eastwikkers

I Objective – Reporting vs. Commentary

According to a new Zogby poll (thanks to The Future of News for the post):

“The vast majority of American voters believe media bias is alive and well – 83% of likely voters said the media is biased in one direction or another, while just 11% believe the media doesn’t take political sides.”

And no wonder. News programming today often makes little distinction between news reporting and commentary, and the journalist is often as important as the news itself.

But distinctions matter. Journalism can never be truly “unbiased.” By the time we read any news article or watch any news segment, even the most “objective” news has been run through a series of bias filters. Each news department selects which stories to cover and which reporters to cover it. Each reporter selects which aspects of a story to focus on and which details of all possible details to include in the story. And editors make selective changes to fit a variety of criteria.

But recognizing this inherent bias, doesn’t mean we should stop insisting on some objectivity. Journalists can still choose to report mainly on the who, what, when, where, and why, and refrain from subjective assessment. They can still do their best to be fair and cover both sides of an issue, reporting that some people disagree about reported facts, and quoting the subjective assessments of people on multiple sides of an issue. And news programs (and bloggers who report the news) can still make a clear distinction between news reports and commentary.

This distinction is an important one for me because it goes to the issue of trust. With the blurring of the distinction between reporting and commentary, to trust the news, we must place more trust in the news organization (with all its corporate influences), which can then lead to an abuse of that trust in the form of completely subjective reporting that serves only the bias. If we can’t trust the organizations, then we’re left only with individuals – whether reporters, commentators, or bloggers – and many of these have little credibility beyond zeal. Stephen Colbert’s incredible humor and influence come from playing off this so perfectly, and the fact that some people don’t recognize the Colbert irony is a testament to what they are not recognizing in actual news programming.

And it’s a good reminder for PR pros. While subjective assessment (“the leader in…”) certainly has its place, hype-free objective reporting encourages trust and ultimately coverage.

While I’d like to think the Zogby poll indicates healthy skepticism, I fear it indicates growing cynicism about an environment in which persuasiveness comes all too often from celebrity and the amount of noise one makes.

The Green Thing

Our former colleague Giovanni Rodriguez worries that “community” is under stress from commercial interests that would abuse the label. “A fair number of people in my world have wondered if marketers are using the word to whitewash their commercial interests.”

I say, take heart. Unlike fabricated labels such as “Web 2.0,” “community” is a real word with some clear definitions. Web 2.0 was coined to refer to a new generation of web-based services and tools, including social networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies, but was quickly adopted as a catch phrase referring to all sorts of things, including websites, businesses, business models, even completely unrelated technologies. And since few actually knew what it meant and investment dollars poured in, little could be done to stop the flood.

But “community” means something generally understood, and if folks start using it for something that isn’t in the spirit of a community, readers will more easily detect it. At the same time, it’s important not to force this broad term to mean only one type of online community. Perhaps we need to keep a modifier in front of it – something more specific and informative than “online” – so we preserve usefulness of the general term and encourage other types of communities, online and off.

Another word feeling the stress is “green.” Although we can all agree that one definition of “green” is “environmentally sound or beneficial,” agreeing on what is environmentally sound or beneficial is far more difficult—which means “green” can end up meaning just about anything.

We may well have reached a tipping point with support for environmental issues. Tim Dyson is hopeful. Hollywood has gone green. Evangelicals have gone green. And PRWeek is holding its first-ever green conference in San Francisco because “Corporations are going green like never before.” But that may also mean that many other companies will soon turn green with envy and start spending the green to convince everyone they too are going green. So while we may finally be planting the right garden, there will still likely be plenty of weeding to do.

A Simple Deception

Another deception is getting play in this New York Times article (as noted in GMSV today). The problem this time is with Wikipedia. In short, a respected editor who used the name Essjay and was supposedly a tenured professor of religion at a private university and an expert in canon law turns out to be a 24-year-old who attended a number of colleges in Kentucky and apparently has no relevant degree.

Most curious, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales initially defended Essjay, accepting the editor’s claim that he’d hidden his identity to protect himself from reprisals for mediating disputes between Wikipedia contributors. According to the NYT article, Wales also stated that the editor “is now, and has always been, an excellent editor with an exemplary track record.” Wales later reversed himself saying that his “past support of Essjay in this matter was fully based on a lack of knowledge about what has been going on,” which really doesn’t at all explain his initial defense or his reversal.

Protecting ourselves by hiding our identity can sometimes be a smart thing to do, and anonymity is often debated in PR. But anonymity is not the same as deception. If I reveal I’ve chosen not to disclose my identity, then it’s up to readers to choose whether or not to take me as credible. I haven’t deceived anyone. Wikipedia’s Essjay lied about his credentials, pretending to have experiences he never had in order to assume a position of authority. The difference is huge, and it’s hard to see what part of this Wales didn’t get immediately.

And what about lying about one’s identity for career advancement? George Eliot? I don’t think so. Actually it’s closer to the fraud perpetrated by Stephen Glass. Essjay was not writing fiction. He was pretending to be an authority on religion, and he used that authority to mediate arguments. Even if Essjay is as knowledgeable about religion as a tenured professor, his readers should have known the truth about what that knowledge was based on.

This deception sits at the heart of social media and our online interactions. How can we ever know that a person or company we encounter on the Internet is honestly represented?  Initially, we can’t. In the offline world, eye contact, a handshake, a feeling we get when we enter a building all help, but even with these, we are often deceived. As more and more of our lives are conducted online, we’ll need to develop new ways of sensing deception, whether through new technology or through social media mechanisms that allow us to get feedback from the crowd – some of these are already emerging (though how can we be sure they are legit?).

