News Bypassing Pulitzer Muster

Posted on January 10, 2012
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

One has to have great sympathy for the members of the juries that award the Pulitizer Prizes – editors and other newspaper people – as they watch their craft being contracted, not only in numbers, but technique, too. They seem to be trying to draw the line, of all places, at Twitter, and that’s an unfortunate stance. When word gets around that some breaking event or other is being reported on Twitter, a tweet at a time, that’s likely to take the edge off traditional reporting, it’s true. But tweeted dispatches are no less valid as timely input, just untethered to newsdesks.

As Andy Weiss notes on the Digital Pivot blog, NPR’s Andy Carvin might have reason to be unhappy over the Pulitzer board’s stance, though broadcast news outlets have never been eligible for Pulitzers in any event. During the Arab Spring demonstrations last year, Carvin relayed tweeted reports, some of them pretty graphic, from the demonstrations, scooping everyone else. But again, broadcasters aren’t eligible anyway.

It doesn’t seem, though, that a guild system can hold much longer for reporting the news. We say reporting, rather than covering, because it’s a more actively pertinent term. “Covering” can be interpreted as who’s assigned to view, or dig into, an event. And that can have little immediately to do with when information actually starts arriving in another town or on another continent. So the Pulitzer Committee’s Breaking News category is for “breaking news” of its choice and definition, not events as they necessarily unfold.

Things were simpler when a couple of reporters relied on “Deep Throat” to keep them advised and there wasn’t any competition from Twitter or other forms of social media.

Postings From the Other Blogs We Do

Posted on March 13, 2011
Filed Under Communication principles | Leave a Comment

Despite my best intentions, I haven’t gotten to restarting my Beetle’s Beat blog, largely because of the time involved in gathering and writing up posts for the other blogs I do – Flack Me, Encore Insights and Barrier Briefs.

But it’s occurred to me that a way of priming the pump for Beetles Beat is to post links to my pieces on those other blogs. They certainly reflect my views on such matters as public relations and crisis communication, technology and security.

Wherever Beetle’s Beat may be headed into rarified areas of communication, these other posts are markers along the way – and I’m pleased, henceforth, to be noting them.

(Discontinuing this approach due to difficulties in using Adobe Contribute – 6/16/11)

May 13, 2011
Flack Me
Four Social Media Guides Focused for Use in PR
Formatting Key to Press Release Mileage on the Web
‘Stealth PR’ Was on Facebook’s Behalf
PR’s Supporting Details, Crucial for Full Impact
Op-Eds Aren’t For Phantoms
Web-power Behind a Playground Rebuild
Watch Those Dim-Witted Headlines
Relational Trends: An App that Leads to Water
Your Own Blogging Beat
Danny Brown’s ‘Bloggers Who Won’t Bore You’
Read All About Them (Your Would-Be Contacts)
Old PR Dogs Need to Learn Online Skills
Keeping Up With Social and Search
‘A Zone We’ve Never Seen Before’
Questions Would-Be Clients Are Likely to Ask
A Lady Shows How to Own Up
LA’s Twitter ‘Newsstand’ Worth Copying
TEPCO Tosses In Its Spokesperson’s Towel
Get Out and Meet the ‘New Journalists’
PR Newswire Posts an Infographics Manual
Saying ‘Thank You’ to Reporters
Spokespeople Need To Know About Beavers
What Counts In a CEO For Good PR?
Crisis Communication: Heed What We’re Hearing from Japan
In Oshawa, Print or Digital? A Question Lots of Communities are Facing
PR Role ‘Reversal’ Enlightening
Email Only Those You Know, Or Else…
Don’t Let Fundraising Subvert PR
Henrietta Lacks’ Story: A Case of PR Malpractice
Good PR Starts Internally, Among Employees
Twitter’s Relational Ups and Downs
A Mashable Tutorial on Twitter as a PR Tool
Pulling Back a Bit: Where’s Language Headed?
Always, What’s Your Focus
Leading Wall Street PR Firms
Timely Topics at an Upcoming PR Conference
Brushing Up on PR Concepts, Via PRSA
YouTube’s Going Live
Don’t Be Wed to a Name, ‘PR’ or Any Other
Try Writing a PR Column in Your Locale

