PAN Blog

Here's an interesting story which may signal the start of a very disturbing trend.  In what is clearly a reaction to more and more people turning to online sources as their primary information outlets, The Boston Globe, the paper of record for Boston and arguably most of New England, is proposing to its employees a new contract that would tie wages to the paper's financial performance.  The Boston Newspaper Guild, a union representing nearly 1000 editorial staff is voting today whether or not to take the deal.  

 

Wow...talk about the erosion of editorial and advertising's "Church and State" lines.  What happens when formerly objective reporters feel obligated to cover only the companies that advertise with the Globe?  Will smaller, innovative but less deep-pocketed companies now be completely ignored?  How does PR compete for a reporter's attention when the issues on the table are to get your client coverage vs. the reporter's need to generate his or her salary?    

 

 

We'll follow this story closely today and provide updates as we can. 

 

 

Technorati Tags : newspapers, journalism, online+pr, online+news, news, Boston+Globe, loss+of+objectivity, Editorial, Church+and+state

Good PR schools were teaching the value of quickly and honestly communicating with audiences long before the spotlight of blogs forced people to think about responding to a situation in immediate terms. 

 

It's not a new or novel concept pioneered by blogging--transparency and immediacy have been cornerstones of traditional pr training for a long time.  

 

Consider one of the more famous PR case studies: the Tylenol poisonings of the early 1980s.  Johnson and Johnson showed corporate America how to quickly and honestly communicate with their publics in the face of a crippling crisis.  The company's response was lightening-fast and focused on public safety, not the company.  Instant credibility was established by making the CEO the point man for the crisis, not a lower executive.  Under circumstances that would surely have killed another company, J&J immediately regained the trust of its customers and Tylenol has been medicine cabinet staple ever since.  

 

Now, we're not suggesting the Wal-Marting Across America crisis is on par with a case of poisonings, but how quickly the crisis was addressed by Edelman and Steve Rubel (who discloses on Micropersuasion that he has never billed any time to the Wal-Mart account--a tough pill to swallow in and of itself) is a case study in how PR professionals sometimes stray afield of their own counsel. 

 

Steve (although he's not billing) says it took a number of days to respond because there was a process to follow; facts had to be gathered to find out exactly what happened so that the posts could deal with the issues from an informed position (see previous link). 

 

What's interesting about this explanation is Edelman had the facts to begin with--they created the blog, hired the bloggers and initially set the wheels in motion.  There was nothing to gather, no data to vet, everything material to the campaign was already in hand.  So explanations to the contrary don't quite make sense. 

 

What stalled the response to the discovery of the fake blog, then?  More likely it was a scrambling to gauge the depth of the crisis, determine how badly Wal-Mart would be harmed and how far into it Edelman would be pulled.  This sort of stunt continues to harm the PR profession.  Rubel (whom we've read for a long time--whether or not we agreed with him), has been preaching transparency and immediacy for large companies for a long, long time. 

 

The comments section of his Edelman/Wal-Mart post  offers priceless lessons for PR professionals trying to get a sense of what's right and wrong in online PR.  Use it as a guide to help find your own way.  Just don't forget the basics--online PR is a different animal than pre-blog PR, but it's very much the same in many respects.  Good PR programs keep both models in mind.   

 

Technorati Tags : Edelman, Micropersuasion, Wal-Mart, PR, Journalism, Fake+blogs, steve+rubel    

Cutbacks in print journalism are taking their toll on people at the Boston Globe.  Last week we blogged about the Boston Newspaper Guild's vote on a proposed contract which would tie the salaries of reporters to the Globe's financial performance, raising the specter of "pay-for-play" journalism.  Luckily the measure was voted down, but not because reporters didn't want to be questioned about their objectivity; the contract was rejected because it didn't include profits from Boston.com, the Globe's online property, which is doing very well. 

 

Now it comes out that the Boston Newspaper Guild lobbied for and got the support of some of Boston's more influential politicians in its bid to get the New York Times Co. (the Globe's parent) to halt the cutbacks.  If the journalists are lobbying politicians to save their jobs, what happens when it comes time to cover those politicians in the paper?