Words for the Wise

Posted by Tom Gable

This classic book by Charles Harrington Elster contains 350 of the most-committed errors in writing.  It starts with “every day or everyday” and strides quickly and eloquently through conundrums and confusing choices PR and news people face every day (this is correct!).  A few:

• A lot or alot
• Can not or cannot
• Anyway or any way
• Their, they’re or there (This includes a sample of the Elster humor that runs through the book: “There is no there there,” wrote Gertrude Stein in a rare moment of lucidity at the end of one of her notoriously incoherent sentences.)
• Imply or infer
• All right or alright
• Be careful with Very
• Avoid the lazy mechanical use of Basically (when you see an adverb, kill it; good tight writing has no unnecessary words)
• Misuse of less for fewer
• Overuse of Impact (The sad thing is that this powerful word, which traditionally connotes considerable force, has lost all its forcefulness through incessant repetition.  The only power impact has retained is the ability to cause a headache.)
• Penultimate does not mean Ultimate or Final

Elster quotes several of the classic tomes, including “The Elements of Style,” “Simple and Direct,” “The Careful Writer” and the “Dictionary of Troublesome Words.”  He uses turns of the phrase and creative metaphors and analogies to make his points with clarity and humor. The book is highly recommended for anyone (versus any one) interested in honing their wordsmithing skills.

Quest to be First

Posted by Tom Gable

The information-packed IPREX annual meeting in Washington, DC, drew partners from some 35 cities on three contents to learn from experts and share best practices in public relations and public affairs in closed sessions among this global brain trust. One of the early sessions featured Kristin Roberts, Washington news editor and deputy bureau chief for Reuters. The high-energy journalist started by reading a collection of bad news releases received by her bureau just this morning – several embarrassments, including for major PR firms who did go unnamed.

From there, Kristin offered some quick tips for the assembled PR pros, many of whom were ex-journalists:

• To connect with the news media, don’t go to the bureau chief of editor. Find the person covering the beat. Do some research.
• Be straightforward. You have news, you have background, or you have a potential resource for future background on a specific topic.
• Be persistent if it’s a good story and you don’t get immediate responses to your voice mails or emails.
• The daily email flow is daunting. Editors will always open email from a trusted source. For others, the subject line needs to be compelling.
• The news cycle churns by the second. Reuters aims to be first and measures itself against Bloomberg and Dow Jones in seconds.
• A media outlet might have only a 30-second lead in breaking a story. The great ones can sometimes hold up for a day until the other media catch up, as happened with Kristin in breaking news of the Iraq Surge under President Bush.
• When managing coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden, she woke correspondents up all over the world before the President’s talk. The lead writer worked from home, away from distractions. She ran to the office in her running shoes, but got called to the White House because their correspondent was solo and needed help. When asked if she went in sneakers, she said no and gave a fashion tip: she had high heels in her gym bag and kept them everywhere (office, car trunk, home).
• When asked about Twitter: “I hate it. I am too old for Twitter (she is 36).” She said she doesn’t trust it and isn’t comfortable with it. They double check anything and everything from Twitter that might be a relevant news lead. This includes whether the Tweet is real or bogus.
• PR is important to the news business. She was amazed that the Libyan rebels had a spokesman in one week and were issuing news releases.
• Reuters aims to be objective in the news. Blogs are different, where it’s not the content that’s important, but the tone. She admitted to being “snarky” in her blogs, but snarky to all. She bragged that no one knows how she votes, not even her husband.

News or Not?

Posted by Tom Gable

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

– Ellen Goodman

The quote from the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist is cited here to establish a framework for a response to a recent Harvard Business Review blog by Joshua Gans that “Facebook is the largest news organization ever.”

He writes:

“News organizations do two major things, commercially speaking: they use news to grab attention and then sell that attention to advertisers.”

Gans says Facebook provides a platform whereby individuals became reporters, editors, and publishers. But a lot of what is being communicated is trivia, such as commuting delays, bad food experiences, hassles with the job and a sick child. People joke, whine and commiserate. They post opinions.

Gans asks the rhetorical question on who would be interested: you and your friends and family. So what? This lures advertisers to Facebook who can target ads to pop up when you, your family and friends are communicating.

I’d argue that Facebook is a powerful platform for communicating in many ways about anything. Some news may exist that appeals to broader audiences, but most of what pops could be called the digital equivalent of the coffee klatch (or an extended version of The View).

