Every once in a while, there’s a story that really, viscerally reminds me of why I got into journalism, why I stayed it in for two decades–and why I consider myself a journalist for life even if I’ve been committing repeated acts of public relations for the past half-decade or so. It’s the opportunity to […]
Category Archives: News Industry
Rahm Emanuel, (occasional) Chicago resident The residency flap over Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel is just a variation on the “Silly Season” theme in Chicago-area politics. Six years ago, one of the central characters in the Emanuel controversy, Burt Odelson, was in the midst of a scrum in Cicero that I covered for the Chicago Tribune. […]
If you are opening the doors to your new business on a Thursday, it’s a good idea to spread word of it to the media by Wednesday. Of course, by Wednesday, I mean the one that falls on the calendar at least four weeks before your Grand Opening. Such advance notice gives the media enough […]
Relying on e-mail alone to communicate news releases to the media is Public Relations Malpractice. Pick up the darn phone and make a phone call, among other things, and you’ll separate yourself very rapidly from the PR pack. Sending e-mail is among the easiest acts anyone can perform. So is deleting that very same e-mail. […]
I have a weakness for alliteration. Actually, it may be more apt to acknowledge an affinity for alliteration in my assignments. So when an aspiring journalist recently asked me to answer some questions about the “Art of the Interview,” a pair of P’s popped to mind. To make the most of our interviews, I told […]
Someone recently asked me for some tips on the “Art of the Interview.” From a journalistic perspective, I have led all-day workshops on the topic and feel like I barely scratch the surface. So my ambition in this small space will be confined to one key principle that is as elementary as it is overlooked […]
It is fascinating to learn that the late, great director John Hughes apparently had a teen-aged pen pal, Alison Byrne Fields, for a two-year period in the mid-1980s. (To the left, that’s his signature from one of his missives to Fields, according to her blog.) But another intriguing element of this story is the blazing […]
In my Inside Edge PR post on Monday, I touched on the perils of fibbing or embellishing–OK, let’s call it like it is, lying–in the stories that we tell. In this case, an ex-baseball player is trying to stretch a single (a few low-level minor-league baseball seasons) into a home run (Major Leagues) in his […]
Writing clearly and compellingly doesn’t come easily. Every word and every punctuation mark brings a new decision. Which word to use next? Is this really the moment to whip out the semi-colon? Should I pose a third question in this rhetorical series? In the quarter-century since I began writing for publications (or should I simply […]