Public Relations + Journalism + Social Media + Ethics: Philip Young
Mediations: Philip Young
Mediations coments on public relations, journalism, and communication ethics, often in the context of social media. Philip Young is a senior lecturer in public relations and journalism at the University of Sunderland, specialising in media ethics. He is also a lead researcher for the Euprera EuroBlog project. All views expressed here are personal and should not be seen as representing the University of Sunderland.
Euprera
The European Public Relations Education and Research Association
Mediations wiki
MediationsWiki Background for students and practitioners researching topics covered by Mediations, including media ethics and the impact of social software on PR and journalism practice.
PR Books Recommended sources for public relations. An excellent site with comprehensive UK content.
PR Bibliography The Public Relations Bibliography, run by David Phillips, offers student resources for internet mediated PR and PR Evaluation.
NewPR Wiki Simply the best resource for anyone trying to understand the global impact of the New PR
Scoop! Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society.
Nick Davies seemed to surprise a few people with a scathing critique of modern journalism which he characterised as Flat Earth News. Certainly he highlighted some pretty shabby practices in a curate's egg of a book - one minute I was right behind him, the next shaking my head in frustration...
One of Davies's key messages was that modern news organisations lack the resources to do their job properly. Starved of cash, newpapers are filled with PR-driven 'churnalism' and even apparently decent journalists have little choice but to rush out a mishmash of half-baked, barely checked information. It is a sorry tale: "Journalism without checking is like the human body without an immune system."
In Can You Trust The Media?,Adrian Monck has a rather different take on fairly similar terrain. His answer to the trust question seems quite simple - a resounding No. And his reasoning is compelling: why should you?
His mission is to 'burst the trust balloon'. "We need to teach people to live in a world where trust is something that is withheld. People need to be sceptical as a matter of course. Then they won't be so disappointed."
Around this time last year I re-read Orwell's 1984 and was so impressed I included it in an exercise that has thrilled my Level 2 students, who were asked to to pitch it to journalists who were running a book week aimed at persuading 18-25s to read more. (It's complicated, but I am sure they enjoyed it!). There's a fascinating piece on the Official Penguin blog about how they approached rewriting the blurb for (yet another) new edition. It's a pretty goood attempt!
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent – even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101 …
Here's what Senior Copywriter Colin Brush had to say: "This edition is not the Penguin Modern Classics edition. This edition is the one we want to get into the hands of school kids, to grab their short attention spans. So yes, putting the key words - Big Brother, Thought Police, Room 101, Ministry of Truth - in there is important, but that is no reason to leave the story or the characters out.
"The great thing about Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it is so unsettling, it is so terrifying and bleak (and not much fun as satire, either). To get that across we need to know what's at stake - what Big Brother is opposed to. We need Winston and Julia, their hopes and love, their humanity. Without Winston and Julia there is no tension, no story."
PROpenMic, the Ning social network set up by Robert French, will soon have 500 members (including a good number who know each other from Euprera and EuroBlog). The platform is powerful - a more serious version of Facebook - and I am hoping it will be of real value to my students.
It is early days and most people are still experimenting but it will be fascinating to see how it develops. Robert is working hard to bring in new members and again it will be interesting to see how many people can join without diluting its impact.
Like everything else, it will be about content and value - the more that people get out of it, the more they will put in.
I am in Prague, talking about reputation and relationship management. Here is the image I chose to represent their beautiful city. Movie to follow... guess which bit moves.
Rather than work I have just downloaded and installed a trial version of the SPB Mobile Shell for my Orbit 2 (details http://www.xda-blog.co.uk/). I'd love to say I like it because it looks rather good (which it does) but it is also a huge boon for someone whose eyesight isn't quite what it used to be but doesn't like wearing glasses. Big bright symbols, an analogue clock and even a weather forecast function for when I can't be bothered to look out of the window!!!
