Uncategorized | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Media Relations 2008

I’m heading back to San Francisco tomorrow, for the second time this year. I’ll be attending Bulldog Reporter’s Media Relations 2008 conference. Here’s the schedule, which looks really interesting. I’m part of a panel on Tuesday called “Getting Personal:Telling your Story in Social Media: Facebook, LinkedIn and More.”

Seems kind of weird to have two colons in a program title. Is that even allowable in English?

I hope to be liveblogging many of the sessions, wireless access permitting. I’m particularly looking forward to:

Keynotes by Robert Scoble, Charlie Rose and Duncan Wardle (from Disney theme parks)
Katie Paine’s session on measuring online media impact
Other technology, new media, social media sessions
Mike Moran from IBM’s address called “Doing it wrong quickly: What corporations need from PR in Today’s Transforming Marketplace” also looks provocative.

I’ll be sharing highlights here.

“Days of Rage” for Weathermen, Other TV Newsers

When I first heard about Paul Douglas losing his job at WCCO-TV as part of the nationwide layoffs at the CBS owned-and-operated TV stations, my first thought was that this is the worst day for Weathermen since 1969.

Paul will be just fine; he’s a natural entrepreneur who has already started and sold one successful business. But the layoffs aren’t just among weathercasters like Paul. A $2 million-a-year anchor in Chicago, and 17 of her WBBM colleagues. WBZ in Boston laid off 30, and the layoffs are affecting all 29 CBS O&O stations.

As part of this trend, news organizations will be increasingly inviting readers and viewers to become writers and producers.

And at KCNC-TV CBS4 in Denver, where last week the CBS O&O laid off at least nine employees, including NPPA member and Video Editor of the Year Shawn Montano, the station is this week heavily promoting their new feature called “YouReport.”

Going beyond the “VJ” or “one-man-band” new wave of video journalism, “YouReport” urges viewers to use their home video cameras and cell phone cameras to shoot spot news when they see it and then deliver their citizen photojournalism to the station, as as quickly as possible, by uploading it to the KCNC-TV Web site. They’ve even written and published a “YouReport Users Guide” to help citizen journalists.

I’ve written repeatedly (here, here, here and here, for example) about the dislocations in the mainstream media. If TV rock stars like Paul Douglas can’t bank their futures solely on mainstream media, it just illustrates that people in PR need to diversify, too. In our increasingly fragmented world of communications, we can’t count on mainstream media being sufficient for “getting our message out.” And even more than that, we need to understand that it’s not a one-way world. It’s not just about getting our messages heard; it’s about hearing and responding to what those formerly known as the audience have to say.

SMUG’s Basketball Team

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which I reviewed here, Patrick Lencioni highlights five characteristics of groups that have not become true teams. I said my next post would turn those dysfunctions upside down, and positively highlight characteristics of one of the most effective teams I’ve had the pleasure to observe.

In Lencioni’s leadership fable, his protagonist Katherine relates the story of her husband, a basketball coach, who benched a talented player who was focused on personal statistics instead of team results. Yet (or maybe therefore) his teams consistently had winning seasons, because of the synergy that comes from teamwork.

One way we keep the costs down for Social Media University, Global is by not having any athletic teams. Also, unlike our online university colleagues at the University of Phoenix, we haven’t paid millions for the naming rights to a football stadium.

But clearly, sports can be powerful for marketing. That’s why a major retailer paid $18.75 million in 1990 for the naming rights to the facility where SMUG’s adopted team will be playing its first-round game in the Minnesota State High School girls’ basketball tournament.

You see, your Chancellor has a daughter on the Austin, Minn. team. Rebekah Aase is a 6′ 1″ junior center for the Packers, who enter the state tournament with a 20-7 record. But she’s not the star of her team. There is no star for her team. This is not a team that relies on one player for a major portion of its points. Nine girls see regular action in every game, and six or seven of them have led the team in scoring in at least one game.

A gimmick defense like a box and one or a triangle and two is completely worthless against the Packers. A different player steps up each time to take the scoring load, as Jenny Fisher, Rebekah Aase and Kristina Vorpahl led the team in scoring in the Packers’ three tournament games. Brittney Gibson sank the three-point buzzer beater that clinched the state tournament berth after being scoreless for the first 33:58 of the game. And part of being a team is understanding that scoring isn’t the only way to contribute; for example, senior co-captain Tana Lukes had seven steals in the section semifinal win.

So here’s how the Packers have done it, and how they positively demonstrate the opposite of Lencioni’s dysfunctions.

