The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #429: March 9, 2009

Content summary: Next FIR Live on Blogtalk Radio on March 18; Michael Netzley reports on responsible blogging in Singapore; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: eBay’s guidelines for reporting company information via Twitter, judges warm to microblogging with Twitter in the US courtroom, what should Burson-Marsteller do about Rachel Maddow?, online brand abuse on the rise: survey; listeners’ comments discussion including a question on Twitter following: brain noise or great info?; music from Novella; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for March 9, 2009: A 64-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

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So, until Thursday March 12…

Posted by neville on 03/09 at 11:00 AM

  1. Hello Gentlemen, thanks for discussing the latest kerfuffle of the week, Rachel Maddow.

    The PR campaign for PR is long overdue.  That said, it would likely only be held up to ridicule by commentators everywhere, Maddow right there in the mix.  And that would happen no matter when it took place, I fear.

    Perhaps the better tack is to have all practitioners speaking out consistently on inconsistencies in the perception of PR.  Hey, we’ve let the misunderstandings slip by so often, they’ve become common definitions.

    The term ‘spin’ has roots in the political world.  We’ve let it become the ubiquitous synonym for PR in many (all?) lexicons.  Random House offers this up as an example for spin/PR, “His assignment was to spin the reporters after the president’s speech.”

    The negative political and major agency stories are the only instances of mainstream coverage by news and commentators.  Makes sense, of course, because they are (a) national/int’l stories and (b) they are rare, so they are news.

    The downside is that the bad instances besmirch everyone.  Even the lonely school public information officer gets tainted.  Those local/regional public affairs practitioners outnumber all agency pros, after all.

    The vast majority of work s/he does is simply the diffusion of information.  (Yes, we want that to be truthful information.) That, of course, is the basic tenant of all PR/PA/PI work.  And, how many people understand the differences between public information (PI), public affairs (PA) and public relations (PR) work?  There are some differences, and we’ve yet to discuss IR and internal comms and ... the list grows.

    Ultimately, I feel this kerfuffle was actually a political spat between two Democratic Party figures.  Maddow is not a fan of Hillary Clinton, or Mark Penn (her chief strategist/pollster in the recent campaign).  I get the feeling she used this as just one more way to poke Penn.  As far back as the US Super Tuesday primaries, Maddow said she stated that Clinton “insults me personally” with regard to her Iraq war votes.  (YouTube: http://is.gd/n4Wb @ about 1:30 in the video)

    Mark Penn is, after all, the current piñata of choice for all those wishing to lash out in these inter-party Democratic squabbles.  I guess Maddow just saw this as her chance to swing the bat.

    Posted by Robert French  on  03/12  at  11:12 AM

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