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	Phil's Blogservations Monday, May 18, 2009 Posted by philgomes 8:59 AM If you're wondering why there haven't been a lot of updates here lately, it's because of this: But, more importantly, this: More news as it develops... *8-) Technorati Tags: phil gomes, leticia gomes | Wednesday, April 01, 2009 Posted by philgomes 9:28 PM Sad At a volunteers' meeting at UIC tonight, I noticed that this Silicon Graphics O2 workstation was serving as a doorstop in one of the Science & Engineering Lab's rooms. Funny thing was, I hadn't yet heard the news that SGI was sold to Rackable Systems for $25 million. Remember when SGI was synonymous with "Hollywood blockbuster?" What a long, strange trip it's been. | Saturday, February 07, 2009 Posted by philgomes 9:45 AM The Fairness Doctrine Is Not A PR Tactic PR Week discusses the quite inappropriately dubbed "Fairness Doctrine" and basically ends with the the following message in the form of a quote by Chris Battle of the Adfero Group: PR people can use this crusty old regulatory idea to browbeat broadcasters into covering their clients. From the article: However unlikely its reimplementation, Battle adds that the Fairness Doctrine – even if applied only to now-conservative-dominated talk radio – could benefit the PR sector. If the measure were to gain passage, PR firms could, in theory, demand airtime for their clients, he says. “In a sense, it could be a boon for the PR industry,” he says, “because any time Rush Limbaugh [or a liberal host] makes an argument that goes against the message or mission of a client, [a PR pro] could call up with the law on [his or her] side and demand an opportunity to put the client's views forward.” I imagine that this news whipped around some agency email lists with blind enthusiasm. I also really hope no working PR practitioners actually take this stercoraceous nonsense seriously. For those who don't know, the Fairness Doctrine (which I have previously mentioned) came into being during a time in American broadcasting when available spectrum — and, therefore, variety in broadcast content — was meager. Thus, rules had to be put in place to ensure that the airwaves, considered a public trust, would carry all major viewpoints of a particular issue. (This is very different from the equal time rule, which is only relevant during a campaign, or the personal attack rule, which only applies to when someone is attacked on-air.) Today, we don't have that problem. In fact, I argue we have the opposite problem — no one in America ever has to consume content they're likely to disagree with. (That's a debate for another time.) Suffice to say, the Fairness Doctrine has been dead since 1987. Newly empowered congressional Democrats, however, seek to resurrect it. There are various reasons why the Fairness Doctrine is a bad idea, to say nothing of its possible use as a PR tactic: Technology has made the spectrum-scarcity argument absolutely moot, and I know that I probably don't have to go into too much detail with my readers on this point. The Fairness Doctrine is 100% unconstitutional, as it creates a First-Amendment-violating environment of "prior restraint." In other words, a broadcaster would be reluctant to tackle any issue worth discussing for fear of triggering the Fairness Doctrine. In such a media environment, no one wins. (For more on prior restraint, review Near v. Minnesota, Austin v. Keefe, U.S. v. Progressive, The New York Times Co. v. United States, et al. I'm not a lawyer, but I nevertheless find media law fascinating.) Enforcing "fairness" is simply not the government's job, justice is. Few people understand the difference between the two. Life, unfortunately, is inherently unfair. (And there's no Santa Claus either.) The Fairness Doctrine is as impossible to enforce as the term "fairness" is to even define. That said, perhaps some percentage of the 91,196 regulators that George W. Bush added to the Federal payroll in the past eight years need to be kept busy. Who knows? This is little more than a "Hush Rush [Limbaugh]" idea, pure and simple. It has nothing to do with "fairness" so much as silencing the harshest public critics of the current legislative majority and the executive branch. I'm not terribly fond of Rush, to tell you the truth, but he got to where he is through his own hard work, his knowledge of his audience, and his deep confidence in what he believes. Agree with his views or not, he certainly doesn't deserve to be punished for them. In any case, the net effect of forcing a Fairness Doctrine on "El Rushbo" would have the net effect of shutting down his program. The Democrats must know that using the Fairness Doctrine to silence a leading conservative voice evokes that scene in Star Wars when Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi: "If you strike me down I will become more powerful than you can possible imagine." Sure, enterprises like Air America struggle to gain an interested listenership. Why? Because no one is interested in what they say or how they say it. That's fine. There are plenty of other places where someone can obtain left-leaning opinion commentary, and most don't rely on an executive's highly placed spouse, either. Most certainly, some outlets would love the reinstatement of a Fairness Doctrine. However, using the Fairness Doctrine to achieve a PR goal is for PR folks who don't know how to change minds, but do know how to run to daddy. In any event, PR people need to always think in terms of chess, not checkers. So, best-case scenario, say you're successful in using the Fairness Doctrine to get your client time on the airwaves. Exactly what do you think it does to your client's credibility if the only way it could get its message out is through bureaucracy and procedure? I can hear it now: You're listening to WANK-AM, newstalk 790. Last week, we received a Fairness Doctrine notice from the FCC's Ministry Of Fairness. So, today, we have to bring on Mike Romaneger... I don't want to live in that media environment. And I definitely don't want the public relations industry to be even partially responsible. Technorati Tags: fairness doctrine, broadcasting, pr, public relations | Monday, January 12, 2009 Posted by philgomes 6:36 AM One Name Missing From Atlantic's "End Times" Piece As The Atlantic speculated about the fate of The New York Times, it occurred to me that one name was conspicuously absent from the writer's list of possible acquirers: It’s possible that a David Geffen, Michael Bloomberg, or Carlos Slim would purchase The Times as a trophy property and spare the company some of this pain. Even Rupert Murdoch, after overpaying wildly for The Wall Street Journal, seems to be tempted by the prospect of adding The Times to his portfolio. Why not George Soros? His net worth is not quite Michael