The ramifications for PR are clear. Our weapons against a heightened fear of being deceived – and its consequence, cynicism – are more transparency and less hype, a lesson that needs to be passed on to clients as well.

Getting Emotional About Writing

In Really Bad Powerpoint, Seth Godin suggests a better way to use Microsoft PowerPoint. While I disagree with one of his conclusions (“No more than six words on a slide. EVER”—I don’t like any rule that makes me do math when I’m supposed to be writing) his core point cannot be repeated often enough. As Seth puts it:

Communication is the transfer of emotion.

His focus is PowerPoint, but his message is universal:

You can wreck a communication process with lousy logic or unsupported facts, but you can’t complete it without emotion. Logic is not enough.

And this truth goes far beyond sales, to politics, the law, and even science.

Getting emotional in writing scares many of us. Why? Too much emotion (except for enthusiasm for the boss/product/company) usually gets us into trouble. An angry memo or email can get us fired. Besides, many of us were taught in school by means of blood-red corrections to eliminate emotion from our writing—an unfortunate result of the belief that we can somehow separate our logical being from our emotional being.

But we can’t.

And we shouldn’t try. Instead we need to recognize that everything we write has emotional content for both the writer and reader. Even if we think we’re being completely unemotional (which is different than being objective!) emotion exists. First, writers have feelings about the topic and the intended readers. Not accounting for how we feel about our topic and readers will allow fear, awe, boredom, disrespect, and more to show. And readers have feelings about the topic and the writer. Not accounting for these feelings almost guarantees our writing will have the wrong impact or none at all. Even if we think we’re just listing facts, emotions help us decide which facts to include, their order, and sometimes how we phrase them. And if we’re communicating facts that readers don’t want to read, we need to understand how easy it is for readers to dismiss them—or dismiss the writer—rather than acknowledge them.

All this doesn’t mean that everything we write should drip with emotion. That doesn’t work for most readers in most situations. In fact, we often—due to responsibility or strategy—need to generate a feeling (professional disagreement) different than what we actually feel (outrage). But we do need to acknowledge all the emotion so we can then craft a communication that achieves the desired effect.

More Social Media

Steve Rubel has again called for the elimination of the label “social media.” And again I’ll disagree.

Rubel’s underlying premise is right:

“The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue - be it in video, text or photos - has earned the right to be called media.”

But I disagree with his rationale for eliminating the label:

“It’s like we’re a separate entity from the rest of the so-called “mainstream” journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name. If you use these phrases you're unintentionally perpetuating that myth.”

First of all, mainstream media and much of the public love (or have finally embraced) the social media phenomenon, so the “special dish” is clearly in the main course and there’s nothing “leftover” about it.

More important, we need the label to understand the phenomenon. We come to understand new things by looking at something we already understand (mainstream media) and explaining the differences (the social elements). For this reason, Rubel admits that “the phrases were helpful as the world began to take notice. But now, it’s different. We’ve arrived.” Well, Rubel has arrived. Mainstream media, Silicon Valley, and millions of people around the world have also arrived. But not everyone, and we certainly are not finished understanding how this arrival is changing the world. Imagine trying to write about how media is changing today without using “social media.” It can’t be done. The label is not a buzzword, and it will disappear from current usage slowly. And it will take up permanent residence in history books.

Meanwhile, I propose satisfying Rubel (I hope) by stating clearly that he and all bloggers are part of the media, without any limiting modifier. But I insist on saying that he got there by being very smart about and being a leader in the development of social media.

The press release renaissance

The best way to drive traffic to your blog is to proclaim something dead, useless, irrelevant or wrong. And so it is in this context that I consider all of the recent eulogies to the press release. And while some are predicting its demise, others have responded with ideas for updating the traditional press release to take advantage of the popularity of social media.

The current conversation has been underway for a year or more. Tom Foremski’s February, 2006 post, Die Press Release Die, outlines a modular news release format that would make his job as a journalist easier. Arguably, we are here to serve our clients’ interests, but if we can do that more effectively by making it easier for journalists to cover them, I’m all for it.

Steve Rubel responded to Foremski and others with his March, 2006 post Everything’s a Press Release:

"…everyone's blogging for a reason. Many of us, although not all, are selling something and when we blog it's released not just to the public but to the press as well. So can we stop the blog vs. press release debate? Everything is a press release, even if it's not formatted that way."

I love this post. Steve really gets it, even if he tends to issue his own predictions of doom.  Steve ticked off a bunch of people (though not me), especially those trying to make money in social media, with his provocative declaration that Social Media is No Mo, (see my note above on generating blog traffic.) Steve also blogged on the Death of the Page View

More recently, Brian Solis posted Social Media Kills the Press Release Star, which gets my nomination for Best Blog Post Title in the Ongoing Discussion of the Death of the Press Release.

Brian says the traditional press release is "lame," and it "sucks," but also mentions "in 2006, 50% of IT professionals reported getting their news and information from press releases on the web over traditional publications." While no trendline is offered, this would seem to me to indicate the popularity of the online press release, at least as of last year. I know the pace of change in our industry is accelerating, but based on this stat alone, I would question whether it’s time to pull the plug on something that has such high adoption. Brian also links to an interesting piece on last October’s 100th anniversary of the press release.

The industry has responded to this critical situation as well, with a series of announcements about the convergence of social media and the static electronic press release.

Last year, Edelman announced its Social Media News Release and Storycrafter:

"The social media news release is a next-generation news release that combines traditional and emerging forms of communications. By incorporating social media features such as hyperlinks, social bookmarking, multimedia, comment and trackback, among others, the social media news release serves as a bridge between traditional and emerging communications tools."

