OK Seriously It Has To Stop Now

Seriously, my flackitudinous brethren, just stop pitching bloggers. There are consequences to this.

Drop the laptop and step away from the "enter" key.

The Scariest iPhone App EVAH

I mentioned the Good Guide iPhone app in a podcast with Maria Surma Manka a while back. It's a database of consumer products and corresponding ratings based on health and nutrition value, impact on the environment, and commitment to social causes or priorities. Until recently, the shortcoming of the app was its usability - you had to work your way through categories and brands etc to find the product you wanted, and if you're at the market it becomes a time suck.

Now they've added a barcode scanning feature so you don't have to work your way through their lists to get the info you want right away. Nice time saver. So I tried it out on a box of cereal.

And I learned immediately that the company that made the cereal has "violated the Clean Water Act."

And then I realized it's just a matter of time before I'm going to learn if a company discriminates against gay people, or is a union buster, or has a CEO that denies climate change, or has a political action committee that gives only to Republicans, or has a slew of OSHA violations, or doesn't pay any taxes, or has another product that's being recalled - ALL AT THE POINT OF SALE.

This means that a company will have nothing more than the time it takes to reach for the next product on the shelf to present its side of the story and restore its reputation. And if it hasn't built up its relationship with a customer ahead of time, and inoculated its reputation against this kind of "breaking" information, it's about to go the way of the dodo.

The Day I Became an Environmentalist

This post is my contribution to sustainablog's Pedal-a-Watt Powered Blogathon this weekend. The long-running green blog (and new green shopping site) is publishing for 24 hours straight to raise funds for the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Northeastern Missouri. Go join the fun: read post contributions from around the green blogosphere, leave a comment to be entered in a drawing for some great green prizes, and join in the Tweetchat at #susbppb.

I'm not what you'd call the granola-crunchy type. I don't drive a hybrid, I don't look for organic cotton, I'm not a vegetarian, and most of the time I even leave the water running while I brush my teeth. (I'm trying to stop that.) I am, however, an environmentalist - at least in the sense that I understand that smarter choices lead to healthier, more sustainable lives.

"Environmentalism" has been a big deal in my family for a long time. When I was in high school quite some time ago, my mom would take me to town meetings about the possible siting of a sewage treatment facility in my town, and she told me that trucks with chlorine gas could be driving through the town, and if something happened to one of those trucks it could be very, very bad. It was all very important, but it was also very abstract - these things weren't happening yet, and I never thought anyone would allow a system where an entire town gets wiped out because a truck turned over. The treatment plant got built, but the trucks with the chlorine gas never materialized, and frankly not many people are all that upset about the whole thing anymore.

The light really switched on for me in my first week as "assistant to the Chairman for special projects" in the Department of Pediatrics in what was then called Boston City Hospital. The Chairman was a great guy named Barry Zuckerman. In addition to being this amazing physician and researcher, he just "got it" - he understood that a child's health is affected by dozens of things most doctors can't address.

Barry may be best known for developing the model and co-founding the Reach Out and Read Program, a "nonprofit organization that promotes early literacy and school readiness in pediatric exam rooms nationwide by giving new books to children and advice to parents about the importance of reading aloud." But what did it for me was another project he started with a lawyer named Josh Greenberg called the Family Advocacy Program. It grew into the Medical-Legal Partnership. Josh and Barry told this great story.

Doctors were seeing young children from housing projects show up in their clinics with some pretty nasty asthma. We all know that environmental factors such as allergens and pollution can exacerbate the symptoms of asthma, so in addition to prescribing medicine the doctors would tell the parents about not smoking around the kids, limiting exposure to cats or dogs, and so on. Still, the kids would come back, far too often, with terrible symptoms of asthma. Eventually they discovered that housing projects were carpeted, and those carpets had gotten wet, dirty, and moldy, and the mold was triggering asthmatic attacks.