Encore Insights
Keeping Statistics Simple, Yet Profound
Siemens Renewed Via Vision and Values
Another Nuclear Utility Muzzled in a Crisis
A Crisis – No Time for Stoicism
Let’s Hope For ‘Silicon Sustainability’ This Time

Barrier Briefs
Lone Attackers Most Likely At Present, Feds Warn
Pakistan: ‘Most Dangerous Place on Earth’
‘How They Got bin Laden’
‘Be Cautious and Be Safe’
Terrorists Had Designs on the Brooklyn Bridge
Security Funding Insights
Behavior Doesn’t Necessarily Betray Terrorists
Site Security a ‘Systems’ Challenge April 10, 2011 Flack Me
‘Psychobabble’ or Relationships for PR?
For PR’s Standing, ‘No Comment’ Doesn’t Work at Any Speed
Beware of Social Media ‘Opportunists’
Twitter Hashtags for PR Outreach
Revving Up for Social Media: Tips From Deirdre Breakenridge
Blogging’s Not for Space-filling
How’re You Doing on the Web?
Communication Planning, Staffing Key to Crisis Management
GE’s Inept Tax Tweets
As INK, Smeared, Responded Belatedly…
Todd Defren Aiming to Streamline RFPs
‘Get With Social Media,’ IT Folks Told
Short Form PR Brush-Ups From the Web
Think You’re Up For ‘Root Canal Week’?
Crisis Response Via YouTube
Pondering PR’s Future – As ‘Curation’?
PR Tutoring by Web Colleagues
Doing Well in An ‘Open Information Culture’?
Nine Gadgets for PR Pros
Twitter Is Five – Only Five
How Blogs Can Be Botched
Does Labor Need PR or Are They Simply Outdated?
Communication Prescriptions for Doctors – and Us
Responding to Crisis Challenges – of All Sizes
All Aboard for Explaining Transportation Options
Where to Revel on Spring Break?
Web Tops Print for News Readership
Travel Agents Getting a PR Booster
Social Media Educational Stalwarts Needed
Football Flubbers on the PR Front

Barrier Briefs
Security’s a Big Picture Job
A Troubling Package Left Laying There March 16, 2011 Flack Me
Deeper Insights From PR Under Stress
Google as a Crisis Responder

Encore Insights
What Should We Curse?
Barrier Briefs
New Magazine Aimed at Women Terrorists March 14 Flack Me: Red Cross Redresses a Rogue Tweet
A “Tone Perfect” Response to a Bus Crash
Nuclear Crisis: What the Japanese are Dealing With
Research Counts More Than Instincts

Encore Insights
Nuclear Communication: A Discipline In Itself
Risk Communication Key Again
Nuclear Communication Needs to be Built-In
Add U.S. Nuclear Communicators Again?
Energy: When Will We Get Real?

Barrier Briefs
Google’s Crisis Response Site
Sources on Japanese Earthquake Devastation
So Many Eyes Seeing So Much
Pickpocketing Passé in the U.S.
al Qaeda Seen Stronger Than Ever

Back on the Beat – Reporting on #blogchat

Posted on August 22, 2010
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

I haven’t posted to Beetles Beat since last October. Been too busy with other blogs, but have been wanting to get back to my own. And, now, here’s the perfect incentive: to recognize and pass along the word about a Web community on blogging.

The last post I did was about community in my old neighborhood on Long Island during World War II and the post-war years – I’m big on community. Where it exists, it needs to be cherished and extended.

And it can exist on the Web, virtually, as well as anywhere else. (“Virtually” may be the key word here.) I discovered that tonight in happening upon a weekly Twitter forum on blogging – #blogchat. It’s on from 9 P.M. Eastern time for an hour (or whenever) every Sunday. Tonight’s topic was the function of sidebars on a blog – what should, or should not, be part of them.

