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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
Happy Memorial Day to you, the families of the United States Military.
A quick note to say thank you and I’m sorry. Oh sure, we applaud the military service and we wave flags. We call you all heros. Most of you are average folk, cooking, cleaning, pushing paperwork, some are Seals, Rangers, fighter pilots, etc etc. but these days of changing threats, all of you are the first to be put in the line of fire. Time and again, redeployments are a way of life and fighting for your pay is almost as time consuming as fighting for your life. See Stop-Loss pay.
As the landscape of threats to the US changes from what was thought of as a battlefield with rules of engagement, to a free-for-all with bombs disguised as trash cans, the way average citizen’s perceive war is changing, and I fear not for the better. Without a draft, most Americans remain a couple degrees of separation away from the effects of war. It seems like we complain more about the inconvenience of TSA airport lines than the sacrifices of military members and their families.
We shy away from war, and when we are allowed a glimpse, it’s usually through the eyes of technology or the sweat of a special branch. Drones, operated by military intelligence officers thousands of miles away, the orchestration of an aircraft carrier, or the training depicted on the Military Channel. May I suggest Restrepo on Netflix. http://restrepothemovie.com/
War, with its limited involvement and engagement by the general population, is sterile today, compared to World War II which was a national sacrifice or the Vietnam War accessed on only three national television networks broadcast into most living rooms.
No, I fear without a national draft and a variety of limited engagements based on an ever expanding rationale for participation, war has as much entertainment value as it does strategic geopolitical value. With three thousand information and entertainment choices instead of CBS, NBC, and ABC (circa 1968), knowledge of US military engagement will be less of a national experience, and more similar to your choice of watching, House Hunters or Sports Nation.
MIlitary life is in a transition, from a lifestyle choice back when deployment meant moving to a similar environment to the one you are in only in a different developed country, to a life of sacrifice where part time National Guard and a career warrior equally are targeted. My humble thanks to all military families for their sacrifice. Also, a modest appeal to fellow Americans and political leaders to consider the point of this post. Do not let America’s military technology and human lives be treated as a team sport.
As we see in the Mideast uprisings, Freedom is not something to be outsourced. On this Memorial Day I wonder if Freedom is something all Americans would fight for instead of calling out for it?
There is a toxic formula brewing for journalism in the United States and everywhere there is the illusion of a free press. This cocktail has led to the entire industry missing stories with global impact.
This panel of editors and journalists was wonderfully candid about the state of journalism and the role PR has in contributing to the content and quality of press in this country. Their lament about the status quo of PR and journalism is the echo we all hear: too little time to read every email pitch.. stop sending pitches that have nothing to do with my areas of interest. The members of this panel felt social media had modest to little use as a resource.
So far, no new news here for me, until the candid Bob Lenzner painfully offered that journalists missed some of the biggest financial stories regarding AIG, the global economic crisis, and the bailout details. He acknowledged in retrospect that the media should have been more diligent, for example, in reading the “footnotes” of AIG’s financial statements. He wished those in PR would have highlighted these issues with greater vigor.
It struck me at that moment – 1) journalists or their researchers are the ones that should be digging into footnotes; however, budget cuts over the years have diminished that capability, and 2) the hurdles to get the attention of journalists and those journalists that are predisposed to trust a small circle of PR sources contributed to this failure of journalism to have seen this complex and long brewing financial crisis coming.
The toxic formula includes: a narrow circle of trusted business PR professionals, a dwindling number of resources to report the news, a faster news cycle, a shorter news story lifecycle, and an increasingly competitive news environment.
Can Twitter be an Antidote?
I have seen a wide range of uses of social media by journalists. Twitter is the most visible, with Business Week and CNN being among the leaders in using the platform for information gathering, sourcing, and distribution of news. The 140 Conference is coming up in New York this week. As one of the moderators on Tuesday, June 16, I’ll ask whether social media is a way to counter the side effects caused by reduced resources and increasing time demands on journalists, or is Twitter another potent ingredient that distracts from the business of reporting on serious and complex issues.
Will Twitter specifically and other forms of social media give journalists other trusted sources, will there be the time, tools, or other resources necessary for to take better advantage of the individuals who have a different voice, a new perspective, or a critical counter to the “conventional wisdom” of the select few?
Some of the journalists and news media representatives speaking on Tuesday include John Byrne. Editor of BusinessWeek.com @JohnAByrne – Rick Sanchez, Rick Sanchez (@ricksanchezcnn) and Ryan Osborn (@todayshow) – Producer, NBC Today Show among many others.
Stay tuned this week for tweets, posts, and podcasts from the conference.
The old maxim “you don’t argue with the guy who buys ink by the barrel” isn’t as accurate as it once was. The combination of blogs, new online publishers like TechCrunch and the Huffington Post, and social media sites are creating new opportunities for professional and unpaid journalism.
The key to social media’s success is voices. The dilemma for social media is finding and determining the valuable content of those voices for you. Helium.com is a Web site designed for long-form written content and has an interesting way of sorting out what’s valuable. The site attracts those who have a desire to write, and its 90,000 members rate the articles on the site, giving all readers some guidance on the quality of the content.
This community grading apparatus rewards objective, accurate articles and banishes self-promoters to the valley of propaganda. (There really is no such place on Helium.com. That was my editorial license to say that garbage articles are ranked at the bottom.)
It’s a combination social media community, wiki (kind of ), blog and content provider. There is also a way for other publishers of Web sites and print publications to post requests for articles. Writers then submit articles for that particular topic for the publisher to potentially purchase. It is like a job board that matches buyers of articles to providers of content. Hey, it might not be enough money to quit your day job, but it is a way to fulfill a passion, share knowledge, and build your expertise and writing portfolio.
Helium.com also allows for contributions to non-profit groups, including Teachers Without Borders and Collegiate Society of America, as articles are purchased. It’s the concept of giving back to the community for writers as well as tapping into those non-profits as sources of quality articles.
Communicators should review this site as another step in determining the social media strategy. These are the interesting attributes of Helium.com:
Source for industry trends across tens of thousands of topics
Venue for your ideas and passion
Potential revenue if articles are purchased
Establish greater credibility as a writer
Give exposure to issues that are not being covered in the mainstream media
Plant the seeds of debate that others nurture -– that, after all, is the essence of social media
2. Join the Conversation book giveaway contest: Joseph Jaffe’s latest book is the talk of the Amazon charts, and we will give a copy away on Dec. 19, with an added bonus. In the spirit of joining the conversation, I have included written commentary in many of the chapters. It’s the ultimate form of keeping the conversation going. Send me an e-mail with “Conversation” in the subject line and you’ll be included in the random drawing.
3. Movie trivia in this podcast episode: Listen toward the end of the podcast for a sound clip from a movie. Tell me what movie you think it came from and we’ll give one person who provides the correct answer a $10 Subway gift card. Hint: It’s a classic! Either send me an e-mail or submit your answer in the comment section.
NOTE: Provident Partners donates a food item for every comment (on the blog or by e-mail) we get. Our monthly budget for this community program is $100/month.
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