January 10, 2012 12:16 pm : Comments 000
Back in 2005, I read a profile in the New York Times about Ted Wells, the high-powered Washington attorney retained by former Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby to spearhead his defense against charges of obstruction of justice, among others. The article mentioned that Wells, an African American, had attended the College of the Holy Cross. This struck me as an unusual choice given the racial tensions of the late 1960s.
STARKMAN has quite an affinity for Holy Cross, as we have a longstanding relationship with the institution that has yielded numerous impressive interns who now work for us full-time (see here and here). Our other Holy Cross connection is through our friend and client Stan Grayson, the vice chairman and chief operating officer of M.R. Beal, the nation’s leading and oldest minority-owned investment bank. Grayson attended Holy Cross on a basketball scholarship and was the first African American basketball player inducted into the school’s sports Hall of Fame. He also was the first African American to head the municipal bond team of a major Wall Street firm.
So, when Grayson told me that he and Wells had attended Holy Cross together and remain close friends, I told him I found it interesting that a college that had virtually no minorities at the time had yielded two trail-blazing African Americans. He replied that there were actually five such men in his class that went on to great achievement in their fields. Their other classmates were Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice; Edward Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and Eddie Jenkins, a running back with the legendary 1972 undefeated Miami Dolphins.
Grayson then told me the story about Reverend John Brooks, then a professor of theology at Holy Cross who, in the days following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., set out to recruit African American students to the college in keeping with his shared belief in the rightness of equality and the need for an integrated society. Grayson readily credited Father Brooks for the success he and his classmates achieved. To be clear, Holy Cross’ early attempt at integration wasn’t without incident. Grayson and other minority students at the time experienced both overt and subtle racism on campus, culminating in a walkout, but they eventually persevered.
The story of Reverend Brooks’ mission and message was quite extraordinary for the times, and I felt strongly that the story should be told to a broader audience. And, when I pondered the universe of reporters who would likely appreciate the importance of the story, only one reporter came to mind: Diane Brady.
Having spent more than three decades interacting with journalists of all stripes, I can say with considerable authority that Brady is pretty much in a league of her own. Her credentials speak for themselves: stints at Wall Street Journal and Canada’s Maclean’s before joining Businessweek, various national and international awards, and a board member of the Overseas Press Club. While there are other journalists with similarly impressive accomplishments, there are few, if any, journalists who rival Brady’s integrity, fairness, and compassion.
I’ve known Brady (a fellow Canadian) for more than a decade and have closely followed her work. Her hallmark is getting her subjects to trust her and open up, and her stories are always chock full of anecdotes and telling quotes that allow readers to draw their own conclusions. I’ve never known Brady to take a cheap shot, and I defy anyone to find even a hint of bias in her stories. Recipients of less-than-flattering profiles from Brady no doubt deserved them.
When I introduced Brady to Grayson, I was confident she would readily appreciate the story of Reverend Brooks. But, getting Brady interested in doing the story was only half the challenge. Grayson is an incredibly modest and humble guy, and I quickly learned that Wells is as well (and, for that matter, so are the more than dozen Holy Cross grads I know; humility seems to be a core value of all Holy Cross alumni). Grayson and Wells were initially reticent about being profiled but, over a steak dinner one night, agreed to do so after I appealed to their loyalty to Reverend Brooks and assured them that Brady would accurately and fairly profile his magnificent career. After meeting with Brady, Grayson and Wells were sold and subsequently convinced Reverend Brooks and their other classmates to speak with her as well. Brady’s resulting story that ran in Businessweek in March 2007 speaks for itself; she was indeed the right person to tell the tale.
Magazine space restrictions being what they are, however, there was still much to the story yet untold. So, Brady decided to give the full story of the men, the times, and the mentor the full airing they deserved. The result is Fraternity, a fascinating book that chronicles Father Brooks’ recruitment and mentoring of five exceptional African American college students who achieved considerable success because of his influence and guidance.
Brady’s inimitable style and reporting talents are the foundation of the book’s success, as is the fact that she possesses the same character and humility as the individuals she profiled. Clearly, this was a book that no other journalist could have written as adeptly, and we warmly congratulate Diane on its publication.
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August 8, 2011 1:58 pm : Comments 002
Can you imagine wearing flip-flops and shorts around the office, or writing to colleagues, clients, or customers with “LOL” and “BRB?” A tad inappropriate and rather awkward…right? Maybe not, judging by much of the corporate writing seen on the Internet today. Many companies have turned to online mediums to engage their customers directly, bypassing traditional advertising for social media platforms. And when it comes to grammar, it’s like the old rules don’t apply. Abbreviations, slang terms, fragmented sentences and even made-up words are the bread and butter of today’s corporate online marketer.
Since first learning to string words together into a sentence, teachers and now college professors have steered me away from playing fast and loose with grammar. They’ve imprinted upon me the absolute necessity of suitable sentence structure and precise punctuation in achieving the correct (non-colloquial…) tone in writing. This, they would say dramatically, was to prepare me for the dreaded “real world.”
Coming to STARKMAN this summer reinforced what I learned about using formal language and maintaining the proper tone when communicating with clients. I’ve learned how to craft a memo and a press release into something unique and interesting while still using accepted business language.