Trust – When team members know that every other member has their best interests at heart, and a single overriding goal, they have freedom to fail and therefore freedom excel. The Austin girls know that they can step up to take a big shot without worrying that their teammates will criticize them if they miss. Coach Gary Peterson says this is the closest team he’s ever had. The girls all genuinely love their teammates.
Constructive Conflict – On a sports team, this probably pertains more to the coaches than to the players, but development of a winning game plan requires the coaching staff to brainstorm all the options and debate the best approach to use against a given opponent. As the plan is being implemented in practice, the players need to ask questions to be sure they are clear on how things should be done. And in the heat of the game, they can talk about what’s working and what isn’t, so the coaches benefit from their perspective. The leader, the head coach, needs to make the final decision, after weighing all of the input.
Commitment – Once a game plan has been created, everyone needs to be fully committed to execution. Even if it wasn’t what they would have decided individually, the only way a team can work effectively together is to completely commit. If anyone holds back and second-guesses, the plan won’t work.
Accountability – Team members and leaders need to hold each other accountable for keeping their commitments. When Rebekah is fronting the post, for instance, she needs to know she’ll have help on the back side defending the lob pass. And when the guards are aggressively pressuring the point guard, they need to know she’ll be patrolling the lane if the point penetrates.
Focus on Results – The Packers’ balanced scoring speaks for itself, that no one is putting individual results ahead of team success. As a result, they’ve reached a goal together that wouldn’t have been possible without exceptional teamwork.

Here are the video highlights (including Brittney’s Buzzer Beater) from the section title game:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B–7ygf_rA]

To see more about the Packers and an application of social media (specifically Facebook) as a sports booster club, visit the Packers’ fan group and read about why Facebook groups beat blogs for this purpose.

The Newest Euphemistic PR Cliché

Sometimes a new word or phrase is developed to communicate more clearly. For example, we say “personalized medicine” instead of “genomics” to help a lay audience understand that this research will enable physicians to prescribe medications more likely to work for an individual because they take a person’s genetic makeup into account.

If a new verbal formulation is exceptionally apt, it can quickly pass into cliché status. Dollars to doughnuts, you know a ton of these. They skyrocket to the top of the usage charts, pedal to the metal past more pedestrian phrasings.

These are all fine; they may indicate lack of literary thoughtfulness, but they aren’t disingenuous. If a cliché briefly encapsulates what would take a much longer phrase to communicate — if it packs a punch — it may aid communication.

Euphemistic clichés are another matter. They’re meant to conceal rather than reveal. Unfortunately for their users, they’re about as effective as Adam’s botanical briefs.

Like pre-owned instead of used cars, or an initial investment replacing talk of a down payment, or agreement being the more delicate way of describing a contract, apparently someone in the PR world did some focus group research and found out that “pitch” has negative connotations.

So now they don’t “pitch” a story idea: they “reach out” to journalists.

Maybe it’s not the newest PR cliché, but besides rapidly becoming dreadfully overused, it also causes bad grammar, in the form of compound prepositions.

I think any communication with reporters that uses language like…

“Hi, I wanted to reach out to you about…”

Should be an immediate candidate for the Bad Pitch Blog. Or the Bad “Reaching Out” Blog.

Grammatically speaking, “reaching out” practioners almost always string at least two prepositions together. And once they get started, “reacher outers” can’t seem to stop, even when they’re not pitching journalists. For instance, I got an email from a PR agency rep last week that said “we’ve reached out to Dr. X regarding speaking….”

How about, “We’ve invited Dr. X to speak…”?

Some of our blogger friends (like Shel Israel) are concerned that PR people won’t be able to break their command-and-control addiction to spin in order to participate effectively in the social media conversation. That’s why, at a PR measurement conference we attended, Shel said companies should just hire a bunch of young people to do social media, instead of trying to retrain PR staff. (See his comments on that post.)

But the reality is that spin and euphemism aren’t keys to long-term success in media relations, either. Good PR practitioners take time to develop solid story ideas and to determine which journalists may find the topic interesting. Then they offer the story: sometimes as an exclusive, sometimes not. And the reverse happens, too: journalists have story ideas and contact PR sources for help in finding experts who can comment. It’s a symbiotic relationship, as journalists get good story ideas and access to subject experts, and the PR pros’ clients hopefully are included in the stories. If it isn’t good for both sides, the relationship doesn’t last.

“Pitching” may carry some traveling salesperson connotations, so I’m not advocating a return to the old cliché. But instead of the mushy new euphemism, “reaching out to,” why not use more concrete verbs like “calling” or “writing” or “contacting?”

