Obama

More! More! More ‘Question Time’ With Barack Obama!

February 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I love love loved the Obama-Republicans debate/question time last week. That was stupendous, a brilliant way to showcase the thoughtful and thorough president trying to craft solutions and the Republicans offering platitudes and talking points. More — more! We need to see more of him using his brain and words to govern, not just to give speeches. That’s who we elected, that’s who I, for one, was looking for: a leader who would engage intellectually with the great problems and opportunities of the day. Who’s next: the Democratic Causus? That would be a great one. Then, let’s... [Read the full story]

Technology

“Vitch” is the first new PR catchword of 2010

January 8, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Why send a plain old written PR pitch when you can send a “vitch” — a video pitch? That’s right, the new thing is to make your pitch via video. It’s certainly simple enough to do — plan your video, shoot it with an inexpensive video camera, upload it to Youtube and spread the link. Makes a lot of sense, too. Video is such an incredibly powerful medium, and now, through the evolution of technology, we can all be fast and cheap video producers. The key thing here is that a “vitch” can’t just be you reading your boring, stilted press release into... [Read the full story]

Fox "News"

Good Riddance, Lou Dobbs

November 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

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,... [Read the full story]

Email Pitching

3 No-No’s When You Pitch the Media By Email

September 8, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Almost all journalists say they want to be pitched by email. So guess what — they are deluged with email pitches! And to make matters worse, most of them are bloated, non-news pitches that get deleted faster than you can say, “did you get my email?” How to avoid the trash bin? That’s easy — pitch real news, facts and figures, information that the journalist’s audience really might want to know. Skip the self-serving pseudo ads — those are the ones that get deleted FAST. But the title of this post is 3 no-nos, so here’s a list of other no-nos: Using... [Read the full story]

Spin

Tiger Should Go With His “New Hugh” Persona

December 20, 2009 · 2 Comments

Now that the stories about Tiger Woods have descended from “marital woes” to “all out sex/party maniac,” I think Tiger needs a new strategy: Tiger should go full-steam ahead and plant his flag as “the new Hugh Hefner,” or in my shorthand (trademark pending), “The New Hugh.” I’m serious here. Hugh Hefner has made a bloody fortune screwing beautiful women and leading the party life. But he’s ooollllddd. I can’t believe he’s still going strong, supposedly. Hugh ain’t gonna last forever. We need a new role model, a new Adonis... [Read the full story]

Media Training

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

November 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment

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... [Read the full story]

More! More! More ‘Question Time’ With Barack Obama!

[Continue reading: More! More! More ‘Question Time’ With Barack Obama!]

“Vitch” is the first new PR catchword of 2010

[Continue reading: “Vitch” is the first new PR catchword of 2010]

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...

[Continue reading: Free Media Database for UK Media]

Tiger Should Go With His “New Hugh” Persona

[Continue reading: Tiger Should Go With His “New Hugh” Persona]

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...

[Continue reading: Top Tech Products of the Decade Were All About Communications]

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...

[Continue reading: The Ugly Truth About Tiger Woods and All His Enablers]

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...

[Continue reading: Death of E&P is a milestone worth noting]

Company Gets $500,000 in VC Funding to Bridge the Gap Between PR and Media

I am one who believes there will always be a chasm between the media and PR, unless and until the media dies and all media is PR. Which I hope does not happen. I’ve been working on the media/PR divide much of my career. I was known as a sympathic media person who helped PR people figure out if they had a story...

[Continue reading: Company Gets $500,000 in VC Funding to Bridge the Gap Between PR and Media]

Tiger Woods and the Concept of Super-Replicators

One of the more interesting things that has been said about Tiger Woods is that now he is “human like the rest of us.” This is undoubtedly true, though quite painful for him and us to live through this week. We all have our human failings — can you imagine coming to terms with yours under the spotlight...

[Continue reading: Tiger Woods and the Concept of Super-Replicators]

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...

[Continue reading: Tiger Woods Caught With His Pants Down, But He Keeps His Guard Up]

Older Posts »