However, a significant aspect of my internship here at STARKMAN has involved keeping up with the news on behalf of clients, which means spending quite a bit of time reading a broad range of publications. As a committed member of Generation Y, that means more than getting a little newspaper ink on my hands. I compliment traditional news mediums with online ones, such as blogs and Twitter. All of these sources play an integral role in my daily interactions with the outside world. Twitter has real time news updates that keep me current, and blogs are particularly poignant when searching for opposing opinions on a trending news story or seeing what major industry players are talking about on a given day.
Interestingly – and opposite my expectations – I found social media content from corporations to frequently disobey the golden rules of grammar, punctuation and style. And I’m not quite so sure that’s necessarily a good thing.
For example, consider a common blog and Twitter occurrence: the made-up word. Pronouncing a word wrong and creating a new one in error has happened to everyone – even Sarah Palin (see the completely fictional word ‘refudiate’), but the type of word to which I’m referring is when two words are forcibly smashed together and form a new, (supposedly) more accurate word (such as the word in this title – twiggle: a giggle caused by twitter). This used to be a common tactic of branding professionals to develop names for companies and products, but now it seems everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.
Let’s look at a few self-crafted words for reference:
While it is expected that conversations among friends and family will be peppered with informal words and incorrect usage, corporations used to adhere to some degree of formality in their communication with targeted audiences. But, not anymore. Why is that? An easy explanation may be that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it probably is a duck. Corporations are delegating the role of social media upkeep to Gen Y employees thus ensuring the authenticity of their communication to the target audience.
Without a doubt, however, it also reflects a desire, almost desperation to connect to the everyday reader or, as marketers like to say, “to engaaaaage” their audience. There is so much competition in a consumer-driven world that every entity trying to reach a consumer (or more specifically, their wallet) must differentiate themselves in order to be heard above the din. Corporate lingo and buzzwords don’t resonate well with the everyday consumer, as companies now increasingly recognize. And, as the list above illustrates, even professional journalists are throwing out their AP and MLA Stylebooks in favor of a more relaxed writing style.
So while the made-up word may be silly sounding or even a ridiculous substitute for a perfectly reasonable real word, it pays, literally, to be accessible to all the Gen Y-ers out there with massive consuming power. Because, while I might not know what a Spux is at first, with closer inspection, I realize that a tux made from spandex is equally as ludicrous as the word Spux. I’m able to appreciate the humor and relaxed tone the writer is trying to convey with this type of word. However, my appreciation for this type of humor doesn’t necessarily extend to corporate-to-public communication. While I understand that print publications are fighting to regain the credibility they once had and connect with a new generation of readers, this may not be the route to take.
When readers look to a source for reliable, trustworthy information, they don’t want to feel like the subject of a marketing campaign. A reader wants to know that they are being passed correct information and being taken seriously, not as mere lemmings seeking entertainment value. So while the medium for connecting with readers might be changing, the language should not. A real word can easily take the place of a fictitious one and can create an appropriate tone for a publication or company pursuing a credible image.
Sadly, this means that although its summer for a while longer, leave your flip-flips and “LOLs” at home with your personal life and pull out your loafers. After all, a well-crafted message using strong key words can still make a reader twiggle.
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May 23, 2011 8:03 am : Comments 000
I’m not a life-of-the-party kind of guy, which may explain why one of my simple pleasures on any given Friday night for many years was reading the latest issue of BusinessWeek while drinking a stiff martini. Under the 21-year tutelage of Steve Shepard, the magazine served up an impressive mix of news, features, and insightful analysis written by experienced and collegial reporters who were bent on producing great journalism and not promoting their individual brands. In Shepard’s day, quality journalism actually drove circulation, not social media, Google rankings and the like. Something was clearly working: BW’s readership increased some 40 percent while Shepard ran the show.
Shepard left in 2005 for academia and replaced by Stephen J. Adler, an aloof, Ivy League-educated former Wall Street Journal editor who, it is rumored, was once a front-runner candidate to lead that newspaper. Adler literally drove BW into the ground by diminishing the quality of its journalism and implementing a questionable redesign. When he exited the doors four years later, BW’s value had deteriorated so badly it was hardly worth the paper it was printed on. BW’s longtime owner McGraw-Hill nearly shut it down, but opted instead to essentially give it away to Bloomberg L.P.
Josh Tyrangiel
At the time of the acquisition, Bloomberg had already become the premier U.S.-based business news organization. In terms of collective talent and experience, it has unquestionably surpassed The Wall Street Journal, a feat accomplished in part by poaching a substantial number of that newspaper’s journalists and editorial alumni. Yet despite its experienced in-house stable of capable editors, Bloomberg tapped Josh Tyrangiel, a 37-year-old Wunderkind from Time to be BusinessWeek’s editor and renamed the publication Bloomberg Businessweek.
To fully appreciate the chrysalis-to-butterfly transformation of Bloomberg Businessweek under Tyrangiel’s nearly 18-month reign, you need to understand three things: he had no previous business journalism experience when he took the job; he is, according to his boss Norm Pearlstine, a “true dude;” and he likes to pal around with fellow unabashed “dude” magazine editors.
To his credit, Tyrangiel has restored some of BW’s former excellence. The publication once again is chock full of insightful and tightly written articles, and its overseas business coverage is considerably broader. BW’s graphics are impressive as are its business book reviews, and its iPad app does Steve Jobs proud. Suffice to say, BW is once again as compelling as…well, as compelling as Tyrangiel himself.
That said, readers still want substance over style, and on that front Tyrangiel’s lack of business experience is abundantly clear, particularly in the magazine’s cover stories.