Does anyone really think that a journalist who is “reached out to” dozens of times a day fails to see through this language?

I’m not saying the reacher outers should be sent to a correctional facility, but their communication should be hauled away by sanitation engineers.

Technorati: PR, Bad Pitch Blog, euphemisms, cliché, journalists, agencies

“Cheers” for Medical News

Imagine a medical news community where journalists aren’t bombarded with irrelevant story pitches. Where they don’t receive the dreaded “Did you get my email?” phone follow-ups from PR practitioners. Where journalists have quick and easy access to sources they trust. Where public information officers and PR staff understand each other’s needs and interests, and come together in a common space of mutual respect. “Where everybody knows your name…”
“People say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”

Well, I am the only one right now, but I’m dreaming that might change. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had created a new group in Facebook for Health & Medical Journalists and PIOs. But having listened to part of Made to Stick (highly recommended; my review is forthcoming), I was compelled to change the group’s name to: “Cheers” for Medical News.

Journalists have the Association of Health Care Journalists. PIOs have PIONet through Newswise. These are fine organizations, but they have their limits. Though journalists can be collegial, they naturally compete with each other to get the story first. Likewise PIOs and PR practitioners have an interest in pitching their stories and getting their subject experts featured.

“Cheers” could be the place where individuals from both groups come together to meet. Sometimes it would be a public conversation, much as the ones Norm and Cliff had when they left their bean-counting duties and their appointed postal rounds. Other times journalists working on enterprise stories, and PIOs “pitching” ideas, would be like the countless, nameless others on the show having private conversations at the side tables and in the anteroom.

Journalists are exploring how they can use Facebook, and a group called “Journalists and Facebook” has grown to over 900 members in about a week. Here’s the story behind it. With 31 million members, and growing 1.2 million per week, Facebook has both critical mass and privacy flexibility that could make it a Commons for medical news.

I believe the “Cheers” for Medical News group in Facebook could bridge the gap between news media and public relations by creating a community of mutual respect and trust.To join the group, a person would need to be approved by an administrator, either as a medical center PIO or a journalist. ( I’m looking for other administrators to help approve new members, by the way.)

When a big story is breaking, a discussion of angles and sources could take place out in the open on the discussion board, “around the bar” in the Cheers metaphor. Everyone could chime in. If a reporter is enterprising a story, on the other hand, she might send a private message to PIOs at certain institutions asking for sources.

Likewise, a PIO with an embargoed news release could send a notification and link to the release through Facebook (although EurekAlert works fine for this right now), or could pitch an exclusive to a particular producer or reporter through a Facebook message.

Messages would come by email. If you think someone is spamming you with irrelevant pitches, you could block his messages through your Facebook privacy settings. People who continually behave badly could be banished from the group. The result is you could reclaim the value of email; you would know the messages you get through your Facebook groups and friends would be worthwhile.

Journalists are legitimately frustrated that they are overwhelmed with story pitches from people who don’t take the time to know their beats or what kinds of stories interest them.

Media list companies exist to build distribution and pitching lists for news releases, and often hype their services with phrases like, “We’ll show you how to score big coverage…” as if media relations was some kind of predatory dating game, and we were a bunch of Sam Malones.

Through the web 2.0 service Facebook, people in the health and medical news community can set a higher standard. PIOs and journalists need each other and have mutual interests that could be achieved by coming together in one place:

Journalists who are part of the Cheers commons could also establish their own secret Facebook groups, and could send source queries just to those individuals, quickly and easily. By putting their beats, interests and how they prefer to receive story pitches in their Facebook profiles, they would get more worthwhile story ideas from PIOs.
Academic centers could put their news release distribution lists in Facebook, in a similar secret list. They could even distribute embargoed releases this way, and would be sure that only credentialed journalists would have access. If someone broke an embargo, they could be removed from the list. And unlike PR Newswire and other services, distribution through Facebook would be free. It’s Wikinomics at work.

ProfNet is a good service that enables journalists to cast a wide net, to send out an All Points Bulletin in the search for sources. Facebook would be a way to create more helpful, meaningful relationships.

I know about meaningful relationships formed through Facebook; my daughter met her husband there. They were both in college in Wisconsin, and he was searching for people with an interest in Theology. They met in December 2005, and I walked Rachel down the aisle on December 30, 2006.

We’re not talking anything that meaningful with our version of Cheers. But if there’s interest, we could create a digital health journalism “watering hole,” which would, I think, be a worthwhile thing.

What do you think?

Technorati: Health, Journalism, Medical, Facebook, PIO, PR, Cheers, Association of Health Care Journalists