By Linda Forrest
The headline “Gawker Media Now Bigger Than All Newspapers Online–Except One” caught my interest for a number of reasons. In addition to being interested in all things media, I’m a fan of Gawker Media; in my professional life for media gossip and Valley news delivered with a healthy dose of sarcasm and in my personal life for hilarious movie news and intelligent commentary on women’s issues and interests. And while I applaud its growing audience and great success for its individual websites, I feel that comparing the conglomerate that houses each of these properties with specific newspaper websites is a ridiculous exercise.
I was glad to see one of the commenters on the original story point out this very fact.
MikeBarthel wrote on the Awl: “It confused me that “Gawker Media” is bundled together but other newspaper conglomorates are not. Shouldn’t “USA Today” actually be the traffic of all the Gannett papers, if we’re comparing it to all the Gawker sites? Similarly NYT/Boston Globe, WSJ/NewsCorp, etc. Am I missing something?”
You’re not alone, Mike. Nick Denton himself, publisher of Gawker Media, recognizes that the newspapers are but one slice of his competition. In a letter to his staff, he called out additional sources of online news such as Huffington Post, Yahoo and AOL.
You’ll note the reasons that I listed for visiting Gawker Media entities were pretty soft and fluffy. Hard news or astute political opinions were not among them. If I want to read what I would consider to be real news, I’d most certainly visit one of the other sites against which Gawker Media was compared. “Online news” casts a very wide net and it’s important to define key terms if you want to be clear about your position in the marketplace and what readers can expect from your online properties.
Twitter’s traffic undeniably trounces that of all other ornithological sites on the web, if not combined, but just because they’re using the same language doesn’t mean they’re talking about the same thing. It’s an important distinction, and one that we as PR practitioners have to be extremely careful about. It’s for this very reason that we learn our clients’ whole story so that we have a holistic understanding of the company, its business, its technology and its market. A term that means one thing to one person can mean something quite different to someone else; we need to be able to draw that distinction and then pursue the opportunities that make the most sense for our clients knowing full well that we’re speaking the same language as the media outlet we’re pursuing.
If the media wants apples, don’t give them persimmons. They’re just likely to throw them at you for not knowing your apples from your persimmons. I would have assumed that the likes of Nick Denton would have been conscious of the distinction.
By Linda Forrest
It’s clear that we’re bad summertime bloggers. Sorry about that.
Occasionally there have been topics that have crossed my path in the last month and a bit that I thought could be ruminated on in a blog post, but when the spirit struck, it was usually when I was unplugged completely for a week-plus (No phone, no internet, no email, no television … heavenly!) or too swamped with client commitments to dedicate the time required to write it up. As I recently Tweeted, I haven’t blogged in so long that I suffered a brief case of performance anxiety about picking up the virtual pen once again.
I’m over it now.
I’ve been doing significant outreach in the UK for one of our clients and I’m noticing that journalists over there are far more eager to have a phone conversation with me than many of their North American counterparts. At outlets big and small, I’ve been greeted with enthusiasm, courtesy and appreciation for the information I’m providing, rather than being avoiding altogether, relegated to voicemail hell or, at worst, berated or abused because I deigned to call. All this latter negative experience has been all-too-common with some North American journalists I’ve dealt with in my decade plus as a PR practitioner. This has been a lovely experience and has resulted in some tangible and impactful coverage for my client.
Many of these same editors and reporters weren’t at all responsive to my emails, a distinct change from my experience in North America where calls and voicemails predominantly go unanswered and unresponded to, but emails fare far better. It was refreshing to have so many productive phone calls that resulted in good things for my clients.
I’d posit that the phone calls themselves went so well because we pride ourselves on building out a media list of pertinent, relevant and interested media targets so that we know all of the angles and all of the data points that are likely to result in coverage of our client. Or perhaps I just seemed exotic with my North American accent and that’s why they were so nice to me, eh?
Having had such a good string of calls, I was particularly interested about the articles I read this week about the death of the phone call. At least that’s the snazzy spin that’s put on the article, but the content rather suggests a more integrated communications approach – using the multiple channels available to us to best communicate with one another. The latter resonates strongly with my daily experience, while the former is hyperbolic and not at all what’s truly going on.
