Save Newspapers….Ban Links to other Internet sites? I don’t think so…

While I am a believer in print Journalism and as a spouse of a former long-term staffer of The Dallas Morning News (22 years), I also believe in moving forward and looking to the future.

“Gawker,” an edgy daily e-newsletter sent the following article to my in-box at 2:45 a.m. this morning.

I love certain phrases such as, “You can copyright a news story, but you can’t copyright the news.”

While the future of true print newspapers is still questionable (and probably will be for a while), I believe that gizmo gadgets will appear that will allow us to receive news in different ways. We as PR pros need to be open to new ideas and ways to communicate.

So, share with me and others your thoughts on the following article:

Let’s Screw Up the Entire Internet to Save Newspapers

Link: http://is.gd/1lqzN

By Hamilton Nolan, 1:09 PM on Wed Jul 1 2009

The hot new idea among people who think about “journalism,” and the sanctity thereof: let’s ban linking, on the internet! Let’s also ban wheels, in order to save the horse industry. Let’s also ban talking about things!

This whole argument is premised on the assumption that we mustsave newspapers. At the cost of making the internet into an inefficient mess! So Richard Posner, professional smart man and US Appeals Court judge who writes 23,000 words per day, floated the idea of banning links (and more!), so internet cannibals don’t keep stealing newspaper content for nothing:

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Periods, Richard Posner. Try them. To break up text. What you may notice here is that Posner proposes banning linking or paraphrasingcopyrighted materials. The problem: this is America dude, we say what we fucking want, amirite?

You can copyright a news story, but you can’t copyright the news. “The news” just means “things that happen in the world.” What would it mean, in practice, to make it illegal to paraphrase a copyrighted news story? Summing up, for example, political events, or a sports controversy, or even a fashion trend, could be interpreted as paraphrasing copyrighted material. So let’s ban talking about anything. And banning links will help us make our references even more obscure, by making it impossible for anyone to refer to source materials! Good idea, Posner. This gross oversimplification makes you look none too freedom-loving!

We all know journalism happens only at newspapers. Better to protect them at all costs than to invest in the murky “future.”

This idea is supported by a newspaper columnist! Connie Schultz, a columnist for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer (who’s married to a senator, btw, nothing to see here), also touts the idea of giving newspapers a 24-hour injunction on news they post, during which time it’s all theirs, and can’t be aggregated by others online.

Fine. You can have your injunction. But you can’t stop anyone from discussing, and writing about, current events. As they happen. Go read all those “Twitter Generation” stories you guys are always writing! The idea that it’s worth crippling the entire free flow of information on the internet in order to add to the bottom line of newspaper companies is prima facie idiotic. I guess you could also help save newspapers by passing a law that everyone has to buy one every day, or by making it illegal for TV news to exist. That doesn’t make those things good ideas.

If Bill Gates pledged to make it so computers could not be operated properly until the user could prove they had read today’s Cleveland Plain-Dealer that might save a reporter and he is a monster for not doing so, QED.
[Pic: Chronicling America]

Wall Street Journal says Twitter Can Cause Uproar

So, for all those Twitterers, such as myself who is more of a watcher and reader than one who posts “Tweets,” how should we help our clients/organizations deal with fake Twitter profiles? One of my clients dealt with this and they traced it back to someone within their company…but not for long. The impersonator was immediately let go. Not surprising.

Excerpts from June 29, 2009, Wall Street Journal (and shared by fellow PRSA Dallas colleague Richard Grady):

 By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

 Twitter users have caused an uproar by impersonating celebrities on the popular micro-blogging service. Businesses, too, are targets of fake Twitter profiles — sometimes from competitors.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has found at least two unauthorized Twitter accounts under variations of its name. Twitter … terminated one of the profiles last summer. An Exxon spokesman says the oil company is considering what to do about the second profile, which it discovered several weeks ago. The profiles didn’t appear to contain malicious content.

The incidents are reminiscent of “cybersquatting” in the early days of the Internet, when people registered Internet domains of well-known companies and sometimes demanded payments to relinquish them.

