Magnosticism

Some consider “broadcast journalism” an oxymoron, but Tim Russert defied that derisive view. He was the ultimate newsman. In these days of stream-of-conscsiousness blogging masquerading as news, Russert stood out as a relentlessly prepared and fearless journalist, an objective reporter who had no other agenda than to get the truth out of politicians and other Washington power brokers. But as colleagues and friends noted in the many tributes pouring in since his sudden and unexpected death yesterday at age 58, he didn’t have a mean bone in his body.

As someone who always believed in the ideals of journalism, the art of interviewing, and the thrill of pursuing a hot story, I loved watching Russert perform his craft. He was a true master, and both journalism and politics will be much worse off without him.

An About Us page is a checklist item for any business’s website (and many personal blogs, in its more informal About Me variation). Here’s what NOT to do on your “About Us” page:

• Don’t put your “About Us” page in the “Past News” section - this implies that, well, you are old news.  
• Don’t put embeddable ads in the text. That tells me a lot “about” you - all of it negative.
• Don’t say you have an experienced staff, but then provide no information about or access to those people.
• Don’t post text with numerous typos (and compound the oversight by calling yourself an “award-winning” media publication).

If you don’t think any established website could possibly allow any of these egregious errors to go unchecked, think again: I found one that features ALL of them. And I’m sad to say I used to work for them. What a disturbing decline for a once-great publication.

“Feeding frenzy” takes on a whole new meaning with 7/24 news cycles. Witness the Eliot Spitzer scandal. This guy was buried in a New York minute. My favorite tabloid covers:

You can even write your own NY Post headline.

Google News search results for “Eliot Spitzer” for March 11: 16,199

Google-indexed blog posts referencing “Eliot Spitzer ” on March 11: 2,160

Best jokes, compiled here.

Even advertisers are getting into the act.

Nothing’s more tasty to media folk than a holier-than-thou public figure caught with his pants down. The Steamroller gets steamrolled.

At client meetings today in Milwaukee, where - surprise! - it’s snowing. For such a supposedly hardy area of the country, the local news sure makes the populace seem weather-wimpy. The ABC affiliate extended their morning news by a half-hour to cover what amounted to a traffic jam on I-94 and generally slippery roads. Among the list of safe-driving tips they offered:

• Clear snow from vehicle before you drive
• Drive slowly
• Avoid skids

And the anchor added, with the tone and furrowed brow of someone who’s acutely aware of the seriousness of the situation: “Drive slowly out there.”

This probably speaks more to the state of local media than the fine state of Wisconsin.

First sentence in an email I just received: “Hi Rob…I wanted to let you know that your blog ranked as the #52 overall blog in the Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs premiere listing.”

Number 52 in a Top-42 listing? Wow, that’s great. No, really.

Lately, I’ve been categorizing my editorial consulting work as “corporate journalism” - the practice of creating balanced, fact-based content for marketers. It’s a more authentic alternative to the usual PR drivel and marketing fluff that companies have traditionally used to annoy customers, journalists and other target groups. The content can take many forms: white papers (reported with real-person interviews, not made-up quotes), articles, blog posts, video, etc. - all the stuff you’d see on a typical media site. The content development work is also similar to traditional journalism: understand the target audience (customers vs. readers), identify the experts (internal and external), and get them to help you tell the story (through interviews or direct contributions). The result is more engaging, more believable marketing communications. (And it’s a good next career step for disgruntled, aging journalist types.)

I take no credit for coining the term. I first heard it from David Churbuck when talking about the time we spent together at McKinsey helping to re-do the company’s knowledge management platform (a Herculean task). He may or may not have borrowed the phrase from the 1999 book “Beyond Spin.” From the publisher’s description:

In Beyond Spin, three experts detail the techniques of corporate journalism–an ingenious communications model that hinges on open, accurate, and strategically weighted reporting inside a corporation.  

I wouldn’t go so far as calling the practice “ingenious,” but corporate journalism is an important step away from traditional PR/marketing. Churbuck takes a broader view of the concept than the book’s apparent (I never read it) focus on internal mar-com; he uses the phrase to refer to the lens through which companies must view external communications as well:

Organizations need to report upon themselves with the objective eye of a journalist, holding any statement or action up to the same skeptical, unconflicted scrutiny that an outsider would hold, to determine how it will sit with the most important segment of its public - its customers.

I found another good post on the topic at Contentious.com, this one dating back to 2004:

It takes courage on the part of the corporate communications/PR people to step beyond the simplistic goal of persuasion – to acknowledge and address controversy, shortcomings and skeptical or critical perspectives without being dismissive. In short, to try to fairly present more than just the preferred corporate view.