If one goes to Anwers.Com or Dictionary.Com

Noun

1. New information, especially about recent events and happenings: advice (often used in plural), intelligence, tiding (often used in plural), word. Informal scoop. See knowledge/ignorance, words.

2. Something significant that happens: circumstance, development, episode, event, happening, incident, occasion, occurrence, thing. See happen.

Professional journalism traditionally aims for accuracy, enlightenment and fairness. Some Bloggers and Twits claim to practice citizen journalism, which others dismiss as fluff, hype and churnalism. Legitimate media, including top bloggers, post corrections and updates when stories are wrong. Doing a search for corrections on Twitter doesn’t turn up much. Younger consumers of news and information may have difficulty discerning the difference between professional journalism and faux fast news. The race to be first is having an impact on financial news coverage as well.

Tim Carmody, in a piece titled “Twitter, tech bubbles, and the nostalgia of the technology press” for Nieman Journalism Lab, wrote that the technology press is getting pushed in new directions and helping inflate bubbles, “worrying over them, and watching them burst.”

“ What is new, according to Federated Media’s John Battelle and Thomson Reuters’ Connie Loizos, is how the accelerated news cycle of blogs, Twitter, and other digital media forces the technology press to work at the same speed as the investors they cover — with the same worries about getting in early and beating competitors trumping the real value of the product. In this case, though, the product is their own journalism.”

Carmody quoted an email from Loizos about Twitter and Quora spreading good and bad information equally quickly, and in volume. “The first story out wins.” She notes that journalists no longer compete against one another but “also against savvy investors and entrepreneurs who know they can reach just as broad an audience by delivering their news themselves via Twitter and their blogs.”

Battelle commented that Churnalism is a much bigger problem than just press releases and wire stories. It’s everywhere — and creating an echo chamber unprecedented in its size and reach.

Carmody wrote:

“…blogs and social media offer both entrepreneurs and journalists new modes of engagement with each other and a different kind of conversation with their readers. At the same time, the demands of traditional news formats can actually push us into stories that privilege new forms of manipulation. Reporters seeking a news peg for an analysis-driven story about a popular company can find quotes from blogs, Twitter, or Quora as easily as they can from a company’s press release, putting the same texts and voices into circulation.”

Whom do you trust?

Going for P.1

Posted by Tom Gable

Today’s PR University teleseminar from Bulldog Reporter covered “10 PR Power Writing Tips: How to Create Compelling Copy That People Want to Read and Share.”

The panelists were: Michael Smart, national news director, Brigham Young University, and founder, Michael Smart PR; Nancy Brenner, senior vice president, MS&L Global Corporate, New York; Don Bates, APR, Fellow PRSA; academic director, Graduate School of Political Management, George Washington University; and Tom Gable, APR, Fellow PRSA, CEO, Gable PR. Jon Greer moderated.

I’ll provide more details later on some of the great tips from my fellow panelists in such topics as: be an internal reporter; know your audiences; word choice matters; always be concise; make news when you don’t have any; where’s the wow: rewrite, revise, repeat; and commit yourself to continuous improvement. Within that, yours truly covered the Gable PR seven-point litmus test we use as a starting point for issuing real news stories with topical, relevant information and evocative and provocative quotes. Here is the short course, adapted from an earlier PR University teleseminar and workshops at various PRSA and Counselors Academy conferences:

1. Is it really newsworthy to anyone other than the company and, perhaps, the CEO’s family and a few friends?
2. How big is the impact: company, community, region, market niche or category, industry, technology or science breakthrough, nation, hemisphere, humanity?
3. Has the same or similar story already been told (quick database research will answer the question)?
4. Can the premise be supported by valid data, third party sources, real case histories and ongoing proof of principle?
5. Does the company have credible “gurus,” or spokesmen and women who can bring the story to life and become valuable and trusted resources for the media?
6. Can the company be further differentiated by its people, technology, culture and personality? Or if you lined up all the companies in the space would they all look and sound alike?
7. Can the story be summarized in a compelling headline, Tweet or one or two-sentence sound bite or elevator pitch? If posted through social media, will it generate interest and action (Re-tweeting, links, etc.)?