Of course, a doctor can't prescribe removal of a moldy carpet in a state-administered, federally-funded housing project. And that's where Josh came in. He would navigate the legal bureaucracy to get things done. It was typically a bunch of inside-baseball stuff - it's not like you need to stage a rally decrying the evils of "Big Carpet Corporations" - but it meant a lot to the children and families affected by it.

In truth, the carpet story was just one of many things they did, and I never got the impression that Barry or Josh saw themselves as environmental crusaders. They were child advocates. Barry recruited tons of people to work on dozens of innovative ideas that could improve the health of children - the Child Witness to Violence Project comes to mind. I was really just along for the ride for a few years.

But I never forgot that story about the carpet in the housing project. I understood, in concrete terms, the public health impact of changes to a specific environment. I saw it again in the winter when the hospital's Failure To Thrive Clinic reported children were malnourished and losing weight because low-income parents were using some of the meager food budget to pay for heat.

Why is this story relevant now? Simple. In December the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a determination that greenhouse gasses are a threat to public health, and the agency asserted its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emission of those gasses. The EPA has started a fairly gradual process of data collection and is considering next steps. This action has led to an uproar among the largest emitters of GHG's and their supporters.

But it's really not that far-fetched to suggest there are significant (if unintended) public health consequences to the things we do, and it's not all that bad if people outside the traditional health care profession take meaningful steps to address them.

My friends over at sustainablog are going to be at the eco bed & breakfast The Milkweed Mercantile throwing a blogathon to raise money for Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. One of the longest-running blogs on environmental issues, sustainablog also recently launched an eco friendly products comparison shopping site, selling everything from green cleaning supplies and organic clothing to energy efficient appliances and composting toilets.

The blogathon will raise funds to support residential learning opportunities at Dancing Rabbit in organic gardening, natural green building, and wind and solar renewable energy design and installation. Interested in checking out Dancing Rabbit for yourself, or taking advantage of some of their educational opportunities? Read more here. And consider making a pledge to support this sustainable community's efforts.

An Open Letter to Online Thugs

Dear knuckle-dragging mouth breathers:

The fact that you're using blogs or facebook to help people harass, intimidate or threaten Members of Congress and their families because they supported a bill doesn't make you media savvy. It makes you cowards who know nothing about the ideals for which our founding fathers fought and died.

Nathan Hale wasn't hanged so you could fax a picture of a noose to a Congressman. George Washington didn't guide a bunch of scared and starving patriots across an icy Delaware River so you could hurl racial slurs at a hero of the civil rights movement. Ethan Allen didn't storm Fort Ticonderoga so you could cut the gas line to someone's house. And Paul Revere didn't risk his neck warning the Minutemen of a British advance so you could disrupt proceedings of the House of Representatives, literally delaying representative democracy in action.

You don't like a bill. I get it. I didn't like a lot of bills that passed under previous Congresses. I worked for a Senator and didn't like a lot of things that got passed there. But this is how representative democracy works. You don't threaten anyone.

But here's a thought: if you can't articulate the details of the bill you apparently oppose, you might want to put the brick down until you can. Complete sentences help. Verbs. They're called verbs.

And to the big-time bloggers, company executives, and MEMBERS OF CONGRESS who tacitly endorse and enable this thuggery: the blood these thugs draw - and believe me, it's just a matter of time before they really hurt someone - will be on your hands. Deep down you know it.

Those electoral gains you keep saying you'll have are disappearing in front of you because you're tolerating this. This is gonna backfire on you. Big time.

But I'd rather you make electoral gains than tolerate this depravity. America deserves better than this.

Entrepreneurial Journalism and Rebuilding Trust

My boss has asked me to take a long look at media convergence issues - you know, how the Internet changes the way people consume news and how journalists report it - and I'm incorporating much of it into some social media training materials for the company. More and more I'm realizing this isn't a story about technology, and it really isn't a story about journalism.

"Media convergence" is really just one of countless stories about entrepreneurship. It's nothing new. It's about large companies clinging to the methods and products that made them successful 20 years ago, and remaining steadfast in the belief that any effort spent doing something other than selling that product or using that method is a wasteful distraction. (For example, television news has become formulaic, almost rote in its delivery.) It's about smaller companies and individuals trying something new, most of them failing, and trying again.