BW last year ran an appallingly naïve profile of Charles Schwab, portraying the founder of his eponymous brokerage as someone who champions the interests of individual investors. While that is how “Chuck” – and his marketing team — like to portray the founder and his company, the facts are very much at odds with the story line, as this story by New York Times reporter Floyd Norris makes clear.
More recently, BW ran a gushing cover story about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, painting her as a sensitive and caring boss who sometimes cries at work and provides “adult supervision” for the company’s young staff. The reporter was so smitten by Ms. Sandberg that he opted to gloss over the not insignificant detail that the FTC will soon decree that Facebook’s privacy policies constituted “unfair and deceptive” practices and the company will be subject to periodic privacy audits. As the story went to press, news was breaking that Facebook had hired Burson-Marsteller to conduct a clandestine campaign attacking Google’s privacy policies without disclosing that Facebook was behind it. Ms. Sandberg, a former Google executive whose responsibilities include communications, is likely tougher and politically more brass-knuckled than BW understands.
As well, some of BW’s articles of late appeal more to stereotypical “dude” sensibilities than individuals looking to gain some business insight. For example, the magazine ran a cover story in February about Ashley Madison, a niche website that provides a venue for men and women looking to cheat on their spouse. The article’s only particular insight was the owner of the site purports to be the consummate family man. The magazine has also recently run articles on the “business” of cougars and lingerie football, and profiled a small 15-store lingerie chain specializing in custom-fitting bras. It’s hard to take seriously a business magazine that refers to Victoria’s Secret as the “Goldman Sachs of ladies underwear.”
I’ve long maintained that mainstream journalism’s declining influence stems from the repeated promotion of failed editors and journalists writing stories to impress each other rather than the readers they serve. Underscoring my point, Stephen Adler, the former BW editor, in February was named editor-in-chief of Thomson Reuters, an even bigger news organization. Fortunately, Mr. Adler just hired former Dow Jones executive Paul Ingrassia, one of the few business journalists with a successful leadership and management track record, to serve as his deputy.
As for Tyrangiel, if he wants BW and the impressive editorial team he oversees to garner the respect they rightfully deserve, it might behoove him to spend more time focusing on the stories truly shaping the economy and the business of business. Leave the “dude”-esque stories to publications like Maxim.
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May 16, 2011 10:04 am : Comments 000
Mainstream media, the tech trades, and the blogosphere are agog covering the story of Burson-Marsteller’s (BM) clandestine anti-Google media pitches on behalf of undisclosed client Facebook, but I’m guessing BM’s John Mercurio still doesn’t get the fuss.
During his earlier career as a political reporter, he no doubt frequently found himself on the receiving end of “you-didn’t-hear-it-from-me-but” calls from politicians, candidates, aides, lobbyists, and the like looking to plant stories that would smear the opposition. So when he jumped to the other side and entered the PR world by joining Burson-Marsteller, that’s the playbook he brought with him.
Mercurio and his colleague Jim Goldman, another newly hooked BM employee fished from the journalism sea (Goldman is a former CNBC reporter), soon learned that what works in the political world doesn’t necessarily translate to the business sector, particularly when public – or soon to be public — companies are involved. There are simply too many constituencies with a real vested interest — investors, employees, customers, analysts, vendors, and regulators, to name a few — for the usual chicanery of politics to prevail. If Mercurio and Goldman didn’t know that when they set out on their secret mission to raise privacy concerns about Google’s Social Circle, my guess is they do now.
The media’s outrage to date has focused primarily on Facebook’s hypocrisy for secretly trying to point a damning finger at Google given its own track record with user privacy transgressions. Despite founder Mark Zuckerberg’s claims that he’s all about transparency, the company is reportedly close to signing a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission for its repeated violations. With the Burson stunt, Facebook was clearly trying to end their ignoble reign as poster child for online privacy violators by dragging Google up to the podium with them.
Despite the industry’s professional code of ethics requiring PR practitioners to reveal sponsors for represented causes and interests, it shouldn’t come as too great a surprise that Burson-Marsteller chose to violate it. While the company insists that Mercurio and Goldman breached the firm’s ethical guidelines, BM got caught doing pretty much the same thing for Microsoft two years ago with respect to Google’s planned acquisition of DoubleClick. Having a code of ethics is the easy part; expecting employees to adhere to it is something entirely different. After all, even Enron likely had a well-written code of ethics in its new employee onboarding package.
The issue of bigger concern is the inevitable adverse consequences when people from the world of politics infiltrate senior corporate communications positions, or in the case of Facebook and Burson-Marsteller, are allowed to run entire companies. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose responsibilities include overseeing communications, is a former Treasury Department Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration. Elliot Schrage, vice president of communications, marketing, and public policy, also is a political veteran. Mark Penn, Burson’s CEO, was a close aide in the presidential campaigns of both Bill and Hillary Clinton.
“Reputation management” has a very different meaning in politics. It’s about swaying public opinion by any means necessary. Politicos and lobbyists spin and leak stories, and political reporters lap it up and keep score. The effectiveness of this constant spinning is measured in news cycles; if you are featured positively in more news cycles than not, you’re ahead. Is it any wonder that Congress and the media are routinely ranked as America’s least trusted institutions?
Accordingly, individuals steeped in politics instinctively see nothing untoward about anonymously casting doubt on a rival. I believe BM’s claim that it was Facebook that insisted it not be identified as the sponsor of the campaign against Google, but I’m highly doubtful that Sandberg and Schrage weren’t a party to the decision.
