Thursday, July 27, 2006

On Hallowed Ground

Is no ground sacred?  

From bathroom stalls to bananas, every space is being monetized.  Next up -- the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Yes it is true.  The Wall Street Journal, home of the dot matrix portrait, has announced that it will now run ads on its front page.  Known as the "jewel box," this ad space will be available in the lower right hand corner of the front page of the paper.

They call it “a unique, high-impact opportunity to reach the world's most influential newspaper audience.”  It seems like plain old marketing to me.

It’s a shrewd move financially, but clearly a sign of the times as newspapers face the prospect of a dwindling readership and challenges from alternative information sources.

This latest incursion should come as no surprise.  There is nothing particularly special about the front page.  Historically, there has been advertising on the front page of newspapers.  USA Today has ads, as does every newspaper homepage with pop ups and banners that are more obtrusive and more annoying.  I suppose it is the cost of getting free access to a site.

But somehow, even as a PR professional, I don’t like it.  I am not sure why.

Perhaps it is a matter of what I am used to or maybe I am just a purist. Front page ads speak to the eroding boundary between editorial and advertising.

Like the separation of church and state, I have long valued the wall between the marketing department and the newsroom.  When I pitch a story, I want to feel certain that commercial interests won’t interfere with coverage.  While I may joust with a reporter over a story I didn’t like, I do respect journalism’s commitment to independent thinking and public service.  Advertising on the other hand serves the private interest.

I also support what Bob Steele, The Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at The Poynter Institute, wrote in a recent everyday ethics blog posting:

 

"If we are to keep moving toward more advertising content that competes with the premium news space, we must make sure the journalism does not suffer. If we keep cutting the news hole on the front page, the section fronts and throughout the paper, we must find ways to make the journalism all the stronger."

Given the proliferation of advertising, I suspect most readers won’t care.  Journalists, a high minded bunch by nature, could be a different story.  More than likely, the loudest grumbling will come from the newsroom where reporters and advertisers generally don’t mix.  Reporters, despite covering constant change, cling to old habits. 

Putting aside the debate on whether blogging is journalism, I would proffer that bloggers are also a high minded bunch.  While at the vanguard of change, we are pretty vocal and conservative about blogosphere protocol.  There is a right way and wrong way.  Pity the ones who don’t know the difference.

It will be interesting to see how the blogging community will react as blogs become more mainstream and adopt practices that run contrary to firmly its held beliefs.  Will bloggers face the same ethical dilemmas if they decide to accept ads on our sites?  Will we stick to our guns or, in the end, will we succumb to unyielding commercial pressures? 

 

Let me get back to you.

 

Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:03:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday, July 24, 2006

When Blogging Isn't Enough

This past week offered me an opportunity to test out the high tech/high touch theory that John Naisbitt formulated more than twenty years ago. 

In his book Megatrends, Naisbitt wrote, “Whenever a new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response – that is, high touch – or the technology is rejected.  The more high tech, the more high touch.”  

The more I blog, the more I start connecting with bloggers in the real world.  This past Wednesday, I stopped by a local pizza joint to discuss a variety of social media issues with several members of the Atlanta Media Bloggers.  Blogger Josh Hallett, visiting from Orlando, was also on hand.

My non-virtual connections add credence to the efforts of Chris Heuer and a non-profit group called the Social Media Club that he helped co-found. 

The goal of the Social Media Club is to “bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. We are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist - we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far.”

I was curious about his efforts to bring people together and why he felt the need to form a “club.”  I connected with him via phone on the suggestion of Bob Winslow at Fleishman-Hillard and fellow EarthLink blogger Dave Coustan.   

All these connections and recommendations suggest that Chris is onto something.  According to Heuer, there is a real need for people to come together in person in the real world and share ideas and best practices.  While blogging has a global reach, he is hoping that blogging will foster relationships at the community level as well.  Virtual connections can start dialogues, but in-person connections are much deeper and more lasting. 

Despite the highly personalized nature of blogs and their focus on individualized self-expression, Heuer also hopes to encourage media literacy –“ the 4Rs – reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and RSS” to make sure everyone has the necessary tools of engagement.  