The Pew Project's State of the News Media 2010 Report came out last week. I found it via Tom Johnson's post on Media Convergence Matters. Johnson cites one of the report's conclusions:

For online news to become a profitable enterprise, either consumer attitudes need to change or the industry must do more. That more could be developing new better-targeted products that people are willing to pay for; new forms of advertising that work better, including local search; or new forms of revenue other than display advertising, including perhaps online retailing.

The "consumer attitudes need to change" is a reference to consumers not being willing to pay for a lot of content or clicking ads. In truth, consumer attitudes are constantly evolving. The report includes a lot about how news needs to move online, and it has. It includes a lot about aggregating and curating content to better fit the needs of the consumer. This is all good, but to me it doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

Sadly, it doesn't have a lot about improving the quality of journalism generally or helping people understand why the news is relevant to them. In America at least, I think people have developed a significant detachment from what we commonly refer to as "the news." I think there's a strong mistrust of the news industry. People want to know who's paying for it.

At the source of it, I think, is the news industry's oft-repeated "if it bleeds, it leads" mantra has devolved into the basic formula "conflict = news," and if information doesn't have loud, competing sides, it really isn't newsworthy. I see science bloggers express some version of this sentiment on a regular basis.

The most important recent example of this is the coverage of health care reform over the last year. Some conservatives had legitimate disagreements with the Democrats' proposals, and other people decided to equate reform with genocide. The media made its choice early on what to cover - and so we heard wild tales about socialism and death panels. And once that decision was made, conservatives realized that the only way they could get their message out to the general public was to push the rhetoric further and further out, past the fringes of sanity.

As a result, people still don't know what actually passed in the health care reform law, after a year of debate.

Of course there are people in journalism who do a great job and should get more attention. But ask yourself - is that where the media industry is as a whole?

So yes, innovation in how news is developed, curated, and delivered is a must. (I like the idea of a business incubator for journalism.) But so is quality control - and that's the hard part.

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die

This morning I'm thinking about my old boss. I like what Maggie Mahar had to say about him.

And say what you will about the politics and the policy - over the past two months Speaker Pelosi has cemented her place among the greats to hold her office in terms of effectiveness. I'm very impressed with her knowledge of the process and policy, her knowledge of her caucus, and her sheer force of will in the face of unprecedented opposition in dollars and outside influence. Senator Kennedy used to say that sometimes you have to sail against the wind, and Speaker Pelosi stared down a gale and never blinked.

Clay, Cannon, Longworth, Rayburn, O'Neill - in my mind she's up there with them.

Bridging Brands and Bloggers

Susan Getgood asked me to participate in a webinar next month called "Bridging Brands & Bloggers." I've sung Susan's praises here before but I think she's really outdone herself this time.

The Council of PR Firms is sponsoring the webinar and Susan is representing Blog With Integrity. (I'm a member of BWI's Advisory Board.) The webinar will look at best practices in social media outreach and also examine the impact that new FTC rules have had on the industry. CPRF is really leading the way here, and I'm very pleased they've tapped Susan to lead the development of this.

What really excites me about the webinar, however, is the panel of bloggers she's lined up:

Beth Blecherman is the force behind Tech Mamas;
Michelle Madhok leads SHEfinds; and
Tim Hurst, my editor at Earth & Industry and at Ecopolitology.

It's very rare that someone brings bloggers together from three huge sectors - tech, retail, and environment - on a single panel to talk about PR, but she pulled it off. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to participate, and I hope you'll join us...

In transit...

I'm on a somewhat frantic 48-hour jaunt to meet some new friends and some old friends to talk about social media and politics and stuff. I'll be tweeting a bit, and will check back in here later this week...

ummm... so what's up with Utah?

I don't usually take this space for political rants, and I don't think this will be all that mean - but I just have to ask a question.

Seriously, what is going on in Utah politics?

