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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]