Moreover, the very cynical side of me suspects that, despite the negative press, Penn, and perhaps Sandberg and Schrage, view BM’s whisper campaign as a huge success. Yes, the disclosure that Facebook was behind the campaign is somewhat of an embarrassment but the fundamental message points have been well reported.
Sadly, the Facebook-BM-Google debacle isn’t an isolated incident of a dubious corporate PR campaign being run by a former politico. Leslie Dach, who held various positions in the Clinton Administration, was the architect of the “Wal-Marting Across America” blog. It was positioned as being penned by a couple of genuine pro-Walmart customer enthusiasts, but was really an initiative of Walmart’s PR firm. That ill-advised campaign ranks among the biggest PR blunders by a major consumer corporation. Dach launched the campaign while working at Edelman, but he’s now Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs. (For more on Dach and his corporate communications activities, read this damning profile in The New Yorker.)
The financial services sector is now turning to politcos for its communications counsel. Citibank recently hired Ed Skylar, a former aide to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, as its head of public affairs, and Goldman Sachs last year retained Clinton aide Mark “Master of the Disaster” Fabiani to help clean up its image. John Thain, CEO of CIT and the former head of the NYSE, has relied on former state department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler for his communications counsel for several years.
All of these companies are in some sort of trouble, whether it be financial, competitive, or reputational. It will be interesting to see the tactics these companies use to turn themselves around.
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August 31, 2010 8:20 am : Comments 000
The maturation of the Internet should have been the golden era of the public relations industry. Prior to the widespread use of the Internet, PR firms had to inordinately rely on the mainstream media to communicate client messages to broad-based audiences. Relying on reporters was a dangerous and often difficult process; journalists controlled the bat and ball and they all too often were reckless and arrogant in how they wielded their power.
The Internet provided an opportunity to level the playing field. The rise of the blogosphere quickly cut the media down to size and exposed their rampant irresponsibility. Mainstream publications and broadcast outlets were held to an unprecedented accountability standard and many reporters crumbled under the scrutiny. An untold number of prominent media stories have been retracted because of eagle-eyed bloggers.
Harnessed correctly, the Internet can be a powerful marketing tool, but it’s also an effective vehicle for fraudsters, flim-flam artists, and for companies with no qualms about using deception and unscrupulous tactics to win over customers. It’s in the best interest of the PR industry to promote and adhere the highest standards of ethics in Internet marketing. The more credible the medium, the more potent its efficacy.
Sadly, the PR industry has contributed mightily to the corruption of the Internet. One of the biggest global agencies was caught years ago for running the “Wal-Marting Across America” blog, supposedly penned by a couple of customer enthusiasts who turned out to have been shills paid by the PR firm. The person responsible for overseeing the Wal-Mart account was recently deemed one of the most influential professionals in the industry, underscoring that there are no material career consequences for dishonest or questionable practices.
Some PR firms also were caught secretly paying off or bribing bloggers with products to post positive reviews, but fortunately a PR blog named “Strumpette” was quite aggressive about exposing the practice and some industry leaders became quite vocal about condeming the practice. While blogger payola has not yet been eradicated, fortunately most recent exposed incidents didn’t involve PR firms.
Nevertheless, some PR firms still can’t resist employing deception as part of their “strategic” arsenal. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission settled charges with a California PR firm for having its employees “pose as ordinary consumers posting game reviews at the online iTunes store, and not disclosing that the reviews came from paid employees working on behalf of the developers.”
Rather than taking the high road and saying the firm settled the matter in support of the FTC’s desire to ensure greater transparency on the Internet, the company’s owner haughtily dismissed the agency’s concerns as a “frivolous matter”, saying they only agreed to settle to save on the cost of litigation. Perhaps most disappointing of all was the disclosure in the New York Times that the deceptive reviews in question were written and posted by interns. Thus, a new generation of PR professionals was taught that deception is an acceptable communications tool. That’s a toxic message to teach impressionable college students interested in pursuing a PR career.
Sadly, there is no shortage of PR firms who will welcome the skill-set these interns acquired. It’s an open secret that other PR firms regularly engage in having employees post reviews on behalf of clients. Let’s hope that the head of the FTC’s advertising practices division successfully eradicates the practice. Now there would be someone I could get behind as deserving of the “most influential leaders in the PR industry” title.
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March 9, 2010 1:36 pm : Comments 000
Much has been written about the changing role and significance of mainstream media and the myriad factors that continue to erode its once-vaunted credibility. Chief among them is, of course, that the field is rife with unethical individuals who fabricate and plagiarize, a trend I wrote about last May when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was caught using prose previously published by a blogger (my take here). Since then, at least two other high-profile cases of journalism plagiarism have emerged, as outlined in this column by New York Times columnist Clark Hoyt.
Another major factor for mainstream journalism’s decline is the profession is plagued with failed leaders who, despite their less-than-stellar track records, continue to hold their senior positions. Mainstream journalism is in desperate need of radical visionaries, yet the industry continues to be led by people who are part of the problem rather than a source for the solution. Is there any other business where failure and myopia is so frequently and handsomely rewarded? If ever there was a single industry that illustrates the concept behind The Peter Principle, today’s mainstream media is it.
Marcus Brauchli, the former managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, is a prime example. Under the leadership of Brauchli and other senior editorial leaders, the Journal went into a near-irreversible economic spiral. A very senior Dow Jones executive confessed to me that the company quite possibly would have gone bankrupt had Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. not come to the rescue. As part of the deal, Brauchli retained a degree of “veto” power over anything Murdoch might want to do with the paper, ostensibly to protect the Journal’s editorial integrity and standards. Once the deal closed, however, Brauchli reportedly received a whopping $6.4 million to go away instead. In this market, Brauchli’s payout is sufficient to finance the hiring of at least 10 reasonably experienced reporters.
Brauchli has since been named Executive Editor of The Washington Post, another newspaper that has suffered a significant erosion of prestige, talent, and national influence. The paper is badly in need of an innovative editorial leader to regain the previous glory it once had under the editorial leadership of Benjamin Bradlee in the late sixties through early nineties. Brauchli is no Bradlee; if he is doing anything of note to save that newspaper, it isn’t readily apparent. Indeed, the newspaper’s one known attempt at, ahem, “innovation” — soliciting lobbyists to pay a hefty fee for exclusive meetings with editors and reporters — was the biggest journalism ethics debacle in recent memory. Brauchli claims he wasn’t told of the pay-for-access program, a possible indication of how he’s regarded by the business side of the newspaper.
Stephen J. Adler, who also held senior editorial positions at the Journal before being named editor of BusinessWeek in 2005, is another example of how journalism rewards failure. BusinessWeek, a once grossly underrated magazine that long eschewed gourmet sizzle for solid meat-and-potatoes reporting and analysis, badly stumbled under Adler’s four-year leadership. Under his tenure, the weekly magazine essentially became the Reader’s Digest of American finance, replete with oversized typeface, condensed stories, and bulky photos and graphics that badly reduced the magazine’s news hole. The magazine was on the brink of failure when Bloomberg picked it up for next-to-nothing last fall. Adler resigned shortly after the deal was announced, subsequently moving on to Thomson Reuters where he was named senior vice president and editorial director of its Professional division. Since the sale, BusinessWeek is fast returning to its previously high editorial standards, which is to Bloomberg’s great credit.
The disturbing state of journalism leadership was, ironically, further demonstrated recently at a meeting held by a trade group called the Committee of Concerned Journalists who are “worried about the future of the profession” (I guess non-members belong to the Association of Reporters Who Don’t Give a Damn). As reported by Fox Business News Senior Correspondent Charles Gasparino (Full disclosure: Gasparino is a longtime friend of mine), the high-minded committee last week held a seminar to breast-beat themselves for their failure to warn the public that the U.S financial system was on the brink of collapse.
Hank Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary and CEO of Goldman Sachs in the period leading up to the economic collapse, gave the keynote address. If anyone there could have shed valuable light on the subject, clearly he was the one. However, according to Gasparino, the “concerned” journalistic luminaries on the panel, including Fortune editor Andrew Serwer and New Yorker media writer Ken Auletta, never availed themselves of the opportunity to ask Paulson the tough questions about his own failure to anticipate or prevent the economic collapse.
Hmmm…just a wild guess here, but reporters who don’t act like reporters could have something to do with the professional pickle they collectively find themselves in.
Personally, I don’t buy into this notion that reporters should have been able to predict the financial meltdown. It takes unabashed arrogance for journalists to believe that they are so well-steeped in economics and high finance that they can possibly forewarn the nation of a pending financial collapse. They are on the sidelines, not in the game itself. Most business journalists tend to mime conventional wisdom of the day, which explains why the leaders of Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco were heralded in newspaper and magazine cover stories before those companies blew up. Journalists would serve their audiences best if they reported as many informed perspectives as possible, rather than spew out their too often misinformed and biased opinions about the companies and subjects they supposedly objectively cover. As for the prescience of mainstream journalism about Goldman Sachs and Paulson, check out this fawning profile that Fortune published in 2004.
According to a study by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, less than 30 percent of Americans believe what they read in the mainstream media. That’s a fairly sobering statistic, and one that the Committee of Concerned Journalists should be focused on rectifying above anything else. Sadly, absent a real change in the vision, mindset and competencies of the bold-faced names that occupy the upper echelons of the business, mainstream journalism will likely only continue to go downhill.
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January 7, 2010 1:34 pm : Comments 000
Much has been written and speculated about the dire state of the mainstream media, both in terms of its financial condition and declining ethical standards. If you ask me, much of the current financial troubles can be attributed to industry leaders’ death grip on their widely held misperception that citizen bloggers can’t produce good content and that their own reporter’s work is vastly superior simply because they went to j-school.
An egregious example of this misplaced and often smug superiority was evident in this blanket statement made in a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Peter Kann, the former Dow Jones chairman who nearly drove that company to ruin:
“The Internet is not filling news vacuums either. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online sites and blogs that claim to provide news, but virtually none of them even pretend to pursue the traditional news role of newspapers, which is to invest in professional staffs dispersed around a community and across the country or the globe to cover, analyze, and only then comment on, events. Actually, all they do is comment.”
Yes, the Internet is indeed filled with wanna-be journalists and mischievous trolls who simply publish trite pablum or grossly reckless commentaries simply for the sake of getting noticed or causing a stir. But mainstream publications produce more than their share of irresponsible drivel as well, such as this “investigative” article published in the San Francisco Chronicle or this doozy published in the Orange County Register.
The American public clearly isn’t impressed with the content produced by mainstream media: According to a September Pew Research survey, just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. But hey, even Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters like Kann apparently don’t have to let the facts get in the way of a good argument.
In truth, many of today’s bloggers are increasingly establishing themselves as authoritative sources of news and commentary in a variety of industries. Blogging is not a mere trend; its advent has proven to be a significant mile marker in the evolution of mass communication. Any organization that believes otherwise is deluding itself. Brett Snyder, who pens the “The Cranky Flier,” airline industry blog, best personifies the new breed of blogger who most threaten the survival of mainstream journalism.
I’ve closely followed Snyder’s work for the past two years. A former industry insider and self-professed “airline dork,” he is wise to the industry’s shenanigans and isn’t afraid to call them on it. Brett’s readers also are remarkably well-informed and civil in their comments on his observations. If you want to understand the airline business, “Cranky” is truly a must-read.
As for Kann’s dismissive claim that all bloggers do is comment, sometimes informed commentary is decidedly more valuable and insightful than the original “reporting” trumpeted by Kann. To wit, Snyder’s initial post regarding the crash of the Air France flight from Brazil stood in stark contrast to the speculative reporting of mainstream reporters. He derided the “million different theories” he had seen about what happened, cautioned readers that “none of the theories that keep being flung out there by the media seem to make sense on their own,” and forewarned that the true cause of the crash may never be known. By comparison, among the speculative stories published by the Wall Street Journal were this one, this one, and this one. More than six months later, we still do not know what really happened.
Unlike a lot of mainstream reporters, Snyder isn’t above admitting he might have been wrong, as he recently did in a post discussing Virgin America’s announcement that it posted an operating profit (as he put it himself, he’s “been a harsh skeptic of the viability of Virgin America since the beginning”). When is the last time you can recall a mainstream publication openly admitting without public pressure or the threat of a lawsuit that it may have gotten something wrong?
Snyder tells me that not one mainstream publication has ever approached him about a job. Given that he lives in suburban Los Angeles, which is heavily impacted by the airline industry, you might expect the Los Angeles Times or Orange County Register would be fighting to scoop him up, but therein lies the judgment of the leadership of mainstream publications. Hmm… is it any wonder the owner of the Orange County Register in September filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Blogging about airlines may be his passion but, like everyone else, Snyder needs to make ends meet. To that end, he recently launched Cranky Concierge, an airline planning and travel problem-solving service that I wholeheartedly endorse. Snyder recently figured out a way for me to fly business class from New York to San Francisco on my preferred flights for less than $250. Trust me: the guy knows his way around the system. And if anyone can solve your air travel dilemma, it’s him.
A tip of my hat to you, Cranky. Dork or not, it’s conscientious bloggers like you that should have the mainstream media now reaching for the overhead oxygen masks…
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January 6, 2010 1:42 pm : Comments 000
When I first joined The Detroit News after working for several years as a business reporter at major Canadian newspapers, I was completely taken aback by the comparably low level of editorial concern and legal oversight given to any of my highly critical stories about private individuals. As it was considerably easier to sue for libel in Canada, I had grown rather accustomed to my hard-hitting stories about business executives being subjected to Talmudic scrutiny by a bevy of seasoned editors and legal counselors. At The News, however, my investigative reports pretty much sailed through the copy desk as I had written them.
I suspect the unusually high number of ex-pat Canadians at major U.S. print and broadcast outlets probably has as much to do with the strong caliber of Canadian journalists’ rigorous training as it does with simple geography. Fear of being sued is a tremendous motivator to practice responsible and diligent journalism, and the extra miles Canadian reporters must often go to get their stories published undoubtedly helps ensure that media debacles such as the reckless maligning of innocent individuals like Richard Jewell and Dr. Steven Hatfill happen with a lot less frequency north of the border. Indeed, in Canada even former prime ministers can successfully sue for libel.
But that’s about to change – and not for the better. Sadly, the Supreme Court of Canada recently decided to dismantle some of the safeguards built into libel laws by allowing journalists to cite “responsible communication” as a defense in libel suits. The Court ruled that Canadian journalists can avoid liability if they were “diligent” when trying to verify the allegations. Under that standard, the reporters responsible for destroying the lives of Mr. Jewell and Dr. Hatfill couldn’t be held liable under Canadian law.
In theory, a vigorous and aggressive independent press is healthy for a functioning free society. I agree – in theory. Practice is another matter altogether. Truth be told, the mainstream American media has become a business controlled by profit-driven companies seeking to bolster their bottom lines and staffed by reporters focused more on promoting their brands than pursuing justice, revealing truth, and upholding the profession’s historic role as the Fourth Estate.
Oh, Canada….you’ve truly picked the wrong standard to benchmark.
New York Times reporter Alex Berenson is representative of the moral compass of journalists who remain in the profession: Having orchestrated a highly dubious scheme to gain access to court-sealed documents relating to the controversial antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, Mr. Berenson then balked about publishing a story when one of his cohorts insisted on making the documents widely available to serve the public good. Faced with a choice of serving the public interest or promoting their own, I sadly suspect most U.S. reporters would follow Berenson’s lead. (An outline of Berenson’s largely unknown antics can be found here and here.)
The Supreme Court of Canada should have taken a lesson from Parliament about knowing when to rebuff the prevailing wisdom of its neighbor. Years ago, Canada’s Parliament blocked four of the country’s five major Canadian banks from merging, showing remarkable responsibility and prescience by ignoring the dominant view in the U.S. at the time that “bigger is better” when it comes to financial institutions. Had those bank marriages been allowed, the merged institutions would likely have been badly crippled during the global economic collapse by their combined U.S. exposures. Instead, Canada’s banks remain among the healthiest and safest in the world.
Canada would be similarly wise to prevent the creation of a U.S. style press where the media can publish irresponsible and false stories with wanton abandon and without retribution. Regardless of your political leanings, it’s hard to argue that despite having the most liberal press freedoms in the world, the American public is any more enlightened than their brethren elsewhere in the Western world.
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September 11, 2009 11:42 am : Comments 001
The Internet is typically blamed as the primary reason for the accelerating decline of daily newspapers, but I don’t buy that argument. Quality neighborhood news cannot easily be found on the Internet and a newspaper that is staffed by journalists who understand and respect the communities they cover will always be in demand. Sadly, most daily newspapers don’t appreciate their readers’ interests and values, and accordingly, cannot establish, let alone maintain, a connection to their subscribers. Sometimes the disconnection is so egregious it leads to the publication of appallingly offensive articles.
Mark Whicker, a columnist for the Orange County Register, serves as a poster boy for why daily newspapers are dying. His column in question is so asinine that I’d prefer to just link to it, but I note that sample reader responses under the apology he was subsequently forced to issue are considerably more intelligent, thoughtful, and better written than the column itself. That Whicker’s column made it into print speaks volumes about the editorial leadership of the Orange County Register. The newspaper clearly is in need of some adult supervision.
The company that owns the Orange County Register filed for bankruptcy last week but promised there would be no changes to the newsroom’s operations. If that’s the case, The Register deserves to go out of business.
Herewith is Whicker’s commentary:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/world-won-most-2555260-never-one
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July 24, 2009 10:56 am : Comments 000
The well-worn cliché about the shoemaker’s children notwithstanding, logic clearly suggests that a publishing company whose major asset is the world’s most respected newspaper would know at least a little something about media relations. On any given day, The New York Times receives hundreds – maybe thousands – of pitches from PR people angling to get their client, product, company, or cause included among “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
If any company should appreciate the value of having a clear, credible, and consistent message, it is The New York Times. Remarkably, however, the Times is flailing on the PR front, and its current media offensive is only quickening the fast erosion of its prestigious brand. The newspaper’s editor and spokesperson are publicly lashing out at reporters whose stories question the newspaper’s future and the competency of its publisher with the kind of ad hominem attacks the newspaper regularly hears and knows not to take seriously from the targets of its stories.
The peril of the Times‘ PR offensive was underscored last Friday in “Page Six” of the New York Post. Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis apparently called to complain after the gossip column characterized Mexican financier Carlos Slim as the newspaper’s savior. Earlier this year, Slim had agreed to inject $250 million into the publishing company, for which he will be paid a whopping 14 percent interest. “I think the correct way to refer to Mr. Slim is that he is a shareholder in the New York Times Co.,” Mathis reportedly argued. “And we did a debt transaction with two companies in which he has an ownership position.”
I’m all for taking the offensive and playing hardball with reporters, but the tactic only works if you have formidable facts and credible arguments. CIT, a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy last week, was saved at the 11th hour after agreeing to pay 13 percent interest on its debt injection. It is not unreasonable to assume that a company paying an even higher rate must be in a similarly dire situation. In any case, arguing semantics with the writers of Page Six is a strategy doomed from the get-go, particularly if you represent a company that is a frequent target of its ridicule.
In fairness to Mathis, she may have been pressured by management, or some outside consultant, to make the ill-advised call about their characterization of Slim. Regardless of who was responsible for the decision, it should now be abundantly clear that it was a very bad one. In the end, it merely served to spark the kind of negative attention that the Times presumably wants to avoid (corporate communications isn’t for the faint of heart).
Alarmingly, that bad call to Page Six was not a one-off. Comments Mathis and Times editor Bill Keller have made to reporters at The New York Observer suggest that attacking reporters and media outlets who write critical stories about the Times and its publisher is standard procedure – and the full sum of its PR strategy. The problem is, of course, that that is not really a PR strategy or plan. It’s a bad omen.
The Times‘ future is dependent on whether it can maintain its position as a purveyor of the best original journalistic content available anywhere. Communicating and reinforcing that message should be the driving force behind all the newspaper’s PR initiatives. Given the Times‘ precarious finances, debating whether Slim is a savior or merely an investor is akin to a spokesman for the Titanic arguing in its waning hours that the ship wasn’t sinking but merely taking in some water.
Many companies mistakenly isolate public relations as a separate silo from their core businesses. But effective and authentic PR requires a holistic initiative that integrates a broad range of functions outside of marketing, finance, internal communications, and particularly HR. Mathis can tell reporters outside that the Times‘ finances aren’t all that bad, but its own news staffers are being told the situation is sufficiently dire that they have to take pay cuts and furloughs. That is a significant message misalignment that cannot be dismissed.
If the Times is to have a fighting chance at a winning PR program, it needs a real plan that focuses on promoting, preserving, and reinforcing its superior brand of journalism. Media relations – the effective kind – should be only one component of that effort. Among some tactics for the Times to consider:
Ignore the NY Post
The Post has been trashing the Times and publisher Arthur “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr. for as long as I can remember and nothing the Times can do or say is going to make a difference. We all know that Post owner Rupert Murdoch is determined to have his Wall Street Journal dethrone the Times as America’s most influential newspaper, so he has a vested interest in diminishing the value of the competition’s brand. Michael Vick has a better chance of being named head of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals than the Times does of getting favorable coverage in the Post or any News Corp. media outlet. Accept it and move on.
