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The Flack

This weblog attempts to shine a brighter light on the subtle role public relations plays in politics, popular culture, journalism, business/finance, entertainment, technology, social media, consumer marketing and sports.


The Juiced Up News ReleaseOctober 21
This week one of my clients issued a news release on one of the big paid wire services. The Google News Alert showed immediate and impressive results: Dow Jones Marketwatch, Yahoo Finance, and dozens of others including the perennial Earth Times.

Yet, when searching for the story on the Marketwatch site, nothing popped. Huh? Where's the "story?"

No matter. Most agencies will include the link to the unedited release's appearance on these sites in their client wrap-up reports. But it's a fallacy. The release's "presence" on Yahoo Finance is a result of feed agreements the paid wires have with the portal and dozens of others, which also includes countless local broadcast TV stations' companion websites.

So when PR Newswire called me several weeks ago to talk about a new study that "demonstrated" its greater prowess for generating media "pick-up





Live from NY: It's Sarah PalinOctober 17
Say it ain't so, Lorne Michaels. You've invented and re-invented television's most valuable piece of youth-oriented programming ever, and I hear you're poised to betray those who've made it so.

We all know that Tina Fey's artful, yet scary take of one vice presidential candidate has given America a deeper understanding of Sarah Palin than any of the interviews Ms. Palin's handlers have allowed.

And SNL, now in its 34th season, has struck such a resonant chord with its link-happy, socially networked audience that the show today plays a larger role in the outcome of the election election than any news organization. Moreover, its success in the audience and advertising-challenged broadcast medium stands in contrast to cable TV's reigning kin



Twitter and Media's AtomizationOctober 17
We all know about mining the online conversation and the value it has for individuals, institutions and enterprises trying to get a read on their online reputations.

This increasingly vital PR function also provides an early-warning system for potential PR peccadilloes, as well as an opportunity to engage and catalyze brand evangelists.

Yet, I sit here mesmerized by a special Twitter feed on the elections...contemplating its barometric possibilities and what it portends for the PR pro. Is this what TIME's Richard Stengel had in mind when he spoke earlier this week of "the further atomization of the media."

Scanning the revelations that scroll by in these 140-character posts, some with TinyURL links, one begins to grasp just how much the mainstream media is missing in its daily (recycled) news reporting. This goes well beyond the already gra





Murphy's LawOctober 9
The success of most media-driven PR events is contingent on several factors:
  • The quality and timeliness of the story;
  • The appropriateness of the journalists whose attentions you seek, and
  • The state of the news environment.
The first two variables are relatively manageable. The third is a wild card that has been known to derail even the most mediable of media events.

As I write this, we are immersed in a near impossible news environment, one that has likely hamstrung many of you from doing your business. Take heart. You're not alone.

The week before last, we were charged with securing media attention for a high profile two-day business gathering in New York that happened to fall in the eye of the perfect media storm. Our "competition" for New York's bandwidth-challenged journalists included:
  • The $700 billion bailout brouhaha
  • The stock market meltdown
  • The Bushes dropping in to the Big Apple
  • Sarah Palin in town for her photo-opped foreign education
  • McCain at the Clinton Global Initiative
  • Dozens of foreign leaders for the opening session of the








Unfiltered Kool-AidOctober 7
Hasn't the mainstream media learned its lesson? Didn't the unquestioned pronouncements that led to this failed administration give practicing journalists sufficient reason to say enough is enough?

Jay Rosen tweets us to a post on The Atlantic's Daily Dish blog:
jayrosen_nyu Sullivan: Until Palin gives a full press conference, cable news should stop putting her road shows in the rotation. Agree? Andrew Sullivan's post concludes with this:
What the Palin-McCain campaign wants is all give and no take: an indirect propaganda filter and the outrageous precedent of no press conferences in presidential campaigns. This is an assault on democracy. It is closer to Russian or Georgian democracy than American. If cable news continues to enable this chilling process, they will become complicit.

Enough.

In dealing with the media filter, the last thing a PR person needs to transmit is a sense that he or she can somehow cont