Giving Thanks

Yeah, I'm doing it because all the cool kids are doing it this week. Peer pressure and all. So here's what I'm thankful for this year:

• My family
• My new home
• Sleep
  
• The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
• People who make careers in science cool
• Our armed forces and their families - especially those who won't be able to be together this holiday season
• Schlubs in other PR firms who try to sell potential clients a "Twitter strategy" so I can walk in after them and look brilliant by just describing the obvious
• Spring training
• A company that provides a flexible work environment
• Entrepreneurial bloggers who let me do cool stuff with them
• Clients who let me dream up goofy ideas and don't shoot them down immediately
• Antioxidants
• People who work the third shift
• Pizza
• The ability to work closely with colleagues thousands of miles away
• Both of the people who read this blog

Have a happy and restful Thanksgiving.

MAN CRUSH: Ethan Zuckerman

And I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit it. Welcome to a new semi-regular (i.e., I do it when I feel like it) feature on the blog. If I can highlight female role models, why I can't I share a man crush or two? If "man crush" makes you feel uncomfortable, how about "aspiring bro-mance?"

No?

I don't know the guy, never spoken with him. I exchanged a couple of emails with him a long time ago, doubt he'd even remember. But I know some of his colleagues. And what he's talking about is what I try to do in my job, albeit on a much smaller scale.

I still listen to the podcast he did with Christoper Lydon and Solana Larsen at Brown University. But I saw this on AIDG Blog and I really liked it. It's long, but if you really care about what social media can do for the world, you'll watch the whole thing.

Why Newspapers Are Failing, Part 3,489

Most newspapers are watching the bottom drop out of their readership - even when they double-count readers. It would seem to me that newspapers (online and offline) really want to reverse that trend - at least that's what I hear a lot. So when I read that Rupert Murdoch is seriously considering removing his news sites from Google's search engines - to the point where he's negotiating with companies that have a mere fraction of the search volume of Google - I really get confused.

Restricting access to your content is not a way to get more people to see your content. That seems pretty basic to me.

Here's an analogy that works a lot better than most journalism types care to admit. A long time ago - way back before there were iPhones or Playstations or even the Wii Fit - we had this thing called a "phone book." The phone book was made of paper and had lists with contact information of all the people and businesses in your area. It was the thing people used when they wanted to know how to contact you on the phone - and remember, back then phones were actually attached to the wall by a cord. You can still see them in old movies or in museums. Phone books had sections - individuals were listed on white pieces of paper and businesses were listed on both the white and a separate section of yellow pieces of paper. (Those were called "yellow pages" - sheer genius, right?) Consumers never paid directly for the phone book - the money to make phone books came from ads that companies placed in those yellow pages near the sections that you would go to search for things like "pizza" or "plumbers" or "personal injury lawyers."

Back then phone books were really important - if you weren't in the phone book, people who didn't know much about you didn't know how to find you. Which was bad, because most people used the phone book. Sometimes other companies tried to come up with a different phone book, a better phone book, but most people still used the same phone book that they got in the first place. It had the most listings and was set up in a format that everyone understood.

So now we have a new phone book called Google. And YES, it's amazingly similar to that old phone book because, as Rupert Murdoch and his business partners keep insisting, information is (to them at least) a commodity. Sure, there are a couple of alternative (and fairly spiffy) phone books, but the overwhelming majority of people are still using the Google option, and the data seem to suggest that won't be changing anytime soon.

So now Rupert Murdoch and a few others are saying they're ready to take their names and numbers out of the phone book and if you want them, you have to go to this other phone book that pays them a fee. Of course, the original phone book will still have plenty of information and product remarkably similar to the product Mr. Murdoch "produces."

This journalism-as-commodity model, complete with artificial barriers to access, doesn't strike me as a path to long-term profitability. First, some players in this commodity model want to charge for the finished product but haven't considered the new costs they'd have to incur once the original sources of news discover their rightful place in the "value chain" of news. Second, it's just resisting the trend toward innovation and consumer empowerment. Consumers dictate the marketplace - they will find information they want to fit their interests and world view.

I think the folks at News Corp. are in for quite a shock if they think their brand is so powerful that people will use the search engine News Corp. tells them to.

It's nice to see Europeans can be crazy too

This is the first question the Irish Prime Minister gets when he arrives at an EU summit...

FTC Update

Susan Getgood has the goods. Watch the webinar, read her analysis. It's good.

Media Convergence? Or Concession of Defeat?

A colleague of mine brought to my attention the latest example of media convergence: YouTube is collecting video submissions from consumers for use on major mainstream news outlets. It's amazing how quickly we've gone from mainstream media organizations complaining that people who publish YouTube videos and write blog posts can't be trusted because OMG they're not journalists, to co-opting that same content from those same people for themselves.