This quick test can help create a smart, compelling and interesting story or posting that breaks through the clutter, communicates to key audiences and supports the long-term image and reputation of your client or organization.  For tracking Tweets from the teleseminar use the hash tag: #bulldogpr

]]> http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/the-seven-point-litmus-test-for-creating-real-pr-news-stories/feed/ 0 http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/quoting-the-greats-on-pr-journalism-and-creativity/ http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/quoting-the-greats-on-pr-journalism-and-creativity/#comments Fri, 04 Feb 2011 04:33:03 +0000 admin http://www.gablepr.com/?p=2462

Creative Seeding

Posted by Tom Gable

I was working on a copy for a workshop for the PRSA Counselors Academy’s annual conference and subsequent articles on improving writing skills for the PR profession and had slid into a creative morass. Having been a journalist, I turned to the proven ploy of using research to find brilliant people I could quote, then benefit from the halo effect. The quest turned up a few gems I may or may not use, but thought I would share them for the good of the order:

I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

– Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman

It’s not easy getting up there and saying nothing. It takes a lot of preparation.

– White House spokesman Barry Tiov

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s ‘St. Matthew’s Passion’ on a ukulele.

– Bagdikian’s Observation

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

– Russell Lynes

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

– Tom Lehrer

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

– Daniel J. Boorstin

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

– W. Somerset Maugham

Where facts are few, experts are many.

– Donald R. Gannon

What’s another word for Thesaurus?

– Steven Wright

I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.

– Peter De Vries

Don’t use a big word where a diminutive one will suffice.

– Anon

If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: Resist hyperbole.

– Anon

Eschew Obfuscation.

– Anon

Avoid awkward or affected alliteration.

– Anon

Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

– Anon

Daily and Sunday

Posted by Tom Gable

The title of the news panel was “It’s Not Your Grandparents’ Newspaper or Newscast Anymore” and although it occurred in San Diego with local media, one can find several lessons learned with broader implications:

• • • • - The ability to self-publish on the Internet has created a world where journalistic principles most likely don’t exist and readers now have the burden of determining what is journalism and what is not
      • - Evolving newspaper business models, with 24/7 reporting and fewer copy editors, has resulted in more errors
      • - The competitive nature of the broadcast media can creating feeding frenzies, such as the one experienced when the loon preacher in Florida threatened to burn a copy of the Koran on Sept. 11
      • - Viewers need to distinguish between entertainment shows and news shows
      • - Journalistic standards are lower with online media (or nonexistent)

The panel was held Sept. 17 at a biweekly luncheon meeting of the Catfish Club, founded by the Reverend George Walker Smith in 1970 to spur dialogue and understanding among different segments of the community. More than 70 attended, including community leaders, elected officials, retired Sheriff Bill Kolender and a couple of gadflies.

The moderator was Michael Grant, former columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune and now journalism and media instructor at Grossmont College. He was joined by: Jeff Light, editor of the U-T (www.uniontrib.com); J.W. August, managing editor of KGTV (ABC affiliate, owned by McGraw Hill); Andrew Donohue, editor, Voice of San Diego, 100 percent online newspaper; and Leon Williams, now retired, the first black elected to the San Diego City Council and also the county Board of Supervisors, who has a long history of promoting positive deeds in minority communities.

Grant set the stage by noting that with the evolving world of self-publishing, there are no guarantees online news is journalism – accurate, verified and worthy of trust. He said in pre-Internet days, the news media acted as gateways to screen out the questionable, objectionable, unverifiable and other non-news. Now, with everyone being self published, journalistic principles may simply not exist. (I had one former editor hand back a daily business column written on deadline saying it wasn’t writing, it was typing; glad he was around to make it right.)

Grant, a droll former Texan, said the authors of websites, blogs and other self published information and mostly never been to journalism schools. As a result, it is now up to the citizens to have the burden of determining what is journalism and what is not.

Donohue said he sees “churnalism not journalism” because of the 24/7 news cycle being chased by media with smaller staffs and more pressure. He said if gatekeepers of old had been at work, the preacher who threatened to burn the Koran on Sept. 11 might never have been covered.

August, of Channel 10, said cable beats things to death. He also used the Koran story as an example. The cable news networks picked it up and it turned into a feeding frenzy. If they had just dropped it at the outset, August said, the story would have gone away. He noted the growth of fake news programs and the challenge of confusing real news with entertainment.

Williams said the media has a duty to be accurate. He told the audience that the reporters often ask leading questions (“Don’t you think it’s the end of the earth?”) and complained about reporters twisting things to create conflict. He said the media need to keep their feelings and prejudices out of the news and present the news as fairly and objectively as they know how (in whatever the format).

