The Journalist & the PR Pro: A Broken Marriage?

Last week my former Associated Press client Tori Ekstrand invited me to speak at the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a two–hour snow delay in New York, I finally made my way to the Freedom Forum Center on campus where Tori, now an assistant…… Continue reading The Journalist & the PR Pro: A Broken Marriage?

On Entrepreneurs & Earned Media

Penenberg joins PandoDaily (Illustration by Hallie Bateman)Leave it to Jeff Domansky (aka @theprcoach) to draw this blogger’s attention to a rant by one of the more astute observers of today’s tech scene – Sarah Lacy (aka @sarahcuda).Writing for her thought-leading tech news site PandoDaily (which just hired Fast Company’s Adam Penenberg as its editor), Ms. Lacy rails…… Continue reading On Entrepreneurs & Earned Media

EMail: Love it or Hate it

For more than a decade, email has endured as the preferred mode for engaging journalists in an “earned media” paradigm. Of course, the term earned media wasn’t in the PR lexicon ten years ago. We simply called it media or editorial relations.PCNY Panel (8/7): NY Daily News, Good Day NY, HuffPost, WPLJ, BuzzfeedAs much as…… Continue reading EMail: Love it or Hate it

Finding Influencers

Today’s fragmented and Twitter-driven media landscape has created a significant challenge for PR pros seeking to earn their clients greater editorial attention. A fire-hosed and fickle media-consuming public has already moved on to the next news flash before most stories have a chance to sprout roots.Here’s a data visualization of how a story evolves on…… Continue reading Finding Influencers

Commander in Control

One of the points I had hoped to emphasize in my last post was that Twitter, blogging, Facebook and Google+ offer an even more controlled communications environment than what a fastidiously prepped/messaged executive might face in a media interview.David Carr may give Rupert Murdoch props for his more authentic Twitter persona, but it’s Mr. Murdoch…… Continue reading Commander in Control

Re-casting Paid and Earned Media

Social media guy Dave Armano, fresh off the news of his impending move to the “social media capital” of the United States — Austin, TX — today Flickr’ed some imagery (at left) to illustrate Brian Morrissey’s astute post “Blending paid and earned media in the stream.”Morrissey’s post, which took its cue from a Fred Wilson…… Continue reading Re-casting Paid and Earned Media

In Praise of the Press Release

Two weeks ago, a client issued a news release nationally on Business Wire. Two days ago, a colleague sent me an effusive email containing a list of links to reputable web sites that posted the release verbatim.It included the usual subjects: Yahoo! Finance, AOL money & finance, msn money, Forbes.com…I ask myself: do these even…… Continue reading In Praise of the Press Release