The art of the public relations agent comes out in press releases, which generally are artless.
They can be elaborate. They can entice. They can blare, rarely trying the subtle approach.
They are why city editors have messy desks.
They are the stuff of the logo, the release date, the contact information.
No tree should have to give a life for one. No electron should have to spin a tizzy over one.
But press releases are not going away, no more than their authors in media relations departments.
Press releases can be the cry of the Sirens, who seduced the crew of Ulysses on his odyssey. Tough men, they, but prone to have their heads turned by sexy maidens. Or, press releases can be terse, useful guides to the morning line for reporters to take slight notice of and then discard.
So we need to put them into perspective.
New York Times business writer Joanne Kaufman does not. She does dignify the press release with a story http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/business/media/30toxic.html?ex=1372478400&en=109705c354560eb5&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
We find out the best words a PR writer can use to attract the attention of a journalist for exposure in the media.
A kind of a science as well as a recklessly purported art figures in Ms. Kaufman's article: The proper technique uses words most likely to be picked up by an Internet search engine these days.
We even learn a book by PR stunt planner David Seaman is due out in October, "Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz." Makes you feel dirty just thinking about it.
The biggest little secret in public relations, it turns out, is timing. Make sure the press release comes out on a slow news day, the Times article concludes.
Well, there's no true conclusion. I will supply one. The story is dutifully non-judgmental. I will be, dutifully.
A press release has one value and one only, as a tip sheet. The best ones in my experience are so labelled, "Tip Sheet." Trust it any further and you're liable to tip over. Even phone numbers and addresses are suspect, to be checked and verified while the journalist re-reports any information in the release, which is never to be quoted or treated as valid information from an original source.
Did you get that, young journalist?
Ms. Kaufman did not report the journalistic value of press releases. Allow me. There is none.
Journalism is what a reporter brings to an idea. The idea may come from a tip by a useful press agent. But the journalism is value-added.
Oh, me, oh my!
You will depart this blog post with the thought journalism is an art and public relations is a service industry whose product is mechanical, the press release.
You think correctly.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Hometowners: Obama and McCain
When you’re hot, you’re hot.
And when you’re not, you’re not.
– Jerry Reed
No one wants to repeat Al Gore’s non-election. He lost Tennessee, his home state.
So GOP nominee-to-be John McCain feels the need to campaign a bit more in Arizona, even though he represents it in the U.S. Senate.
Things slip. People who know you best may not view you as presidential timber. And the minority vote prefers the opponent.
That African American, Native American, Latin American and Asian American electorate counts.
Journalists from those groups saw Democratic nominee-to-be Barack Obama up close and personal at Unity, the combined journalism conference for all four minority groups.
They saw him in “Chicago, Chicago, (his) hometown,” which is generously endowed with admirers of the Illinois senator.
Hot item at the conference was the Chicago-based Ebony cover of Obama as “One of the 25 Coolest Brothers of All Time.”
He made the list with music mogul Jay-Z, R&B great Marvin Gaye and “the original heartthrob, Billy Dee,” swooned Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell.
Obama fever soared until an editorial in that paper had to remind readers that campaigns are the news, not just the hometown candidate.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism found the Democrat featured in 78 percent of political stories, according to the paper’s observation. McCain mentions came in at only 51 percent.
An oped piece by Jewel Woods, a “gender analyst” for the Renaissance Male Project, claimed even guys have a crush on Obama. It’s his “white collar masculinity.”
Still another columnist compared the candidate’s foreign policy team with The 300. That would be Sparta’s hero-defenders against Persia in the cult movie featuring Bowflex-product, muscle rippling warriors admired by gamer boys.
What’s the fun of Chicago, if you can’t go over the top?
The attention drove Sen. McCain to mock the press.
But cool as the breeze off Lake Michigan, “Obama sizes up Mideast stage” in a Chicago Tribune headline.
A quote by Trib columnist John Kass called McCain “grumpy.”
Editorial Board member Steve Chapman called the man “confused on Iraq.”
And Trib syndicated writer Jonah Goldberg called his pro-surge strategy on the war a loser as the defining issue of his campaign.
Don’t mess with the hometown candidate in other words.
A couple of days’ look at Chicago papers conjures the Jerry Reed lyric when it comes to Sen. Obama: My luck was so good I could do no wrong.
And when you’re not, you’re not.
– Jerry Reed
No one wants to repeat Al Gore’s non-election. He lost Tennessee, his home state.
So GOP nominee-to-be John McCain feels the need to campaign a bit more in Arizona, even though he represents it in the U.S. Senate.
Things slip. People who know you best may not view you as presidential timber. And the minority vote prefers the opponent.
That African American, Native American, Latin American and Asian American electorate counts.
Journalists from those groups saw Democratic nominee-to-be Barack Obama up close and personal at Unity, the combined journalism conference for all four minority groups.
They saw him in “Chicago, Chicago, (his) hometown,” which is generously endowed with admirers of the Illinois senator.
Hot item at the conference was the Chicago-based Ebony cover of Obama as “One of the 25 Coolest Brothers of All Time.”
He made the list with music mogul Jay-Z, R&B great Marvin Gaye and “the original heartthrob, Billy Dee,” swooned Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell.
Obama fever soared until an editorial in that paper had to remind readers that campaigns are the news, not just the hometown candidate.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism found the Democrat featured in 78 percent of political stories, according to the paper’s observation. McCain mentions came in at only 51 percent.
An oped piece by Jewel Woods, a “gender analyst” for the Renaissance Male Project, claimed even guys have a crush on Obama. It’s his “white collar masculinity.”