Let me see if I get this right - the majority leader of the Utah House of Representatives told everyone that 25 years ago he got naked in a hot tub with a 15-year-old female employee of his. He was 28 and married. But seriously, they were just naked in the hot tub as a "spur of the moment thing" and that was it. Then in 2002, when this guy was running for Congress, the girl resurfaces and he pays her $150,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement. It's not hush money, he says, but something to "help her heal." And he says he treated it like any other event in his life. He's coming forward now because that woman is starting to call reporters.

He says all this, and then members of the Utah legislature give him a standing ovation and hug him.

This is a couple of months after the majority leader of the Utah Senate resigned after his arrest for DUI. Reportedly this guy's father was killed by a drunk driver.

And don't forget, this is the legislature where one guy insists "climate change" is actually a conspiracy to control population, and another guy thinks they should cut the 12th grade to save money. Or he did until people called him nuts, now he just wants to make it optional, maybe, or something.

I suppose we've all done some really stupid things and said some really stupid things. But seriously, have most people done or said things that stupid? And rise to the ranks of Majority Leader of a state legislature?

Is it me?

Science Bloggers Discussing Scientists Discussing Science Blogs

Bora Zivkovic wrote a post this week about an article in the Journal of Science Communication that suggested that science blogs may not be doing enough to engage non-scientists in discussions about science. (Or something like that. I'm not a scientist.) Bora questioned the methodology. But he also said something that seemed rather obvious to me:

Most bloggers write for their own amusement and not with a specific goal of popularization of science, and, after a while, tend to adapt to what their audience actually is. Thus, a knowledgeable audience will result in further posts being written at their level of interest and understanding.

Similar sentiments -and more - came from Sean Carroll, Richard Hoppe, and PZ Myers. I liked this - Bora linked to it - from Science Kitchen :

Different blogs serve different purposes, but one common justification for science blogging is that it can serve as a way for scientists to speak directly with the public, as a tool for engaging non-scientists, keeping them up to date with current discoveries and promoting the enormous value of research.

A recent study in the Journal of Science Communication, however, points out that science blogs are failing to provide this useful service (link found via A.J. Cann, thanks)

Is this really a failure or is it an unrealistic expectation?

I think it's an undeserved knock. To me, criticizing science bloggers for not being accommodating enough toward non-scientists on their blogs is a bit like turning down a dish of homemade apple pie because it didn't come with ice cream. Sure, I'd like the added bonus of someone stopping the discussion and explaining quantum physics to me, but let's just agree I'm not going to get it and move on.

Scientists deserve their own online community like any other group of people with similar interests. The science blogging community is large and diverse. It has its ups and downs, its rivalries, its own jargon, and so on. It's like any other community. There shouldn't be a need to defend the practice of discussing issues and ideas within one's own community.

But here's the thing: a lot of scientists and science bloggers - I'm sure even some of those I linked to above - want people outside the science community to see the value in their work and their writing. Not all of them, of course - but many do, and there's real societal value in that. It's important for people to understand why, say, molecular biology matters. People should understand there's more to paleontology than dinosaur bones. (though, let's face it, dinosaur bones are kind of cool.) The best possible people to make this case are the people who do it.

More importantly, I think all these science bloggers are implicitly acknowledging we can't expect other people to learn about the importance of science by reading their blogs.

If scientists want other people to understand the importance of science, they need to go to them and talk with them wherever they are. And when that doesn't work, they need to go to them again. And again. And again. Never stop trying.

Social media tools give scientists a direct line of communication with other people. Science bloggers don't need to change anything about their blogs, because that's not what they're for anyway. What's needed is a new dialogue, in a new place.

This can be done, people.

There goes my shot at a spot on the Board of Education

Never Write Off Mom Bloggers, Part 2,953

I first learned about Leah Peterson doing research for a social media client a few years ago. I was trying to find women bloggers who would be interested in participating in a conference call with Gloria Steinem. (Yes, THAT Gloria Steinem. It really wasn't that hard.)

