:

• Access Communications


• A&R Edelman


• Brunswick


• Dell


• Eastwick


• Fleishman-Hillard


• BusinessWire


• SanDisk


• Voce


• Waggener Edstrom

Is it ever right to pick a fight with the media?

Great old saying about media relations: "don't pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel." Translation: usually, the media has a lot more firepower than you, so even if you're both angry and right, in all likelihood you should restrain yourself from going after them.

There are exceptions, however, and one of them is when you are POTUS -- President of these United States. Then, you can decide it's time to call out FOX News.

As a staunch and proud Obama supporter, I'm very glad they have decided to take on FOX news. They saw that other media were starting to follow FOX's lead, and it was important for them to fight back.

When is it ok to take on the media? When you have leverage. Generally, news subjects have very little real leverage, particularly after a story has run. You can use online tools to fight back, posting rebuttal information, for instance, but then you risk adding fuel to the fire.

When you're POTUS, you have lots of leverage. So it makes sense for them to use it.

Sure Fire Elements of Media Stories, Or How to Get in the Times if You're Looking for a Job (Hint: Be Cute, Young, Blond and a Twin)

Part of my media training curriculum is explaining to people that the media covers only a set group of topics -- they are broad, but they are really all you will find in American mainstream media, so if you want coverage, you better figure out which buckets your story fits in.

They are:

• Novelty: things that don’t happen everyday


• Familiarity: things that DO happen every day, such as the weather, the City Council and the stock market


• Big money and winners: the ups and downs of public and private institutions are always grist for news stories; everyone loves a winner


• Risk-takers: people who put their money, reputation, health or safety at risk


• Cat-fights: want coverage? Pick a fight


• Your wallet: everyone likes to learn more about how to make money, save it or spend it


• Sex, celebrities and scandal: because they have universal appeal

The story that prompted this post is this: cute blond female twins who want to work in journalism. This story appeared in the New York Times. Seriously.

Bucket analysis of this story:

• Cute blond twins = sex


• Want to work in the media = the media's favorite big institution, itself.


• Killing themselves to get a job = risk-takers, esp. if you are a cute blond twin


• And don't forget novelty! They're cute young blond girl twins! How unusual!

Here's another story making the rounds: Rush Limbaugh's desire to become a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams of the NFL. It has generated, for sure, the most publicity ever for someone who wants to buy a non-controlling interest in an NFL team. Limbaugh knows exactly what he's doing -- here's an interview to that effect.

Bucket analysis:

• Limbaugh = celebrity


• NFL = familiarity and big money


• Wants to buy small piece of NFL team = catfight!

See how easy it is!

Are PR Embargoes Dead?

The embargo is one of my favorite PR tactics, but it looks like it will soon be another casualty of the Internet, if it isn't already.

In the ooollllddd days, you could hand out embargoed news and assuming you had a good relationship with the media, the news would sit in the can until the agreed-upon time. But the Internet and online media changed all that, for good.

In the tech news space, in particular, the embargo has become a cause celebre. TechCrunch, one of the gorillas in the tech media space, has been pushing for the death of embargoes for awhile, and their wish may be coming true. TechCrunch may be a little early in writing an obit, but in the end, they may be right.

For other tech journalists, however, it's still something of an open issue -- and one we'll discuss next Wednesday (along with many other topics of interest to tech PR) on the PR University webinar, Tech Media and Trends PR Can't Afford to Miss: Top Tech Influencers Reveal Best PR Practices for Reaching Consumers in Today's Economy. Panelists include:

• Nancy Blair, Senior Assignment Editor/Technology, USA Today


• Spencer Ante, Computers Department Editor, BusinessWeek


• Jim Kerstetter, Executive Editor, CNET News


• David Lidsky, Articles Editor, Fast Company


• Tom Foremski, Author, "Silicon Valley Watcher"

How do I know we'll be talking about this? Two reasons: it came up today on our pre-webinar prep call, and I'm the moderator and get to ask the questions.

Know-Nothing Journalists Give Bad PR Advice (Again)

I almost didn't even react to this latest example of journalists giving businesspeople bad advice about PR, but I couldn't help it. I figured it was better to blog about it than to leave a comment on someone else's blog.

