Hoax Shows How Easy It Is to Fool Bloggers, Media

Citizen journalism can be a great thing by enabling anyone who wants a way to express themselves beyond their immediate friends, colleagues and family.

Yet one of the strengths of traditional journalism is training and judgment, and the need to source information. The old adage that traditional journalists heard at some point in their careers is that if your mother says she loves you, check it out. In other words, trust no one until you can get two sources to verify.

Blogging often seems about opinion, so fact checking sources gets little attention. And because of the speed of the news cycle -- I remember before the 24/7 cycle -- many people want to get information out there fast. This includes traditional media, picking up stories that bubble up in the blogosphere.

The New York Times wrote an fascinating article about Martin Eisenstadt, a senior McCain advisor, who turned out to be a hoax. Check out the article, "A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence," for the details.

But the point is that most bloggers, and quite a few journalists, accepted at face value the news and opinion from Eisenstadt (played by Eitan Gorlin) without digging deeper. There were clues out there that Eisenstadt wasn't who he said he was, according to the article, for anyone to find. But in the rush, not enough people actually did. Interestingly, there was one blogger who kept on the Eisenstadt trail, pointing out discrepancies in his story. And reporters at major media, when they found out the truth, did apologize and publicly comment. I'm not sure, though, that the disclosure changed procedures/policies anywhere.

That's a challenge for those who turn to the Internet for facts and trend data. It's a challenge for PR departments when reaching out to bloggers.

Cavaet Blogger!

How to Explain Social Media

Common Craft, which makes videos for businesses, made a good introduction to social media. Check it out: Video: Social Media in Plain English.

Do Half the Analysts on Your List Belong: Fixing an Analyst Relations Program

Sage Circle, an analyst relations firms, makes an controversial statement in a recent blog post: Your analyst list is likely wrong - half the analysts should not be on it, half that should are not.

I tend to agree. Just as I would that half the reporters on the average media list don't belong -- or, at least, won't be interested in most the news coming out of most companies. (In terms of media lists, many lists contain reporters who are likely to write about a company, but that determination may be based on a single article caught by a PR staffer, and that article could have been written to fill in for another reporter. It's like reading tea leaves.)

One reason analyst lists could be wrong is that analysts may have moved to another firm, another coverage area -- the same is especially true of media lists, by the way, given layoffs, shifts to cover the Wall St. crisis (and until last week, the election).

Here are reasons that Sage says leads to analyst lists containing wrong media.

• Perception that there is no time to do the work
• Lack of formal analyst list methodology
• Inadequate consideration of corporate, business group and team objectives
• Lack of carefully considered weighted criteria
• Infrequent review of the analyst marketplace for changes in analysts and coverage
• Lack of mechanism for capturing how analyst list decisions were made
• Focusing on large firms while giving boutiques short shrift
• No access to a database of analysts
• Internal political pressure
• External squeaky wheels

In another blog post, Sage says it's important to understand how an analyst list was compiled, and notes some important questions:

• Which criteria were used?
• How those criteria were weighted, and so on?
• When was the list created?
• Has it been maintained?

Good points.

Layoffs & PR Strategy

We've seen a growing number of startups announce layoffs as a way to "cut the burn rate" and "extend the runway" -- two terms rarely heard after the dot-com crash.

Call these preemptive layoffs, they are intended to help startups keep enough cash to survive until the end of the economic crisis (which a friend yesterday called the "new normal") when, presumably, there will be more interest in their product or service.

Lawrence Coburn, CEO of RateItAll, a distributed consumer review company, makes an interesting point in a recent blog post: "Layoffs should not be part of your PR strategy."

I totally agree.

On the other hand, the New York Times' Claire Cain Miller wrote an interesting article, "In Era of Blog Sniping, Companies Shoot First," in which she reports that companies need to get aggressive to communicating key messages about layoffs because of blogs and Twitter.

Unfortunately, I totally agree with that, too.