If you read Leah's blog you learn very quickly that she's really up front about her mental illness. She shares a lot of details. And I have to admit I was a little nervous about inviting her to the call. We were putting a high-profile client in a public setting, and we would be giving access to someone who wrote frequently about multiple personalities, drug addiction, and worse.

But here's the thing: it was quite clear the other moms knew her well. They all linked to her blog and said very nice things about her. I remember she featured interviews of other bloggers - and that's where I got the idea for the sidebar on the right. She was a full-fledged, credible member of an online community. She wrote a reasonably prominent blog. The only reason we'd be excluding her was her health status, and that's just wrong. So we invited her.

The conference call went well - the women asked great questions, and Gloria Steinem gave great answers. So, happy little PR flack that I am, I went to the blogs to see if the women would write about it. And I saw a post on every woman's personal blog except one - Leah's.

Turns out Leah published her piece on The Huffington Post. You know, that blog with the millions of visitors. So from a PR perspective, she went from being a "risky" choice to being an absolute no-brainer.

I kept in touch with Leah over the years, as any halfway-decent social media flack would - not as much as I keep in touch with some bloggers, but every now and then. I saw her at BlogHer '07 in Chicago and thanked her for the post she wrote. I wrote about a project she was working on called Real Mental. A couple of months ago she sent me a note out of the blue, asking me to contribute some stuff to her new magazine, LP Creative Humans, so I did.

And now I learn she's a consultant for Showtime's Emmy-winning series, The United States of Tara. She's doing it to help educate people about mental illness, get people talking about it, and reduce stigma. Not too shabby, huh?

Media Convergence Done Right

Global Voices Online and BBC News team up.

Congratulations to Ivan, Solana, and everyone at Global Voices - and to BBC News for having the courage to try something new.

Science Has a Serious PR Problem

Here's the truth: evolution happens, vaccines save lives and don't cause autism, and climate change is real.

Meanwhile, as Julie Marsh points out, the state of Texas continues to push for alternatives to evolution in its science curriculum in schools. Even after the Lancet retracted its infamous paper suggesting a correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism, The Huffington Post published a piece by David Kirby insisting the retraction "changes nothing." (and guess what? this post is the first thing you see when you google "Lancet retraction.") And sadly, the South Dakota House of Representatives just passed a resolution - well, let Kate Sheppard explain:

The resolution, approved by a vote of 36-30, states that public schools should be required to teach students that "global warming is a scientific theory rather than a proven fact" and that a variety of "climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics" could be changing the weather. Yes, that’s astrological, as in horoscopes. And as Brad Plumer points out, thermology involves the science of infrared body imaging. Not quite clear what role that might play in global warming.

In Utah, one state legislator called climate change "in fact a conspiracy to limit population not only in this country but across the globe," and prompted the state Assembly to pass a resolution urging the federal government to stop its "carbon dioxide reduction programs."

Now the New York Times reports that opponents of science are trying to link some of these issues together - leveraging misinformation about climate change to promote misinformation about evolution. It cites a bill filed in Kentucky that tries to question the science on both.

From a politics and communications perspective, science is getting its butt kicked right now on the state level. And while the stimulus package Congress passed a year ago gave science funding a boost, overall sound science isn't doing all that much better on the federal level.

This is a serious problem for everyone in many ways. Right now I'm focusing on my line of work. When science is attacked, people don't know who to believe on issues of fact - and they can't make informed decisions. If you're a business with science-based product, you're vulnerable to any kind of fear-based campaign with halfway-decent, focus-grouped messaging. You know, like "there's antifreeze in vaccines." (there isn't.) Further, if a business tries to stand up for science, it's attacked as mercilessly profit-driven. Who's right is irrelevant.

So where is the campaign to fight back?

The truth is there isn't one. What we have is a handful of decent books like Unscientific America and Denialism, a lot of really smart science and medical bloggers, and Bill Nye. There is a grassroots group (more accurately, a group of groups) called Citizens for Science that tries to take on the issues facing science education - but you may notice that they list no chapters in the states mentioned above - Utah, South Dakota, and Kentucky.