Blogchat was apparently conceived and is maintained by Mack Collier, in Alabama. It’s an inspired idea – draws apparently hundreds of followers with good things to suggest and report on their progress in blogging. Here’s an instant community that draws people together from all over the nation and the world around a subject of mutual interest.

After an hour, Mack somehow, magically, produces a printed transcript of the tweeted conversation, nothing short of a miracle to enshrine this community and make it more useful to everyone.

Can you imagine – even Twitter, with its 140 character limit, is perfectly capable of sponsoring a community around a subject of interest to participants. This is a marvelous aspect of the Web.

If you blog, or have been thinking of doing so, check out #blogchat. Hey, it’s good to be back on the communication beat!

Before TV, We Communicated; Social Media is Such an Opportunity Now

Posted on October 12, 2009
Filed Under Communication principles | 3 Comments

I went to a seminar on social media today and both enjoyed and bemoaned it – enjoyed it because I got reaffirmation of what social media is about, bemoaned it because the presenter didn’t make that clear enough. It’s about a change in life and listening style.

Social media is about attempting to recreate the wonderful lives we had before television. That is, the way we interacted with friends and neighbors in the suburb I grew up in on Long Island, N.Y., N.Y., before television arrived in the early ’50s.

Before TV, and this, admittedly, was largely during Word War II, the big events, the memorable events in our neighborhood, were when the neighbors got together – and my parents and their neighborhood friends did that without much prompting. They planted Victory Gardens in the vacant lots behind our homes (since built-up), or they organized block parties, when they were empowered to put up sawhorses at the ends of our street and enjoy a keg of beer and pretzels without a permit from the city. Those are wonderful memories, and they were wonderful experiences, but they aren’t any longer possible in most places.

When television came, we all went into our living rooms, stayed there, and you could see the glow from each front window. Howdy Doody, Ed Sulivan, Ted Mack, the ball games, whatever. We all had to have “a set,” and when we got TV, we stayed in front of it – black and white and, then – color! One-way communication from the networks became the rule. My folks no longer went to the taproom on Hillside Avenue to be with their friends, nor did they crack a keg on 86th Avenue, our home street, any longer.

Then I went away to college and quit brooding about it. But my folks stayed in front of the TV, and, I’m convinced, had shorter, less pleasurable lives because of it.

Now I see people trying to recreate that former sort of community in a new manner on social media – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others, without realizing, probably that that’s what they’re doing, because they don’t realize what they lost when communication became one-way in the near and far suburbs alike.

Because it’s computer mediated, social media communication isn’t the same – it’s not as personal and close-up – but it’s a lot better than watching “the tube,” it’s a form of two-way communication again.

When people say, as today’s seminar presenter should have and could have, that social media requires a change in lifestyle, it really does. It requires you to take time to engage someone on the computer, and that may take a while, weeks or months, even, like it did in our neighborhood before we found ourselves out on the street talking casually together. (Shoveling snow was another great communal activity, and maybe that can still be done. And, of course, there was also the ice cream truck with its jingly bells in the summer).

My computer doesn’t jingle, and my social media friends or acquaintances don’t shake my hand, but I increasingly value them, nonetheless. They bring me back, somewhat, to the Victory Gardens and keg parties of 86th Avenue during and after World War II and before TV. I miss those days, and I’m glad to have these new opportunities on my computer and the Internet.

Be Wary of ‘Emotional Hijackings’

Posted on July 31, 2009
Filed Under Emotions | Leave a Comment

At their next meeting, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley might consider forming a “Cool It Club” that should have chapters in every community in America – especially in Washington, D.C.

I wasn’t there, but by all accounts, what appears to have happened at the Cambridge home of Professor Gates shortly after noon on July 16 was, in Daniel Goleman’s term, an “emotional highjacking.” While complicated by race, the incident seems to have been an emotional flareup that could happen to any of us, if we’re not mindful of what may be occurring. That’s because we all have human emotional systems.

Professor Gates had just completed a no-doubt exhausting trip home from China, had had trouble opening his front door, and then found a police officer – Sgt. Crowley – at the door suspecting him of breaking into his own home. (A lady passerby with a cell phone had called the police.)

