Mark Twain responded to reports of his death, “Rumours of my death have been highly exaggerated.” The same could be said of newspapers. A year ago it was believed they were down for the count. Advertising revenues had crashed and it was widely believed that readers had already migrated to the internet when the recession hit. A year out there is evidence that the perceived crisis was mainly in North America and even on this side of the pond the Economist reported in June that most have returned to profitability.
To survive newsrooms cut over 13,000 jobs changing the face of reporting for some time to come. Newspapers are slimmer and some, like the National Post which eliminated its Monday edition during the summer months, have survived by reducing services to customers. Many increased their reliance on service bureaus such as Dow Jones and Reuters. In the United States as the auto industry tanked car reviews disappeared. Ditto film critics and food and beverage writers whose spots have gone to general reporters. All of these things make it tougher to get attention for products and services. Newspapers have returned to delivering the news!
One sidebar of the recession is that the industry has become less dependent on advertising revenue -- which may be a good thing. But to survive long term they are going to have to pick that revenue up from subscribers. To do that, they will need to create value for their customers. Whether consumers prop their newspapers in front of their morning coffee or download it to their iPad, newspapers have to deliver something that is compelling and distinctive.
The good news is that they have survived to fight another day!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Friday, February 26, 2010
Buttoning Up
So I have been reading the lastest fiascos about men undone by their emails. What were they thinking?
I learned the PR business from one of the great characters, David Scott-Atkinson. He was really a Canadian pioneer for the profession. David's mantra was "If you don't want to see it in print - don't say it!" It's a lesson I took to heart and it's my first advice to any client. There are lots of ways to remain polite while refusing to talk about things that are no one's business but your own. You just don't talk about it. In that regard, I have enormous respect for the colourful American skater, Johnny Weir. When asked about his sexuality, he simply replies that he thinks it's in bad taste to talk about who he is sleeping with. Isn't that refreshing?
But to come back to Tiger, Adam Giambroni and others, I am not for a minute suggesting that their actions are fine as long as no one knows about them. But there is some simple advice that we could all learn from their experience. If you don't want to see it on line -- forever -- don't send it. It's really pretty simple. For all that our world has been changed irrevocably by the internet some fundamentals remain the same in both the on-line and off-line worlds. It's one reason why I am so intrigued by facebook and so many other social networking sites. Notions of privacy do seem to be crumbling away. What it all means is anyone's guess. But I, for one, am dipping my toes into it very carefully. It remains to be seen how this all plays out.
I learned the PR business from one of the great characters, David Scott-Atkinson. He was really a Canadian pioneer for the profession. David's mantra was "If you don't want to see it in print - don't say it!" It's a lesson I took to heart and it's my first advice to any client. There are lots of ways to remain polite while refusing to talk about things that are no one's business but your own. You just don't talk about it. In that regard, I have enormous respect for the colourful American skater, Johnny Weir. When asked about his sexuality, he simply replies that he thinks it's in bad taste to talk about who he is sleeping with. Isn't that refreshing?
But to come back to Tiger, Adam Giambroni and others, I am not for a minute suggesting that their actions are fine as long as no one knows about them. But there is some simple advice that we could all learn from their experience. If you don't want to see it on line -- forever -- don't send it. It's really pretty simple. For all that our world has been changed irrevocably by the internet some fundamentals remain the same in both the on-line and off-line worlds. It's one reason why I am so intrigued by facebook and so many other social networking sites. Notions of privacy do seem to be crumbling away. What it all means is anyone's guess. But I, for one, am dipping my toes into it very carefully. It remains to be seen how this all plays out.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Spinning
I had lots of great feedback and advice from my friends about my blog. (Most people thought I should shorten it up which left me a bit crushed – hence my recent silence.) I even had an offer to “redesign” it – please note the new look. So thanks to all!
Great piece in the New York Times this weekend about the Public Relations profession. It quoted Lloyd Blankfein the CEO of Goldman Sachs on his efforts to manage the company’s public profile through the economic meltdown. The story reported on a speech in which he referenced with disdain advice he had received from various image consultants, reputation managers, and public relations advisors : “Some people come in and say, ‘you are doing too much. Don’t say another word.’ Other people say we should get on the talk shows.”
Reporter Graham Bowley went on to note that these are unusual times for Wall Street. Where the titans were once virtually invincible from public opinion, the rage over recent abuses is costing them big-time.