Chris has some experience with all this.  He helped to create the non-profit BrainJams organization to “promote the idea of unconferences and ad-hoc collaboration to a broader audience of non-geeks.”

From a corporate perspective, it is easy to get cynical about non-hierarchical grassroots efforts like these.  I can just see management saying – “Show me the money" -- wondering about the advantages of sharing information.

Clearly, there is a social good to all this, but there are also huge market opportunities to those entrepreneurial enough to harness and adapt in creative new ways the blogosphere's vast storehouse of knowledge.  In a decentralized, cluetrain manifesto kind of world, the power is in sharing information, enabling others to participate and building connections in the virtual and physical world.  Done in a spirit of openness and cooperation, the resulting benefits will hit the bottom line and serve the public interest.

Let me get back to you. 

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Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:03:40 | Permanent Link | Comments (4) |

Thursday, July 20, 2006

You Are So 36 Hours Ago

How long is a news cycle?  24 hours?  24 minutes?   Do news cycles still matter? 

 According to a new research paper, “The Dynamics of Information Access on the Web,” reported in the New York Times this week, “36 hours is the amount of time it takes for half of the total readership of an [online] article to have read it.”  In other words, stories have a 36 hour shelf life.

In the age of 24/7 cable and the Internet, I would have expected the news cycle to be a few hours at best. 

 As reported by Noam Cohen of the New York Times on July 17th, readers read in “bursts” and do not read articles evenly throughout the day.  These bursts may explain why “readership rates don’t drop off precipitously for particular articles after a few hours.” 

For news editors, viewing patterns are very relevant.  They help determine how long a story should occupy prime online real estate and how to package news items for occasional readers who visit websites irregularly.  One of the leaders of the study – Albert László Barabási -- suggested that editors may want to revisit how often they refresh content.  Perhaps there are ways to package content to suit the viewing habits of individual readers to a site and therefore give PR folks a chance to extend the life of a story.


In the age of blogs, I am not sure if a news cycle is relevant or even measurable.  Does it still exist or is its time frame still being determined as stories take on a life of their own in ways that reporters or editors never intended?

In the days before blogs, I gauged my success in managing press in 24 hour increments.  If I were lucky, a bad story may appear on the evening news or in the morning paper for one, maybe two days.  Today I don't have that luxury.

An article on an online news site can have multiple lives in the blogosphere. The blogosphere’s reaction to an article can make its way back to the original news site – the so called coverage of coverage phenomenon.   Or the article can lie dormant on a server only to be summoned in subsequent searches by readers.  In other words, a news story may never really die.

The actual article is only part of the dynamic.  How bloggers digest and refashion it is the other -- especially if the blogger is the reporter who wrote the article in the first place. 

All of this reminds me of the long tail theory put forth in Chris Anderson's book by the same title that is making the rounds in a flurry of recent book reviews.  (As an aside -- according to the Economist Magazine [subscription required], for the past two years, technology “conference goers have entertained themselves playing a guessing game of how many times will a speaker mention the phrase long tail.”)

Well in this case, I cite the long tail, because it relates to news consumption.  Just as the Internet can generate sizeable profits for the remaining 80 percent of all products, so can blogging and the Internet itself generate interest in an article long past its point of initial publication when presumably it had its highest news value. 

For the record: that’s 3 long tails. 

Let me get back to you.  
Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:02:37 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Monday, July 17, 2006

Transparency Is Not Always Clear

Dell recently launched its new corporate blog to decidedly mixed reviews. 

 

Critics seemed to be unimpressed by its first forays into the blogosphere and in true blogger fashion were not afraid to say so. Given that Dell had waited this long to address customer service issues in a corporate blog, bloggers like Steve Rubel in a Micro Persuasion posting felt the company had missed a real opportunity to be more candid and forthcoming with their customers.

 

Candidly I am of two minds here – hence my headline.

No company should get a free ride.  You can’t use a corporate blog as a PR vehicle to gloss over or ignore problems with customer service.  Nobody is going to be fooled, but I am wondering how the blogosphere’s response will impact skittish executives at other companies who are still on the fence about social media.  It may spur companies to do it right or reinforce their fears so they don't blog at all.  If they can’t do it right – honest, transparent, personal, conversational – perhaps they shouldn’t blog.  Or conversely cut them some initial slack -- at least they are trying.  


