Andrea Southcott, the president of the Vancouver-based ad agency TBWA, wrote a great article this week in The Globe and Mail about how to enter the blogoshere.
She talked about the importance of blogging.
Blogging is a big word for some companies. But these days, when the business communications model is moving from one-way communications to the creation of conversation between the company and its clients, it’s just the first step.
Oh this is just nuts. RCMP Commissioner William Elliott is reported to have “sent reassurances” to the federal public safety minister Stockwell Day that the force will review the censored information contained in reports on the use of TASERs. The report which was revealed by a joint freedom of information request made by the CBC and Canadian Press was found to have most of the pertinent data blacked out by the RCMP.
Now the commissioner has the gall to send reassurances. The RCMP claims it censored huge sections to protect the privacy rights of individuals? Which individuals Mr. Commissioner? Your own perhaps? Or the identity of possible suspect officers? Couldn’t have been the folks who got TASERed as that must be a matter of pubic record. Right? I mean your officers did charge them (no pun intended) with a crime? Or else, why were they TASERed?
And what is Day going to do about this mess?
Well, Stockwell what are you going to do? Are you going to sit on your hands? Did your government lawyers tell you their hands are tied? How about a quick history lesson? Let’s start with Magna Carta. Somewhere in the great charter is a reference to the fact that king and his agents are not above the law.
If there is no avenue in parliamentary law for you to seek out your own warrant to force the RCMP to produce the document why not create a special parliamentary committee or better yet a Royal Commission and command this commissioner to attend with documents at hand and uncensored?
While you’re at it, why not look to see if the RCMP still has the public’s respect and confidence? Perhaps it’s time to rethink our national police service?
What will it take to fix the RCMP? While we’re debating that questions I tell you the one thing I’d do is disarm the media relations guy. He or she is either going to shoot themselves in the foot by accident (again) or take one in the head on purpose before the mess that’s our national police “service” gets sorted out.
Here’s the latest shot in the dark. Media forced to use the federal access-to-information law to gain information about the controversial use of TASERs by force members discovered most of the pertinent information was edited out.
Great! First the media had to go find the information instead of having it handed to them by the cops but when they did get it the report was full of holes.
How can we trust the RCMP with TASERs when we can’t trust them to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
William Elliott, the new commissioner, needs media help and it couldn’t come soon enough. This situation is going to get worse before it gets better. How much worse? Just watch.
One of the readers of Chris Brogan’s site tells me that the graphic wasn’t made by Chris but comes elsewhere. I wasn’t so much concerned about who made it as what it represents but I thank Sam (his comment should be on this site) for his observation.
- peter
Some say I’ve got an open mind. Some claim it’s vacant. All I know is I get really confused about all the social media applications that are out there.
Chis Brogan has managed to read my mind and has published a really neat graphic of the current list of applications.
Why is this important?
I’m an old-school public relations practitioner. I believe in controlling the conversation. Pay me and I’ll help you shape the nature of the communication’s environment. Media can be tricked. It’s easy to do. It’s hard to do well and it’s really hard to do well without being detected doing it.
That’s why some companies and individuals pay really big bucks to really big PR agencies to help them control the message. In the old days we did this by training our clients when to keep their mouths shut and when to open the kimono. (I can just tell by my language that I’ve got a burr up my butt this morning.)
Now knowing how to turn on and off the information spigot doesn’t protect you and your company from diddle-squat.
So how do you shut this kid up? You can’t fool!
And all this went down before the days of Twitter. What’s Twitter? OH MY GOD do not give a speech in public without knowing what Twitter can do to you and your reputation instantly - and - forever!!
Frightened yet? You should be.
Chris Brogan is one of the BIG names in social media. He was at Podcamp Toronto earlier this year and he’s all over the Internet. If you’re interested in what’s happening out there, he’s the go-to-it guy. I’ve got a Google reader feed on him so I get all of his blog comments downloaded automatically for my leisurely consumption.
Today he did a bit on self-esteem and I recommend it to all my clients and readers. Here’s the link: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-power-of-personal-leadership/
I’m posting this on both my public relations and coaching blog. It seems that the two career paths are converging and merging with my teaching. Where all this is going I can’t tell but the ride is wild, weird and wonderful. Couldn’t ask for more 
Seems one of the interview sessions at the South X South-West art/media conference being held in Austin, Texas went off the rails when the audience rebelled against the softball questions being asked by Sara Lacy the interviewer of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.
Seems the word got out instantly that the interview was a “train wreak” via the microblog Twitter (140 character text messaging service which connects people online and those with mobile devices into a viral social network. Some might (and have) called it a mob after the Zuckerberg interview.)
In a YouTube interview Sara only made the situation worse by being defensive. Nobody cares about the actual interview anymore.
So you’re invited to speak at a conference or be on a panel at your industry or association conference…
…might want to call or e-mail me first for a complimentary talk about what could happen (and trust me, if it goes like the Zuckerberg interview, it won’t be pretty but it sure will be memorable).
Is Ryerson University first-year student Chris Avenir a cheat? Or is he just way ahead of Ryerson’s faculty?