In my recent UK experience, I had indeed sent emails to the folks I later spoke with on the phone. For some, they’d read my email and highlighted as something to follow up at some nebulous point in the future, while others fully admitted that they hadn’t read it. That they had it in their mail and could call it up as we were speaking was very useful as they were provided with more information than I could succinctly deliver on the phone.
The rumours of the telephone call’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Telephone calls still play an important role in the PR practitioner’s day-to-day practice; I will agree that their ranking in the grand scheme of all of the tools available may have slipped, but make no mistake – there’s nothing quite like speaking to someone to get your point across. Whether it’s through Skype or an old rotary dial or anything in between, don’t count the phone call out just yet.
As an aside, there’s an interesting corollary to this phenomenon in the world of popular music. When I was growing up, there were scads of popular songs that highlighted the importance of the phone call – from Blondie’s “Call Me”, Phil Collins’ “Don’t Lose My Number”, and Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309.” The only popular song of late that references the telephone (at least the only one that’s coming to mind at the moment) is Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” with the repeated chorus of “stop calling, stop calling, I don’t want to talk anymore.” Pop music’s just reflecting our shared experience and indicating that the honeymoon’s over when it comes to our love affair with the telephone.
By Linda Forrest
Well, yesterday was interesting. Ottawa was the major city nearest to the epicenter of a 5.0 (heavily disputed) magnitude earthquake.
A friend who has traveled extensively was rolling his eyes at us meek Canucks, saying he felt quakes like this in Japan all the time. Suffice to say, I’d be a shaky mess if that was a regular occurrence.
Not used to seismic events of any magnitude happening in this area, at first, like so many, I thought there must be a big truck outside making all that noise, but as the shaking intensified, I began to think it might in fact be an earthquake and ran outside. When the quake subsided, I immediately picked up the phone to call the daycare just around the bend to see if either a) I was crazy, or b) did they feel it there too? (I’m not crazy.)
Then, purveyor of media that I am, I instantly began visiting media websites to see if there were any details on what had happened. I went to CFRA’s website, CBC.ca, Google News, Ottawa Citizen – nothing. I checked Twitter and bingo – there was instantaneous, regularly updated information available in real-time, people sharing experiences, jokes, links, statistics…
I was lucky to have spoken with both my daycare provider and my husband, because immediately afterwards, the phone lines were down – both cell and landline – as everyone else in the affected area called their spouses and daycare providers.
Traditional media were not quick enough to provide the information needed, traditional forms of communication were unreliable, but social media saved the day. Within minutes of the quake, thanks to Twitter, I knew where the epicenter was, the magnitude, the affected areas, and more. Twitter really proved its mettle to me beyond a shadow of a doubt as an important, relevant and succinct communications channel. While I’ve been using Twitter as part of my outreach for clients and networking for myself for two years now, I had recently grown tired of the endless witticisms, location updates and general narcissistic tone of some of its users but when push came to shove, Twitter was the most important communications channel where others lagged or failed entirely.
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Before the earth moved yesterday, the power of the media made a technicolour display when Stanley McChrystal, the top general in charge of the U.S. military in Afghanistan had his feet held to the flames for outrageous, disrespectful and unpatriotic comments made in a disastrous forthcoming Rolling Stone article. He had a decidedly uncomfortable meeting with President Obama wherein he tendered his resignation, certainly milliseconds before he was fired.
The article is truly scandalous and worth a read.
As a PR professional, my first thought was HOW did this happen? Are there no communications professionals involved with the highest strata of the U.S. military that would have overseen the opportunity and decided what could be gained by profiling a top general in a rock and roll magazine? If they then decided to move forward, would they not have been along every step of the way, providing both strategic and tactical counsel to the general about what he’s to say and what not to say, key messages, likely lines of questioning, etc.? Surely with an organization so reliant on security and secrecy, the PR team would have also had the opportunity to review the copy for approval prior to publication? Anyone? Bueller?
The most egregious of the comments were off the cuff, said not during any formal interview but when perhaps the general and his team thought comments would be off the record. As we’ve discussed previously, the interview is never over. The journalist was interviewed in the aftermath, also worth a watch.