Certainly there were all the makings of an emotional flareup, and we ought to be mindful that one could befall any of us under similarly stressful circumstances.

“Such emotional explosions,” Daniel Goleman wrote in Emotional Intelligence, “are neural hijackings. At those moments, evidence suggests, a center in the limbic brain proclaims an emergency, recruiting the rest of the brain to its urgent agenda. The hijacking occurs in an instant, triggering this reaction crucial moments before the neocortex, the thinking brain, has had a chance to glimpse fully what is happening, let alone decide if it is a good idea. The hallmark of such a hijack is that once the moment passes, those so possessed have the sense of not knowing what came over them.”

Should even a Harvard professor have such a flash emotional upset in the presence of a police officer suspecting him of breaking-and-entering, the moment might go awry. It could happen to any of us under emotionally charged circumstances.

Again, I wasn’t there on that Cambridge porch, but it appears very likely that the “teachable moment” President Obama had in mind when he invited Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley to the White House yesterday might have included reflections on how we are all subject to emotional surges at anxiety-filled moments. They blindside us, and keep us from responding effectively.

The more we can be prompted to recognize and handle such super-charged moments, the better it will be for us all. An emotional early warning system – very early – is needed. The kind that arises from prior awareness or ingrained sensitivity. Talking about such realities can be helpful. Maybe thoughts like this were exchanged at the White House “beer summit” yesterday. We can hope so.

Crisis Communication Becoming Locally Global

Posted on May 18, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

The best laid plans of corporate and governmental communicators for providing – and controlling – information during a crisis are being undone by the growing use of social media.

People building personal networks on Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, Flickr and other social media today would be turning to them tomorrow to ask questions and spread information should a crisis strike.

They could quickly get ahead of the official information purveyors, especially if the official folks are located far from the scene – like the operators of the Three Mile Island nuclear power station, who have chosen to move the plant’s media center 60 miles away.

Such thoughts are reinforced by an article in the January, 2009, issue of Nature, “Crisis Communication, Messages appear on Internet-based social networks within minutes of disasters occurring…”

Science writer Lea Winerman notes that federal and local disaster response agencies who trained under the “top down” approach are now having to consider a far more distributed information system. And they had better plan to be in the midst of it, not miles, or counties, away.

‘How do you convince people that they are at risk?,” asks Dennis Mileti, a disaster-management researcher at the University of Colorado. “Only through other people.” And now, notes Winerman, there is the Internet to extend their reach. Using email and social media you can check in with people from the neighborhood or the globe. They’re all as close at hand as your computer screen.

And probably quite reliably so. During one series of California wildfires, researchers monitored social media sites. They had already discovered that national news websites ignored much of what was going on and that “the county so-called emergency site was always crashed.”

Local media sites, though, provided updates from “any local resident and an Internet connection and information to share.” The same kind of thing has occurred during earthquakes in China, Winerman notes.

Being envisioned is a web-based “‘community response grid’ that would combine the power of social networking sites with official government emergency-response systems.” While such an inclusive grid may be a ways off, the potential for sharing scraps or whole scenarios of information is growing rapidly.

Don’t forget, Winerman writes at the start of her article, students on the campus of Virginia Tech had already identified all 32 of Seung-Hui Cho’s 2007 massacre victims online by the time the university released their names a day later.

Baldridge Criteria Can Improve Communication

Posted on April 16, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

In communication terms, as well as those of production, organizations can do well by adopting the Baldridge Criteria for Performance Excellence, whether they intend to seek the national quality award or not.

Boiled down, which is what Quality Digest does handily in its April issue, the Baldridge criteria are leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management, and results.

These can be as much of a mandate for a deliberate, attentive approach to organizational communication as they are for production quality. Communication, too, has results and we often are blissfully unaware of them, especially if they’re unfavorable.

Leadership starts with vision and is propelled by effective communication. You can’t focus on customers without communicating with them, by whatever means, effectively or not. Your staff members become the beneficiary of enlightened communication or the victims of poorly presented organizational imperatives.