Ofcom has published a valuable report on the penetration of social media in the UK, finding that just over one fifth (22%) of adult internet users aged 16+ and almost half (49%) of children aged 8-17 who use the internet have set up their own profile on a social networking site
Social networkers differ in their attitudes to social networking sites and in their behaviour while using them. Ofcom’s qualitative research indicates that site users tend to fall into five distinct groups based on their behaviours and attitudes. These are as follows:
Alpha Socialisers (a minority) – people who used sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people, and be entertained.
Attention Seekers – (some) people who craved attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles.
Followers – (many) people who joined sites to keep up with what their peers were doing.
Faithfuls – (many) people who typically used social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
Functionals – (a minority) people who tended to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.
Paul Bradshaw has now posted some thoughts on his collaborative Twitter review of Here Comes Everybody. I was interested by his response to Dave Lee in which he says: "Dave was mistaking Twitter for a pure publishing platform. What I discovered was this: it was about a conversation, not a publication."
He obviously has a point, but the exchange highlights how hard it is now to distinguish between conversation and publication. Part of me felt uncomfortable reading and commenting on a dialogue between Twitterers but at the same time they had chosen to hold their conversation in a public place.
Maybe Paul gets closer to the real distinction when he observes: "A blog post is more ‘finished’ than a series of Twitter tweets. I didn’t have to worry as much about structure or what to leave in or out - if I felt I was reading an important point, I twittered it. If it sparked off a thought or example of my own, I twittered it...."
Leaving aside the frequently made (and often justified) criticism that too many blog posts are anything but 'finished', this gets closer to the point; if they are searchable and publicly accessible, Tweets are published, but the essential difference is lies in the degree of completeness.
I don't suppose any journalist ever believes they have 'completed' a story...
Two really valuable resources emerged this week, both of which should be particularly interesting to PR students.
Richard Bailey and team have launched the online edition of Behind the Spin magazine with a first issue that looks at public affairs. Part of me believes that magazines should be on paper and I do mourn the loss of the 'proper' publication but there are many strengths to the new format. So read and contribute! The more people who get involve, the better it is going to be.
At the same time, Robert French, of Auburn University, Alabama, has set up a social networking site for PR students and educators called PROpenMic. Judging by the rate at which people are joining this promises to be a very useful platform for anyone looking for internships and study abroad opportunities.
If pressed very hard I might admit to having friends who Twitter but I remain fairly resistant. OK, I use Facebook updates mainly to tell students where I am (and to grumble, of course) but as I am not great on small talk in real life I can't see why anyone should be interested in micro-updates on my thoughts and movements. If anything my position hardened during the EuroBlog Symposium when a hardcore of enthusiasts put Twittering ahead of actually listening to the presentations and debates. An old-fashioned part of me thinks it is socially rude but more importantly, I don't think it is constructive; if a presentation is worth listening to and reflecting on, and you can't do that if you are talking to other people.
All of which should make me treat with great scepticism Paul Bradshaw's announcement that he is going to spend tomorrow Twittering a real-time review of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody. But at the same time, I have a great deal of respect for Paul and am intrigued to see what he makes of this experiment.
And I can't escape the fact that although I have made many mentions of Everybody, here, and in presentations and lectures, I haven't actually written anything of any consequence; so much for the power opf considered reflection.
This is for my MAC266 PR Strategy students who got rather grumpy when their journalism colleagues responded to their book review pitches...
It was produced for the Public Relations Society of America's National Capital Chapter's 2007 Annual Thoth Awards Gala; apparently "These Mac/PC Spoof Commercials personify the battle between Public Relations (PR) and Journalism (and the Media/Press)."
Stephen Davies has just taught me soemthign interesting about what he calls blogger outreach. Like me, he had received an Xda Orbit phone, and like me he was wondering exactly why... In the grand scheme of things we attract relatively small volumes of traffic (and PR Blogger is a lot more popular than Mediations); even if every single Mediations reader bought an Orbit 2 for themselves, their friends and family, it wouldn't chnage the world. And few if any of the people I meet are going to covet an Orbit 2 just because I have one...