I kind of like the wait and see approach taken by Shel Israel in a posting from last week -- Blog the way we tell you to.  Right now, dammit!  He brings some perspective to the debate without passing judgment.

 

Good blogs should evolve over time.  That certainly is the case at EarthLink (of course I am biased!).  EarthLink’s blog experience is not analogous to Dell’s, but it may be instructive.

An earlier version of our corporate blog was not greeted with disapproval, but didn’t garner legions of readers either.  Postings were made irregularly and the hosting set-up did not allow readers to post comments.  We worked our way through the first year and then decided to revamp the blog to move beyond the theme of Internet protection.  

Our corporate blog earthling reflects the broader mission of the company. It is intended in part to capture the spirit of the Internet and help readers to take advantage of what the Internet has to offer.  We also hired a full time blogger to manage the process and provide his unique perspective.

The point is we took a chance, experimented, and most importantly learned from our experience. 

The same is true of my blog.  I continue to experiment and grapple with subject matter as I try to find my voice.  That voice is shaped by topics I want to discuss, the image I want to project and feedback I have gotten from readers.

At times, my writing has alternated from the personal, the professional, and the professorial.   I must confess I am still working on my blog’s tone and content, balancing confidence and certitude with humility and doubt.

At work, colleagues have been coming to me for advice on how to blog.  They want to be honest, but they don’t want to go off message.  They worry about internal and external reaction if they say the wrong thing.

Transparency is not always clear.

What is off limits?  Is there a proper mix of personal and professional?  Can a blogger be too honest? Beyond guidelines about disclosure, disclaimers and deportment, I am encouraging them to take a leap of faith and be themselves.  Demanding control when talking with reporters, I am willing to cede authority in the blogosphere.  Where I speak in scripted talking points during interviews, colleagues should be more informal.  Mistakes will surely be made, but the sense of engagement is far more critical.

Their blogs will be as different as the bloggers themselves.  Each voice won’t represent THE voice of EarthLink, but collectively I am expecting a symphony, not a cacophony.

They say blogs are conversations.  They also say that great conversationalists are great listeners.  Let's hope that Dell will listen to its audience and find a voice for its blog that serves the needs of the company and its customers. 

 

Let me get back to you.

Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:08:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

Thursday, July 13, 2006

This Blog Is on the Record

I know I am late to the party here, but I wanted to comment on the recent brouhaha between General Motors and the New York Times over a piece by noted Times columnist Thomas Friedman. 

 I think the interaction is instructive as we establish new rules of engagement with the media.

As many of you know, Mr. Friedman wrote a piece rebuking General Motors for its SUV marketing strategy -- likening the auto giant to a drug dealer.  General Motors response:  “Rubbish.”   However, readers of the newspaper never saw that characterization.  The Times, known for “all the news that’s fit to print," wouldn’t print GM’s rebuttal, unless it toned down its language.    

GM refused and found it fit to print its side of the story right on its corporate blog – FastLane Blog  – and, in the process, created more news than the Times could have imagined.  For General Motors, it was a masterful stroke of PR.  

GM’s response created a media circus – garnering thousands of hits to its corporate site, countless mentions on leading blogs and extensive coverage in mainstream media.  

In an unprecedented move, The Times blinked and actually responded to GM’s blog.  In the June 26 issue of PR Week, Karl Greenberg opined that this incident “may signal just how far blogging has come as a driver of media and as a platform for issuing opinions that can garner as much attention as top-shelf print columnist.”  

How far indeed and at what price?  

For me, the more noteworthy aspect of this story is not each side’s perspective on car manufacturing and foreign oil dependency.  It was instead GM’s decision to publish its back and forth emails with the Times as they negotiated the terms for a response letter.

We all know the challenges of getting our op-eds published in the Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. These pages are valuable real estate.   

If it were as easy as posting a piece on our corporate blog to garner the same amount of prestige and the same number of impressions, I would never again bother to submit an op-ed to a major daily and would rely exclusively on a corporate blog to spread the word.  