Light, recruited from the Orange County Register where had driven web-based initiatives, said the new owners of the U-T bought into a losing operation and now wanted to find a way to “improve lives and build a stronger community.” When the new owners arrived, they found an aging, shrinking and dissatisfied audience, Light said. They did research and people were interested in values and improved community coverage. Rather than do incremental changes, the U-T made major changes to give a strong signal to the community. This included a complete design overhaul and making website news coverage the driving force, with section editors later determining what should make the print edition.

On accuracy, Light said the time-honored process within the news business was to have reporters arrive at a different level of trust, based on experience. They would turn in their stories, which would go through the editing process. Does it ring true? Have the facts been checked? Then the story would print. He said news media hear quickly if the are wrong, or if not all sources have been used.

In answers to questions from the audience, he said they have reduced the number of copy editors at the U-T. It was a financial necessity. He said he was given a certain budget for reporting. Under the old news model, 40 percent of the staff covered the news and the rest was infrastructure, including copy editors and editors. Now, they’ve reduced the number of copy editors to increase the number of reporters in the field and improve community coverage.

There will be a spike in errors, he noted, but they will be cosmetic. The reporters are getting closer to each community they serve, which he believes will be well received. He said he likes the online comments to stories because they help the media learn. But he hopes to eliminate anonymous postings.

The panel agreed that online comments are great, but need attribution. Light said the blogs and the various voices with anonymous comments get into demagoguery. Donohue said online platforms can generate ranting. Since the Voice of San Diego changed to eliminate anonymous postings, the quality of the comments has gone up considerably. They also moderate the comments.

Grant noted that with anonymous comments, most of the harangues turn into people ragging the comments of others rather than the story.

Donohue said Voice of San Diego, the online paper, has a tight editing procedure. The reporter prints the first copy of the story and gives to Andrew to edit with a red pencil in the old-fashioned way. The reporter is then challenged to prove the accuracy of the story. As a third step, copy editors conduct fact checking. They also require that reporters to footnote their stories. The footnotes are hidden, but give the editors of the opportunity to research and learn more. On big stories, the material is sent to their lawyers. This diligence hasn’t prevented Voice from breaking some big stories in politics and education and winning awards. Its processes could provide a model for any legitimate media outlet, online or otherwise.

Maybe Not

Posted by Tom Gable

Will print media make a comeback starting in 2011 or will newspapers be gone by 2022?

Two recent postings questioned the future of newspapers and print media. Joe Pulizzi, writing in Folio, noted that print can and should play a vital role in an overall content marketing mix. He offered seven reasons why he envisioned good news for print in the coming year (summarized here; see his post for more detail):

1. Getting Attention: There are fewer publications in most niches, so each gets more attention.

2. Print Media Help with Customer Retention

3. No Audience Development Costs; marketers can distribute a magazine to their customers using existing lists.

4. What’s Old Is New Again; marketers are leveraging print in their marketing mix.

5. Customers Still Need to Ask Questions. He noted that you can ask yourself tough questions based on what you read.

6. Print Still Excites People: He talked to a journalist who said it’s harder to get people to agree to an interview for an online story than print; people will reschedule for that.

7. Unplug: Joe opined that people are disconnecting themselves from digital media in increasing numbers. (Recent studies show that digital overload actually hurts cognition).

I agree wholeheartedly on No. 6 on the excitement of print, plus its credibility. Coverage in a real, non-electronic publication with a history of competence and integrity has significantly more value than coverage in most online media and blogs (the latter being, of course, fairly low on the credibility scale). Seeing your story in the print edition of the NYT, WSJ, Economist or even your home town daily paper generates a great sense of accomplishment. PR professionals almost expect coverage to land in on-line media, so the so-called earned media isn’t as dear online as in print. Of course the print media have a website, RSS feed, Twitter feed, etc., so you can have the best of both worlds. And it’s a world I surely want to continue in perpetuity.

On the other side of the debate, Ross Dawson, a futurist, was speaking to Newspaper Publishers’ Association in Australia and predicted that within 10 years, mobile reading devices would allow people to consume news on the run and be the “primary news interface”.

He predicted the costs would fall from the $600 iPad level to under $10. “More sophisticated news readers will be foldable, or rollable, gesture-controlled and fully interactive,” he said.