Then Stephen looked at his logs - and discovered he was getting a lot of hits from people searching for Orbit 2. So he checked Google himself. Try it - you will quickly come to Stephen's post, and then to Neville Hobson's posts.
In a comment to Stephen, Amelia of VCCP explains:
"As the agency Planner on this I can certainly tell you that the Search element was central to our thinking. At VCCP sometimes we talk about “the world according to Google…” and I think that is right. Part of our measurement evaluation centres on just this.
"What is hard to know though, unless individual Bloggers share back-end data, is how popular a specific blog post is. With Cocoon we never asked for it, we were very very conscious of not over-stepping the boundaries at all but I wonder whether maybe we should be asking if people would be willing to share any of this?"
If you couldn't make it to Brussels last weekend for Euprera's EuroBlog2008 Symposium, there is video on You Tube and comment on the EuroBlog blog. Lots of background, including papers and powerpoints are being gathered on the EuroBlog wiki.
EuroBlog has come and gone. And it is the gone that I am thinking about... Three packed days, old friends and new faces, some fascinating presentations and many stimulating conversations. As expected, almost every element of the Brussels Symposium highlighted sharp contrasts between the perspectives and objectives of the participants; naturally, there was a split between practitioners and academics, but also clear distinctions in culture, notably but not only between USA and Europe and a sometimes barely supressed tension between those who thought they understood social media and those they thought don't.
Personally, there were times I felt my position was in the centre of the debate, a fertile ground where several conceptions overlap; that along with a handful of other people, I grasped the implications of social media for public rerlations and could therefore accommodate the aspirations of theory whilst being alive to the realities of practice.
Then, maybe five minutes later, I was feeling terribly lonely and confused; am I the only person who thinks like I do? How can I disagree to a more or less significant extent with almost everyone here (not least some of my closest colleagues)?
In the event, I spent quite a lot of the Symposium is the 'lonely and disorientated' frame.
Being there, I was convinced that the important thing was to make sure EuroBlog isn't 'gone'.
Practically, that means setting up a EuroBlog wiki (please help!). But it is more about trying to collate, assimilate and order the information and ideas in a way that helps participants, real and virtual, to do something constructive with the blizzard of ideas Brussels generated.
For some, including Neville Hobson, the real action was on Twitter. For others, the true worth of the Symposium would only be measured by academic papers that might take months, even years, to emerge. Lack of timeliness, combined with a dearth of diverse and meaningful case studies, were valid criticisms of the academic approach.
But I also fear that the debate that moves this quickly has only limited value. The most effective contributors will be those who assimilate ideas in relatively focused areas and go on to produce widely accessible outputs.
After months of planning, it is hard to believe that the EuroBlog2008 Symposium begins on Thursday! We have just posted the final programme on the EuroBlog site and it looks pretty impressive!
Personally, I am very much looking forward to (and very nervous about!) giving a presentation with Steve Rubel, David Weinberger and Neville Hobson. I am looking at PR and social media, five years back, five years on, trying to assess the changes, and trying to predict what we will be saying at EuroBlog2013!
The speed of change has been quite phenomenal. As ever, Constantin's New PR Wiki has been an invaluable resource, and it has been truly fascinating to see how our thinking has moved forward.
I have suggested to Steve and Neville that neither of them could have begun to predict the extent to which what we now call social media would have on their working lives. Any thoughts Mediations readers have would be most appreciated!
Like any good academic, my response to the "What comes next?" question, and the "What does it all mean?" question will be unequivocal - we need to do more research! Feel free to make add your own speculations, and to mention points I might make to Steve, David and Neville.
If you haven't booked already, we still have a few places left - but be quick!!!! If you can't make it to Brussels, thanks to Philippe Borremans and his team at Blackline, you can watch live conferece footage here...
Here's how I should have written the previous post: my favourite PR blogger, Tom Murphy, interviewed on Sarah Stimson's Offer and Acceptance. Excellent stuff (and very useful for my keynote at EuroBlog next week...).