What I think makes this a cautionary tale is GM’s decision to post the exchange between two parties that was originally intended – or at least I hope it was – as a private correspondence.  It was the sausage making and the publication of private negotiations that helped in part to fire up the blogosphere and drive media interest.  

I would be interested to know at what point GM made the decision to publish the correspondence and how was the decision made.  Were alternatives debated and consequences discussed?  At what point did the process become as important as, or more important than, the message itself?  

Everyone would love to bring a giant down a notch or two, and I am sure every PR professional has been a victim of something that was intended as off the record that made it into print.  

Did the Times know their exchange would be public?  Assuming they didn't, would they have acted differently if they did know?  What obligation do we have as corporate spokespersons to now tell reporters that their conversations are on the record and are fair game for publication on our blogs?  And will the possibility of a public airing of every private conversation have a chilling effect on the transparency and openness that is blogging?

In the age of new media is anything really private?  Do we need to preface every conversation with ground rules for what is on and what is off the record?  And will they be honored?  Are there still rules?

I for one support full disclosure.  Even in the new frontier of  new media, we need boundaries in how we communicate, what we record and where we post.  I might add that these same concerns now extend to surly call center reps and unsuspecting guests changing in health club locker rooms.  It appears everything can find its way on a blog. 

It reminds me of a T-shirt my friend once saw:  “Careful what you tell me.  I may blog about you.”

The Times has learned a lesson or two in humility.  Given GM’s media windfall, I wonder what lessons we and GM have learned. 

Let me get back to you.


 

Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:01:30 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) |

Monday, July 10, 2006

New media, customer service and other observations

Three and counting….

Three departures of well known news personalities in almost as many weeks.

Dan Rather’s was sobering.

Connie Chung’s was bewildering.

 And Amanda Congdon’s…well, I am not taking sides.

I do wish both Rocketboom and Amanda great success.  They are helping to transform the news business. As the old adage goes, the show must go on -- even if the site (tongue in cheek) was inactive for a few days.  

But it does occur to me that despite all the talk about blogging, vlogging, podcasting and other new technologies and delivery platforms, personalities and human drama will always take the forefront of a news cycle.

And now this….

Customer service is once again in the news…as only new media can deliver it.

The PR departments at AOL and Comcast must be smarting with citizen journalists using the web to publicize their frustration  with customer service reps through video cameras and recording devices.

Brings new meaning to the oft heard recorded message…”Your call may be monitored for quality assurance.”

On his blog, Spinfluencer, Eric Schwartzman asks whether these “blog storms” as he calls them “really have a lasting effect?”   And John Wagner offers up some advice for dealing with social media cloudbursts. 

Anyone in the customer service business has had to weather consumer complaints played out in the media. So no stones will be thrown here from glass houses.

For some perspective on the impact of new media, I asked brand expert and Atlanta co-resident Laura Ries.  Her take: if the brand is strong enough and its reputation secure, the company can endure this type of negative publicity -- whether it comes from “60 Minutes” or a heretofore unknown blogger.

My take: To extend the weather metaphor one step further – Some companies have actually enhanced their reputations during a crisis, while others have failed miserably.  But while a company may begin repairing its reputation in a storm, the real work for building customer loyalty is done during the calm that precedes the storm.  

Let me get back to you.  
Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:01:52 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Is Your Company Ready for Social Media?

No question social media is a communications force to be reckoned with.  But just because management understands what a blog, wiki or podcast is, doesn't mean everyone should go out and start blogging.

Determining employee awareness is a critical first step in developing a communications strategy. Gauging mangement's tolerance for openness and decentralization is the next.  A social media strategy will fail without understanding employee awareness and the prevailing company culture.

So in the sprirt of share and share alike, I offer up the following survey:  Testing Your Company's Social Media Awareness.  It is a simple questionnaire to be given to colleagues and clients.  It is meant as a starting point for discussion and socialization.

Candidly, there is a built-in bias. It assumes that companies should embrace social media.  The challenge is determining the right path to get you there.  