Don’t Waste Your Time with Michael Wolff and Other “Nattering Nabobs of Negativism”
It’s a waste of time to pursue a “charm offensive” with Michael Wolff and other media pundits who promote their own brands by trashing yours. Most Times readers don’t know who Michael Wolff is, and even if they do, they probably don’t care what he has to say. The only people who take Wolff seriously are other journalists at best. Let Murdoch, who clearly doesn’t have a lot of time for Wolff and his antics, deal with him in his own inimitable way.
Get Bill Keller Media Training — Stat!
Times Editor Bill Keller needs to learn a valuable lesson in media relations: Just because a reporter asks a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it. He discloses way too much about the inner journalistic workings of The New York Times. The Observer should pay him a stipend for all the original material he provides the newspaper’s media reporters.
For a seasoned journalist, Keller can say the darnedest things. To wit: Responding to a question about layoffs, he told the Observer that “it serves no useful purpose to talk about things that are mainly hypothetical.” That’s a pretty incredulous comment coming from an editor whose own newspaper regularly reports and speculates on the hypothetical. As well, he might want to check out some recent Times corrections or this classic before chastising other publications for “mistakes elementary fact checking should have caught.” It’s unfortunate that Vanity Fair’s profile of Sulzberger misstated the number of Times reporters, but at least they spelled the name of your publisher correctly.
As the saying goes, “People who live in glass houses…”
Focus More on the “Nuances” of Times Readers
Amid the Times‘ unprecedented challenge for survival, Keller last month jetted off to Iran so he could better understand the “nuances” of that country. While I understand and respect that Keller wants to preserve his overseas reporting chops, the Times probably doesn’t have much of a paid circulation in that country.
The most successful corporate leaders make a point of actively meeting with current and potential customers. As the editorial leader of The New York Times, it is Keller’s responsibility to meet with readers and potential readers and hear first-hand about their concerns and interests. Traveling to Detroit might not be as interesting as visiting Tehran, but the economic and political turmoil there is quite formidable. Not to mention, the Times offers home delivery in the area.
Stop Telling Readers Who First Reported a Story
With the exception of journalists, the vast majority of readers don’t care one iota which news organization was first to report a story unless it involves something monumental like the Watergate break-in. The Times should stop crediting other media outlets for first reporting stories that it is just covering for the first time; doing so merely creates the impression that you are serving warmed over news. If competing publications want recognition in the Times for being first to report a story, let them take out an ad.
Kill Clark Hoyt’s Column
It’s admirable that the Times feels an obligation to employ someone whose job it is to air the newsroom’s dirty laundry, but in this day and age it’s a luxury you can’t afford. In addition to Fox News and the Post, there are more than enough bloggers looking to call attention to the Times‘ journalistic wrongdoings, and I’m not aware of any evidence that having an ombudsman has a meaningful impact on how reporters conduct themselves. Hoyt’s columns merely serve as a painful reminder that the Times also has its share of ethically challenged reporters and columnists– and endanger the remaining trust readers have in the brand.
Get Your Messages Straight
Accuracy and consistency of message are two of the givens of PR, yet sometimes Mathis has made statements that are subsequently shown to be egregiously wrong. I speak from first hand-experience. And I’m not the only one who has taken issue with the credibility of her statements. (Again, to be fair, Mathis may merely be following orders).
For what it’s worth, Mathis shouldn’t be commenting on editorial matters. There is supposedly a separation between the Times‘ business and editorial sides, and a corporate spokesperson shouldn’t be straddling that division. The newspaper has a “standards editor.” He should be the spokesperson on most editorial matters.
Keep Your Reporters Focused on Producing Great Journalism
I recently had breakfast with a Times reporter whose “to do list” for the day was staggering. Within hours, he was expected to file a story for the International Herald Tribune, do a broadcast interview, and then report on a major Page One story for the following day’s newspaper. Adding to the reporter’s stress was an ever-increasing mandate not to get beaten by Murdoch’s invigoratedWall Street Journal.
What makes the Times America’s most respected newspaper is its ability to provide highly authoritative and original content. Reporters can’t do this if they are expected to rush off and provide interviews for the broadcast networks and videos for the Times‘ website.
Multi-platform journalism is a great concept in theory, but in the real world a journalist can only produce a finite amount of content. Times reporters today are stretched way too thin and are being dragged in competing directions – while being asked to take a pay cut to boot. This is not a sustainable or realistic HR model. Journalists don’t aspire to work at the Times for the opportunity to provide sound bites for Entertainment Tonight.
No More Comedy Central Interviews
After watching the Daily Show interview, even the newspaper must now realize the error of its ways in letting those cameras in. What on earth were you thinking? The show’s stock-and-trade is mocking mainstream journalists and the Times no doubt represented the ultimate target. And make no mistake, Jason Jones hit a bull’s eye.
Sulzberger apparently likes to spout that he is “platform agnostic.” While I don’t know exactly what that means, presumably it has to do with making the Times available to readers via the medium of their choosing. If that’s the case, the Times needs a leader that excels at communicating on all platforms and in diverse interview situations, including comedy shows – like this guy and this guy.
When a company is in a crisis mode, a solid, rational public relations strategy is the compass that helps leadership find its way out of the dark woods. Regrettably, it seems the Times is operating without one.
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