In a defensive move, AMR Corp.’s American Airlines in April “registered every possible Twitter name that could be associated with us,” a spokesman says. The move came after airline employees last summer found a rogue profile in the name AmericanAir, which was shut down four weeks later.

… While a 1999 law gave trademark owners the right to sue cybersquatters, it is unclear how the law would apply to false Twitter accounts. “It’s not covered by existing laws protecting against domain name abuse,” says Susan Weller, a trademark attorney in Washington, D.C., for Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo P.C.

… Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says the company hopes to introduce a verification service later this summer to confirm profiles of public officials, public agencies and other well-known individuals. But he says there are currently no plans to offer an authentication service for businesses because of the costs and time that would be required.

Twitter policy prohibits unauthorized use of trademarks, but Mr. Stone says the company has no system for identifying violators. He says the service is working to respond to complaints within 24 hours, instead of the current average of five days.

Energy Flows Where Attention Goes

I sat through a media training recently with our natural gas gathering and processing managers with a vendor who shall not be named. I have sat through several of their training sessions since first joining Enbridge in 2005, but I guess this was the first time I really heard the line: Energy flows where attention goes. Of course, the trainer was using it in relation to media and learning how to keep them on track in an interview and off the rabbit trails, but I realized that there were many other aspects of life – personal and professional – to which that phrase applies.

For example, have you ever been in a meeting or group discussion when someone gets sidetracked and it feels like forever before the discussion gets back on track? Maybe the discussion leader put one foot on the rabbit trail and others in the meeting not only followed him (or her), but pushed the discussion onto a completely different topic. Before you know it, the allotted meeting time is winding down and you have not actually covered the topic you are there to discuss!

While good information may result from this diversion, thankfully there is always someone in the room who says “Excuse me, can we please get back on track?” Energy flows where attention goes.

Just think of how much more efficiently we could communicate with one another if those trips down the rabbit trails were a little shorter. Notice I did not recommend cutting them out altogether – I am actually a big fan of rabbit trails, it is where I do some of my best brainstorming – but those trips could definitely be shorter and just as productive.

And it definitely applies when dealing with the media, whether on a normal news day or during a crisis situation. Ever been faced with a reporter who gets stuck on one particular piece of information and you spend way too much valuable time trying to help her (or him) “get it”? Energy flows where attention goes. Instead of essentially agreeing to spend your time there, force the reporter to move on so you can deliver your message (a spokesperson’s primary job during a media interview of any nature) and get back to business.

So, I usually don’t make New Year’s Resolutions (who sticks to them anyway?), but how about a Mid-Year Resolution? I hereby resolve to pay more attention to where my energy is flowing so I can be a more efficient and productive communicator. How about you?

The Changing Reporter Relationship

I was speaking with a good friend Friday about possible media topics for a professional development program. Like me, he’s a former journalist, though he focused largely on print with some broadcast sprinkled in for good measure (my experience was the opposite).

In the midst of our conversation, he made the statement that he has to work much harder today to secure coverage for his clients than would have been the case even a few years ago. When pressed, he said that he is now doing much of the reporter’s job – largely because there are (at least in Houston after recent, significant cuts to the newsroom at the Houston Chronicle) fewer reporters to produce the valuable content readers expect from their daily newspaper.

By this, he meant the legwork: deeper research, identification of trends, creation of graphics and charts … anything needed to make the reporter’s job a little easier and secure coverage, short of actually conducting interviews.

That made me think about how much the media, as a business, has changed.

Are we actually helping the reporter by doing much of his job for him in order to secure coverage, or are we helping someone at the top of the food chain make their case that cuts are justified? We, as PR pros, have a symbiotic relationship with the media. We are working to secure coverage for our company or clients, and the reporter needs to fill space or time. Does this relationship begin to erode as layoffs threaten, or does it strengthen (partly for networking purposes)?

How many times have we read news about recently announced or pending layoffs in the newsroom?  How many of us have arranged happy hour or mixers or invited laid-off reporters to lunch to help them network with PR professionals? The answer to both of those questions is “too many.”

Food for thought.

