12/05

The view was that this was out of character for the Times, a "newspaper of record."  The Times has become a crusader, and it shows.  Crusades are a tradition in the newspaper business.  Many a wrong has been righted because of relentless coverage and editorials. 

Augusta would not seem to rise to a crusade, but someone on the Times' editorial page thinks it does.  The positive side is that the Times is not afraid to show its preferences.  The negative is that someone on the other side of an issue from the Times is unlikely to get a fair hearing. 

Under the law, a private club does not have to admit anyone.  You could have a private club of one, if you wish.  The head of Augusta has gone on record saying he was not obliged to bow to women's groups that are pressuring him.  And, he is legally, if not politically, correct.

My sympathies lie with the golf club.  Groups should be allowed to choose membership compatible with their goals.  If not, then the Girl Scouts should be forced to admit boys and the Boy Scouts Girls.  All-female high schools and colleges should be forced to admit men, whether they like it or not.  Sports teams should be integrated by sex no matter the weight and size difference between men and women.   

On the other hand, some organizations must include both men and women because of the nature of their mission.  For example, the military services would collapse without the women who serve in them.   Congress would be an old boy's club without female Representatives and Senators.  Women CEOs, the few of them there are, have added dimension to leadership.

So where does one draw the line between admission and refusal?  It's not clear to me that there is a line other than the law, pressure groups aside.   Were I a spokesperson for an organization like the Augusta golf club, I would be thinking about the issue constantly.  My turn might be next.
 

12/04

It also doesn't help that a major interactive media director stated his firm was "trying to blur the line between the advertising and editorial boundary. "

There is nothing wrong with advertorials, of course, as long as they are clearly marked as such, but many parts of the Web lack the editorial integrity that you find in a major newspaper, for example.  The temptation is to fudge and advertisers are pushing hard to make that happen.

Don't they understand they are undermining the credibility of the medium when they do that?  I guess not, or they wouldn't be doing it.  On the other hand, in their short-term focus on sales today, they probably don't care as long as they get that next pop on the bottom line.

This is why PR practitioners should be on the side of journalists and fighting for the integrity of the Web.  Allowing interactive media directors to get away with such nonsense harms what we do.  Public relations relies on the implied third-party credibility that comes with an impartially reported story.  Advertorials masquerading as editorial wrecks credibility for everyone.

I hope the PR practitioners are explaining this to media directors, but I'll bet the media directors aren't listening.
 

12/03

Richard Bailey of Oxford, U.K. offered to look through pages and check underlying sites.  That was a wonderful proposal (and I took it).  Robin Gregory suggested I add a link to the home page to allow people to contact me.  Actually, I had done that for several years with sparse success, but Robin convinced me I should try again.  Robin might not be aware that online-pr.com has a credits section for those kind enough to tell me when I am in error or when I should make an improvement. They will both find their names there today.

Online-pr.com was conceived as a community effort.  In my early idealistic view of  the Internet, I would start the site and users would suggest links and report errors to help maintain it.  That was in 1997.  It is now nearly 2003, and it never worked quite worked that way.  There are names in the credits, but they are not as many as one might expect for the years the site has been running. 

I realized after the first year or two that, as in most volunteer efforts, the bulk of the work depended on one individual willing to commit the time to get the job done.  It turned out that I was this person.  So I kept doing it.  It has not been onerous, and I use the site all day long in my work. 

When I began, I thought of online-pr.com as my links list on steroids.  Then, I regarded it as a central resource for the agency in which I work.  Finally, I realized it had become a list that people were consulting worldwide. 

I learned this over time based on the questions e-mailed to online-pr.com from around the earth.  For example, when I signed on this morning, I found one from Malaysia waiting and another from the U.S.   Yesterday, I answered questions from the Middle East.

Interestingly, many of the questions are the same.  People want to know what PR is and why it is important.  That tells me our business has a long way to go to explain itself.  That's good.  It is easy to become arrogant.
 

12/02

It is impossible for me to stay up with the web sites listed here.  Sometimes, I take a section and look through every link to find if anything unusual has happened.  Of course, link rot has set in, and a site may be there but doing something entirely different than when I first listed it.  It does not help that I have a service that checks links monthly and reports to me.  The service dials a link and if it shows, that is good enough.  Of course, that is not good enough for a site that endeavors to make online PR better, faster and less expensive for practitioners. 

I have never solved this problem, and I don't know of any other solution than checking manually.  Because I have a regular job, hand-checking is infrequent.  That means when I get around to looking at underlying web sites, I find distortions in up to 10 percent of sites checked.

I have tried to take comfort in keeping good sites in place where practitioners can find them, and I hope practitioners can forgive the errors that creep in.  I have heard few complaints, but then most people don't complain.  They just leave.

I thought when I started this site back in 1997 that people would contact me when there was a problem.  To date, this has not happened, and I have given up expecting it will.  It seems that practitioners are in too much of a hurry to tell me what is going on. 

I guess I should have expected that.