I have two short articles in the current issue of 1to1 magazine. One is on some of the new metrics that marketers are adopting to help them measure the performance of their online and offline programs, as well as the value of their customers. It includes a sidebar on the impressive results that Petco is seeing after adding user-generated content - a.k.a. customer product reviews - to its website.

The second looks at the expanding skill set that today’s CMO needs to survive. The big three: General management experience, a deeper grasp of new media, and an eye for talent.  

Both require registration to view.

Back when I had a corporate job, we used to tell employees, Don’t put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t want forwarded to another person. The blog has streamlined that principle: no one has to forward your blog posts, because they’re already there, naked,  for anyone and everyone to see (and possibly take offense to). David Churbuck reminds us of this in a post about his interactions with a journalist; even though he did a phone interview with the reporter, the scribe found a juicier quote from is blog and chose to use that in the upcoming article. David’s conclusion:

Hence, if I continue to blog in the same voice and tone, I can expect to get quoted saying that things bluntly suck or rock, or that  the best use of Second Life is trying to get virtually “laid”, or that X is a moron, Y a frigtard, and Z a knuckle-dragging mouth breather. This gives me pause, particularly since I tend to put a different filter on my spoken utterances in the presence of a reporting reporter. 

The concept of blog as public record also should give pause to nitwits like this guy, who was blogging anonymously (or so he thought) while he was a defendant in a medical malpractice suit. Apparently he was providing a running commentary of the trial:

In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff’s case and the plaintiff’s lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

Nice strategy. After admitting under questioning that he was the blogger named Flea, the defendant settled the case the next morning - for what the Boston Globe reported to be a “substantial” fee.

We’re just beginning to see the courts address the issue of libel as it relates to blogs. The Media Law Resource Center is keeping a tally.

Libel, slander, disclosure of trade secrets - those are the things that corporate marketers and lawyers freak out about when deciding whether their executives or other employees should launch a blog. Traditionalists will no doubt use any news of blogger lawsuits as proof points against unfettered corporate blogging.

That’s an overreaction. The spontaneity of blogs provides a refreshing departure from heavy-handed oversight from marketers who expect everyone to stay “on message” and from corporate lawyers who see potential lawsuits around every corner. But bloggers - regardless of whether they’re on their own or representing their company’s brand - have to be smart about what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. In other words, don’t expect that no one will notice or care about what your write because it’s “just a blog.” 

Proponents of editorial integrity are claiming victory following the reinstatement of PC World Editor in Chief Harry McCracken, who had resigned two weeks prior in a dispute over a cover story that PC World CEO Colin Crawford apparently ordered McCracken to kill. Um, make that former CEO, as IDG Communications President Bob Carrigan abruptly shuttled Crawford back to the company’s online group after just three months as head of PC World and Macworld, clearing the way for McCracken’s return. [Disclosure: IDG was my employer between 2004-2006.]

As David Churbuck notes, trade publications have always been beaten up over their close associations with advertisers and the perceived impact of those relationships on editorial coverage. Churbuck says he never experienced any such pressure during his days in the newsroom at PC Week, and neither did I. In fact, PC Week’s publishers, particularly the legendary Don Byrnes, went to bat for me more than once against advertisers who were outraged over some perceived slight in our coverage. The pains we took to maintain the church-state division never lessened the hue and cry of the Mac zealots (followed by the Linux zealots) who were certain we were on Microsoft’s payroll.

That was years ago, when publishers still had some leverage and could afford to play tough when vendors threatened to pull their ads. Now, with ad dollars at a premium, it’s particularly satisfying to see the edit guys win one. It’s even more refreshing to see PC World’s bloggers discuss the situation so openly. That’s something that would not have happened five or 10 years ago.  

Compelling column by Mike Bloxham on MediaPost, juxtaposing the unhealthy skewing of our broadcast and cable news heavily toward sensationalist (Duke rape case) and celebrity (Imus, Anna Nichole Smith) issues with the raw footage found on Hometown Baghdad, a recently launched site featuring video vignettes of a handful of young Iraqis living in a war zone. From Bloxham’s column:

Live since March 19, Hometown Baghdad is an example of a kind of news content that gets closer to the reality of the issues, skirting around the pre-packaged, sterilized and trivia-obsessed formats we see across much of our TV news options.  Does news really need an anchor or a celebrity journalist to front it? 

I couldn’t agree more. The Web is changing the way we consume news. Hopefully it will change the way the broadcast and cable networks package it as well.