Proud to see the name checks for Delivering the New PR - and for Richard Bailey, whose PR Studies sets the standard for everyone else trying to both teach and understand social media.
An obvious question for people taking my Intro to Weblogs module is "Why blog?" The obvious answer from my perspective is "Because you get more out of it than you put in." In PR Strategy we are looking at persuasion, and recognising that self-interest is one of the most powerful forces PR can harness.
Here's how it works for Mediations. Yesterday, I was writing a lecture on wikis, and drew heavily on Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody (review copy sent to me because I blog); Chapter 5 Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production is particularly strong and Shirky's observations around notions of co-operation and user-generated content will help in many other contexts.
I then started thinking about a project that forms the spine for my Level 2 PR Strategy module, a campaign to persuade 18 to 25-year olds to read books (the teaching will soon be wiki-based). As well a newspaper-based promotion, we are looking at social media channels and, right on cue, Mediations reader Lee Henshaw emailed with details of his new novel, Queer Fish in God's Waiting Room. Lee works for Silence Advertising and is using a range of techniques to get his book noticed, including this You Tube video and putting a big chunk of it online here.
Rather than do the hard work myself, I have also used materials created and distributed by fellow bloggers, for example to explain social bookmarking.
Oh, and my gruelling programme of academic begging and borrowing was interrupted by the arrival of a shiny new Xda Orbit 2 phone from O2, sent to me by Steve Cater of VCCP; I will try hard to make sure it doesn't go the same way as my Cocoon. The Xda has sat nav!!!!
Thanks to Penguin, I am reading an uncorrected proof copy of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, which will be one of the most compelling and influential social media books of the year. The improbably named Clay Shirky has done a splendid job of bringing together a wide range of themes into a highly readable whole that effortlessly manages to be much more than a sum of its parts.
Shirky has a piercingly sharp eye for the spotting the illuminating case studies - some familiar, some new - and using them to energise wider themes. His basic thesis is simple: "Everywhere you look groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, take some kind of public action." The difference is that today, unlike even ten years ago, technological change means such groups can be form and act in new and powerful ways. Drawing on a wide range of examples Shirky teases out remarkable contrasts with what has been the expected logic, and shows quite how quickly the dynamics of reputation and relationships have changed.
The thesis is not new but the achievement of Here Comes Everybody is in bringing together the argument in a focused and accessible way. Put simply, it is an exciting read that demands serious attention.
I have just tried to download a useful sounding programme - from a link in a novel. Unfortunately for me it turns out to be for Macs only and I have a PC. Here's the quote, from a rather good book called The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Steig Larsson:
"The family was so extensive that he was forced to create a database on his iBook. he used the Notepad programme (www.ibrium.se), one of those full value products that two men at the Royal Technical College had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the Internet. Few programmes were as useful for an investigative journalist."
One of the essay topics I set my Media Ethics students was:
Find a (newspaper) article... that features amember of the public who has not sought the media spotlight and examine the ethical arguments for and against exposing their action, character and personal circumstances to wider scrutiny.
On Wednesday Peter Burkhill was just another airline pilot.
I believe that to write well you have to read well. The two skills go hand in hand. It would be surprising to hear a musician say they didn't listen to music but is not unusual for PR students to say they don't read fiction, or any other books that aren't directly related to their course.
This worries me on many levels. First of all, they are missing out on a great deal of fun; the more you read, the more you enjoy reading. Secondly, PR is a discipline that requires creativity and the ability to draw on a wide range of sources and interests is a distinct advantage. Thirdly, good employers tend not to believe that spelling and grammar are optional extras, and the best way to improve written English is to be continually exposed to good written English. (I was delighted that in his excellent talk to Sunderland L1 students, Stephen "PR Blogger" Davies explained that the reason his writing has improved over the past few years is because he read other people's blogs and learnt from them.)
Being able to write is like playing music; there are rules you must learn but you also have to develop an ear for rhythm, cadence, pitch and tone. Yes, some people are naturally better at writing than others, but these things can be learnt, and the way to learn is to immerse yourself in good writing.