The survey attempts to address such questions as:  Do Interent savvy and social media adoption synch up or is there a disconnect?  Do employees understand social media and how to use it?  What steps must be taken to implement a social media policy?

I recommend giving it to a wide range of people -- from the most savvy to the least experienced, new employees and old, management and rank and file to accurately gauge awareness. Only through understanding your company's or your client's level of awareness will you be able to develop a successful strategy for implementation. 

This knowledge is also critical in gauging tolerance for this new form of communication. If the answers reveal a very low awareness, you need to ask why.  Does the company culture encourage or discourage social media or is it simply that your employees lack the necessary knowledge? Or is it both?

For those that already embrace social media, the feedback may surprise you.  It will tell you how much education is needed to make the transition from the old way of communicating to the new.

I welcome your feedback. 

Let me get back you.

Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:01:09 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

Monday, July 03, 2006

On Muckraking and Blogging

If you are a student of journalism like I am, you may be as surprised as I was to discover that 2006 marks the 100th anniversary of the word “muckraking.”  But there it was in the July 3 issue of Time Magazine devoted to Theodore Roosevelt.  Apparently, he coined the word in an off-the-record speech at the Gridiron Club in Washington. 

Now a badge of honor, muckraker was an unfavorable term given to individuals who in Roosevelt’s mind “continue racking muck instead of looking to the heavens.” 

 These reformed-minded journalists, writers and activists yielded tremendous influence in the first decade of the twentieth century. But by the early teens, their clout had diminished.  The publications that once thrived on the muckrakers’ zeal became victims of advertisers and creditors.  Advertising dollars dried up, and publications changed policies or died on the vine.  Sponsors became none too pleased by the critical stances that muckrakers would often take against their business interests. 

So as we observe this important milestone in journalistic history, I would like to take a moment to consider the muckraking legacy and how it lives on with today’s bloggers.  What can we learn from our 20th century predecessors?  

Certainly, blogging, like muckraking did a century ago, can inspire great passion – at once praised and hyped or vilified and dismissed. 

Like muckrakers, bloggers have benefited from changes in content creation and distribution.  Where we have the Internet, they witnessed the emergence of the popular press and inexpensive, widely read magazines.

For some perspective I dusted off a college text book – Richard Hofstadter’s landmark book, The Age of Reform.  According to Mr. Hofstadter,  muckraking’s reformist streak was not what made it new ; it was “its reach – its nationwide character and its capacity to draw nationwide attention, the presence of mass muckraking media with national circulations, and huge resources for the research that went with that exposure.”

Today, the cost of entry for blogging is almost non-existent.  Bloggers don’t require huge resources and are not beholden to advertising revenue or large circulations for sustainability.  In most instances, passion and an Internet connection are all they need to promote a cause or bring down a journalist, politician or company.  

And so today bloggers are flourishing where muckrakers couldn’t.  They are ushering in a new era of muckraking built on new rules of engagement and a new form of journalistic realism.  

In exposing abuses in business and corruption in politics, muckrakers introduced a growing number of readers to a rough and tumble world that had remained hidden from their view.  Their subjects were new and so was their language – at once sensationalist, accessible, unadorned and realistic.  

Bloggers too are challenging institutions and centers of power, exploring new subjects and redefining the relationship between public and private.  Often just amateurs and proudly so, successful bloggers take a more personal, informal tone with interaction and dialogue as their goal.  The new aesthetic is about inserting one’s passion into the discussion, blurring the distinction between personal and professional.  One’s feelings and attitudes happily coexist with the facts and speculation.

One only has to look at the changing practices and policies of business and mainstream media for proof of blogging’s burgeoning influence.  Corporate blogs are more commonplace with transparency and candor as goals.  Journalists now have blogs that are informal, personal and interactive.  Rather than being swept under the rug, blogs are embraced as opportunities to advance corporate objectives, and bloggers are courted and solicited for their opinions. 

So as July 4th approaches, I would like to express my appreciation for the freedom to muckrake and blog away and for the pioneering efforts of muckraking stars like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens who set the stage 100 years ago.

To my American friends, happy July 4th.  Let me get back to you.  

 

Posted by Dan Greenfield at 00:01:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |