I am a firm believer in reading and absorbing research and surveys done nationally for how old and new media interact. There are lessons to be learned from this national research on how we should interact in our own communities.
Archives for media-outreach
As you may recall this past September 1st, a man armed with guns and explosives entered Discovery’s HQ building in Maryland and took three individuals hostage for several hours. Thankfully no employees were hurt or killed; the gunman was shot by police during their operation to rescue the hostages.
Often I am asked by PR execs from for profit corporations what protocols I feel they should put in place in the event of a crisis, whether it is fire or law enforcement that might occur on their premises.
Over the holiday weekend I have had the opportunity to do some reading and investigation to attempt to put together the facts from a PR perspective of how things could go so terribly wrong in terms of the “they against us” attitude most folks now have towards the TSA. A number of PR gaffs has lead to this perception.
First off the lame TSA Administrator John Pistole used a worn out administration card saying the TSA knows what right for our citizens but unfortunately they haven’t done a good enough job educating people. Again, we’re so stupid that the wonderful changes they put in place and the stellar way in which they presented it to the public is above our scope of appreciation.
As a PR and marketing guy I have over the year been confronted, when a consumer or customer thinks that an injustice has been done to them, spew the old line “I’m going to the papers with this.”
I used to love to hear this sentence spoken when I knew someone with no case, truth or validation to their complaint assumed the “papers” would hold the presses so the masses could hear that we were out of blue logo tees or a donation receipt was not mailed to a donor within moments of the envelope being opened. The chance a journalist or reporter had in receiving a Pulitzer Prize for the irate information usually tended to have them pass on the story.
Over the last year or so I have been closely watching how various corporations, emergency service arms and organizations utilize social media to report on a serious incident or crisis. I am not totally convienced that reporting details rapidly on Twitter or Facebook is the most advantageous way to let the public know about an emergency. With things moving so quickly and so much at stake in giving details, social media can trap you into churning out information before we can actually put the unfolding events into perspective. A case in point took place in Singapore last week.
As of this writing the 14th miner has been rescued from the Copiapo, Chile cooper and gold mine. I like many, especially those of us in the emergency services, were up all night watching the human drama that was unfolding before our eyes. I was riveted to the raw internet feed from CNN. To this point it has been a flawless rescue effort.
I am duly impressed by the skill and professionalism of the entire rescue team. From those at the mine shaft opening to the rescue workers who went down to supervise the efforts in the mine to the EMT’s and medical staff and mine and government administrators, everything has been done in an organized and flawless manner.
I’m pretty lucky in Smithtown, NY where I serve as the FD PIO. Most of our day to day press initiatives are covered by the local media which consists of three weekly newspapers and two or three websites which maintain hyper local sites.
If I have a specific alarm report that I want to disseminate to the press, I send a release with photos and let the editors do their thing. In almost all instances the locals do a great job of rewriting the story to fit their papers styles. I always try to place a quote or two in the body of my release but if an editor calls for more information or quotes, I’m happy to provide.
My problem lies with one of the weeklies in that they take my releases verbatim. When I write a release I write it in “fire-ese.” I tell the facts, give the numbers of the apparatus, give hours in military time etc. I use parenthesis around the military time, or other fire jargon to better explain, but this paper prints it all, as mentioned, verbatim.
In one of the more bizarre recent occurrences surrounding the amazing story of the 33 trapped Chilean miners it seems that need to express themselves clearly is towards the top of the agenda. It appears that PR types are yelling instructions down the shaft telling these guys the appropriate way to speak to the media upon rescue. If there ever was a way for the miners to get good nights sleep it would come as the result of some media consultant telling them what to say upon seeing the sunlight for the first time in months. Enough for anyone to go into a catatonic state!
A new form of reporting local news is taking root across America. It’s called hyperlocal and is much more nimble and reactive then traditional community news sources.
Next month I am inviting the editors of Smithtown Patch to the firehouse for a media open house. I hold these events several times a year in which I invite one media outlet at a time to come and tour our department and get to know a little better about who we are and how we serve the community. This is the first time I am inviting what at this point can be called a non traditional or newly emerging form of media.
There is a certain group of trend arbiters around whom I envision being skinny, wearing all black, with black framed glasses who think that when they speak the entire work of public relations will turn on a dime to do their bidding.
Over the last several years I am becoming progressively irritated when PR pundits keep saying that the standard press release is dead. Maybe the body is cold from where they sit, but in our line of work the old tried and true, boring and predictable press release is our lifeline to the media.
Often we say someone is a good public speaker. But a closer look reveals that someone might be a good public speaker in one discipline while lacking skill in another spoken area.
In my mind public speaking, in our profession as PIO’s, is segmented into a few distinct areas. Throughout the year we address many different audiences in many different venues, each requiring their own specific set of verbal commands and finesse.
I read a quote online recently by Anderson Cooper that puts this discussion into perspective: “Being on camera is easy for me, but speaking in front of several thousands of people, it’s a different skill set. Making speeches gave me a nervous pit in my stomach, so I forced myself to do it.”
I consider myself, due in part to a radio and TV background, to be a pretty good overall public speaker, but when I segment my responsibilities out, the report card indicates that I do need to go to study hall in a few area’s –
A lot of what we do as PIO’s is based on standard formula and template. If we are sending out releases and working with the press at an incident scene we are pretty much like baseball umpires, calling them as we see them. There is no room for embellishment or spin in our line of work. This is one of the aspects of our job that we should be thankful for when we look at the alternatives, like choosing sleazoid PR as a career specialty.