To encourage reading I am strongly tempted to introduce a Book Club into my Level 1 PR classes this year. Each session I want someone to tell the class about the book they are reading; it can be fact or fiction - anything as long as it isn't on a module reading list.
I mentioned this before Christmas but was floored by a very sensible question from someone who said she did not read regularly and wanted me to suggest a good novel. My mind went blank.
Help please. Any ideas of novels guaranteed to captivate young people who aren't convinced of the joys of good fiction....?
The Grey Cardigan's Dispatches from down table are more often than not the best bit of UKPG but even he would find it hard to top a gem contained in Tim Bullamore's obit on the doyen of obit writers, Hugh Massingberd.
Massingberd's relationship with (The Daily Telegraph) management was not always an easy one. After one 'ideas' meeting he was instructed to find some younger subjects for his page.
Stuart Bruce has just tagged me in the "My week in media meme" so rather than think about the desperately needed relaunch of Mediations, or mourn the departure from the blogosphere of one of my favourites, No Copy, here goes.....
What I've read
I have the Guardian delivered at home, along with the Sunday Times and Observer, and we get all the nationals delivered to our lecture rooms so I try and read most of them, most days. I subscribe to UK Press Gazette, and haven't got round to cancelling Uncut (it makes me feel old). I read The Sun online most mornings and my home page is BBC News.
My favourite medium is books, and am usually reading one PR/ ethics text, one novel and one non-fiction/ non-work title at anyone time. At the moment that means Jacquie L'Etang's new Public Relations: Concepts, Practice and Critique; Blair Unbound, by Anthony Seldon (essential reading for anyone who has waded the Campbell's Blair Years, Stuart); and Kalooki Nights by Howard Jacobson. I am also halfway through the Martin Beck series of Swedish (Marxist) crime novels - splendid.
What I've watched
I watch very little TV except Manchester United and Newsnight. I enjoyed Nirvana Unplugged on DVD (Christmas present), and am desperate to add to my collection of Kurt Wallander DVDs.
What I've listened to
Unless it's for football, my radio dial seldom leaves Radio 4. Today is a vital part of waking up and I seldom miss Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time or Laurie Taylor's Thinking Allowed. The 70mile return drive to Sunderland gives me a lot of time for music... My Desert Island Discs for 2007 were: Soul Kitchen, Patti Smith (Twelve); Here Comes That Day, Siouxsie (Mantaray); Shine, Leszek Mozdzer and Adam Klocek (Live in Warsaw); 21st Century Schizoid Man, Crimson Jazz Trio; Tuesday Wonderland, Esbjorn Svensson Trio; Amiina, Kurr; Walking the Dog, John Cale (Live Circus); and Locomotive, Stan Tracey and Bobby Wellins.
Where I've surfed
Naturally I subscribe to a host of PR blogs, but I also enjoy The Local, a slightly irreverent (English) take on Swedish news and can spend hours tracking cycle rides on Google maps.
I am tagging all the students who are about to take my MAC250 social media module....
I have just finished reading Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll, by David Jennings - How Digital Discovery Works and What It Means for Consumers, Creators and Culture.
The best lectures are spontaneous, when students take the topic off into interesting new areas and start to teach me things I hadn't realised before. That's why Wednesday's Level One session on evaluation was great...
I always begin a powerpoint with a picture... usually something silly. This time it was a couple of rabbits, rom a children's book...
I had actually forgotten where it came from but somebody recognised it, saying it was something about love.
How do you measure love, I wondered? Just as clients want to evaluate PR, we all want to know whether that special person loves us (are we getting a return on our investment?!?)... Perhaps predictably, the first suggestion was "Count how many times you have sex." Good start - this is something quantifiable and countable - and probably at least as useful as Advertising Value Equivalence.
The group is a resource for anyone interested in the conference and the conference themes but also an experiment to see how a group of people who know quite a lot about PR and social media can use Facebook. Please join, please contribute, and please put forward your ideas for how the group can be developed. I would be particularly interested to hear about case studies of successful and innovative PR uses of Facebook - anybody fancy writing a paper on this theme?
Following on from Stuttgart and Ghent, I am delighted to be part of the programme commitee for Euprera's EuroBlog2008 Spring Symposium, which will be held in Brussels in March. The three-day event, Social media and the future of PR: New ideas, new research, new business, will bring together researchers and practitoners to explore the possibilities and realities of what I am still prepared to call the New PR.
By identifying and presenting examples of best practice, empirical investigation and new concepts for modelling and understanding the rapid changes in relationship management, EuroBlog 2008 will shape the agenda for social media discussion.
Papers are invited which address these questions: • How can academic research lead and support the ways in which practitioners embrace social media? • How should academics approach teaching social media (both in terms of course content and pedagogy)? • What are the societal implications of social media (democracy, accountability, privacy)?
We are also inviting contributions that will inspire new thinking on the four key themes. • Five years on: Has the New PR delivered on its promises? • Five years ahead: What will the future look like? • Social networking: Personal privacy and the public sphere. • Changing our minds?: Value exchange and the psychology of social networks.
Imaginative and iconic architecture is a tried and trusted technique for putting a less fashionable location on the map. Here in the North East we have two brilliant examples in the Sage and the Angel of the North. Both may seem bold and striking - but they are positively pedestrian compared to a project planned for Vitthaten in the north of Sweden....
Can this be real? A 150 foot high elk, containing restaurants, concert halls and conference suites? Have I been hoaxed? You decide...
I am in Warsaw listening to Ken Rabin talking about Learning from mistakes: Blunders in multinational campaigns.... selling the United Nations in Cincinatti, selling Michael Dukakis (in a tank).. and arguing that the media are the natural enemies of PR.
Highlight of the morning was Andrew Lawrence, Hill and Knowlton CEO for Europe, Middle East and Asia, identiying five trends for the future of PR. They were, in reverse order, 5: Destination Brands (Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai); 4 Energising Multinationals - wll the giants comng out of Russia and Asia embrace our ideas about communication? 3: 'New' Corporate Responsibility - like it or not you client will be judged on its behaviour; 2: Digital Dilemmas - our channel is to become channel neutral,not favouring one above another but choosing the the most relevant to audience and message; and top of his list... 1. Value Challenge - positioning PR as a strategic business discipline which delivers business impact.
Issue 18 of the UK's 'public relations magazine for students and young practitioners', to be published in March 2008, will have two main themes:
Public Affairs (eg lobbying, political PR, issues management)
PR for transport (bicycles, cars, planes, trains, space rockets etc)
Proposals to write articles on these themes are welcome now. We also welcome articles on perennial themes such as careers in PR and the value of a PR degree. As well as writers, acting editor Richard Bailey is looking for photographers and editorial assistants.
You can contact Richard via the comment box on his highly recommeded PR Studies blog or by email r[dot]s[dot]bailey[at]leedsmet[dot]ac[dot]uk.
"The popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace is driving unusually strong growth in public relations business, as companies tap into the power of recommendation, according to Sir Martin Sorrell, head of advertising group WPP."
Interesting story from The Guardian (thanks, Chris).
It was no big surprise to hear the head of corporate comms for Google in the UK, Ireland and Benelux explaining "How the Internet Changes Everything ... and that includes PR." But some Leeds Met students listening to D-J Collins last night will have been struck by how firmly much of his advice was grounded in 'traditional' PR values.
Yes, he flourished some mind-bending facts about how quickly technology is evolving, not least in our capacity to store and access information, but his central theme was that PR is about simple, effective, and honest communication.
Do your homework, identify your messages, project them with enthusiasm and clarity: "If the message is strong enough people will hear."
Citing Foreign Secretary David Miliband's Flickr site as an example ("If you were DM why wouldn't you do it?") D-J urged PR to embrace and experiment with social media: "You can ignore it or you can explore it."
