It's Over: Dow Jones is Sold to Murdoch

Mark the day folks: it’s the end of an era in journalism, especially business journalism. One of the great temples of journalism, Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, will change hands and now be owned by right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch. As I’ve said before, this will have cataclysmic effects throughout journalism. There will [...]

Must Reads About the Media

I wanted to pass along to you some of my favorite information sources for keeping up on the media. They’re all free and available, of course, online. Poynter Institute: The entire site of the Poynter Institute is a huge window into the world of journalism for any PR pro who pokes their head in. It’s [...]

Journalism Schools Start to Evolve

Interesting story in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the curriculum overhaul now underway at Medill, the journalism school at Northwestern University and one of the top programs in the country. From the Chronicle: At a time when newspaper readership is steadily declining and many readers are bouncing from blogs to Internet video to get [...]

Is the PR Industry Wired For Change?

The PRSA and Dow Jones/Factiva released a survey of PR professionals and PR students probing PR’s acceptance of online communications tools and technologies. Not a great deal of “news” in the release, as far as I can see. PR pros are “excited” about new online communications channels but fret about the difficulty of maintaining ethical [...]

Media Relations Magic: Promoting Harry Potter

PRSA’s PR Tactics and The Strategist Online web site has posted a story about the PR program behind the release of the latest Harry Potter book and the promotion of the series in general. The key passage: As part of hyping the forthcoming “Deathly Hallows,” Scholastic is sending the purple three-decker Knight Bus across the [...]

Young People Not Following the News

The Shorenstein Center released a report today on the news-consumption habits of young people, and not surprisingly, found that many don’t pay much attention to the news, and what news they get comes from TV rather than print media or the Internet. From the press release on the report: The Internet is making inroads as [...]

Audit Bureau to Count Online Readers

The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the independent body that verifies the circulation of newspapers, will soon start to release figures counting online newspaper readers as well. The ABC said that, “Beginning this fall, newspapers will be able to report in-market print, online and net combined readership.” In a related announcement, the ABC also gave magazines [...]

Whole Foods CEO Turns Contrite

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, under pressure from his board and the SEC, has seen the light and is now apologizing for using a sock puppet (the now famous “Rahodeb”) to post anonymously on Yahoo Finance message boards about his company. The previously verbose Mr. Mackey issued the following terse statement: “I sincerely apologize to [...]

White Paper on PR's Role in Social Media

The Council of PR Firms has issued a white paper called, “Relating to the Public: The Evolving Role of Public Relations in the Age of Social Media.” From the Council’s summary on the white paper: >> The paper provides a snapshot of this important moment in time for the industry and imagines what the next [...]

Online Newsroom: It's a No-Brainer

TEK Group International has released a survey of 350 journalists reinforcing what you probably already know: that an online newsroom is absolutely essential to conduct 21st Century Media Relations. Some of the findings: 100% of the journalists who took the survey said that having an online newsroom was important, with 61% saying it was “very [...]

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