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Arrington Gets Spat On, Gets Death Threats

Posted by jongreer on January 29, 2009 · Leave a Comment 

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington reports that media relations has gone to a whole new level of bad: he was spat upon this week and was the subject of a death threat last summer.
Serious stuff, and seriously out-of-bounds, it goes without saying. Arrington writes a blog, for godsakes. Yes, it is influential, but no company’s life or [...]

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Does PR Need a Stronger Sense of Ethics?

Posted by jongreer on October 27, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

At first blush, it’s a no-brainer that the PR industry could use a much stronger and enforceable Code of Ethics. The industry is rife with bad practices and shoddy, over-priced work, which is why we still find ourselves on the defensive so often. This is not to say that there aren’t a lot of hard-working, ethical and talented [...]

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SoCal Train Wreck: PR Takes Fall for Telling the Truth

Posted by jongreer on September 15, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

On Friday, an LA commuter train slammed into a freight train, killing 25 people. On Saturday, the PR person for the Metrolink train system said publicly it appeared that the passenger train’s engineer was at fault for the crash. On Sunday, her bosses issued a statement saying her pronouncement was “premature.” On Monday, she resigned.

This [...]

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KMart CMO Takes A Courageous Step For What He Believes

Posted by jongreer on June 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

It’s not every day you see someone walk the talk. There’s a lot of posturing out there in the business world, a lot of saying one thing and doing another.
Not so with KMart CMO Bill Stewart. Make that soon-to-be-ex-CMO Bill Stewart.
Stewart announced last week that he will leave the retailer on June 30 to [...]

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Comparing the Benefits of Trained Versus Untrained Bloggers

Posted by jongreer on June 20, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

Here’s a follow-up on Monday’s Catching Flack post about whether it’s better or worse for PR that bloggers are now being offered journalism training from the Society of Professional Journalists.
The vote so far on the poll: 14 for trained bloggers, 3 for untrained. I was glad to see some people vote for “untrained” — I’m [...]

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More McClellan Fall Out: I Told You So

Posted by jongreer on June 13, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

Leave it to a lawyer-turned-journalist to be the one to take the bait and use the Scott McClellan tell-all as an opportunity to rip the PR industry. I told you this would be one of the consequences of McClellan’s sell out.
It happened on CBS Sunday Morning [I resisted posting this all week but felt called [...]

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Scott McClellan Sells Out the PR Industry

Posted by jongreer on May 29, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

Scott McClellan is going to be rich man. The former Bush press secretary’s about-face regarding what he and the White House said while he was Bush’s spokesman will make his book fly off the shelves and will probably double his speaking fee (and the demand for his services).
It’s safe to say that if McClellan had [...]

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Fighting Crime By Using a Fake Blog

Posted by jongreer on May 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

Here’s a good one: Coach bags doesn’t like that its trademarked products are so often counterfeited and sold as real. So as part of its anti-counterfeiting initiative, it teams up with a college PR class to create a fake blog about a college student who loses her genuine Coach bag, posts signs on campus offering [...]

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Pentagon Plays the PR Game To Win

Posted by jongreer on April 22, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

I’m having a hard time getting terribly worked up about the New York Times story that the Pentagon used media training tactics to prep retired military officers for appearances as military analysts on TV talk shows.
This has nothing to do with my position on the Iraq war. The tagline for this blog is “smart ways [...]

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The Right Way and Wrong Way to Do Media Interviews by Email

Posted by jongreer on March 20, 2008 · Leave a Comment 

An emerging PR tactic is to insist on being interviewed by email. It allows the interview subject to have almost total control of the information provided to the journalist, and creates a record of what was said.
I recommend this tactic when appropriate. Times when it is appropriate include: when time is short and the interview [...]

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