Entries from October 2007
SPAM and the SPAMaholics (or robots) who send it are and always have been nothing short of a plague of annoyance, so using it as an actual PR tactic to spread information or gain attention must -clearly- be done with great care… or else you end up with a charming blog post like this one from WIRED magazine’s Editor-in-CHief which begins:
“I’ve had it. I get more than 300 emails a day and my problem isn’t spam (Cloudmark Desktop solves that nicely), it’s PR people. Lazy flacks send press releases to the Editor in Chief of WIRED because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching…”
FULL POST HERE
-PJT
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Anti-PR post Editor in Chief of WIRED Chris Anderson Th
October 10, 2007 · 1 Comment
Ripped from Yahoo News:
“Blackwater hires Public relations giant Burson-Marsteller”
Three sentances to sum up the issue quite neatly in a soft little package:
“According to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Blackwater has received federal contracts worth more than a $1 billion, with the bulk of its earnings coming from the State Department.
On Tuesday, Prince, 38, spent several hours at the witness table as Democrats on the oversight committee accused his company of being above the law and his guards of being indifferent to Iraqi casualties.
The fees Blackwater charges are excessive, they said, and Prince and his associates have become wealthy because of the war.”
full(er) story HERE
and helpful commentary HERE by Mark Rose in a blog post Titled “Burson digs itself deeper” which is lucky winner of today’s quote of the day: “Now, Blackwater has hired Burson to put a positive gloss on gun-toting, outside-the-law vigilantes who siphon off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to wage a private war in Iraq. I am sure that Burson has a ready-made defense for accepting this client – everybody deserves representation, and all that – but the reality is that Burson is part of WPP Group plc and the parent company demands constant escalation of the revenue stream. And you can bet that Blackwater has very deep pockets, thanks to our tax money. The equation has a perverse elegance when you think about it: We pay Blackwater over $800 million to shoot first and ask questions later, and they pay Burson a few million to tell us what we should really think about it. Isn’t PR beautiful?”
Near-hopeless PR challenge?
-PJT
Categories: Stateside Comms
Tagged: Week in Review Mark Rose Blackwater hires Burson-Marste
I read an interesting abstract ripped off an article printed in Swedish daily ‘Dagens Nyheter’ about the euphoria /phenomenon of blogging. It wasn’t so much the fact that journalists are beginning to resort to trashy stories and sourceless information (with of course subjective credentials as per story) which had an impact on what I read. The article didn’t even resonate when it came to finding out that 250,000 readers of a ‘national’ blog were mostly there to read about gossip and celebrity..I mean that’s no surprise trashy and starry is all the current public sphere is concerned about since the advent of MTV anyway…
No–what really hit home was that the actual guy who wrote this blog struck out against readership demand by pulling it off the net altogether. It’s all about information on crucual and vital issues ‘pur et dur’, integrity and clear and present news – useful and substantial stuff…
Anyway, another bell in my ear was the hallmark of Swedish mentality with regards to R&D and this is an example of how a mere segment of Swedes want to uphold and promote this very hallmark..they want to effectively debate the relevance and importance of blogs…
Read below
George.K
MEDIA
Sweden – Dagens Nyheter
Sweden’s most popular blog discontinued
Sweden’s most popular blogger, Alexander Schulman, last week closed down his blog, which attracted over 250 thousand readers a week, published on the homepage of Swedish daily Aftonbladet. Schulman explained the move saying his readers were chiefly interested in reading gossip about celebrities and that he was “filled with self-disgust”. Now Sweden is debating the importance of blogs. Maria Schottenius writes that it’s “a major mistake to consider blogs as a revolutionary development on a par with the advent of the Internet or radio. This delusion has triggered a kind of hysteria among otherwise serious journalists. It’s sad to see respected journalists dedicating all their time to unimportant issues. Gossip attracts readers, but how many bloggers are there whose blogs are really read regularly? And what does the fact that the most popular words for blog searches are ’sex’ and ‘porn’ tell us?” (06/10/2007)
» full article (external link, Swedish)
More from the press review on the subject » Media, » Sweden
All available articles from » Maria Schottenius
Categories: 'European' Comms · Blogroll
