Monthly Archives: January 2012

Premature Reports of JoePa’s Death: When Being First Trumps Being Sure

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Growing up in journalism, I would periodically hear of the profession’s learning curve, which included making your first mistakes in smaller markets. The key was to learn from those missteps and thereby become less prone to major blunders at larger publications.

That was in the 1980s, when a story I wrote in the Marshfield Mariner took days to appear locally and wouldn’t show up globally unless someone boarded a flight at Logan International Airport and hauled a copy of the paper to another country.

Now, an inaccurate (or at least premature) report of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno’s death goes from a student website (Onward State) to CBSSports.com in the blink of an eye. And from CBSSports, of course, it goes viral….then backfires, due to the national site’s lack of independent corroboration.

It’s about 11 p.m. on Jan. 21 and Onward State has issued an apology by Devon Edwards, who announced his resignation as managing editor at the same time.

CBSSports.com, by contrast, hasn’t issued an apology–though it should, especially if all it did was re-hash Onward State’s erroneous report without any independent verification.

While Onward State’s mistake might be something you would  expect from young reporters and editors, how can a major outlet get so lax that it is drawn into such a sophomoric slip-up?

The gaffe will surely be dissected in the days to come, but I’ll bet that near the heart of the problem is one or more individuals’ desire to put being first ahead of being sure.

PR Should Have Purpose—And is Even Better When It Can Be Re-Purposed

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Public relations for its own sake is empty. It should have a purpose—some larger organizational aim that the PR serves.

For example, a feature profile on a Realtor should help that professional and his or her firm sell homes. A recent case in point: this Inside Edge PR piece on Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Gloor Realty’s Nancy Leavy.

And the development of quality content—often in the form of writing—is a great gateway for one of my favorite PR phenomena: the re-purposed piece.

A month ago, I identified one such opportunity with the Kenosha Area Business Alliance, an IEPR client. KABA President Todd Battle had written an excellent piece for the organization’s newsletter.

It focused on a group of business leaders who comprise KABA’s CEO Roundtable—and how, collectively, they possessed admirable qualities unlike the “fat cat CEO” depiction that so often dominates public perception.

Todd wrote the piece nearly two years ago, shortly after the Roundtable was formed. The timing didn’t deter me.

If anything, amid the Occupy Wall Street movement and related labor/class unrest across the country, Todd’s message is more relevant than ever.

And on Thursday, a significantly larger audience than those who follow KABA got that message: the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published the column as an op-ed piece, “Not every CEO fits fat cat portrayal.”

The success of this re-purposing approach, of course, rises and falls with the quality of the original content. Take the time and expend the effort to get it done well the first time, and you’ll be setting the stage for an excellent return on that investment days, weeks, months or even years later.

`PR Secrets From a Media Insider’ Returns Feb. 8th

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“PR Secrets from a Media Insider” is back.

My 90-minute workshop, which demystifies how to communicate with the media and empowers organizations to secure coverage for their causes, returns with three sessions over the next three months.

The first one is Wednesday, Feb. 8, at 1111 South Blvd. in Oak Park (directly south of the CTA’s Harlem/Lake stop, on the far western edge of the Green Line).

As with prior PR Secrets workshops, the program will be tailored to address the specific needs of those in attendance. Capacity is capped at 12 people, and each participant receives an 11-page workbook that provides a blueprint for putting the secrets into action.

PR Secrets is back, with monthly sessions between February and April.

Among PR Secrets’ alumni: small-business owners,entrepreneurs, attorneys, finance professionals, insurance agents, and creative professionals.

Attached is a flier that you can click on for more detail, including the $39 fee.

You can also see a brief excerpt from my first PR Secrets session, held just up the street at The Carleton Hotel in Oak Park. Got questions? Email Matt@InsideEdgePR.com or call 708-860-1380.

Stop the Senseless Cranking Out of LinkedIn Invitations

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It takes quite a bit to coax out the cranky side of me.

Some sample scenarios: seemingly bright souls who fail to see the humorous relevance of “irregardless” in certain contexts; running across mention of the Red Sox collapse in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series; and getting yet another LinkedIn invitation from someone I’ve never met.

Of that irksome threesome, the last happens with alarming frequency. So from time to time I feel it my social-media duty to rail against it in the spirit of promoting common sense, basic 21st century etiqutte and sound interpersonal practices.

If you are guilty of inviting people to link-in with you–and you have never met (either in person or in cyberspace), then stop!

With every impersonal, mud-on-the-wall LinkedIn invitation, you are communicating laziness, sloppiness and presumptuousness. Those are the hardly the traits to get you off on the best footing.

If you’ve not met someone and you think you’d be a good LinkedIn candidate, then go ahead, tell them so–but be sure to provide context or indication of how such a connection would be mutually beneficial.

I have written at length about LinkedIn, mostly via posts here on Tips From the Inside Edge, and the theme I keep returning to: treat people like individuals, not some additional notch in your Cyber-Rolodex belt.

Another tip I’d offer: make the effort to provide meaningful recommendations of people with whom you are LinkedIn—add value, so that it’s not about a quantity of connections, but a high quality of any given connection.

I’ve made more than 60 recommendations and it not only benefits those I recommend, but also showcases my ability to string a few cogent thoughts together (on good days)–a rather relevant “show, don’t tell” element when one is in the public relations and communications industry.