Either way, it would seem to me that an expulsion hearing - especially one where the young man can not be represented by a lawyer (that comes only if he gets the boot by the university) - is too draconian in principle and too unfair in practice to be tolerated.
It comes down to this: If young Avenir was supposed to complete an assignment without help, then it would seem that he might be in trouble and should face some penalty (way short of expulsion),
However, if by setting up a Facebook study group, he did nothing more than create an online community of friends (seems almost 150 of his fellow students joined him online) no different than if these young students met in a coffee shop or library to study, then Ryerson has some egg on its face and some explaining to do.
Sort of reminds me of that scene in Scent of Woman when Charlie faced expulsion from his school and Al Pacinno threaten to take a flamethrower to the joint….
Dave Fleet sent a comment to my post “We get the news we deserve”. You can read it in the comment’s section below that post. Thank you Dave. I thought Dave’s comment was so good that I sent him an email reply directly. And, then I thought to share it here as follows:
Hi Dave,
First of all no offence taken. Sorry! I should know better. Text over the Internet needs lots of to make it palatable. Takes a lot for me to take anything via text personally.
As for newsrooms, they are what they are. They’re run the way they run and because of economics (news budgets are the first to go), time (there’s never enough to cover everything and to cover the good stuff right) and choice (many corporate owners don’t give a damn or a dime and they make the big decisions which the news people learn to live with - or leave for PR jobs - no kidding here). Great PR people (and campaigns) exploit this flaw. (I sure did at the police service when I was a media relations officer (civilian) for them. As in, “yup you’re right we killed him/her (or words to that effect) and here’s what we know right now and when we know more we’ll release more information (which we’d do in an effort to nullify the opposing, hysterical and unsupported comments of relatives, spouses and political opponents. Worked great. See the police service has gone back to command and control PR and it will bite them sooner or later.)
Working in the news media is generally a high stress and lonely job with shitty hours and generally poor to fair pay. You work for morons (which you will become as you too grow older) and you think you could do better if given half the chance (which you won’t get for another decade or two).
Now the creative and personal satisfaction is right up there with as much fun as you can have without taking off your clothes. Money, even desire, won’t change the news game. The game is to sell papers or ad space. Journalists and newsrooms are just an unfortunate expense that must be tolerated in order to create a vehicle in which to insert ads. (See how many non-commercial publications survive past their owners running out of cash. Zero.)
One the other hand the value of trained journalists to not only report the story but discover what’s really happening as opposed to what you’re being told is invaluable and will never be replaced by legions of “citizen journalists” with their digital recorders, cell phones etc. They may record and broadcast news events but they don’t have the skills to discern the “value” of the news. PR people will exploit this flaw in “social media” news gathering to huge advantage.
I always played full-contact PR in my day and full-contact journalism before that. Loved both. Both are flawed sure but both are the best we can create right now with the resources and abilities at hand.
For both professions (and I hold journalism a craft not a profession. PR I’m not so sure about.) have their place and to be in either (or both as in my case) one must firmly believe that the truth will out and believe that good will overcome evil. The cynicism of most journalists comes only due to their age (young) and their lack of meaningful life challenges (which will come in their 40s and 50s) which will change them in ways they can’t predict or understand.
David Fleet who I met at PodCamp Toronto and is a general good guy has taken umbrage with my Twitter comments about how reporters handle the news.
This follows a tweet from Donna Papacosta (who I caught working out the YMCA in Oakville this morning after she professed to be working hard at her office. Shame on you Donna….. ) who was making reference to a blog by Michael O’Connor Clarke’s comments about social media which in turn got me over to comments by David about Wayne MacPhail’s comments about how the media screws up reporting on child porno issues.
Does this new social media stuff make your brain want to explode?
Anyway, Dave fired off a tweet at me saying that big media could do a better job of researching and reporting the child porno story.
My assumption here is David may think that:
The list could go on.
Here’s the reality of the newsroom:
A media release comes in or a media package gets delivered into the editor’s in tray. He or she (the new editor-in-chief of Chatelaine is 28 for goodness sake. At 28 the only thing I was responsible for was making sure there was beer in the refrig. And this by the way is the second reason why I’m not the editor of something notable. The first reason is I’m not that good - or that young anymore and neither condition is likely to improve with age.) anyway, he or she throws it at the nearest reporter.
That reporter has to write three stories that day (if it’s a daily. If it’s a weekly they have to do a couple of stories, pet of the week, the local hockey game and maybe a man on the street interview.) of between 800 to 1000 words before quitting time. They take what they get and if it looks half decent and has reputable contacts and quotes that come from people in authority, they aren’t likely to call around for opposing comments.
(Us PR people count on this fact. Give them something that looks great and it might actually pass for news. Calling it the next best thing or the industry leader will only make any editor or news director suspicious as heck. Any PR person who hasn’t figured this out should go into advertising which isn’t any easier to master.)
BTW this scenario is different for an investigative reporter (read into this someone who actually does research and writes a lot but doesn’t necessarily get paid a great deal) who may actually call around and comes back to their editor to pitch a whole new angle on this sucker but that’s a different story.
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