Science has a serious PR problem, and it's this: Critics of science are searching people out and talking with them in the simplest terms possible. Scientists and "science writers," if they talk at all, are basically talking with each other.

Even Bill Nye, who really tries to talk with non-scientists, likes to talk about meeting Stephen Hawking. He's really preaching to the converted.

The blogosphere represents an outstanding opportunity for scientists to share ideas with the rest of us. And there are hundreds of really smart scientists writing very impressive blogs - most of which use words I've never seen. But on issues like climate change or evolution or when science is criticized generally, Not many science bloggers I've seen like to talk with the "persuadables." They prefer to eviscerate their critics, and insult those who might follow those critics. On science blogs, scientists are sharing their points of view with their colleagues, and they're adding some powerful snark for good measure. It may be good science, but it's not good PR. And what's happening in the blogosphere is happening elsewhere as well.

I've heard people say "we need to make science cool" - a lot of that talk was at ScienceOnline 2010 - and that would be nice, but I don't think that's really the answer. "Science" isn't really going to beat out American Idol or the NFL or whatever.

Cool is important, but I think we need to make science relevant. There's a difference. For example, I think every scientist should listen to Robert Krulwich's 2008 Commencement Address to graduates of Cal Tech:

When a cousin, or an uncle, or a buddy comes up and asks you, "so what are you working on?" even if it's hard to explain, even if you know they don't really want to hear it - not really - I urge you to give it a try. Because talking about science, telling stories to regular folks is not a trivial thing. Scientists need to tell stories to non-scientists because science stories - and you know this - have to compete with other stories about how the universe works and how the universe came to be. And some of those other stories - Bible stories, movie stories, myths - can be very beautiful and very compelling. But to protect science, and scientists - this is not a gentle competition - you've got to get in there and tell yours, your version of how things are and why things came to be.

Yes, we should celebrate science and scientists in our pop culture. But it's not enough. Science has to be accessible and relevant. Those who do it must be able to talk about it - not "media trained" but able to explain, in simple terms, what it is, why it's important to them, and why could be important to everyone else.

Further, people have to be able to participate in it, at least in some way. Darlene Cavalier and Michael Gold are developing this wonderfully important and engaging website called Science for Citizens that gives regular folks an opportunity to participate in real science projects run by real scientists. Of course, I learned about this by watching Darlene present it to a room full of scientists. And I saw some of those scientists mumbling things like "that's not really science."

What Darlene and Michael are doing is profoundly important, and it deserves enormous support. Not everyone is going to be a PhD but everyone should have the opportunity to participate in the scientific process, and feel the rush of discovery and awakening that comes with learning and experiencing new things.

As more people have that understanding and perspective, I think we'll see much more support of science generally and far fewer attempts by state legislators to obfuscate or reject what we know is true.

So gear up, science bloggers... I'll be sharing more thoughts soon...

Funny What Happens When You Promise Stuff To People

They remember what you said and expect you to follow up.

Frankly, I Think Sarah Palin Could Take You.

My recent post about the inconsistently applied policies at Facebook prompted an interesting discovery - there's a group called "I Want to Punch Sarah Palin In the Face."

And it has over 1,000 members. Seriously. I did notice this, ahem, disclaimer:

This is in no way a group promoting or condoning violence toward women or anyone, it is simply a repository for unremitting anger and frustration.

Here's a tip - if your group doesn't want to promote or condone violence toward women, you might not want to name the group "I Want to Punch Sarah Palin In the Face." I don't agree with her on much, but she's done nothing - NOTHING - to deserve this.

I don't hide my politics but I'm disgusted when people who may (or may not) share my politics express themselves like this. Recently I've seen people openly ask why no one has dropped a plane on a certain political activist's building.

And I'm not interested in "the other side does it too" garbage. That doesn't matter. You're either against violence or you're not.

And we wonder why our political leaders can't accomplish anything.