Still another columnist compared the candidate’s foreign policy team with The 300. That would be Sparta’s hero-defenders against Persia in the cult movie featuring Bowflex-product, muscle rippling warriors admired by gamer boys.
What’s the fun of Chicago, if you can’t go over the top?
The attention drove Sen. McCain to mock the press.
But cool as the breeze off Lake Michigan, “Obama sizes up Mideast stage” in a Chicago Tribune headline.
A quote by Trib columnist John Kass called McCain “grumpy.”
Editorial Board member Steve Chapman called the man “confused on Iraq.”
And Trib syndicated writer Jonah Goldberg called his pro-surge strategy on the war a loser as the defining issue of his campaign.
Don’t mess with the hometown candidate in other words.
A couple of days’ look at Chicago papers conjures the Jerry Reed lyric when it comes to Sen. Obama: My luck was so good I could do no wrong.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Unjumble this: dreenyipsit
You know about the man who checks the obits every morning to see if he’s there.
I work the Jumble word puzzle to see if my mind is all there.
My wife does the same with the crossword puzzle.
Our grown children tackle sudoku.
There’s the lady whose day just isn’t right until she checks her horoscope and the man who looks for the daily comic he has read ever since he was a little boy.
We’re all hooked on the benign narcotic of the syndicated feature. Newspapers set out to make us return customers. And darned if newsprint is not a lifestyle for some of us.
Journalists are so-o-o-o serious. Their products are news, sports, features, editorials, business coverage and all the rest in life that’s more or less momentous.
Many of them don’t know we really want to read the used truck ads in the classifieds. Or find out the weather in Bangkok. Or check the TV listings.
My local paper ran a gazpacho recipe this morning. Perfect. Now my household knows what to do with the surplus of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from our garden.
Papers everywhere run food sections one day a week – usually Wednesdays – to wrap around the grocery ads with their coupons and twofer come-on sales. And those are part of the information industry too.
Publishers put out a package, not just coverage of breaking events. Many still provide yesterday’s stock listings, although any investor can check the markets instantly online.
Try to stop a syndicated feature like that and watch the switchboard light up with angry calls from us in the newspaper habit. Don’t even move a feature from its usual spot.
An organizational mind is a measure of good papers. Alter not their internal order.
Serendipity also is a hallmark, though. We wonder what the letter writers are up to today, what the movie critic says, what fantastic hand the bridge column is about. Finding the answers is a random walk through a land of happy discoveries made by happenstance.
You may think or wish this marriage of opposites – an ordered plan wedded to chance delight – is exclusive to newspapers and would keep the competing Internet at bay.
Nope. The World Wide Web is just a many times larger collection of oddities and curiosities and fun features to divert us from its serious content updated instantly. If you think it lacks order, you haven’t put links, feeds, widgets, blog readers and all the other gadgets together on your familiar home page.
There is simultaneous organization and serendipity to a good Web site just like a good newspaper. That’s why online journalism can succeed once the economic model is in place. We habitués can make the move.
Those of us who are grumpy if we don’t work the Jumble every morning now aren’t able to settle into the day’s routine without checking our email.
And when we manage our own homepage, we don’t have to worry that some editor left our favorite feature out that day.
I blog, therefore I am – without having to check the obit page.
I work the Jumble word puzzle to see if my mind is all there.
My wife does the same with the crossword puzzle.
Our grown children tackle sudoku.
There’s the lady whose day just isn’t right until she checks her horoscope and the man who looks for the daily comic he has read ever since he was a little boy.
We’re all hooked on the benign narcotic of the syndicated feature. Newspapers set out to make us return customers. And darned if newsprint is not a lifestyle for some of us.
Journalists are so-o-o-o serious. Their products are news, sports, features, editorials, business coverage and all the rest in life that’s more or less momentous.
Many of them don’t know we really want to read the used truck ads in the classifieds. Or find out the weather in Bangkok. Or check the TV listings.
My local paper ran a gazpacho recipe this morning. Perfect. Now my household knows what to do with the surplus of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from our garden.
Papers everywhere run food sections one day a week – usually Wednesdays – to wrap around the grocery ads with their coupons and twofer come-on sales. And those are part of the information industry too.
Publishers put out a package, not just coverage of breaking events. Many still provide yesterday’s stock listings, although any investor can check the markets instantly online.
Try to stop a syndicated feature like that and watch the switchboard light up with angry calls from us in the newspaper habit. Don’t even move a feature from its usual spot.
An organizational mind is a measure of good papers. Alter not their internal order.
Serendipity also is a hallmark, though. We wonder what the letter writers are up to today, what the movie critic says, what fantastic hand the bridge column is about. Finding the answers is a random walk through a land of happy discoveries made by happenstance.
You may think or wish this marriage of opposites – an ordered plan wedded to chance delight – is exclusive to newspapers and would keep the competing Internet at bay.
Nope. The World Wide Web is just a many times larger collection of oddities and curiosities and fun features to divert us from its serious content updated instantly. If you think it lacks order, you haven’t put links, feeds, widgets, blog readers and all the other gadgets together on your familiar home page.
There is simultaneous organization and serendipity to a good Web site just like a good newspaper. That’s why online journalism can succeed once the economic model is in place. We habitués can make the move.
Those of us who are grumpy if we don’t work the Jumble every morning now aren’t able to settle into the day’s routine without checking our email.
And when we manage our own homepage, we don’t have to worry that some editor left our favorite feature out that day.
I blog, therefore I am – without having to check the obit page.
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