I haven’t heard much since Edelman’s announcement and I’m not aware of any plans for large scale adoption, but it’s early. I can only speculate on its slow acceptance (or my lack of awareness thereof). Agencies may be wary of a potentially proprietary standard developed by a competing agency. Or perhaps it’s a great idea, but too radical for adoption right now.

While an entirely new kind of press release may be too "disruptive," enhancements and extensions to the formats of existing press releases may provide a more manageable transition from old to new media. (And by the way, watch the way some clients cringe when they hear a pitch that their product is disruptive. Their customers are not looking for disruption.)

Two announcements this week, from BusinessWire and PRNewsWire, signal what I think the social media news release revolution is going to look like, and it may already be here.

On Monday, PR NewsWire announced:

"All individual press releases distributed through PR Newswire will now include a 'Technorati' button, linking readers to a search result page hosted by Technorati that will display a list of blogs discussing and linking to the news release, and relevant excerpts from those blogs. Once on the search result page, the reader can set up an automatic watch list on Technorati to notify them when any new blog posts are published."

This is a great way to bridge some of the gaps that exist between bloggers and traditional media.

On Wednesday, BusinessWire announced that it would begin embedding links in its online news releases to allow readers to bookmark and share the release with popular tools like del.icio.us Newsvine, Digg, and Reddit

An important part of BusinessWire’s strategy is measurement. "When accessing the company’s NewsTrak feature, clients can monitor the performance of their releases on social media sites, including break-down by service and number of hits." As agencies and clients alike are becoming more interested in measuring the outcomes of social media initiatives, integrated metrics capabilities will be very compelling.

So who do you believe? The argument has become largely one of semantics. Clearly, with the proliferation of social media, tagging and bookmarking the traditional electronic press release is due for an overhaul.

I tend to side with Steve. Everything’s a press release. A recent trend, particularly in larger corporations, is to think about total customer experience – a relatively new way of looking beyond traditional components of a brand strategy, like corporate identity and advertising, to factor every way in which a company connects with its customers. Instead of considering the role of the press release in isolation, it’s time for those of us in the trade to think about the total media experience we are helping our clients deliver.

And if the press release and social media and all this other stuff really do go away, Steve and others can still find work writing obituaries.

Doing DEMO

A week and a half ago, our intrepid Eastwick colleague Erin McCabe led our client Simple Star, purveyor of an entertaining multimedia platform that allows you to easily manage, edit, and share photos and videos, through a launch at DEMO, where each company has six minutes to demo a product to an abundant supply of journalists and venture capitalists. After each DEMO conference, especially in these days of evolving mechanisms for bringing people together, the question gets ask. Does it pay? Is DEMO the right venue for launching a product?

The answer is still a resounding “It certainly can be!” DEMO is a physical and emotional PR challenge.  You’re there for one purpose, to garner mindshare from journalists—well, perhaps you also want to get face time with the crowd of venture capitalists that attend the event—but so is every other company (70 of them at this last event), all of them with “market-changing technologies” (as organizer Chris Shipley described them), and all of them led by “brilliant” or “creative” teams.

So why bother? Because it still works. Simple Star was pleased with the results, having gotten fabulous write ups in the San Diego Union Tribune, Network World, Computerworld, TechWeb, and CNET, and more coverage is coming. Best of all, the many introductions made, even brief ones that did not result in coverage, served Simple Star well on its launch tour last week, and will continue to serve it for future PR campaigns.

If you do opt for DEMO, make sure your six-minute demo goes smoothly. The presenter and presentation should come across as polished—journalists like an accessible company spokesperson—and the demonstration should be free of technical glitches. Also, know your targets and track their movements. Outside of the demo, it’s all about connecting with journalists in the pavilion. It’s important to work efficiently and effectively but without irritating the very folks you want to impress. Standard PR, just more frenetic.

 

Click Fraud and the Golden Age of PR

Check out Steve Rubel’s post on Click Fraud and the source article in BusinessWeek. According to the article, click fraud is “a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes. The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet’s advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo, whose digital empires depend on all that gold.”

Says Rubel: “My take on all of this is that advertising is clearly at a major crossroads. The old model of throwing stuff up there and seeing what sticks is dying. Search engine marketing, while certainly effective, can have its challenges too and clearly can be gamed. Over time, people are going to say “enough.” They’re going to want companies to engage them in conversation before they are convinced they should buy. This is why I believe we’re about to enter the golden age of PR.”

Rubel is right. Unless Google, Yahoo, and others change their practices, the click advertising model is likely to collapse in upon itself. It’s not just about scammed advertisers abandoning the model. Search for an item, say ping pong tables, and you get more links to more tables from more sellers than you can possibly assimilate. It’s unpleasant and intimidating—unless you are already dealing with a select group of trusted retailers.

Which is why Rubel is right that relying purely on search engines will likely be replaced with something more conversational, which paves the way for trust. Still, the “golden age” of PR may be a bit further off than we hope. While many of the experiments in community—and Eastwick is involved in several—are extremely successful and point us in the right direction, companies need to be more tech savvy and invest more time and money to create a community. And while large retailers and tech companies will move more quickly to adopt new models and reap the benefits, new tools and partnerships will be needed to help smaller retailers and non-tech companies to participate.

 

In the Good Old PR Time

“PR in the Internet Age: Same As It Ever Was?” asks BusinessWeek’s Rob Hof while commenting on Robert Scoble’s complaint that Google passed up the blogosphere and briefed only a few, mostly print, news outlets on Google Apps for Your Domain.

Writes Hof: “It does seem ironic that the world’s most prominent Internet company – one that’s specifically trying to get us all to do our work online instead of on the desktop – chose to brief mostly print publications. Maybe I should be glad even Google thinks print matters. But for such an innovative company, the tactic sure looks like a throwback.”