Bowley took the brief to some of Manhattan’s top PR advisors. Once again the opinion covered a wide range:
· Apologize – admit you were wrong;
· Others disagreed;
· Take out ads, hold news conferences, Rubenstein opined;
· Does anyone really believe anything they read in ads?;
· Give back - donate to worthy causes;
· Will this appear a transparent ploy and beg more questions about the use of public funds;
· Require mandatory employee volunteerism;
· Communicate, communicate, communicate about their valid role in the economy;
· Reduce compensation packages;
· Now there’s a thought;
· Ignore the whole thing.
Why is it so difficult to come up with a single answer to the problem? It is because people still think the public relations profession is about spin and easy answers. And they want metrics – this and this equates that. As I said in an earlier blog, the profession is getting better about measuring, but the truth is that the practice is still more art than science. Frequently there is no “one answer” and certainly no “one size fits all.” The important thing is to decide on a strategy and move in a direction, not sit about sinking in the controversy.
I am always offended by people that think you call in the PR people to pick up a paint brush when they are cover in ****. Any good professional will always tell their client “Do the right thing.” It all falls out of that single insight.
Great piece in the New York Times this weekend about the Public Relations profession. It quoted Lloyd Blankfein the CEO of Goldman Sachs on his efforts to manage the company’s public profile through the economic meltdown. The story reported on a speech in which he referenced with disdain advice he had received from various image consultants, reputation managers, and public relations advisors : “Some people come in and say, ‘you are doing too much. Don’t say another word.’ Other people say we should get on the talk shows.”
Reporter Graham Bowley went on to note that these are unusual times for Wall Street. Where the titans were once virtually invincible from public opinion, the rage over recent abuses is costing them big-time.
Bowley took the brief to some of Manhattan’s top PR advisors. Once again the opinion covered a wide range:
· Apologize – admit you were wrong;
· Others disagreed;
· Take out ads, hold news conferences, Rubenstein opined;
· Does anyone really believe anything they read in ads?;
· Give back - donate to worthy causes;
· Will this appear a transparent ploy and beg more questions about the use of public funds;
· Require mandatory employee volunteerism;
· Communicate, communicate, communicate about their valid role in the economy;
· Reduce compensation packages;
· Now there’s a thought;
· Ignore the whole thing.
Why is it so difficult to come up with a single answer to the problem? It is because people still think the public relations profession is about spin and easy answers. And they want metrics – this and this equates that. As I said in an earlier blog, the profession is getting better about measuring, but the truth is that the practice is still more art than science. Frequently there is no “one answer” and certainly no “one size fits all.” The important thing is to decide on a strategy and move in a direction, not sit about sinking in the controversy.
I am always offended by people that think you call in the PR people to pick up a paint brush when they are cover in ****. Any good professional will always tell their client “Do the right thing.” It all falls out of that single insight.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Mosaics and Melting Pot
My niece, Sarah, is doing a course at Western on twentieth century immigrants in Canada and the United State that explores the notions of “cultural mosaic” and “melting pot” -- ideas that had currency when I was still in school. As a consequence my interest was renewed. I don’t often find myself in sympathy with the British philosopher A.C. Grayling, but I think there may be something in his view that rigid theories of multiculturalism and assimilation both have their risks. He argues cogently that multiple, complex human identity is the only way that a global society can exist in harmony.
Not that I advocate an abandonment of community, but rather a recognition that while community can support, it can also entrap.
As a part of her program Sarah is reading Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Middlesex, a book that I had previously avoided because of its controversial subject matter. But Sarah made me curious so I decided to read along. Middlesex traces the story of Calliope Stephanides, who has been raised as a girl but later doctors discover that she is in fact a hermaphrodite. She has inherited a recessive gene as a consequence of incest and inbreeding. Shockingly, Callie’s grandparents were siblings.
Born in an isolated village in Asia Minor, Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, grew up sharing a bedroom. Their parents died as they entered adolescence. With few potential partners to choose from, sexual curiousity led to a mutual attraction. It might have stopped there had they not been caught up in the turmoil and violence that erupted during the war between Greece and Turkey in 1922. Left with nothing, and fighting to survive the trauma, they turned to one another for physical comfort. Eventually they fled to American and conspiring to hide their relationship, married. Their story plays out against the pageant of 20 century America, with its jostling cultural and ethnic evolution. At one point Lefty is stirred up in a literal “melting pot” at a Ford Motor Company English graduation ceremony.
Callie herself becomes a kind of metaphor for the entrapment of community and the disconnection in our global society.
If I find parts of the story shocking, I wonder how Sarah sees it. Much has been made of the fact that many of today’s youth are post racist. They don’t make judgments about race or sexual orientation and partnerships and pairings reflect a jumble of colours, ethnicities and social and economic backgrounds. And yet, can they grasp life experience so circumscribed that choice was reduced to a close relation?