He predicted journalism would be “increasingly crowdsourced” to “hordes of amateurs overseen by professionals.” (We now have that on the web, mostly with no adult supervision)

He did predict expert journalists would still be employed in Australia. Audiences would be guided to trusted journalists by some form of public reputation measures (probably recorded from electronics sensors implanted in our skins and transmitted wirelessly to the Media Measurement Algorithm Monitor in the sky).

Bottom line: this former printer journalist and long-time PR practitioner believes the printed word will continue to be valued by many, most notably those with a sense of the weight of non-electronic media. I read four papers every morning with breakfast and love to see how the news is played, the relationships of stories, news judgment in context and find new discoveries on every page. Sure, you can get a little serendipity online, but I don’t think the medium works that way. I find the printed variety better for scanning and quickly absorbing the flow of news and trends. I can turn a page and scan it faster for information than I can scrolling through a website screen or agonizing as I view 14 lines of news at a time on my Blackberry.

Joe, thanks for the post. I second the motion: print is rebounding — in 2011 and beyond.

LA Times Home Page

Posted by Tom Gable

BIOCOM hosted a panel discussion today on “Social Media 2.0,” with Terri Somers, BIOCOM director of communications and former Union-Tribune life sciences reporter as moderator. The panelists: Mauricio Minotta, Director of Communications, The Salk Institute; Peter Pitts, partner and director, Global Health, New York, Porter Novelli; and Shari Roan, life science reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

The most compelling insights for the PR profession came from Roan. In a few minutes, she provided an incredibly succinct description of where newspapers are going in evolving from old to new models and incorporating social media to drive change:

• The Web site is now their main product, not the print edition.
  
• Most readers come from the Web.
• As a result, the L.A. Times now reaches broader, more diverse audiences.
• The Web site has 10 to 15 times more content than the print edition, which has its obvious production and distribution limitations.
• They have more than 100 blogs, so can cover issues and ideas that wouldn’t typically get into the newspaper because of the size of the news hole.
• With blogs, there are more opportunities to tell your stories and also stimulate comments, which help gauge public interest.
• The blogs provide short snippets of news and are not fully reported out. They try to be fast in getting out the news and then provide links to stories or sources with more detail.
• The beat reporters, such as those in sports, use Twitter to provide up-to-the-minute coverage. This has been valuable in covering breaking news, such as the recent fires near Los Angeles.
• Twitter is used to Tweet on headlines and link back to the Web page.
• Social media has made journalism more of a two-way street; they can engage with readers.
• With an unlimited news hole on the Web, there is a greater need for visuals, including video.

Thanks to Roan for these important insights, including the latter. PR professionals, many of whom came out of print journalism (including yours truly), tend to think in terms of the printed word. Creating a visual communications strategy with Web sites, Facebook, You Tube, Flick, Twitter and all other tools and tactics can provide new power to any program, particularly those with difficult stories to tell in print but that can be covered in a three-minute video.

In today’s “information overload” environment, it is obvious that PR agencies must be selective about what qualifies as news. At Gable PR, we often have to provide the journalists’ perspective and tell our clients no when they suggest that “let’s do a press release on that!” Of course we do it tactfully, applying the “so what, who cares” test. Why? Because just like in the story of the boy who cried wolf or the start-up from the Silicon Valley that cranked out one release a day for months before collapsing, the media will ignore the missives if they are too frequent (or too frequently irrelevant). Much better to be highly selective, or authentic. And to target the media who are most likely to care.

This week, Slate.com had a particularly relevant example, from well before the age of information overload. It turns out that in his final days, Nixon’s press office bombarded the national media with press releases from every Cabinet department in the hopes of somehow pushing the impeachment news off the front pages.

It didn’t work, because the news wasn’t authentic. The media instantly recognized this and continued following the scent of the real story.
So if your company has a “major” product development or if you’re “incredibly excited” about a “transformative” new employee who has joined your firm, that’s great! But before sharing this “news” with the world, give some serious thought as whether or not anyone else will really care. It just might make more sense to go after the spotlight when you have something more “shine-worthy” and truly exciting to the news media and outside audiences.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

Place your mouse on a city anywhere in the world. City and paper image appear on right. Click on the city to open image of the front page of that newspaper. You can either read the PDF version or click to go to the web site of the paper itself (the upper right corner). This site changes every day with its news publication.

Happy reading!

###

Posted by Tom Gable