I’m flabbergasted not only at the comments of the general and his staff but also at the incredible failing of the communications function of the U.S. military in this instance. By contrast, there was a brilliant article on McChrystal’s successor David Petraeus in a recent Vanity Fair. Whether it was better journalism, a better communications team that managed the process more carefully, or just a better man as the subject, we’ll never know.
By Linda Forrest
Oh dear.
The standards editor at the New York Times (@nytimes) has banned usage of the word Tweet, insisting that its use flies in the face of the paper’s general avoidance of “colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon.” His reasoning is that Twitter might be next year’s proverbial bird-cage liner and the Times will have egg on its face for adopting this word before its usage was properly established and therefore considered “ordinary.”
Just today, the Oxford English Dictionary added a number of words to its tome – data center among them. Until now, was that just jargon? When I consider the OED more closely, however, maybe it’s not the best arbiter of what’s ridiculous and what’s not, as evidenced by this meant to be comical but rather frighting piece. I’d be very interested in the standards editor’s position on muggle and gaydar. Perhaps the paper could devote an On Language feature to Frankenfood or bouncebackability… Here’s an interesting article where the columnist behind On Language reports on the fact that Tweet was 2009’s WORD OF THE YEAR. That would indicate that the word is in common usage, would it not?
If it’s familiarity with terms that the editor is worried about he can rest easy in the knowledge that fully 87% of Americans know what Twitter is; you can be assured that fewer people than that know what paleolithic means, Mr. Standards Editor. And paleolithic is exactly how you seem to the 105 million registered users of the platform.
What truly strikes me as comical, however, is that this comes despite of the great extent to which the NY Times itself Tweets, er, writes on Twitter. The paper as a whole, various sections and, according to @nytimes, 96 staffers all have distinct Twitter accounts. I hate to tell you, Phil, but this thing’s catching on.
What I fear is that this indicates a larger problem – how out of touch the media can be with, well, how to be successful in the modern media marketplace. Heaven knows Rupert Murdoch’s plans to rip the Wall Street Journal content from search engines as they erect a paywall is doomed to failure. Should be interesting to watch. The Times itself is planning on employing a metered pay system itself next January. Too late. People have been enjoying your content for free for far too long to want to pay for it now.
This does remind me of a time in 1999 when I was privy to a tour of one of the major record label HQs and the president, when asked what their online strategy was, said “we’ve got a couple of guys working on it. Nobody really knows what they do, but I’m sure this ‘Internet’ thing will be short-lived anyway and we’ve got it well in hand.” We know how that worked out. It would be a shame if the New York Times suffered the same sad fate, but this obtuse move doesn’t bode well for its future.
By Linda Forrest
Many moons ago, we wrote a post that gave a general overview of how awards fit into an integrated PR program. All of this information still rings true. Awards can be a worthwhile part of your communications program, but make sure that the ROI is worth it if it’s something you have to pay steep fees to enter. The best kind of award is the one where entry isn’t even necessary, where you’re singled out by experts in your field for being the best at what you do. You can’t buy that kind of third-party validation from reputable sources and it may cause prospects and competitors to both sit up and take notice of you.
Since many of our clients have had the good fortune lately of winning some prestigious awards and being singled out as some of the best at what they do, and since I’m working on a report for a new client that maps out appropriate awards opportunities for the year ahead, safe to say that I’ve got awards on the brain.
I’d like to publicly congratulate several of our clients for recent distinctions bestowed upon them:
UNIT4 Business Software, a top-six provider of ERP software worldwide, was named Employer of the Year at last week’s VIATeC Awards, which honour Vancouver Island technology companies. We like working for them; they must also be a pretty good place at which to work.
PerspecSys, whose hybrid cloud platform that mitigates the data privacy, residency and security concerns inherent to using SaaS applications in the public cloud, was both feted as one of Gartner Group’s “Cool Vendor in Cloud Security Services 2010” and named as finalist in the Global Cloud Security Challenge 2010. We’ll be telling the world a lot more about PerspecSys starting tomorrow.
Touch Bionics, the company behind cutting edge bionic technology like the i-LIMB Hand and ProDigits, was recently awarded the Queen’s Award for innovation, the most prestigious award in the UK for business performance. It’s another nice nod for a client that, it is safe to say, is the most decorated of any we’ve ever worked with.
Keep up the great work!
