19 avril 2004

Two new blogs added to my list


They are Micro Persuasion (Steve Rubel on how weblogs are changing the practice of public relations) and Media Culpa (Incoherent opinions about media and public relations).

16 avril 2004

Do the 9/11 Commission members comment too much?


Incredible but true, that's what some critics are saying to The New York Times (free registration required).

Quotes from proponents of this new-found openness include:

Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey governor who is the commission's chairman, said he and his colleagues were so determined to be credible with Americans that they decided early on to conduct themselves in a very public manner.

"We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible," Mr. Kean said.

For his part, Mr.
(Richard) Ben-Veniste said, "Our chairman has encouraged us to discuss the open work of the commission, because a large part of our function is to inform the public."

Mr.
(Bob) Kerrey said the tough questioning and the television and print appearances had helped shake loose information from the White House that would not have otherwise been released.

Mr. Kean said even if he wanted to avoid the news media, it would be next to impossible in the age of the major 24-hour news networks. "People are going to be talking about us anyway," he said. "We would rather have the commission talking about us rather than talking heads."

The major quotes about or from critics include:

Democrats and Republicans alike have raised concerns about the degree to which commission members are discussing their deliberations on television and, even, in newspaper columns.

The accessibility of the commissioners to the news media, not to mention the openness of their views, is a departure from similar independent commissions of the past. Its members' openness troubles some officials here (Washington).

Former President Gerald R. Ford (says) "I think they could do a better job if they were less public-relations related."

Tucker Carlson, cited on "Crossfire" on Wednesday what he said were Mr. Ben-Veniste's appearances on at least six programs over the course of the last five days and said, "He's destroying the credibility of these proceedings."

Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was on President Bill Clinton's national security staff, said that since this is an election year, "the commission ought to be well aware that too much public exposure will feed suspicion by those who are already so inclined of the commission's political motivation."
Which do you prefer?

15 avril 2004

Green Media Toolshed Blog

Another blog to add to my list. The Green Media Toolshed Blog (Opening the door to successful communications campaigns for the environnemental movement) has a lot of interesting posts. Check it out.

5 avril 2004

Two new blogs; both about writing online


The people at Bloglines are going to think I'm crazy. With these two, I now subscribe to 85 RSS feeds.

The first feed I subscribed to today is Writing for the Web, published by Crawford Kilian who says his blog is about "comments and links about the fast-changing genres of Webwriting."

The second one is Contentious Weblog written by Amy Gahran and covers "News and musings on how we communicate in the online age."

2 avril 2004

Is your e-mail getting through?


Lets say you or your client use e-mail marketing. Let's say it's permission based marketing, and not just spam. You'd think that your emails are reaching your targets, right?

Think again. And it could be your ISP's fault.

emarketer.com writes that Return Path, an e-mail service provider, has studied 18 different ISPs and has found that some ISPs see as much as 37,7% of their emails are blocked (Netzero is the worst). The winner is Earthlink that sees only (!) 7% of their permission-based emails blocked.

The most common reason for non-delivery is that the target's ISPs identify the e-mail as spam (even though it's not) and either block the mail or send it to a junk mail folder.

1 avril 2004

Various stuff


From Marcus Zillman, a white paper on searching the Internet

From David Sifry, Technocrati's founder and CEO:Technorati Tracks Two Million Blogs: also 12,000 new blogs and 150,000 blog updates every day!

From Easterblog, a funny spoof of an AP story:
BUSH ADMITS MISLEADING NATION

WASHINGTON, APRIL 1 2004. (ASSOCIATED PRESS.) President George W. Bush admitted today that he misled the American people on the reasons for the Iraq war. "No matter what your motives, it can never be right to be dishonest to the public," Bush told a hushed crowd at a news conference. "I am deeply sorry, and will never fail to tell the truth on any subject again."
Yes it is April Fool's Day.

Spin


Some people start really young.

For all internal communicators

Corporate training and coaching firm Franklin Covey released a study (PDF, 27 Kb) last December that covers the disconnect between management and employees.

It looks at employee buy-in from the viewpoints of clarity, commitment, action, enabling, synergy, and accountability.

Some stats include:

Only 48% of workers say their organization has a clear strategic direction
Only 37% say they understand the reason for that strategic direction
Only 15% of workers say upper management actively supports the goals of their work team
Read the whole thing.