As anyone knows who reads my posts on a regular basis, I’m not a big fan of speaking to the media “off the record.” I’ve been burned a number of times over the years trying to be a nice guy, covertly helping a journalist get what I feel is the essence of a story without my direct quotes.
I usually peruse the Atlantic website to see there political take on things, but yesterday came across an interesting article looking into the world of “off the record” comments.
The article was written by Chuck Todd, the White House correspondent for NBC news and Albert Oetgen, the Managing Editor for the NBC News Washington bureau.
I found the most interesting part of the story to be the Pete Williams glossary of terms that unofficially govern the flow of information to the media in Washington.
I’m not a big reader of the New York Times; our politics are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. A colleague recently emailed me a link to a Times story about what not to do in case of a crisis communications emergency. I’ll admit it, it’s a great story by Peter Goodman and I encourage you to read it.
The story gives many industry leaders critiques into many of the world’s recent PR disasters including Toyota’s acceleration problems, BP’s oil spill, Goldman Sachs securities fraud and Tiger Woods marital bust-up. Interesting read.
Since we deal with crisis as PIO’s on a regular basis, there is always something to learn from others missteps!
Yesterday afternoon my department was toned out for a mutual aid on a working fire in a neighboring town. We sent a Chief and an Engine. I followed the transmissions on my scanner and it appeared our work was limited. The scene of the fire was right near a notorious, long shuttered psychiatric hospital. A number of plans are on the table of how to eventually utilize the land the facility is standing on. Everything from parks to a planned community is on the table.
Due to the interest in the site, I figured the media would be all over this one. Little did I know that the media would be all over me.
There’s been a lot of talk recently at conferences I have attended about whether websites have outlived their usefulness and are merely dinosaurs left over from 1990s.
I think in our line of work where fact and not hype are the foundations of our websites, a no frills approach is warranted and the website model fits quite well thank you. Whereas a consumer product or service might look to gain interest through blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube first, most folks who want fire and EMS information will visit our websites as the main source of information. With that said though our websites should still serve as portals to assist in integrating our traditional website and social media marketing efforts.
Yesterday we had our third working fire in less then two weeks. In this day and age in a suburban department that is usually a years worth of major jobs.
After photographing at the scene and rotating on a hose line I went back to the firehouse to send out my incident release to the press.
Since we all send the vast majority of our PIO press releases via e-mails these days I wondered what many of you write as your subject line copy in the e-mail.
I wrote a post awhile back where I discussed that I banned a news outlet for life for distorting a story that they did not vet properly. Now I see the US Army has also in a way sent a reporter into purgatory for his dealings with them.
At one time, especially in the suburban volunteer fire service, when an incident was newsworthy a simple formula was established for reporting. Type out a press release (yes type), mail it to the community newspaper, enclose a picture or negative from the photos you developed at the drug store and wait a week for the public to learn more about the fire. But those were kinder, gentler times. Now instantaneous PR is a 24/7/365 job, even for volunteer PIO’s. We must always be on our toes listening to what the community, bloggers and press are saying about us.
I just read an interesting story posted on Yahoo News about a unique program lead by CNN and the Chicago Tribune that allowed military public affairs officers to do a reverse-embedding of sorts.
Normally journalists and media outlets request from the military credentials to embed with an active combat unit to share and report on the experience.
As PIO’s most of us are constantly working to position our departments in the most positive public light possible. Much of this effort involves interaction with the media to spread the word about our professionalism and efforts. While it is great that we can create cordial working relationships with the press, it is not beneficial to either party to become “friends.” Sooner or later tough questions are going to have to be asked by the media and on the opposite side we may find a story to have erroneous facts or flawed opinions.
This past Friday we had a fully involved barn fire in Smithtown, NY where I serve as PIO. Fortunately horses stalled in the barn and other livestock where turned out in paddocks when the fire erupted so thankfully no animals were lost or injured.
In Smithtown, most property zoned for livestock has the family residence at the front of the property and the barn area set to the back.
At Friday’s fire the barn was about 100 yards set back from the access street. Incident command was also set up close to the barn. On the access street was one Engine supplying the water source from a hydrant, Fire Police and Suffolk County PD.
I was just cleaning up my favorites sites on Internet Explorer. I have not updated my links section on this blog in awhile. I use these favorites for both my work as a fire department PIO and as a marketing and public relations professional for a national not for profit organization. Over the weekend I will hopefully add some of these new sites to my links page.
I present to you the most often visited PR sites that I rely on for information.
One of the more hotly contested Senate races taking place this fall is in Nevada where Sharon Angle is trying to unseat majority leader Harry Reid. I think it is safe to say that Angle, who was leading Harry Reid and is now trailing slightly in the polls, is starting to be looked upon as a “wingnut.” She certainly is not making any new friends in the media. Angle held a so called “press conference” recently in which she invited the media but bizarrely refused to even acknowledge their presence when they tried to ask her questions after the event ended.
I was driving to the airport a couple of hours ago after attending the Maryland State American Legion Convention in Ocean City.
Great place to hang out for a couple of days!
I was not going to post today but was listening to Fox on Sirius and heard a story about Apple holding a press conference tomorrow. Since this is a first time they are facing a negative situation in many moons, I thought I’d give you a heads up to closely follow how their PR strategy follows through. I call following these stories “recreational PR.” It’s a great sport to watch how the big guys handle a crisis.
