Not every client or employee is equipped to deal with the media on an intimate level. When I was a journalist, public relations contacts would sometimes sit in on interviews I conducted with company executives. In most cases, the public relations department was there to lend support — as either a confidant, or a source of additional information. In other cases, however, it was clear that the executive needed his hand held because he could not handle on-the-fly questioning alone. But media training can help clients and company employees prepare for encounters from journalists and interviewers. (Read more…)

Every so often, I undertake what I call my “Email Dump.” This is where I go through the approximately 12,000 emails that have piled up in my inbox and decide what I can finally delete for all eternity. Unsurprisingly, there a lot of press releases and public relations communications among the emails now languishing in my “trash” folder. (Read more…)

Several years ago when I was covering the dot-com bubble, a German magazine featured me in a story. “The Harbinger of Death,” the writer called me, noting that if I wrote about a company there was a good chance that said company was on its way to the grave. “The Harbinger of Death” is back, but these days I’m an analyst, studying corporate executives who disastrously borrowed money against the stock they own in their company. (Read more…)

Half-day Fridays, long weekends, longer lunches, ducking out for “getaway” day baseball games, early afternoon drinks, meetings that last 18 holes. Summer is great fun, but some people in the public relations industry seem to be on a permanent vacation. Are you one of these PR slackers? (Read more…)

Steve Jobs is alive. That much we know. But the health status of the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple, Inc. remains a mystery to many, especially those who believe Jobs and the company’s public relations department are not being completely honest. One thing is clear: Questions about Jobs’ health are not going away anytime soon. (Read more…)

Did the media cost Stanley O’Neal his job as the chairman and chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch? Veteran public relations man Paul Pendergrass, who goes by the nom de plume “Jack Flack” when blogging for Portfolio.com, believes that the fourth estate is at least partially responsible for O’Neal’s forced retirement. (Read more…)

I don’t own a car, but historically high oil prices are taking their toll on me.

My airfare for a recent trip was 25 percent higher than I normally pay, and taxis to and from the airport cost me at least 20 percent more than I’ve paid in the past. High oil prices also impact my life because petroleum derivatives are used in thousands of products, including food (plastic containers and pesticides), beverages (plastic and glass bottles), clothing (polyester and rayon), consumer electronics (plastic), home furnishings (carpet) and utilities (gas-powered plants). Even the government is feeling the pinch (which means my tax dollars are wasting away), because petroleum is central to everything from government-owned transportation to government-sponsored works projects. (Asphalt is a petroleum product, and asphalt prices are up about 20 percent over the past year). (Read more…)

I touched briefly last week on the present controversy at Hewlett-Packard, and before the “ink” was even dry on my column, the company had swung into action. (Read more…)

In early 2004, I received a phone call from a reporter for a major business publication. She wanted to know if I was the Ben Silverman who was donating heavily to Democratic political campaigns. She thought it may make an interesting story considering I wrote a business column, one in which I had been critical of the Bush Administration on more that one occasion, for the right-tilting New York Post. (Read more…)

By any measure, Barry Diller makes a lot of money.

The chairman and chief executive officer of InterActiveCorp. (”IAC”), Diller hauled in $295 million in compensation in 2005, according to The Corporate Library, a corporate governance research firm. The figure put Diller at the top of the list of highest-paid CEOs, which brought plenty of attention from the media - none of it positive. The figure is also misleading. (Read more…)