Straightaway he attached a health warning about internet transparency (much of it driven by search enginesd like Google), arguing that the old PR maxim that if you tell something confidently enough people will believe it no longer works in the New PR.
"Be honest and open. The internet is forcing those who were prepared to tell a lie to wise up."
That's changed, but the need for the world's most visible internet brand to engage with traditional media relations hasn't. "Newspapers still matter and will continue to matter for many years to come."
D-J said he spent far more of his time talking to traditional journalists than to bloggers, adding: "You can never read enough news."
The important thing is to really understand what you are talking about: "The better you understand the compexity of the product the better you sell the story.
Essentially his advice to those looking to forge a career in PR was keep it simple.
"You are going to have to counsel people who have no experience of PR. You are going to have to be very confident and concise. The people who succeed are the people who call out their counsel down on one page.
"Unless you can boil it down to two or three things, you shouldn't be counselling them."
Welcome to the New PR: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.....
I have managed to add a new dimension to the 02 Cocoon seeding programme... by losing mine. I wonder if whoever 'finds' it will blog about their experience?
Would I normally write a post about getting a new mobile phone? Although I sometimes stray from Mediations' declared content of Journalism + Public Relations + Ethics (with cycling a frequent diversion) the focus hopefully is still reasonably tight and readers (friends?) know what to expect.
So the answer is probably no, I wouldn't. So do I review the Cocoon, just because I was sent one and feel some sort of obligation? If it had come out of the blue, the answer is relatively easy, but I did accept the pitch from Peter Kwong at VCCP, so maybe the obligation becomes rather stronger.
And I am interested in watching how the blogger outreach campaign develops.
The next question is probably "Am I in any way qualified to review a mobile phone?" Well, yes and no.
Yes, because I use one and as I am on perhaps my fourth, I do have experience of choosing and using them.
No, because I have taken little interest in them, and have no real idea as to what a discerning user should expect from a mobile in Autumn 2007; I am quite enjoying setting different songs as ring tonmes from different people, but I don't know whether this is a brilliant new feature unique to the Cocoon or in fact every time I phone a friend their mobile starts playing Rod Stewart's Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? (This is definitely my favourite feature as I have just realised that, by definition, the caller is unlikely ever to hear the song I have chosen for them... mischief beckons).
So does my ignorance matter? Is VCCP being clever in side-stepping 'real' reviewers and targeting naive, impressionable amateurs who will be entranced by the shiny newness (and may also be thinking 'If I play the game this time what comes next?)" If we are talking about technical knowledge I clearly fail the test of competence that should underpin ethical decision-making. But, then again, as a journalist I reviewed and reported on hundred things I knew virtually nothing about...
The nub of the question seems to be, has VCCP bought publicity on Mediations by giving me a phone? And to a large extent the answer has to be yes. Is this wrong? I am sure some people would say it was. But why? I can see strong arguments against celebrity PR which demands copy approval and have sympathy for newspapers that refuse free travel trips etc (although I took them myself!).
The answer is quite complicated (and that is often not a good sign in ethics!). I am going to suggest that it is OK to fulfill the obligation I made my accepting the pitch on the grounds that I am using it to examine an ethical dilemma in a social media context. What a convenient answer!
But I would go on to say that this is definitely not a pitch for more consumer goods - not least because this is not a consumer goods blog and any more posts about new equipment would alienate my already small readership. (Anyone wanting me to write about long distance cycle rides should not be put off by this...).
As for the Cocoon, I like it because it has a 2GB music player which is sufficient for most journeys and it is smaller than either my existing phone or my Creative Zen mp3 player, never mind both of them. And I like having Marquee Moon as my ringtone. That's cool...
Nick Davies seemed to surprise a few people with a scathing critique of modern journalism which he characterised as Flat Earth News. Certainly he highlighted some pretty shabby practices in a curate's egg of a book - one minute I was right behind him, the next shaking my head in frustration...
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