Well, yes, PR is the same as ever. While we often focus on how new technologies are changing the way we communicate and do business, good PR pros will use any technology and any technique they think will be most effective. Doing what’s expected – even if it's usually effective or very cool –  is not required or necessarily the best strategy, and employing a “throwback” can itself generate buzz – witness all the attention Google’s strategy is getting. In fact, by its willingness to comment on everything, the blogosphere continues to create more opportunities not just to innovate but also to experiment.

Take a look at “Street Stunts On The Digital Highway” and the power of blogs to turn a street corner billboard into a media event.

Trading Down

Not too long ago, I got a call from an exec at a very large PR agency.  I knew a great deal about the agency, and had a favorable impression, so I listened.  The conversation started off pleasantly, and was going well, when suddenly we hit a snag.  Without a trace of embarrassment, she suggested that my years at Eastwick --the best in my professional life -- have given me an opportunity to “trade up” and work with a more "elite" firm. I was more amused than offended.  She was talking to a working class Puerto Rican from the Bronx who fought his way into an elite college; I’ve heard worse expressions of class and privilege, and I have learned -- the hard way -- that elite does not mean good (not always, and not often enough). She had just failed to "read her audience," as people in my profession like to say.  But more than that, I was reminded why I was sitting behind a desk at a smaller agency, and not hers.  For me, working at an agency like Eastwick was a deliberate choice -- the culture, the values, and yes, the size, were just right.  I’m a start-up guy, and Eastwick -- though it is mid-size by Silicon Valley standards -- has the qualities I love in start-ups: fast, innovative, open to change.  I told myself that if I were ever going to trade, I would probably trade down, to start at the grassroots level and build something new. 

I'm now ready to do that.  Tomorrow is my last day at Eastwick, and following the convention of other transitions in my world, I’ve decided to announce my news on this blog.  But the real news, if there is any, is that I'm starting a new business.  I expect this to raise even more questions than I would have raised had I chosen to go to a competitor or a larger agency.  (“A new kind of consultancy in the Valley?  What is he thinking?").  But what I’m doing is taking the leap that many of my start-up clients have taken – going out on my own, with just one partner, starting with little more than a notebook of ideas, aspirations and -- thank goodness -- leads.

***

I arrived at this decision after exploring a couple of options.  For some time, we looked at whether we could launch this new venture within Eastwick.  But the business opportunities that excite me the most would be even more difficult to execute within the structure of an agency.  I am hoping my new business -- launching in September -- will be the first multi-discipline communications consultancy intentionally built for the post-blogging economy.  It will be a different take on  PR -- and it will be broader than social media -- overlapping on disciplines that require different people, different ideas and, most challenging, a different business model.  I plan to address all three.

Another reason to go out alone, and not to another agency:  it would have been difficult for me to accept a role at another agency where I didn’t have a full vote at the senior management table.  My partners at Eastwick -- Barbara Bates and Elaine Cummings -- are two of the most broad-minded, and forward-thinking agency executives in the Valley, and over the past four years they have given me a great deal of freedom to explore, ideate, and tinker with the new things I believe agencies need to learn and master.  Truth is, it’s great to be a partner, and whatever I decided to do had to provide me with at least as much latitude as the people at Eastwick allowed me.  I am proud to say that Eastwick will be my first client.

But just as important was the thing that drove me to Eastwick in the first place.  I was attracted to the agency because of the culture, the reputation, and the people -- especially the young folks, who see Eastwick as a place to learn, experiment and challenge the mandate of PR.  Again, I’m a start-up guy, and I’m most excited when working with small, emergent groups.  Now that I’m ready to try something new, I’m happy to trade down.   

Stay tuned -- when I’m back in business this Fall, I’ll have something new to talk about. But I’ll be sitting behind a smaller desk, I am sure.

Keith O'Brien Has a Blog

That's Keith O'Brien of PR Week, but as he explains in this post, this is his blog.  I met Keith a few weeks ago at SxSW, and I enjoyed hearing his thoughts about the future of the industry and the direction of his magazine.  Keith is the guy behind many of the cool changes to the mag's online look and feel.  And he loves marketing.  It will be interesting to watch this blog go.

Take the Train to "Third Thursday"

By now you may have gotten wind of -- or an invitation to -- a new networking event called "Third Thursday."   A couple of months ago, Mike Manuel (Voce), Phil Gomes (Edelman), and Jeremy Pepper (Weber Shandwick) and I hatched the idea on a conference call.  The idea, roughly, was this: a monthly get-together for PR people, bloggers and journalists who are all interested in sharing practical knowledge about social media.   Appealing, for several reasons.  Not only would it be open and inclusive (when was the last time folks from four competing agencies collaborated on anything?), but the focus would be on a topic that we knew would command a lot of interest.  Oh, yes, there was also talk about beer....

We liked the idea so much, we decided to act on it.  Third Thursday kicks off next week on April 20 (i.e., next Thursday) at Fanny & Alexander in Palo Alto.  Featured guest is Michael Arrington, author of TechCrunch, a top technology blog.  To sign up, go here.  For more details, go to Mike Manuel's excellent post about this event.   Hope to see you there. 

For folks coming in from SF:  Fanny & Alexander is near the CalTrain station.   

The P-Club

I'm in NY this morning, my old hometown, to speak on a panel about the effect of new media on PR agency management.  The focus of my talk will be new PR roles in the post-blogging economy, my favorite topic these days.  Co-panelists are Steve Rubel (Edelman) and Aedhmar Hynes (Text 100).   I'm looking forward to it.  But an extra treat for me:  the event is being held at The Princeton Club, a mid-town hangout for alums of my alma mater.  I think this is my fifth visit ever to the club, which feels like a throwback to a much earlier era when "gentlemen" business types sought refuge from their working lives in plush, comfy private libraries and meeting rooms.   We could use a little of that today in Silicon Valley, sans the trappings of class and privilege.

