NSA Goes on Deep Background
It’s always a good idea to try to give journalists background information to help them write better informed stories in a broader context. Too often, they come to stories under-prepared, which they think is a sign of strength (“I can cover anything”) and too often results in shallow, inaccurate stories. The problem most of us [...]
Burson-Marsteller Outed as Microsoft's Sock Puppet
The Wall Street Journal and the U.K.’s Observer both outed Burson-Marsteller today as the “sock puppet” of Microsoft’s effort to create an Internet industry group to oppose Google’s planned acquisition of DoubleClick. Seems B-M has sent emails to players in the Internet space urging them to join a new industry group, Initiative for Competitive Online [...]
This Is Who You Are Dealing With
The San Francisco Giants held a press conference yesterday to announce that they won’t bring Barry Bonds back next season. At least 3 local TV stations carried the beginning of the press conference live at the top of their 5pm newscasts. At least 2 of them KNTV (NBC, Channel 11) and KPIX (CBS, Channel 5), [...]
Shameless Plug for a Friend
My good friend and former colleague Delia Rios recently joined C-SPAN as a history producer and helped create a new 12-part series based on the audio and video archives of the 12 Presidential libraries (from Hoover to Clinton). She worked on the Hoover, Truman and Reagan segments. Truman airs tonight. From the C-SPAN web [...]
Fundamentals of SEO for PR
Here’s an excellent free resource for PR people everywhere: a 3-part series on optimizing your press releases for the web (SEO = Search Engine Optimization). I recommend you read the 3 parts in their entirety. But here are a few nuggets of wisdom: Identify the crucial descriptive keywords for your release. Use these terms to [...]
WSJ.com Wants to be Free
The only subscription-only daily newspaper site in the U.S., WSJ.com, is on the road to becoming at least a partially free site, according to a story on today’s subscription-only WSJ.com site. From the story: Mr. Murdoch has been dropping hints that he is contemplating doing just that when he takes over, raising the idea in interviews [...]
Google News Comments Off to a Slow Start
Good reminder that not everything Google does turns to gold: since its launch last month, Google News’ comments feature has only posted 100 comments. Steve Rubel comments on it here. Hard to imagine only 100 people have tried to comment on news stories on Google. But Google says it will only post comments that its [...]