Creating High-Level ROIs: Give Your Clients Some Real Bang for Their Bucks

This might be a hard pill to swallow, but I have to say it – the “blah-dom” of yesterday’s Power Point presentations with its sterile text, cartoonish clip art and boxed borders, are becoming as useless as an analog television without a digital converter box. In other words, presenting just a Power Point presentation to your client doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to showing them the return on their investment for supporting your cause, event, etc., especially in the world of non-profit where the playing field is extremely competitive for donor dollars.

 It is time to take the ordinary and turn it into the extraordinary with robust colors, embedded video, moving images and a well-crafted polished piece that shows your client that you appreciate their investment. I mean – you can’t take a $25,000 investment and say thank you with text and figures can you?

 With the demand for corporations to support causes and events, it is increasingly more important that when it’s time to go in and give the overview of what their investment means to your company, you have to give it your all. If you’ve been doing good, then it’s time to step it up and move to great. In Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t, he says “if you’re doing something you care that much about and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It’s just a given.”

 What that says to me is this: you believe in the mission and purpose of what your company is doing, right? Your donors and sponsors obviously believe in it, right? So how can you NOT take the step to use the ROI as a way to say thank you in a big way.

 Now I know what you’re probably thinking….I’m not creative enough to do that? Doing something fancy costs a lot of money and our budget is basically shot or I don’t even know where to begin. Well, there are actually some easy, available, cool resources out there that you can use. These are tried and true ones that I’ve done at my company and the results are amazing and most of all, your cause sponsors will be wowed.

 So let’s look at some of the inexpensive ways:

 1. Buy a flip camera. The ones that cost about $100 come with one hour of video recording time, a USB port that connects from the cameras to your computer, and it has easy-to-use features after you download your video. You can check your local Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or Target. They also come in different colors.

 If you can steady your hand and click the red record button, then you can catch the action of the event, interview some of the key clients, and make your own mini-news clip. You can upload it directly to YouTube, your company website, etc., for all to see.  Or if you are a die-hard Power Point user, there is also a way to embed the video in your presentation.

 2. Invest in a quality digital camera. Sometimes taking on the role of photographer is a hat that many of us must wear, especially if we cannot afford to hire a professional to capture our great events. Be sure to take lots of posed and non-posed pictures of the key executives, donors and other high-level clients. Pictures are a great reminder, a visual if you will, of your client’s investment. Make sure you take pictures of the signage with their logos on it, too. Then you can upload these to  social media sites like Facebook, flickr, or your company’s blog site.  

 3. Get Animoto-ized. One of my favorite places to visit  is the Animoto site where you can upload pictures and create cool videos in just minutes. This site lets you create a super cool “picture book” complete with transitions (that means the images auto advance to the next one with cool fade-ins, dissolves, etc.,) and you can even add music from the site’s music library.  In fact, they make it so easy for you. Your biggest job is deciding which pictures you want to use.  And you have to love that their website says, “We analyze your images, we feel your music, then we produce a beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video piece.” And they do. Just this past holiday season, we captured snapshots of our events, survivor story snippets, etc., and produced a “thank you” video that was shared with all of our sponsors in our four-state affiliate. You’ll have to check animoto.com to see what minimal fee is associated with creating these videos.

 4. Book it. Don’t cringe at this, but using a tangible “hand-off” to complement your video or presentation is also important. Instead of the traditional 8.5 x 11 report cover, make your “ROI brag book” larger. It is amazing what an 11×17 size book will do. You can use some nice thick colored paper as your front and back binding and then inside, you can include color copies of newspaper clippings that shows the name, date and circulation numbers of the media outlet (nothing says return on investment like millions of media impressions); you can also do screen captions of at least the images of stories that made it to a media outlet’s website. You can divide it into sections with tabbed listings of your events (kick-offs, meetings, etc.), include copies of collateral pieces (printed programs, stickers, invitations), and add some verbiage on what the impact to the community was from the event. Get actual quotes from real people!

 So that should get you started. Remember, there really is life after Power Point. And more importantly, your donors will appreciate that you’ve stepped up your ROIs and it gives you something to walk in with when you go back and make another donor ask.