Bye-Bye Strumpy

"She's" gone.  And sooner than expected.

I'm guessing the authors got bored.  But will they be sending us an April Fool's surprise?

UPDATE:  "She's" back. 

We're going to pass on this story until April Fool's.  Pretty sure we'll know more then.

Strumpette: "Is it Cool to Be Anonymous?"

Tom Foremski asks, does it matter that Strumpette is a fake?  Couldn't we all use a little Strumpette in our lives?   My take:  if she's a fake -- and I believe that "she" is -- she will quickly become b-o-r-i-n-g.  After all, it was the promise of Strumpette -- a muckraking bad girl from Chicago -- that got bloggers all hot and bothered.  But this affair also reminded me of an article we ran last year on Gelf, a fun new Web zine that likes to think about issues like this.  I'm reproducing the article here ...  it might help in the discussion. 

UPDATE:  You MUST read The Language Artist's post on the question of Strumpette's true identity.  Beautiful -- does the artist make court appearances?

The Naked Web

Is It Cool to Be Anonymous?

by Giovanni Rodriguez on April 22 at 11:53 AM

The blogosphere, transparency, and three tips for keeping it real.

Several weeks ago, in a quiet, unassuming post on its well-trafficked website, the Electronic Frontier Foundation raised quite a few eyebrows in the blogging community. At a time when bloggers have been increasingly vocal about transparency, the EFF posted a how-to piece on anonymous blogging, complete with tools, tips, and tricks of the trade.

N.Z. Bear is one prominent blogger who chooses to go incongnito. He explains why here.

To many of us—particularly those of us in the business community, where transparency has become almost a matter of religion—it felt like an odd move. (I'm an executive vice president at Eastwick Communications, a Silicon Valley PR agency, as well as a writer and a blogger). PR strategist Steve Rubel observed on his blog, "Anonymous blogs have the least credibility so I am not sure why they are advising people to go that route." It was as though the folks at EFF, who have earned a fair amount of Internet street cred over the years, were committing a social error by advising less-than-savvy newbie bloggers to go incognito; the EFF were asking people to do something that was not cool. Not just in the traditional sense of the word cool, as in "hip," but in the more evolved, contemporary sense, in which both youngsters and adults describe what's acceptable according to "peer-group related values."

Big-time bloggers have disagreed about the importance of transparency. In an email to Gelf, David Weinberger, co-author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, the philosophical touchstone for the blogging revolution, bluntly presented the libertarian view on anonymity: "It's a personal choice. In my opinion, allowing anonymous speech is a requirement for an open society, and is essential in repressive societies."

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen, who blogs at PressThink, told Gelf, "There's a mysterious kind of guarantee when a real name is attached to a weblog. Without it, everything is less real, more inconsequential."

I felt like the EFF was letting us down by encouraging folks to write anonymously, that anonymous bloggers' important stories would be washed away by a sea of reader skepticism. That was my bias going into this story, and I vowed to examine it.

I started by checking out a lively debate on the tech discussion site Slashdot about whether the right to privacy and free speech trumps the social convention of needing to disclose one's identity. A careful—and sometimes painful—review of the Slashdot conversation offers up some clues. First, as a fair number of Slashdotters and bloggers have observed, the law-and-policy issues underlying the debate are serious, and any meaningful participation in this debate requires at least a passing acquaintance with those issues. Second, as recent experiments and adventures in blogging have shown, there's a lot more to transparency than attribution, and both known and anonymous bloggers are thriving on the Web by observing a few reliable—if not well-understood—social norms that I outline later.

Crude Instruments

Let's start with law and policy. In an interview with Gelf, co-author and EFF policy analyst Annalee Newitz pointed to several groups of people who clearly deserve the shield of anonymity, including: corporate whistleblowers, dissidents in politically repressive countries, victims of domestic violence, and gays looking for communication outlets without fear of repercussion from families and employers.

The EFF, says Newitz, has long advocated and defended our First Amendment right to anonymous expression, a civil liberty recognized in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission. But lately that liberty has come under attack. In an often-cited recent study on anonymity and the Internet, Karina Rigby at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted Justice Scalia's antipathy for McIntyre in a more recent decision, suggesting the Court might take a different direction in the near future. She also cited a California Supreme Court case that upheld a state law "prohibiting anonymous mass political mailings by political candidates." Rigby concluded, "The fact that this case involves limiting anonymous speech, which is strongly protected by the First Amendment, does not bode well for media such as on-line communications which would have inherently less protection."

According to Newitz, the EFF decided to publish the anonymity guidelines because of an even more recent threat: Apple v. Does, the December 2004 lawsuit that Apple filed against several anonymous individuals who allegedly leaked information on new Apple products to blogs. (The targets in the case didn't blog the alleged leak, but the EFF's interest in educating the public on the rights they have to anonymous communication under the First Amendment prompted the article.) Journalists and First Amendment activists have rallied against Apple because they're worried the courts might use the case to curtail the media's right to protect the anonymity of their sources. It wouldn't be a stretch for the courts to reach beyond the confines of this case to question the right to anonymous speech in more general terms.

Other developments outside Apple worry First Amendment activists. A couple of weeks ago, a proposed San Francisco ordinance requiring political-communication consultants to register their names set off a viral rant that the crazed City on the Bay would soon be regulating bloggers (Slashdot. Postscript: the city's Board of Supervisors never specifically targeted bloggers, and subsequently exempted blogs from the ordinance.) To these stories, add the backdrop of fear and uncertainty that invisible criminal online activities have created (e.g., phishing, pharming, and "toxic blogs" that are spreading malicious code throughout the internet.)

