The purpose of a personal blog is to provide a forum where its writer can complain, praise, and pontificate. A lone personal blog is one of perhaps millions out there, but like everything else out there on the internet, what’s written on even a personal blog has a sense of permanence. As anyone with a website knows, drawing traffic to a new property is a difficult proposition. Most people who read my personal blog seem to be one-time visitors. (Read more…)
I read an article about local government using the threat of budget shortfalls to close a popular and much-needed public service. The writer referred to it as a Washington Monument Strategy. I had never heard that phrase before but a Google search showed it along with the phrase Washington Monument Syndrome being used a bit lately. (Read more…)
1. The Friday Afternoon Bad News Press Release
For decades, the White House has used Friday afternoon as a time to release bad news to the media. The rationale is that the media is wrapping up a busy week, Saturday newspaper circulation and readership is lower than any other day of the week, and the public is just plain tired and ready to relax. The linchpin to this strategy has been the newspaper. Times, however, have changed. (Read more…)
As a journalist, it wasn’t often that I listened to a public relations pitch. But then there were times when I was three hours from deadline and I still didn’t have a story. During one of those crunch times, I checked my voicemail and there was a new message from a public relations rep named Alyssa Shelasky, pitching me on a story that I would normally ignore. But Alyssa got me interested in a very easy way: she did her research. (Read more…)
Good press releases, public relations campaigns and quotes come in all shapes and forms. This week, I examine five recent public relations events to see what was done right, and in some cases, wrong. (Read more…)
Everywhere I looked on Monday, there was Cuil.
Pronounced “cool,” the search provider made its public debut this week and got enough ink to make an octopus jealous. I read stories about Cuil in/on The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Forbes, a blog on The Los Angeles Times, TechCrunch.com and CNET News.com, among others. Most of the initial press concentrated on Cuil’s claim that it indexes more pages than other search engines and that its founders, a wife-and-husband team, are former employees of Google, the clear current leader in the search space. (Read more…)
The error was stunning. The results were more stunning.
On Monday morning shares of UAL Corp., the parent company of United Airlines, plummeted more than 75% at one point. The company’s market capitalization, or the combined value of all its outstanding shares, fell by almost $1.2 billion in a period of just 15 minutes. (Read more…)
Welcome to 2006: a year that will see mid-term elections, Winter Olympics, and the release of Paris Hilton’s first (and dare we hope last) album.
As is the case every year, the news cycle will be driven by known and unknown events. Being prepared for the unknown events is difficult. Being prepared for the known events can be easy. With the latter statement in mind, here are the events and emerging trends I think will dominate headlines this year. (Read more…)
It’s been almost a year since I was active as a journalist, so I was surprised when a former colleague emailed me and asked me if I had a public relations contact at Amazon.com. (Read more…)
Perhaps it’s my natural cynicism, but I had a difficult time coming up with a suitable list of PR winners for 2005. I stopped after two entries when it became clear that sifting through the rubble of 2005 to find deserving winners was going to lead to just more losers. (Read more…)
