You might be interested to know I might be quoted shortly in a newspaper of record on "executives who blog."   I'm still trying to figure out how I came to be an executive. 

I'm also slated to speak in Columbus, Ohio, a week from tomorrow on the subject of online PR.  That should be fun, and if the audience is as pleasant as the woman who has been arranging my appearance, it's going to be hard to return to New York. 

In a moment of weakness I went to Google and checked the key words "online PR" and sure enough, online-pr.com still comes up first.  How that happened I don't know.   But, it feels nice, and I thank you for making it popular.

For those of you who dislike so much material on the site, I know online-pr.com needs a better search engine than it has.  I'm not sure how to go about this, but I'm open for suggestions.  The cost has to be teensy-weensy because I run this site out of a  small pocket on my old pair of khakis.

For those of you who dislike how I format the essays on the site (and there are at least two of you), my apologies for using a two-column format.  I thought users would print the essays then read them.  I didn't think anyone would want to read at length online because it can cause eyestrain.  However, I am told I am wrong in this belief, so going forward, I'll format differently.

Finally, since I'm clearing decks, I know I need a Q&A for frequently asked questions.  I get the same basic questions from around the world several times a month.  So far, I have answered them individually.  You would think I would have created the section by now.  I haven't and it isn't for lack of time.  I could start now... but, I'm off.
 

Read the story here.  http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,4248,1128705,00.asp.

The company's concern is that employees might start expressing opinions that others will take as official statements.   Microsoft is in the vanguard of companies questioning how employees use blogs.  As you have read here, The Hartford Courant forbade a reporter  from producing a blog under the theory that everything the reporter writes is contractually obligated to the Courant.  Other newspapers are not so strict but are concerned that reporters can compromise themselves or the paper by writing about subjects they report on daily.

Microsoft is studying what to do, but it had better hurry.  Nearly 70 employees are writing blogs at the company already.  This is a PR issue because PR practitioners are going to deal with fallout from indiscreet remarks in someone's blog soon enough.   Even a joke can be a headache.  For example, an employee invents an outrageous new product in  an April 1 entry.  I've witnessed it -- and so have you -- that people forget April Fools day and believe what they read.  PR meanwhile has to fight the fire and assure everyone it isn't true.  That's a simple case.  The worst case would be a blogger who dishes inside dirt. 

Ultimately, blogs will have to be treated in some manner.  For example:  

• State explicitly that opinions expressed on your blog are your own and not those of the company for which you work. 
• You may not discuss company business on your blog nor name clients or customers nor co-workers. 
• Violation of these rules may be cause for immediate dismissal.

Blogs cannot be subject to the same legal restrictions as company e-mail unless they are written on company time using company equipment.  Most aren't.  That means reaching into an employee's home and disciplining the employee for writing a blog on his or her own time is a violation of free speech that might be a court case.

Blogs are so new that I am not aware of major control issues beyond those mentioned above.  More will come.  PR practitioners should prepare now for what will be an issue soon.

06/18

It is this:  The Internet has expanded accessibility to human knowledge, but the abundance of data has led to a semblance of openness rather than real disclosure.  

What do I mean?  Organizations remain as closed as ever because, more often than not,  they have to be.  One does not disclose marketing plans, strategies, detailed financial data, new product development or many other things to the public at large.  But,  web sites groan with information  -- company histories,  macro financial data, press releases, bios, product and service information, etc.  All this secondary information promotes understanding of and credibility for an organization.  But, it does not tell one what organization does day-in and day-out.  And, there is the disconnect.  Companies like Enron and HealthSouth engaged in fraudulent activity and seemed to be telling everything about themselves except the truth.

Before the Internet, when we knew less about companies, we accepted ignorance as a condition of business.  Now, we think we know when we don't.   This is a PR problem it seems to me.  Despite what we say in PR, we are rarely open.  We always know far more than we can tell.  What we do is provide best-effort disclosure to satisfy questions and maintain credibility without giving away ugly aspects of a story.   After all,  PR people don't decide the extent of disclosure, the CEO does.