Here's the story: a Boston web trade group held an event on Tuesday called, “An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Bootstrapping PR.” All the panelists came from the media, in other words, the people being pitched, not the people with any experience at pitching (panelists: Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe, Wade Roush from Xconomy, Peter Kafka from AllThingsD, and Bob Brown of Network World). Working journalists were recruited to give profit-seeking businesspeople advice on conducting PR, a marketing department function.

For fun, let me ask: would a right-thinking trade group ask a panel of business writers to opine on "bootstrapping R&D," "bootstrapping legal," or "bootstrapping HR?"

But journalists think they know something about PR, so they opined on what cash-strapped companies ought to do to maximize publicity without hiring those expensive, pesky, clueless PR people who presumably bug them all the time with useless pitches. Here's the moderator's summary of the panel:

As far as these reporter/bloggers were concerned, PR agencies aren’t worth much.

BTW, his post was titled, "PR Bashing Harsh but Fair." Excuse me, but was that the title and intent of the panel? I thought the idea was to give sound business advice, right? [Here's a longer and more nuanced summary of the proceedings]

Anyway, enough. In my experience, the vast majority of journalists know nothing about how PR works or why companies need it. That's not to say that a lot of PR isn't overpriced garbage or that PR people don't annoy journos with stupid pitches. It is to say that there is a perfectly normal role for communications and PR in a growing company, and smart entrepreneurs will figure out how to use it to build their businesses. But don't ask a working reporter -- you're wasting your time.

Tip: it's actually pretty hard to do PR right without some professional help. It's time-consuming and can be unproductive if you don't know what you're doing. But if you're sure that you want to do it and don't have squat in the bank, at least buy a book like "PR for Dummies" or one of the others in my "Recommended" ad from Amazon to the right.

The difference between the mainstream media and online media keeps getting smaller

Everyone knows that the mainstream media and the online media are two very different beasts, at least in their roots and points of view. But as we get further into the Internet revolution and the weakening of the business models of the mainstream media, the lines are really starting to blur.

I ran across an example of this that I wanted to share: TechCrunch's regular contributions to the WashingtonPost.com site. TechCrunch is one of the top online technology media outlets. It was founded by a non-media guy who has always proudly proclaimed his independent point of view. The Post, as you know, is one of the pillars of mainstream media.

But for the last several months, the Post has been running  articles from TechCrunch on its web site [I don't know if they are in the print version too]. These are in-depth pieces that definitely provide some heft to the Post's technology coverage.

Anyway, the point of this post was just to note the continued blurring of the lines. This is not, I might add, cause for despair or hand-wringing -- quite the opposite. Remember, if you get a hit on TechCrunch, it might make the Post too -- a twofer! In any case, it's just a matter of noting an evolution of the media and adapting to it.

In the end, it's all corporate communications

One of the reasons I became disillusioned and left the mainstream media was that while it purports to be "independent" and "objective," it's really just corporate communications. That is, the media of today is largely owned by massive corporations who want to make money, and they do so by researching and reporting "news" and delivering it in an attractive enough package that people will buy/watch/listen to it.

Now that I'm older, wiser, and jaded, this seems like, duh, but back in my younger days, this really seemed like an issue to me. It was certainly evident that we journalists were largely steered to cover "acceptable" stories -- city hall scandals, urban violence -- while understanding that other stories -- such as corporate control of the country, for instance -- would not be career-building subjects.

So I left the media, did a half-dozen years of community service type work, then trended over to real corporate communications, figuring -- seriously -- that if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Just so you know, I don't always sleep well with this deal with the devil, but mostly, I've found a way to make a living while doing relatively benign "corporate communications."

Today's sermonette is prompted by the item in the Times today about the Los Angeles Kings hockey team hiring "their own reporter" to write stories about the team on the Kings' web site. The story assures us that "reporter" is being given "complete autonomy to post reporting or commentary."

However, the story goes on to fret: "how sure can readers be of tough, impartial coverage when image-conscious businesses are paying for it?"

As if the Gray Lady herself, the Times, isn't image conscious.

