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 news
I was perusing U.S. News and World Report and found an interesting list that bodes well for us and our profession as public relations and communications specialists.
The magazine has placed PR specialist among the top 50 careers of 2011. The publication says the industry is expected to add 66,000 jobs, or grow by a whopping 24 percent, between 2008 and 2018. Median annual earnings are reported at $51, 960, with the top 10 percent making about $96,000 although in my estimation, on the overall lines I have seen of PIO and PAO salaries the figure skews a little low on the median.
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 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.
One of the problems we face as disseminators of public information in the social media realm is the question of when is too much information actually detrimental.
A University of Denver study has found that the biggest reason behind Facebook unfriending is a very obvious one: too many unimportant posts or excessive posting. Although the survey related to personal Facebook pages it is still reflective of what the average social media user would also think of us cluttering up their walls.
At one time they were called town criers. When I was a kid there was always someone in the neighborhood who took the lead on posting flyers at the library on various events or spreading news by word of mouth. You always went to people like this if you wanted to spread the word “virally,” before that phrase was actually coined. Today obviously “virally” relates to having information spread across the web. Today the phrase for the old town crier is a “social informant.”
Isn’t it strange that if you are late paying your electric, gas, oil or phone bill you will usually receive a grace period due to the potential problems the lack of service might present. Obviously one can freeze to death and the amount of money owed would never compensate for that death. Local government and the utility provider would look pretty foolish if a citizen couldn’t afford to pay a bill and suffered the ultimate price.
So to put things in perspective, if you owe say $500 on an outstanding electric bill but you didn’t pay $75 to protect your house from burning down, the lights can stay on while the home burns to the ground.
Nothing beats coming into work and immediately hearing “I just read the paper, it looks like you guys are in trouble again.” When I inquired into who and what was in trouble I was told that a story was in Newsday, our Long Island newspaper about the latest loser who riffled through fire department funds, betraying both his fellow brothers and sisters and the public at large.
The problem with the in your face guy who confronted me with the story before I set a foot in the door, is that he assumes all firefighters are the same and all departments are created equal. It didn’t matter to him that the ex firefighter and department in question are about 40 miles from here. For whatever reason, ours is a trade that suffers from collective guilt.
I was outraged that 9/11 turned into a three ring circus of media, yes media flamed protests. A day that will never be made into a National Holiday, least the significance be diminished by future generations, who will take it as a shopping day orgy with no understanding of its implication, was tainted by a media that puts every rumor, innuendo and kook generated story on the same plain.
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!
I just read a story on Phoenix’s ABC15.com that leads me to believe that Arizona tourism might be looking to crew up a backup line if the fire starts getting too hot regarding the State’s controversial immigration bill.
The Arizona Governor’s Task Force on Tourism and Economic Vitality has hired HMA Public Relations in what the story says is an effort to “tackle any negative backlash caused by Senate Bill 1070.”
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.
Suppose we were asked as PIO’s to meet with the media directly after a structural fire where much more went wrong than right. Instead of confronting the situation and transparently addressing where we succeeded, where we failed, and what we should have done to make things run better we took a different tact. We decide to ignore the present, forget about the fire and tell the press that things would have been much worse under the leadership of the past Chief and things are going in the future to get much better. The press would look at us like we were raving lunatics.
This is pretty cool. Today’s post is just a bunch of useless knowledge. Mark Steiger, a firefighter friend of mine from east Texas saw my Fourth of July post about the founding father of the volunteer fire service, Benjamin Franklin. Mark MC’s a holiday parade each year. Before the festivities get underway he regales the crowd with some Colonial era useless facts. I know it’s not PIO relevant, but it’s allot of fun to read.
I think we should all take a moment out of our Fourth of July festivities to think about, and express our deepest gratitude to the founding fathers of our great country for what they did in establishing the framework of a democracy that has survived the test of time.
Of all the forefathers, the one we should place on the highest pedestal is Benjamin Franklin who among his greatest accomplishments was the founding of the volunteer fire service.
I was at a conference last year that had a session on “social media press releases.” In essence this form of release is intended to provide reporters with an interactive and user-friendly way to get information, audio clips, photos and videos about a story in a one stop shopping format. By providing this type of release, as the theory goes, a reporter would have everything at their fingertips to prepare the story without having to play telephone tag with you to get additional details, photos etc. As usually, when you hear these ideas at a conference they seem to fall just below Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as ground breaking, cutting edge genius.
A PR lesson for all of us PIO’s to learn today comes from none other then General Motors. When we write a release we have to look to all of our collateral (website, brochures etc.) to make sure they are all up to date and in sync with what we have written. This is just one of the problems that is plaguing GM for what I consider to be a gut reaction to a marketing scheme that has not taken into consideration all of the ramifications of what they are looking to accomplish.
The PR team at General Motors is spinning their wheels today in an attempt to clarify an internal memo that said employees should only use the word “Chevrolet” when referring to the brand, not Chevy.
Used with permission of Susan Tiffen - www.susantiffenphotography.com
My department, the Smithtown Fire Department has part of our district run next to the picturesque Nissequogue River. The river is a haven for naturalists, canoe enthusiasts and kayakers. Each year we get a call or two to the river for rescues, mostly folks who have found themselves in the middle of the river during low tide and cannot get their boat out of the cement like mud.
There was a time when a good crisis communication plan addressed the situation at hand in a timely transparent manner. The plan owned up to admitting and confronting the bad, showing a solid plan for rectifying the situation and giving folks confidence that the best and brightest were working to develop the best resolution.
In the BP debacle the crisis communications plan of both the oil giant and the federal government seems to be constructed around a template of protecting our image to protect our stock and assets on BP’s front and blaming the other guy and passing the buck on the federal end to protect political assets. Neither plan as it stands is giving much solace or sorely needed answers to the American public.
The Air Force won top honors at last weeks PRSA Silver Anvil Awards for their “Dignified Transfers” program. When Defense Secretary Robert Gates reversed the media ban on the solemn ceremony that takes place when service personnel remains return to the U.S., an approach was needed to balance both requests by the media for coverage, and the individual wishes of the families of the fallen.
The video that accompanies this story has been making the rounds and is real. It was not intended to be viral and it’s not a training film. The event actually did occur a few weeks back as surrealistic as it is!
Our job as Public Information Officers is to be both the go to guy and the bridge builder; we are supposed to protect our Departments from any fallout and make sure that the right message gets out. At the same time, we are supposed to help the media, and the public get information and get access to our Chiefs if needed. But the main thing is that PIO’s are conduits of information.
SnapStream Media is hosting a free live webinar on Thursday, June 3 at 12:30 pacific time. The main presenter will be SGT Tim Schmidt the PIO for the Anaheim Police Department.
Schmidt and spokespeople from SnapStream will discuss -
The traditional vs. progressive TV monitoring approach
*Digitally recording and archiving TV coverage of your city
*Allowing cross-departmental access to clips and recordings
*Pinpointing mentions of interest & creating clips
*Being notified of issues/events via automatic e-mail alerts
*Creating daily media reports
Like in the movie Groundhog Day I have a situation that happens over and over again, in the same manner each June. My department hands out a number of scholarships to deserving students at the high school, I take pictures, submit them to the local paper and they never get printed.
Everything I normally send to this newspaper gets printed, I have a great relationship with the paper, its employees and editor but each year for some unknown reason the scholarship story and photos never makes it to print.