It's not a coincidence that there are two books on the First Amendment and privacy climbing their way up the bestseller lists. There's a creeping feeling that we are living in an age where the potential for free-speech abuse is so great that we no longer have the tools to redress every instance. In a New York Times review of Floyd Abrams's Speaking Freely, Jeffrey Rosen concludes, "Abrams is surely correct that, as a constitutional matter, the law is almost always too crude and ineffective an instrument to provide a remedy for the genuine harms that speech can cause. (As a technological matter, in the age of the Internet, the harms are real and may continue to grow)." As Jay Rosen told Gelf, "Transparency and anonymity are in conflict." But the conflict may be impossible to resolve in the courts.

The Social Way

If the law is too crude an instrument to resolve this conflict, what do we have? Maybe there's a social remedy for what appears to be a social problem. After all, the blogosphere is built upon technology and tools collectively known as social media.

On the question of anonymity, citizens of the internet have already done a lot of thinking. In 2003, David Weinberger posted a concise and modest appraisal of the subject. "There's plenty of room for every gradation of anonymity," Weinberger wrote. By using any combination of true/false names and true/false biographical details, a blogger can participate in the blogosphere as a journalist, a source, a fictional writer, a ghost-written CEO, or a liar. He concludes that, beyond transparency, there are other ways for bloggers to demonstrate they have "skin in the game." In fact, in a number of blog genres, popular writers have earned the respect of their readers despite their anonymity. An interesting example is the increasingly diverse world of military blogging, where anonymous blogs command large and respectful audiences. In a post on anonymity, the anonymous author of Black Five wrote, "Military bloggers have a whole different set of issues to worry about...You don't have to do much to cross the line to get in trouble in the military."

He's right. In some worlds, revealing your name is not even an option. But what rules do readers follow for deciding whether a blogger is cool? Here are three simple questions that the would-be anonymous might ask before they get started.

Who?

This matters a lot. If you're a political refugee, a victim of domestic violence, or, as noted above, a military blogger, you may need to blog anonymously if you are going to blog at all. On the other hand, if you are a journalist, marketer, or PR person, you might as well give up if you're going to blog anonymously; it's hard to earn trust in these professions, and anonymity would quickly make you invisible.

Where it gets difficult is in the large number of genres where anonymity is presumed to be uncool by the group, but where the blogger has good reason to demand a level of privacy. A young, gay anonymous blogger for the controversial site Scattered Words, who writes about his attempt to become straight, told Gelf, "My biggest concern was first and foremost for my privacy—I write about intensely personal things and I wanted to make sure that if the people close to me learn of them, they learn directly from me." He also worried about a "disgruntled reader one day showing up on my doorstep." We all take risks when we post our opinions on the internet, and the more controversial the opinion, the greater the risk.

What?

The author of Scattered Words has disappointed gays who would prefer him to come out. Yet he has won an audience by providing consistent and credible content. As Rigby noted in her study, "Although some people will automatically discount any anonymous postings, other people don't care who wrote it, as long as it is intelligent or funny."

In the end, good content can trump concerns spurred by anonymity. If you study the success of top bloggers across the entire spectrum of the anonymous (N.Z. Bear), the pseudonymous (Atrios), and the most ego-revealing non-anonymous (Andrew Sullivan), they all have one thing in common: content, in great frequency or great quality, or both. It's a tough commitment to be a blogger, and the grind of having to produce credible content regularly has forced many bloggers to give up.

When?

What troubled me the most about the EFF article was the fear that a victim of some injustice would use a blog as refuge rather than search for a more effective way to right the wrong. The question should be: Will writing anonymously at this time in my life make a difference, or should I follow some other course of action?

The question of when to go public should always be present in the mind of reformers. First Amendment proponents often note that the authors and critics of the Federalist Papers all wrote anonymously. Yet they almost all forget to complete the story about how these writers—a few of our nation's founding fathers—were later able to act on their ideas and write under their own names.

NEW PR JOBS -- PART II

The first post in this series generated great conversation on an important topic:  that is, whether Neville Hobson's good looks and accent should earn him the title of "king" of new media.  That's an interesting job title, but we'll stay true to the non-monarchical spirit of this discussion by offering up five -- count 'em -- more PR jobs that non-royals can aspire to in the near future.  In the first post, we credited three personality-profile models:  Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, and The Ten Faces of Innovation.  For this post, we'll need to credit two more:  the very popular-and-excellent The Tipping Point, and the not-so-popular-but-excellent Linked.   

Some of you were probably wondering whether we forgot Jen McClure.  You'll find her here --but like most of the others, she could have been named in several categories.

The Connector -- Anyone who has read Malcolm Gladwell -- or who is familiar with network theory -- will recognize the role of the "connector."  The PR profession has always been able to attract people who are exceptionally gifted at creating and maintaining vast networks of contacts.  In the new world, this skill is in larger demand because we now have the tools to make networks more efficient, intelligent, dynamic.   Historical role model:  Dwight D. Eisenhower, who rose to the presidency by maintaining one of the biggest and busiest Rolodexes in history.  New-media role model:  Renee Blodget (Renee:  I hope you are OK that I am pairing you up with a Republican).

The Professor -- Hey, we are talking about a major transformation -- if not a revolution -- and no transformation is real without the help of people from academia.  A number of college professors are literally breaking ranks from the "old school" and making great contributions to the knowledge base.   But note:  you don't have to be a teacher to be a teacher.  We can all use a professor -- and MaryAnn -- in our lives.  Historical role model:  Horace Mann. New media:  Robert French, David Phillips, and Philip Young.

