Archive for the ‘politics’ Category

Of Tea Parties and Muddled Messaging

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

The April 15 Tax Day tea parties were a great example of grass roots, viral organization to move thousands of people (whether you believe the reported attendance or not) to do something. But here's the problem; what were they doing? In PR, we counsel clients to have consistent messages that ...

Social Media Top 5; Rocky Mountain Low, Loic’s Nuclear Option, and What Beats Who

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

A Newspaper Goes Dark, with Dignity (?): The Rocky Mountain News produced its last edition Friday, after the sudden announcement that it would do so after the Scripps company was unable to find a buyer. Is this the beginning of the real end for print newspapers? I'll defer to true ...

Social Media Top Five: Journalist POV, Incivility, and PR Agencies Really Doing Social Media?

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

Press Releases From a Journalist's POV Daryl James, a former newspaper professional, lays out some very simple tips on what should go into a news release to get an editor's or reporter's attention. Some of them are beyond common sense, but always worth repeating. Setting aside the fact that the ...

Social Media Top 5: Goodbye Pownce, PR Still Not Dead, Mapple

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

Goodbye Pownce, We Hardly Knew Ye - Remember when people were begging and scrambling for beta invitations to Pownce? As a hardcore Twitter user, I did appreciate the differences that the Pownce service presented: threaded conversation, the ability to share small files. But the core application was still quick, short ...

Blog Tag: What are you reading?

Thursday, February 21st, 2008

We all love blog tag! Ok, maybe we pretend we don't sometimes, but we love being linked to, and we love sharing info about ourselves. So, I would like to start a blog tag experiment inspired by a client, Brijit, which provides 100-word abstracts of long-form content, or as they put ...

A cool thing I have: the Dick Gregory Dollar

Sunday, February 17th, 2008

Some of the strangest random possessions have the best stories behind them. My wife grew up in Boston's South End, her family moving in back in 1968. To get a partial idea of the South End in the 1960's and 1970's have a peek at J. Anthony Lukas' celebrated book ...

Super Tuesday- My morning at the polls

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Here's a bit from my vote today in the Super Tuesday primary in Precinct 1, Newton, MA. I thought I would give a little "slice of the process" and see how it came out. It was a real pleasure speaking with the volunteers; sorry Hillary supporters, but where were your ...

Are the candidates using MySpace and other social media well?

Monday, May 28th, 2007

UPDATE: The article has appeared, and I was favored with a two-word direct quote, along with Scott Monty (zero words direct quote-- ahem), and Steve Garfield, who actually said something worth quoting.... UPDATE II: See this exchange between C.C. Chapman and the Edwards campaign. a combination of social media outreach initiative ...

BostonNOW– New daily paper talks to little old me…

Monday, May 28th, 2007

If you are in the Boston metro area, you have probably heard of the launch in late April of BostonNOW, a free daily paper competing with the Boston Metro. The big difference is that the paper is taking contributions from citizen journalists. In fact, I know my friend and fellow ...