Fortunate People

Last month, my friend and P-N media maven Dan Beeson and I held court at Infocom Group’s Media Relations event in New York City.

The room was packed with scores of PR pros who traveled far and wide to learn “how to land holy grail business media placements” (among many other things).

These conferences invariably draw hundreds of in-house practitioners whose employers aren’t in the headlines very often…but desperately want to be. I didn’t have any magic bullets to share except to say that with a little internal mining, there’s a news nugget to be found within most companies…and a media outlet pining to report it. If a company decides to paint its cafeteria, surely the monthly internal newsletter would publish that story…with before and after pictures!

The truth is: not everyone is blessed with working at a company whose every move is breathlessly chronicled in “holy grail” mainstream media and echo chambered in the blogosphere (but maybe not in that order). Today the e-newsletter Good Morning Silicon Valley, which arrives on my desktop sometimes as late as 4PM, carried yet another blurb on the king of the 2.0 world.

But what really caught my eye — and I’m sorry I missed it – was Google’s media day last week to make nicey-nice to the media. It resulted in a flattering piece in Fortune magazine absent any real news. Sure, there was some pretty good face time with the company’s leaders, but since when does that merit a piece in Time Inc’s flagship business book? I guess if Lindsay Lohan’s sexcapades merit a spread (sorry) in Time Inc’s other flagship book, then it’s OK for Fortune to oogle over google.