We often forget that certainly in the nineteenth century, marriage between blood relations was relatively common. Queen Victoria was paired with her cousin Albert, and even Darwin married his first cousin. Does Sarah even know that several generations ago within her own family, the grandchildren of two sisters married? Her father descends directly from that liaison. Can she imagine a time when travel of even short distances could take days, when personal acquaintance was limited to a few dozen souls? There was no internet, no chat rooms and no online dating. And the only good-looking boy within 50 miles might be your own brother.
Middlesex is a fascinating read, not only for its sometimes prurient, headlong narrative style, but for the textured layers of juxtaposed ideas that prod conventional thinking about community, assimilation, ethnicity, sexuality and love. As part of the mainstream, it can be hard to find a reference point with those living on the fringe, but just as Lori Lansen’s, The Girls, challenged the conventional “freakish” stereotyping of conjoined twins, Eugenides offers us access to a better understanding of the “other.” And in doing so, it also gives us a new perspective on the cultural mélange we now inhabit.
Not that I advocate an abandonment of community, but rather a recognition that while community can support, it can also entrap.
As a part of her program Sarah is reading Jeffrey Eugenides Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Middlesex, a book that I had previously avoided because of its controversial subject matter. But Sarah made me curious so I decided to read along. Middlesex traces the story of Calliope Stephanides, who has been raised as a girl but later doctors discover that she is in fact a hermaphrodite. She has inherited a recessive gene as a consequence of incest and inbreeding. Shockingly, Callie’s grandparents were siblings.
Born in an isolated village in Asia Minor, Lefty and Desdemona Stephanides, grew up sharing a bedroom. Their parents died as they entered adolescence. With few potential partners to choose from, sexual curiousity led to a mutual attraction. It might have stopped there had they not been caught up in the turmoil and violence that erupted during the war between Greece and Turkey in 1922. Left with nothing, and fighting to survive the trauma, they turned to one another for physical comfort. Eventually they fled to American and conspiring to hide their relationship, married. Their story plays out against the pageant of 20 century America, with its jostling cultural and ethnic evolution. At one point Lefty is stirred up in a literal “melting pot” at a Ford Motor Company English graduation ceremony.
Callie herself becomes a kind of metaphor for the entrapment of community and the disconnection in our global society.
If I find parts of the story shocking, I wonder how Sarah sees it. Much has been made of the fact that many of today’s youth are post racist. They don’t make judgments about race or sexual orientation and partnerships and pairings reflect a jumble of colours, ethnicities and social and economic backgrounds. And yet, can they grasp life experience so circumscribed that choice was reduced to a close relation?
We often forget that certainly in the nineteenth century, marriage between blood relations was relatively common. Queen Victoria was paired with her cousin Albert, and even Darwin married his first cousin. Does Sarah even know that several generations ago within her own family, the grandchildren of two sisters married? Her father descends directly from that liaison. Can she imagine a time when travel of even short distances could take days, when personal acquaintance was limited to a few dozen souls? There was no internet, no chat rooms and no online dating. And the only good-looking boy within 50 miles might be your own brother.
Middlesex is a fascinating read, not only for its sometimes prurient, headlong narrative style, but for the textured layers of juxtaposed ideas that prod conventional thinking about community, assimilation, ethnicity, sexuality and love. As part of the mainstream, it can be hard to find a reference point with those living on the fringe, but just as Lori Lansen’s, The Girls, challenged the conventional “freakish” stereotyping of conjoined twins, Eugenides offers us access to a better understanding of the “other.” And in doing so, it also gives us a new perspective on the cultural mélange we now inhabit.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Measuring Happiness
French President Nicolas Sarcozy’s decision to measure “happiness” is drawing reaction and some ridicule. A Globe and Mail editorial this morning finds the desire laudable but ponders whether happiness is “unmeasurable and beyond the reach of government?” Our modern society spends a lot of time trying to sort through notions that can’t be added and subtracted. A few years ago someone even wrote a book about “emotional intelligence” in an effort to legitimize the intuitive side of human nature.
As a graduate student of history I was required to do a course in historiography – the study of the philosophy of history. We spent endless hours debating the nature of ‘facts’ and trying to define what was real or tangible from perception and distortion.