In the end, for the sake of transparency, I do think that companies will now need to acknowledge layoffs -- before the ex-employees do. I think companies now need a communications strategy to deal with the Web 2.0 world when layoffs are planned. But I still feel that companies shouldn't use layoffs as part of their PR/marketing strategy.

The Other Shoe Drops for US News

Earlier this year, US News said it would change its publication schedule from every week, and that it would change its emphasis from news to consumer reports -- since its many ranking issues (Colleges, Hospitals, etc.) have been very popular.

So I think it should have, at that point, dropped the phrase "& World Report" from its title.

Actually, I think it should have dropped the word "News" from its title, too, since it clearly wasn't covering news.

I think the reason the magazine didn't is because there's already a magazine called US, and readers would probably get confused. (Not that I think that US is every about me, but that's another posting.)

Now, the other shoe has dropped in that US News & World Report has announced it will stop publishing its print edition to focus on being a web-only publication.

If we soon can't call the Christian Science Monitor a newspaper anymore since it won't be delivered on paper, can we can call US News (or whatever a more accurate name would be) a magazine anymore?

Not sure.

But I think the new slogan for the Christian Science Monitor could be -- Read the CS Monitor on Your Computer Monitor!

Meanwhile, if US News & World Report maintains its name, since there is brand equity in it, the publication won't be the only one with a misleading name. Industry Week isn't really about industry, but about plant management, and it doesn't publish weekly. Redbook isn't actually bound in red, nor is it a book.

One thing's for sure: because of the lousy economy, we can expect other print publications to move to an online-only strategy. Most of these will be second-tier publications. I am still convinced that there is a need for print publications -- if only because Kindle and other similar electronic reading devices are not as widely available as MP3 players. Yet. I also think top publications will still be able to sell print editions to advertisers and readers. It just might be a small group of top publications.

We can survive this, yes we can.

The Interesting Thing about TV Election Coverage

It's not about media bias, although it was clear some on Fox were disappointed. (For example, one pundit said that Obama had won by a landslide -- another pointed out that the popular vote was actually fairly close, it's just the Electoral College that makes it seem like a landslide. A point I'm sure would not have been made if McCain had won.)

What was interesting is how conservative with a lower "c" before calling states for Obama or McCain. In fact, many websites were calling states, even the entire election well before 11pm when the networks decided they had enough hard evidence to call it.

Jacques Steinberg in the New York Times wrote an interesting article about "Burned Before, Networks Prove Reluctant to Name Next President Early" about the situation.

Personally, I've seen lots of tech reporters who were scarred and burned by the dot-com crash decide not to cover small companies for the same reason.

Are Advertising Agencies Like Cats, PR Agencies Like Dogs?

104 West Partners principal makes the case that ad agencies are like cats, PR agencies are like dogs in an interesting blog post, "Reigning Cats and Dogs."

In the article, he makes the case why, during an economic downturn, marketing should go to the dogs. Here are two key points:

• Traditionally, PR is good value for money, to borrow a phrase from my British friends. The cost of a traditional PR media effort that has even mediocre results can return a 'CPM' (now before we get in a lather, I know it's not a perfect analogy, but it's what I got) of somewhere around 40 cents. And that's pretty conservative. That is only the pure media ROI and doesn't include non-media efforts like speaking engagements or strategic counsel. But we should also look at the non-traditional advantages. PR is essentially the ability to sway opinions. (Some might suggest it's more pedestrian than that; I'm not sure the pedestrian assessment isn't an undervaluation, as much as mine may be an overvaluation, but it's my blog.) And there is an opinion that this economic crisis is very much the result of emotion and opinion. Now I am not downplaying the reality of the credit crisis or the housing slide, but markets are very often driven by emotion. How else would you account for 1000 point swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in a matter of minutes?
• In terms of Web 2.0 approaches, Ward says, "The solutions offered by others instead of PR simply don't scale. The complexity of the communications effort needed to justify expenses on goods and services in the coming months will not lend itself to marketing's blunter instruments and even if they did, the cost of making them successful is incongruent with the belt-tightening we are all facing."

Interesting.