Bloomberg's, but more than David Geffen's. Moreover, his politics are most certainly in line with the paper's op/ed page. Is it that far-fetched? Technorati Tags: media, nytimes, newspapers | Sunday, January 04, 2009 Posted by philgomes 6:22 PM Having A "Message" Is Fine, It's "Messaging" That Sucks In PR 2.0 circles, it has long been hip to say that there is no place in modern communications for a company with "messages" and that any company with "messages" is somehow lost in the digital weeds. A PR person who says otherwise is derided as a knuckle-dragging troglodyte while the supremely useless you-don't-get-it crowd gleefully jumps in and piles on. I disagree with the premise that messages are necessarily dead. This was a fallacy that was allowed to progress because the some PR folks were too busy ingratiating themselves with a small set of influencers to think the issues and distinctions through. If your company doesn't have a "message" — a set of clear ideas that codify how it sees itself, its industry, and the world at large — then why the hell does it even exist, let alone communicate? Frankly, a distinction needs to be made. Messages aren't dead. In fact, in an age when meaning is more important than ever, I argue that that having a message or clear set thereof is vital and necessary. It's "messaging" that's dead, defined as the development and cloying repetition of corporatespeak statements devoid of meaning, rendered in a language that no one uses, delivered without the benefit of listening first, and presented in venues and contexts where they are clearly inappropriate. A communications environment where a company needn't have a "message" would be great for lazy communicators who don't want to be bothered with the qualitative measurement of the success or failure of their programs. At that point, "just having a mostly positive conversation" is considered "success". I should hope that, as a profession, we can do better. Now, only a fool would expect that online communities would ever speak "on-message". Only an irresponsible communicator who is unfamiliar with how online communities operate would set that as an objective. However, we're in the business of making a persuasive case on behalf of clients — helping companies, organizations, and even individuals to convince other individuals and third parties of a particular vision or point of view. That's a "message". How the message is conveyed — either by entertaining one-off YouTube video or sustained, mutually beneficial conversation with online communities over a period of time — is a lengthy discussion for another time. The fact is that a company should have a message, or risk irrelevance. Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, social media | Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Posted by philgomes 10:16 AM 2009: Hoping For Audacity, Believing We Can Change From the Edelman Digital blog: The first few years of my PR career in Silicon Valley were marked by a singular frustration — most PR professionals did not aspire to be, nor were they particularly expected to be, as driven to innovate in their own field as their clients were in theirs. "Just get into the Journal," seemed the dictum. "Everything else is secondary." For a number of reasons so tangential to this story as to be distracting, the advent of social media is what kept me in public relations at a point in 2001 when I asked myself "Is this all that there is?" Years later, I'm glad to see there's a lot more. A hell of a lot more. For what it's worth, 2009 will be the year when real innovation starts to come back into PR — not in the relatively cosmetic form of press releases gussied up in Web 2.0 regalia and such, but fundamental changes in how the art of communications is applied day-to-day. Some of these changes won't be all that sexy. Most of them will be perhaps only operational in nature. However, they will be no less important. I won't venture into trying to predict the innovations themselves but, rather, discuss the emerging conditions that make them possible. Read the rest... Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, 2009 | Saturday, December 20, 2008 Posted by philgomes 6:13 PM Media Postions GM PR Adviser As 'Auto Analyst', While Arrington Derails PR's Focus Yuck: CBS’s 'The Early Show' included a statement in its Dec. 18 report on the Big 3 bailout from 'auto industry analyst,' Dan McGinn. Letting the massive car companies fail 'would be like 10 Katrinas hitting America at the same time,' McGinn asserted. 'The American public understands that.' What the report didn’t say is that McGinn is also an adviser to General Motors. Furthermore, TMG Strategies the public relations firm McGinn heads, lists GM as a client. McGinn has been making the case for an auto bailout in many news stories and issuing some compelling statements on behalf of his client. You'd think media organizations would know the difference before booking such a guest. And, yet, nothing from the you-don't-get-it crowd! I guess there's just too much else to be angry about... I'm sure we'll see a post soon about the growing horror (shock!) of corporate blogs that don't allow comments, or companies who don't follow as many people who follow them on Twitter. Or maybe we'll see examples of highlighting the extreme and making it the norm, a favorite tempest-in-the-teapot rhetorical tool for those to wish to defib attention a little. Seems that TechCrunch's Michael Arrington dealt with a few bad flacks who were dishonest about embargoes. His solution: Be dishonest right back! I've never been dishonest about an embargo and, in fact, I've always had a deep respect for what asking a journalist for such an agreement entails. I've also been smart enough to actually, oh I dunno, develop real relationships with the media and influencer communities to determine who is and is not an embargo risk! (A concept that you spray-and-pray PR folk have yet to grasp.) The two best commentaries about this mess come from Charles Arthur and Allen Stern. The point that TechCrunch and most of its fawners don't understand about embargoes is that they don't matter as much as they used to. As Stern offers: Some blogs like the embargo as it allows them to look like a news-breaking organization. The truth is, any exclusive that goes up on any blog, I can have a better post written about the story in 5 minutes. The early bird sometimes might get the worm, but it's the second mouse that always gets the cheese. Technorati Tags: gm, pr, public relations, techcrunch | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a free video game console. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	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. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! 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