If we absolutely have to do so, we might persuade the CEO to let everything hang out.  We do this because we are pressed  by events, and it is a matter of preserving fast-fraying credibility.  Otherwise, we temper remarks and facts to our client's advantage.  (We don't lie -- or we shouldn't.  We just don't tell the whole story.) 

We are in the position of a public defense contractor.  It carries on secret government work at the same time it promotes itself vigorously to the public. It is both open and closed of necessity because of national security.  We don't see the seeming contradiction because everyone accepts the premise, but isn't is possible that under the curtain of secrecy that companies engage in chicanery?  We know they have a history of doing so precisely because they were operating in secret. 

I don't know that there is an answer to closed openness but it is more of an issue as Web-based knowledge expands.

06/17

This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now, there are some
who would like to rewrite history -- revisionist historians is what I like
to call them. Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and the free world in
'91, in '98, in 2003. He continually ignored the demands of the free world,
so the United States and friends and allies acted. And one thing is for
certain -- (applause) -- and this is for certain: Saddam Hussein is no
longer a threat to the United States and our friends and allies. (Applause.)

To read the whole speech, click here:  http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/06/20030616-2.html.  As one blog writer swiftly pointed out, the use of  "revisionist" is interesting.  Who is revising history?  As far as anyone can tell, the Bush administration is revising the reasons for attacking Saddam Hussein from "being a bad man who threatened the US with weapons of mass destruction" to "being a bad man who destroyed his own people and was a threat in general."  The administration's drumbeating about weapons of mass destruction is an embarrassment for the administration and/or intelligence agencies that said they were present in Iraq.

But I'm not writing to attack George Bush or his view of history.  I'm writing to caution speech writers and others to be careful about how they use adjectives.  I'm sure Bush did not write the sentence he delivered.  The White House has a staff of speech writers.  The person who wrote  the term "revisionist" did so with deliberation, I'm sure.  He or she wanted to score points against those making an issue of the inability to find weapons of mass destruction.  But the effect of the term is to set off a debate about the White House's credibility.

I'm sure there were other, less controversial terms the speechwriter could have used, and I'm wondering why he or she didn't.   Perhaps the White House wants the debate, or perhaps, the term was meant to arouse the audience without intention of larger effect.  And, maybe I'm too cautious about using adjectives.  I don't like them because they create problems like Bush's speech has done.  I think I would have stopped with the contention that "there are some who would  like to rewrite history."  That's controversial enough. 

For years, I have had a motto in writing -- "Death to all adjectives, Death to all adverbs."  I can't get rid of them all, but I try to excise most.  Maybe this is a lesson the Bush speechwriter should have learned.

06/16

Anyone who knows anything about the history of US journalism knows little went wrong.   Reporters were less accurate and more corrupted in the old days.  There was a reason.  They were paid poorly, and they did not get in trouble for taking gifts.  Payola, if you will, was a price of bad employment practices.

Last week, Editor & Publisher ran responses from several well-known American journalists and commentators on credibility and journalism and you can read it here.

 http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1909835

The gist of the articles is that journalism does a better job of accuracy today.  However, there is concern about anonymous sources, and there is a need to get reporters back on the street in the view of old-timers like Jimmy Breslin.  Both of these suggestions make sense.  For example, there is far too much "trial ballooning" in Washington, D.C. where politicians are allowed to make anonymous proposals to test the waters before committing to an action.  There is especially too much anonymous backstabbing that plays to various agenda.  Reporters in search of good stories have been too willing to allow anonymous sources to engage in character assassination.  If names were revealed more often, my guess is that civility would return to much of Washington's debate.

Behind both of these bad habits are public affairs and PR practitioners playing the "spin" game.  They should stop it, but they point to everyone else doing it and say they can't.  Of course, someone has to blow the whistle.  That's where journalists come in.  They are the ones who should blow the whistle, since they are the ones being manipulated.  I'm hoping the scandal at The New York Times fosters progress in this area. 

While there is no need for breast beating, there are some things US journalism and PR practitioners should be examining.