The Social Reformer -- One of the most interesting things about social media is that they are, er, "social."  And over the last year, we've noticed that some of the more ambitious social-media projects trend toward the promotion of social values.  A few PR folks are taking this one step further and applying new media to promote social causes.  This will benefit our world -- and the world -- in numerous ways.  Historical role model:  Eleanor Roosevelt.  New media:   Dan Forbush (for his work in education and Katrina), Brian Oberkirch (Katrina), and the gang at Eastwick for their work in 2004 on voting reform (they'll be doing more in the next few years).

The Critic -- Again, this is an industry transformation, and transformations always require people who are brave enough to do the job of destroying the old to make way for the new (reminds me of a friend of mine in college who studied architecture; he vowed to go into a related profession called "demolition").  This is a tough role, and you won't get much love.  But the role is critical, especially in the context of general reform. Historical/spiritual role model:  Shiva, the Destroyer.  New media:  Shel Israel and B.L. Ochman.

The Hub -- And after we destroy what shouldn't survive, we must get into the business of repairing and building the industry.  To describe what's involved here, we need to invoke another network metaphor, because the most important builders are "queen bees" in their networks (alas, we may in fact have a monarch).   They are among the few people in our world who have met most of the researchers, anthropologists, gardeners, architects, impresarios, connectors, professors, idealists, and critics.  In fact, two of our new-media hubs recently brought our world together, and for a brief moment we were all in one place.  Let's see what the future will bring.  Historical role model: Abraham Lincoln.  New media:  Jen McClure and Elizabeth Albrycht (Jen and Elizabeth:  I hope you are OK that I am pairing you up with a Republican).         

NEW PR JOBS FOR THE POST-BLOGGING ECONOMY

Yes, we've been thinking a lot about the ways our profession is changing, and about the need to reimagine the role of the PR professional.  Seems to us that there's more than just one role.  No matter where you find yourself on the personality grid (think Myers-Briggs, or StrengthsFinder, or The Ten Faces of Innovation, the inspiration for this post), there's probably a good role for you in your organization. 

To make things simple, here are five new roles for PR people that have already emerged in our profession.  For each role, we name an historical role model (or "archetype," for the Jungians out there), and contemporary role models (PR people who are already doing great stuff in the industry today). 

Note to the contemporary role models:  no pressure.  And you won't have to stand before classrooms urging kids to behave well (yet).   

The Researcher -- This one is way obvious.  In this age of conversational PR, which is largely happening in the digital world, research and measurement people have a privileged place.  They've always understood the value of listening, as well as the value of numbers.  But unlike the pollsters and researchers of old, the new leaders will not use what they find to respin the message, but rather to enable the teams they support to enter the conversation truthfully.  Historical role model:  George Gallup.  New-media role models:  Katie Paine and Tony Obregon.

The Anthropologist -- corporate communications will learn a lot from the world of design that companies like IDEO has helped to evolve.  Like the product and experience designers, communications people will go into the field and observe how people are actually using the tools (and we thank IDEO's Tom Kelley for the anthropologist metaphor).  We'll see a lot more of this as companies accelerate the adoption of DIY community tools such as wikis.  It's the social rule, not the tool, that many new communications professionals bring to the table.  Historical role models:  Margaret Mead.  New media:  Elizabeth Albrycht and Dianna Miller, who are studying wikis for SNCR.

The Gardener -- to build and maintain communities, you need more than just anthropologists.  You also need people who are talented in "caring and feeding" the community, and sustaining online environments that sometimes get fractious, unstructured, unproductive.  This is a special talent, in rare supply, and the most enlightened members of this lot will always have work.  Historical role model:  Voltaire ("we must cultivate our garden").  New media:  Constantin Basturea, Dan Forbush.

The Communications Architect -- Sometime the tools are just as important as the rules ... if you are smart enough to really know how to use them.  A few folks in the PR world are way ahead of others on the technical side and are helping their clients to make sense of the technology tool kit so that they can actually do stuff, and build things (what a concept).   Note:  building is as much of an art as it is a science.  The best folks in this group are creatives. Historical role model:  Frank Lloyd Wright.  New media:  Phil Gomes,  Mike Manuel, Jeremy Pepper.

The Impresario -- some PR people will lead by the sheer force of their personality, their work output, or the artistry/fun of their writing (after all, blogging is a writer's medium).  For these folks, it's an opportunity to define and shape a new industry.  We expect a number of people to emerge here, each with a different strength or style.  Historical role models:  Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward Bernays.  New media:  Richard Edelman, Steve Rubel, Scott Baradell, Neville Hobson. 

UPDATE:  See Part II

PR Agencies Have Terrible Web Sites

Steve Rubel points to this Adrants post.   We are the cobbler's children who have no shoes.

While advertising sites excelled in design and innovation, public relations sites ranked low across all categories. Notably, public relations scored lowest for copywriting, even though it is an industry known for effective communication. According to Rice, "It's likely that PR practitioners focus more on developing their clients' sites, while their own sites suffer from typical 'brochure-ware.' Another possibility is that the low scores reflect the informal nature of the Internet and the backlash over over-edited, corporate speak."

An Open Letter to PR Week: Join the "Conversation"

I'm at SxSW Interactive today, prepping for a panel on Open Source Management -- a communications methodology invented by writer/provacateur/performer Heather Gold.  The theory is that if you get one company and a bunch of folks together in one room, you can help the company shake free from bad (unchallenged) ideas that might be preventing it from connecting more directly with key constituencies (customers, partners, employees, etc.).   