And, above all, communication is a process that needs to be deliberately and intelligently managed. Do all that with your organizational utterances and you’re an award winner – if only in your own setting which, of course, is where effectiveness matters most.

So get familiar with what the Baldridge people expect of top-performing organizations, but in communication terms above all. Baldridge may not, in fact, have express communication criteria because they are implicit in their entire program. Do well in quality and you’re likely an effective communicator.

But give your communication stance express consideration. How are you getting the results you get? Could they be better with better communication? Very likely.

Countering Information Overload

Posted on April 2, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

There was Kathleen Parker on the op-ed page of The Washington Post writing about a “TMI-addled nation.” Her reflections coincided with the 30th anniversary of the accident at my former workplace, and I thought for a moment she was exaggerating the anniversary’s impact a bit. But no, she was reflecting on “Too Much Information.” Now there’s a concern for these times.

Ironically, information overload is occurring at a time when newspapers, the core of the traditional media, are disintegrating. In my own Pennsylvania neighborhood, the two Lancaster papers just merged and my hometown paper, The Lebanon Daily News, will shortly be printed by a sister paper in York, 53 miles away. (It will be interesting to see how the delivery time holds up there.)

But Kathleen has a point in that the media array is atomizing, our information setting is becoming highly variegated and challenging to comprehend. I wouldn’t say too much so, because it’s not clear how all this will settle out. As Clay Shirky says, we’re in 1,500, with electronic Gutenbergs clamoring for our attention from the Internet and cable TV.

The danger, as Ms. Parker notes, is that as people become overwhelmed with information they become less attentive, less hopeful of, and thereby less interested in, finding meaning in the buzz. Prolonged, such an overload state can make for a truly dysfunctional, inattentive society.

Maybe the best we can all do is to stake out our own information limits, and stay with them. Choose the blogs we want to follow, the books we want to read, the electronic media we want to indulge (like Bill Moyers, not Fox) and stay with them, piecing together meaning for ourselves but not expecting to get it universally – or, as they used to say, objectively – correct.

Instead of going with the flow, use a dipstick and hope it provides accurate enough samplings.

We’re Back, With a Focus on Communication

Posted on April 1, 2009
Filed Under Communication principles | 2 Comments

We’re back, with a little sharper focus than before. On the beat, we’ll be talking about communication – communication that occurs in groups, organizations and society at large. It may, or may not, just happen – good communication usually doesn’t occur that way – but we’ll be looking for examples of situations that were either improved or weakened by communication that worked, or not. Don’t know how readily we’ll find them, but feel free to contribute as our readers and partners in this interest.

We’ll also be looking at risk and crisis communication, as examples or needs arise.

We’ll start with a definition – this is the Web, so Wikipedia is our source for the term “organizational communication”: “Broadly speaking, people working together to achieve individual or collective goals.”

Well, people in groups should be working together, but don’t always. We all know that. What’s not as readily apparent is the awareness factor within a group: do its members realize they’re not communicating well? Do they care? They might not have a clue how they’re coming across, or what they’re missing out on. This is a sad reality, but one that can be improved by leadership. focus and awareness.

Wikipedia adds that communication “can be defined as the transfer of meanings between persons and groups.” For that to happen, leaders and members of groups need to have worthy aims in mind and recognize what might block them from being achieved. They need to value the all-important skills of framing, listening and receiving feedback.

You can easily have a half-dozen people in the same office working at cross-purposes if they’re not mutually aware what they’re aiming for, why it’s valuable, and what the blockages may be. In short, group communication is an express, explicit, shared skill, not one that necessarily comes naturally.

Posting Suspended, Pending Site Improvements

Posted on January 13, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Posting on Beetles Beat is temporarily suspended while changes are made on the Resource Relations website to reflect the growing importance of social media and to launch a second blog, this one on organizational communication. All should be up and running fairly soon. We are looking forward to a wider conversation, and new relationships, with our readers.

Recently


Categories


Archives


Blogroll