First of all, this story isn't news -- Major League Baseball has had the same set up for its teams for several years. Secondly, it's a damn good idea in today's world. It's a world of instant publishing on a global communications platform. Why wouldn't you post your own fresh content?

And this brings us to "credibility." Every media outlet has a point of view -- you just have to figure it out and deal with it, whether you are a media consumer or a PR person. So this is just one more example of a type of media to deal with. Like I said, it's all just corporate communications.

PR Rule #1: It's About the Message, Not About the Methods

Generally speaking, it's a bad sign when your PR strategy becomes the story, rather than the messages you are trying to send.

And so it was today, when the New York Times ran five nearly identical pictures on its front page of Obama giving health care reform interviews on five Sunday talk shows, accompanying a story about the PR strategy. This follows other recent stories about Obama's PR offensive, which once again obscures any messages he is trying to get across.

The New York Times cleverly pointed out [and showed in pictures] that Obama didn't even move from his seat for the interviews, which were obviously done back-to-back in a fancy White House room. The same backdrop, down the potted plant, appears in all the pictures. Can't you guys even get that right?

This isn't like those Hollywood star interviews, where the out-of-town reporters all get five minutes with the star hyping a new movie. In those cases, the poster for the movie is always the background -- get it? In this case, maybe you could have held the interviews in the White House health clinic at least. Sheesh.

I continue to be amazed at how poorly the Obama communications team has handled the health care reform issue. They let the opposition build up steam and credibility, while doing a poor job building their own momentum and credibility. Granted, the president has communications tools that far outstrip the opposition, so they can still rally from behind, but to me as a comms professional, the message I get is this: they're amateurs.

Journalist pokes his head out into the real world, sees his shadow, and goes back

I just can't get enough of journalists trying to make sense of their relationship to PR.

Today's example comes from Monday's New York Times, where David Carr relates the story of his friend and neighbor, Thomas Moran, who left his thrilling but insecure newspaper job covering New Jersey politics for the safe but dull-as-dishwater world of corporate PR at local utility company PSEG.

At least, that's how Carr characterizes Moran's two worlds. Here's how Carr describes being a journalist:

Sure, being a newsie is a grind...but it beats working by a mile. Every day is a caper, and most reporters are attention-deprived adrenaline junkies who care only for the next story. Journalists are like cops, hugging the job close and savoring the rest of their life as they can.

Let me just say that nothing in my journalism career came close to that experience. It was more like working in an insurance office, people sitting at cubes, working quietly, talking on the phone or typing.

And here's how Carr characterizes Moran's PR job:

"... a good job representing the interests of a large corporation... At neighborhood gatherings, we couldn’t help but notice that the once lively and mouthy Mr. Moran was bringing a dark cloud with him wherever he went...For 18 months, Mr. Moran’s nose was pressed against the glass of his nicely appointed 10th floor corporate office in Newark, watching the world go by, mostly without him.

I'm not going to idealize PR, but I've never felt like I had my nose pressed against the glass watching the world go by in my post-media PR career. To the contrary. I felt like an observer, not a player, when I was in the media, and I feel like a player, and not just an observer, in PR.

The end of the story is that after his miserable time in corporate PR, Moran made his way back to the ivory tower insecurity of the newsroom to get his adrenaline fix.

Chalk one up for the powerful media columnist of the New York Times using precious paper, ink and electrons to prop up and perpetuate the myths of the crusading ink-stained journalist and the zombied PR person. What else would you expect?

Great insights into New York Times blogging

MyRagan.com has a great article  by Paul Boutin, a Times freelancer and VentureBeat.com writer, about the nuts and bolts of blogging for the New York Times. It's free today but may go behind Ragan's paid sub firewall soon so check it out while you can.

Inside peek: How The New York Times handles its blogs

Excerpt:

In many ways, the Times’ blogs are no different from anyone else’s. But there’s one organizational trick they employ very effectively: Division of Labor. Times bloggers don’t work on their own. They don’t handle every aspect of their blogs. Who does what is divided up to bring specific expertise to bear on different parts of each post. The result is I can crank out more posts, and those posts are better overall, than if we writers did everything ourselves. I know, not everyone wants to have other people involved in their blogging. But there’s a reason people work in teams.