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Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Posted by philgomes 2:54 PM
The Road To Journalistic Hell Paved With Good Intentions:
Regulators now want to exercise counter-constitutional prior restraint on journalists, crashing into their interviews with financial analysts. As covered by The Los Angeles Times (with my own emphases added): Last week, the New York Exchange and the National Assn. of Securities Dealers, which operates Nasdaq, sent to the SEC a proposed regulation governing stock analysts' conversations with print journalists. In interviews, analysts would be required to disclose any potential conflict of interest posed by their own stock ownership. If a newspaper or magazine fails to print that information along with any comments attributed to the analyst, the analyst would be forbidden to speak again to the offending publication. Failure to abide by the regulation could result in fines or suspension of the analyst.The New York Times is also carrying the story. This creates a chilling effect on financial reporting. Though analysts like Blodgett and Meeker have been famously excoriated for their two-faced conflicts—recommending stocks their companies underwrote, but knew were total crap—the analyst community is an important part of the financial reporting picture. If this passes, very few analysts will want to talk to a journalist. Reporters will refuse to talk to analysts because doing so blunts freedoms that the media enjoys. I'm all for more transparency in the analyst community, but this goes too far. Way too far. Instead, I support NASD's compromise: That the law apply to analyst-authored columns and byline articles.
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
Posted by philgomes 5:04 PM
Times A-Changing In Electronics Publishing:
If you haven't figured it out by now, I've been following (and participating in) electronics PR for some time. Slashdot pointed me to the fact that the venerable Electronic News has shrunk to a staff of three, ceased printing, and gone totally online. Electronic News is largely credited with coining the term "Silicon Valley," thanks to the editorial work of the reportedly inimitable Dan Hoefler. What many don't know is that the magazine seeded a lot of editorial talent into the technology mediaspace. Here is a small sample of where some Electronic News alums have landed: –Jim DeTar, Investor's Business Daily, Semiconductor Reporter –Arik Hesseldahl, Forbes, "10 O'Clock Tech" Columnist –Andrew McClellan, Electronic Buyers' News, Editor-In-Chief
Friday, November 22, 2002
Posted by philgomes 1:16 AM
VCs Want Me Dead!
Last night I was at the Churchill Club, which is Silicon Valley's venerable public affairs forum. During the cocktail reception beforehand, I happened to run into a former client. From the next room, KPCB's marquee venture capitalist and rumored Democratic VP hopeful John Doerr was on his Segway Human Transporter, trying to find a narrow corridor through the crowd. For those who don't know, the SHT (obviously not checked for its acronym) is that two-wheeled personal transporter that everyone from Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos said was going to revolutionize transportation the year before its 2001 introduction. "Entire cities will be built around this," they breathlessly said. (Whatever. Americans are out-of-shape as it is—without the introduction of something marketed to replace the act of walking.) Anyway... As Doerr was making his way, I gently moved my former client aside. "Danger," I joked. "Inbound Segway!" Doerr overheard this. "No!" he was quick to interject. "No danger at all! Look!" He then proceeded to purposely run right into me with that thing! To the SHT's credit, I was unharmed by the experience. An amazing piece of engineering, the Segway stopped immediately once its sophisticated circuitry detected that it had already invaded my personal space—an incredibly elegant means of ensuring that no physical harm is done. But...I mean, what if the thing shorted and put on a uncontrollable burst of speed? Would I be here writing this? What if I spilled my scotch on that four-figure buggy? Yeah...Yeah... I know. That's a specious argument. "Both of those instances apply to the automobile," Segway proponents might say. (Read the above paragraph again.) *sigh* "Your life is an adventure!" someone told me upon hearing this tale. This ranks up there on my list of Bizarre Encounters With Famous People, along with the time Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow crashed Adaptec's 1999 COMDEX booth during my agency tenure with the company. ("Dude...I grew up on the Metal Health album, man!")
Monday, November 18, 2002
Posted by philgomes 11:29 AM
The Easiest PR Gig In The World...
Has to be the PR manager for the U.S. Secret Service. Think about it.
Posted by philgomes 12:51 AM
What American Tech-Heads Are Good At:
I'm not going to make very many friends with this posting, but it's been something I've been talking about for some time. A recent article in cnet's news.com inspired me to write. The Baby Boomers and previous generations have been pretty much trained to accept a certain set of non-derogatory stereotypes as fact. I like to call these benign generalizations "industrial stereotypes." You've all heard 'em: Germans are supposed to be great engineers, Italians are supposed to be great cooks. Etc. etc. etc. But let's talk about how these are shaking out for the seamlessly integrated, feature-rich, robust, end-to-end-solution generation. Indians? Incredible programmers. Why do you think so much programming is going overseas to India? An educational system steeped in mathematics, combined with a resolute work ethic, has made India the place for software innovation. The Koreans and the Taiwanese are manufacturers par excellance. So much so, in fact, that many claim that the most recent set of DRAM price crashes was because companies like Hyundai and Samsung couldn't dial down their incredible manufacturing capacity fast enough. Industrial designers? That award goes to the Japanese. I mean, have you seen the consumer electronics stuff they come out with? Check out the latest stuff from Sony, as a representative example. I was at the Sony Style store the other day — the new Vaio series laptops and the digicam-enabled Clie PDAs are pretty hard to resist picking up. Now... What are we Americans good at? The answer: networking. We really get a charge out of making sure that one doodad can plug into another doodad. We like our fridges talking to the Internet. We want our cars to talk 802.11 to our toaster ovens. We're just not happy until everything is communicating with everything else. Now your phone can talk USB to your PC. Wow. Progress.
Friday, November 01, 2002
Posted by philgomes 3:57 PM
Phil's Last Day At Work:
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ABOUT THIS BLOG
This is the blog of Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL.
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