That idea was on my mind when I got together last night for beers with Keith O'Brien, the online guru for PR Week.  It's rare I get QT with anyone at this increasingly important trade, so I took the opportunity to tell Keith that I really like how much the publication has "opened up" -- more free content, a more Web 2.0-y look and feel, and a more open approach generally -- but that  I still felt frustated how much content was trapped behind the firewall.   Two problems:  if you are the kind of person who forgets or loses passwords (ahem), you're going to struggle keeping up with all the stuff in PR Week that only appears online (including most of what Keith writes, which, by the way, happens to be very good).  Second, at a time when PR Week's coverage has begun to focus on new media and its effect on the PR profession, online writers/bloggers have no easy way to link to what PR Week has to say.   In effect, they are shutting themselves out of the conversation.

I know it's tough to change a distribution model, and I've spent some time talking to other publishers who are scared.   But there's a big opportunity here to become a more relevant publication with influence beyond the traditional reach.  The way organizations communicate and comport themselves online has become a matter of intense public scrutiny, and PR Week has the license and talent to educate and shape public opinion.   I urge Keith and his colleagues to keep pushing in the direction they are going.  It feels right to me.

Are PR People "Challenged"?

I'm speaking this morning at the Puget Sound chapter of PRSA, and I've got PR people on the brain. Good thing, because I hear that I'll be meeting more than a hundred of them (according to the last count), a much larger turnout than we expected. The topic of my talk is the effect that new media has had on our profession. In my opinion, the change has been good, and in fact liberating for those who have embraced it. And no where is this change more evident than in the quality of the people who are now interested in entering the profession.

As an agency principal (a new role for me), I am preoccupied with two big HR challenges: attracting great people to the agency, then keeping them. In PR, as in other consulting businesses, it's all about the people. And if you look closely at the two most vexing challenges, it’s about (1) the younger folks who represent the future of the business, and (2) the somewhat older folks who are capable of defining the business today.   

Both are in short supply.  Let's start with the younger folks.  In a nutshell, here's the problem -- no one ever grows up thinking, "I want to become a PR person." 

There are several good reasons for this. First, the role that the profession plays in our society has never been well understood (case in point, my parents still struggle to understand how what I do meaningfully differs from what advertisers do).

Second, this is not a profession that gets much love from the world at large. Why expose yourself to the ridicule of your peers who are entering "real professions like journalism," as one communications student recently framed it to me.

Third -- if you're looking for role models, good luck. Unless you actually know someone in the profession, chances are you wouldn't know the attributes that define the ideal PR pro.

Hollywood is no help here. Future lawyers have "A Few Good Men." Budding journalists have "All the President's Men." I've searched far and wide, and the best I could come up with is a few hilarious scenes in "A Mighty Wind" (e.g., click on the clip called "He'll Make it a Fire.")  In cinema, there are no inspirational role models for PR; instead we have clowns.

The PR pros in "A Mighty Wind" make us laugh because they are so "challenged" -- they are challenged professionally, ethically, and, most painful of all (the sharpest edge of the joke), intellectually. This problem -- the "dumb PR person" caricature -- has always plagued our profession. 

But now we have an even greater challenge: the fear that new media signals the end to our profession, because PR people (duh) will have little to do. A number of prominent PR bloggers have been debating whether new media poses a real threat, which at first glance seems real enough. After all, new media provides business with DIY communication tools. Blogging, in essence, is DIY publishing. Podcasting is DIY broadcasting (a reality so stark, it has to be sending shivers through the VNR community). And wikis, one of our favorite tools at Eastwick, is DIY communities, markets, and, conceivably, social movements.

Who needs PR people in this new world, unless you are going to keep them just to do traditional media relations?

But therein lies the biggest challenge for PR. For many years, particularly in technology, PR meant media relations, and little else. Now, many of us for the first time see there's an opportunity to assist our clients in doing what our profession professes we do: "relating to the public." And forward-l0oking PR people have already awakened to this reality, and are beginning to see how what we have always been good at may in fact command a premium in the new world. It's a little thing called "social intelligence."

In the old world, some of the best PR pros stood out for their extraordinary ability to connect their clients and socialize them into important communities -- including the media community, one of the toughest of all. Today, that innate intelligence is in even greater demand as businesses realize that have the ability to create their own communities. But the social intelligence that rewards the top professionals in our industry has always been a scarce commodity. It will continue to be scarce, and we can comfortably predict that the best in our profession will always have work.

But here's the great news: the pool of job applicants will get better. Clue: take a look at some of the social rules that govern online behavior.   It's safe to say that in order for someone to be successful today in PR, they will need to be particularly smart and/or sensitive about ethics, group dynamics, and some of the nice, mechanical efficiencies that exist in the online world.  The word will get out. Today, at Eastwick, we're getting interest from recent graduates who studied social sciences, management, and public policy. Those disciplines have always sent gifted people to our profession. But for these new PR pros, the connection between what they studied and what they can now do as professionals -- well, it's a lot more real.

But it's not just the young people who are excited. There appears to be a general reawakening for the entire profession, and it is energizing and redirecting many industry veterans, some of whom admit to have lost their way over the years. Shel Israel, who now calls himself a recovering publicist, is a hot item on the PR lecture circuit and appears to be genuinely happy playing the role of industry gadfly. And I've witnessed a change in my partners, my peers, and, yes, even myself. It's a good time to be in PR because we have an opportunity to not only transform the profession and elevate it beyond the point of ridicule, but to also direct its path toward some truly good and decent things for society. The best PR folks always had this sense of purpose (they are not challenged -- on the contrary, they are doing the challenging) but the hope is that now even more people will understand what we do, and why what we do is good. Who knows, maybe we'll even get better Hollywood role models.