Media Relations Is Dead. Long Live Media Relations.

A few weeks ago, a senior media executive at one of the largest, most digitally savvy PR agencies shared with me a call he had with his top management in which they lamented the lack of media relations savvy from the firm’s younger professionals. “Shouldn’t there be more formal training,” they pressed, to which he…… Continue reading Media Relations Is Dead. Long Live Media Relations.

Beyoncé & Barack: A PR Contrast

Nick Farrell Photography/Courtesy of Columbia RecordsThis week, we watched as the White House press corps angrily revolted against the office of the President of the United States, accusing Mr. Obama and his PR consiglieres of media manipulation and propaganda. Apparently, pre-selected handout press photos no longer pass editorial muster. From Mediaite: “The members of the…… Continue reading Beyoncé & Barack: A PR Contrast

A Reporter & A PR Guy Were In A Bar

About this time last year, I took the PR agency biz to task for what I felt was its fatalistic reliance on the benevolence of journalists to advance their clients’ communications interests. Sure, a great “placement” (I hate that term) in an influential news outlet like Bloomberg, The Journal, Mashable or Buzzfeed still has a…… Continue reading A Reporter & A PR Guy Were In A Bar

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?

Facebook’s Presser

Tech Blogs 100% Confident They Don’t Know What Facebook Will Announce Tomorrow But let’s all report on it anyway! rww.to/Y5NfFy— ReadWrite (@RWW) January 14, 2013Most journalists these days do not have the luxury to leave their workspaces to physically attend a news conference. This is especially true when the announcement itself is completely cloaked in…… Continue reading Facebook’s Presser

Converged Media Rising

Y&R’s Brand Asset ValuatorBack in the day, I had the good fortune to work on the introduction of Brand Asset Valuator, Y&R’s seminal study that turned conventional wisdom on its head about how brands are built. Through thousands of interviews across dozens of countries, Y&R concluded that a brand’s “Esteem” is derived through “Relevance” and…… Continue reading Converged Media Rising

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