I saw “Creation” at a TIFF screening last week – the new film on the life of Charles Darwin starring John Bettany and Jennifer Connolly. The screenplay focuses on the period of Darwin’s life when he struggled to reconcile scientific ‘fact’ with his wife’s religious beliefs. It brought me face to face with my own heritage. Of course it is hard for audiences today to really comprehend that the notion of ‘God’ was as real and factual to most people in the 19th century as dinosaur bones and microscopic amoeba. I grew up in a Mennonite home and often avoided truth in order to protect my mother from the ‘facts’ of my life. Some of my friends thought this was hypocritical. It was hard to explain that some of my actions were not just an affront to my mother’s religious sympathies. She had a profound sense that I possess(ed) an immortal soul that could be endangered by my actions. And her fear for me and my immortal soul was very vivid and completely real.
I was the first child in my extended family to even attend university. As a gifted young girl, my Mennonite heritage recognized teaching or nursing as acceptable professions. So even to pursue a degree was something of an accomplishment. But as an emerging feminist I often berated myself for not having done something ‘professional’ like law – the practical application of facts and truth. But as I matured I came to see that my liberal arts education was a wonderful preparation for everything that I wanted to do. The study of history gave me an excellent sense of perspective that allows me to put all kinds of events under the microscope. For a public relations professional, it has been particularly useful.
Of course, people who work in public relations wrestle with this notion of ‘facts’ day-in-day out. Most of us who take pride in our work take ‘truth’ as a given. But whose truth? Most of us have had clients who have been unfairly maligned by a journalist’s use of the facts. And we work carefully to hone ‘key messages’ to ensure that the facts of our case are presented in a positive light.
Working in a world where everyone wants metrics or ‘facts’ – tangible evidence by which to measure results – can be challenging for those of us in ‘soft ‘professions. There was a moment as we entered the ‘Knowledge Economy’ that I naively believed we might have moved past this – that finally people would be ready to evaluate the nuance of opinion against numerical fact. But it seems I jumped the gun. No one seems to want the complexity of thoughtful analysis. Just the facts, please. Whatever they are.
I for one, am just delighted that finally we have a politician who just might want to know how his electorate ‘feels’ about things. For those of you who saw Bill Maher’s hysterical diatribe to America on the wonders of France, here is one more to add to the list.
As a graduate student of history I was required to do a course in historiography – the study of the philosophy of history. We spent endless hours debating the nature of ‘facts’ and trying to define what was real or tangible from perception and distortion.
I saw “Creation” at a TIFF screening last week – the new film on the life of Charles Darwin starring John Bettany and Jennifer Connolly. The screenplay focuses on the period of Darwin’s life when he struggled to reconcile scientific ‘fact’ with his wife’s religious beliefs. It brought me face to face with my own heritage. Of course it is hard for audiences today to really comprehend that the notion of ‘God’ was as real and factual to most people in the 19th century as dinosaur bones and microscopic amoeba. I grew up in a Mennonite home and often avoided truth in order to protect my mother from the ‘facts’ of my life. Some of my friends thought this was hypocritical. It was hard to explain that some of my actions were not just an affront to my mother’s religious sympathies. She had a profound sense that I possess(ed) an immortal soul that could be endangered by my actions. And her fear for me and my immortal soul was very vivid and completely real.
I was the first child in my extended family to even attend university. As a gifted young girl, my Mennonite heritage recognized teaching or nursing as acceptable professions. So even to pursue a degree was something of an accomplishment. But as an emerging feminist I often berated myself for not having done something ‘professional’ like law – the practical application of facts and truth. But as I matured I came to see that my liberal arts education was a wonderful preparation for everything that I wanted to do. The study of history gave me an excellent sense of perspective that allows me to put all kinds of events under the microscope. For a public relations professional, it has been particularly useful.
Of course, people who work in public relations wrestle with this notion of ‘facts’ day-in-day out. Most of us who take pride in our work take ‘truth’ as a given. But whose truth? Most of us have had clients who have been unfairly maligned by a journalist’s use of the facts. And we work carefully to hone ‘key messages’ to ensure that the facts of our case are presented in a positive light.
Working in a world where everyone wants metrics or ‘facts’ – tangible evidence by which to measure results – can be challenging for those of us in ‘soft ‘professions. There was a moment as we entered the ‘Knowledge Economy’ that I naively believed we might have moved past this – that finally people would be ready to evaluate the nuance of opinion against numerical fact. But it seems I jumped the gun. No one seems to want the complexity of thoughtful analysis. Just the facts, please. Whatever they are.
I for one, am just delighted that finally we have a politician who just might want to know how his electorate ‘feels’ about things. For those of you who saw Bill Maher’s hysterical diatribe to America on the wonders of France, here is one more to add to the list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