And seeing how more and more media organizations are ready to sue you if you link to their content, I’m wondering how long it will take for some organization to take something off YouTube and then try to keep others from using it.

And while so much of what you find on the web is garbage, I challenge you to watch cable news for 24 hours and resist the urge to throw something at the television. And I’m NOT trying to be flip. I’m completely convinced people flock to the web for information because what you see on television is absolute crap.

Cable news’ it-girl right now devotes shows to the “socialist imagery” on the walls of Rockefeller Center, spins conspiracy theories on a chalk board highlighting the way words are spelled, and is given to intermittent fits of crying on the air. Fifteen years ago we’d have put him in a mental facility and he’d be the subject of Grand Rounds. Today he’s on prime time.

Flip the channel and you will see Octo-mom explaining to Miss Teen South Carolina where babies come from.

Is it me?

Earth & Industry: Greenwashing of The Worst Kind

I have a new post up at Earth & Industry that to me showcases the absolute worst case of greenwashing - using deceptive "statistics" about the environment to advance a separate and distinct political agenda.

Typically the term "greenwashing" is used when a company misrepresents the economic benefits of a product, or launches a marketing campaign to distract you from a less flattering set of facts. This time it's being done to advance an anti-immigration argument. I hope you'll check it out.

"In pursuit of the peace that guided their service"

Honor the fallen and all those who served.

But as the President said yesterday, "We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes." An absolutely astounding rhetorical achievement.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

When Will AP, Murdoch Pay Their Sources?

OK, so Associated Press wants to charge bloggers (and others) for using as few as five words of their stories, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is talking about removing their content from Google's search services.

Good luck with that.

Now I'm wondering how much those organizations will be compensating the people they interview and other sources for their contributions to "original" content. Information published by AP and News Corp. is a finished product with a set financial value. And all finished products have raw materials. And all makers of finished products pay for those raw materials. It's incomprehensible that the value chain begins and ends with the publisher.

Oh, and guess which website journalists go to first when conducting research for their stories?

I suppose AP stringers could be equipped with waivers for their sources to sign. They'd say something like "I hereby cede all ownership and authority of the information I provide to [insert publisher here], and grant said publisher any and all power to restrict access to this information from those unwilling or unable to pay for it."

Kinda wondering what would happen if Facebook put something like that in their terms of service.

Blog With Integrity hosts the FTC

On November 10 the folks who brought us Blog With Integrity will be hosting a free webinar featuring Mary Engle, the Associate Commissioner for Consumer Protection at the Federal Trade Commission. They will be discussing the new FTC guidance on disclosure and endorsements - this is critical information for bloggers who talk about products and services, as well as the PR and marketing flacks who hock them. They're accepting questions ahead of time so if you want something to be answered within the time they have, you should ask it early. Just send an email to blogwithintegrity [at] gmail [dot] com.

I've said a bunch of times I really talk more about issues than products, but it's still an enormously valuable discussion. I've let everyone on my social media team know about it, and I hope you'll be able to check in.

Susan Getgood has been the unquestioned leader of this discussion from the marketing side. She's the first person I look to for guidance and perspective on this critical topic. It will have an enormous impact on how marketing and PR professionals work with bloggers and I'm grateful to her and Julie Marsh, Kristen Chase and Liz Gumbinner for their leadership on this.

I've never been good at multi-tasking anyway

Those who know me best call me "concrete sequential," which is a nice way of saying I can't walk and chew gum at the same time. So when Emily McKhann at The Motherhood asked me to help spread the word about their new campaign to prevent texting while driving, I figured I was a natural fit.

Emily and Cooper Munroe have started Mom Sends the Msg, an online campaign aimed at reducing distracted driving. The campaign includes a pledge you can sign (via the comments) and downloadable signs you can print out and put in your rear window.

Emily and Cooper don't do anything halfway, and when they do things people notice. Important people like, say, US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. They're also good at harnessing people's creativity - they've started a contest for the best idea to spread the word about the campaign.

I don't know about you, but I have trouble texting and WALKING. So I'm not even going to go there. But in this crazy busy stressed out world, when everyone has to do 100 things at once, I can see the temptation to do a few things while you're waiting at a red light or something, and how that slips into texting while driving. It's not worth it.

Here's an idea: it turns out that Valentine's Day is the most popular day of the year for texting. I'll ask a colleague who works for a very reputable chocolate maker to send chocolate to the person who comes up with the most creative substitute for sending a quick message for Valentine's Day. (Keep it relatively clean, please.)

So whattaya got? And thanks to Emily & Cooper for their leadership on this!