The Rise of the Video News Release?

A large part of my week is spent meeting with clients to discuss their communications and media objectives. In one such meeting last week, my client announced that they would be increasing the number of Video News Releases (VNRs) they produce for distribution  to the Canadian broadcast media.  As multimedia becomes more important for online coverage, this wasn't exactly an earth shattering announcement. What did surprise me, however, was that they had no intention of using the content to build up an online or social media presence (aside from eventually posting the VNRs to their website's media section).

Instead, their reasoning for increased VNRs is as follows: News rooms across the country have been cutting journalist and editorial positions in an effort to save their bottom lines. This has meant an increased workload for the members still on staff and a decreased likelihood that every story will get the same attention it might have a few years ago.  My client is betting that if they increase the number of ready-to-air VNRs they distribute to these overworked and understaffed outlets, their chance of televised coverage will increase and they will benefit from more air time and exposure.

One hopes (and advises) that the stories are still strong and news worthy. Otherwise, why bother with the production efforts? This  made me wonder if any other agencies or organizations are increasing their VNR output for the same reason. Mike Masnick recently posed a similar question in his TechDirt post "Corporations Hiring Their Own Reporters". He too notes a definite shift towards corporate journalism. Will we see more VNRs and corporately crafted stories run in the place of journalist-generated content? Does this pose an unfair advantage to companies with deeper pockets? What are your thoughts?

-Heather

The Most Important Post You'll Read This Week (CwF + RtB = The Business Model)

I've always been impressed with the good ideas that come from Mike Masnick and the Techdirt crew, and their latest initiative is no different. For quite some time now, Masnick has been repeating the mantra that if you are able to Connect with Fans of whatever you are making or selling, AND give them a Reason to Buy, you've got a business model.

The formula looks like this:

CwF + RtB = The Business Model

He's showed us examples of how it can work for a bunch of different industries, and now he's finally applied the model to Techdirt. By offering a number of unique packages, he's making it easy for anyone to give the blog money and get something in return. The most basic package puts a badge on the user's Techdirt profile, showing that they support the site. More sophisticated packages include signed copies of books or t-shirts. They all give the user a reason to pay money (getting something in return) as well as giving them a chance to connect with the Techdirt crew in another way (from a badge to advance views of posts).

While I'm sure that this will create a new revenue stream for Techdirt, I wonder how much it will actually bring in (compared to their other work), and how applicable this model is to other blogs.

Either way, it is a great experiment.

Check out the various packages, then read the post announcing the plan.

For the record, I bought the Approaching Infinity package for $35 USD, and am looking forward to getting my copy of Masnick's book and a Techdirt t-shirt. I also feel like it is a great way to support a blog that I love reading from and learn something new from almost every day.

-Parker

Congratulations to the CNW Group Scrabble Team!

Every year, CNW Group and a number of "top corporations from Bay Street's financial, legal, technology and accounting sectors" competed in a Scrabble competition for a chance to win the TMX Cup. The competition is in support of Frontier College, an organization with the goal of helping people improve their literacy skills.

I was pleased to hear that on Wednesday, March 11th, the "Newsmakers," a team representing my employer CNW Group, won the TMX Cup. I was pleased about this news, but not surprised. I've seen some of the CNW team play Scrabble before, and they're pretty good. Reportedly one of the members on the team played the word "Footage" on a triple-word score for 98 points.

Great work, Newsmakers.

And congratulations to the other winners, as well as TMX Group and Frontier College for organizing another successful Scrabble contest.

In related news, Futility Closet reports that if you combine all 100 scrabble tiles you can spell:

COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY, NOT EULOGIZE, CAESAR; IF EVIL LIVES ON, BEQUEATHING INJURY, GOOD OFT EXPIRES: A PALSIED, AWKWARD DEATH!

The Twitter Journalist

A few weeks ago, I told Jens and Heather that I didn't want them to write any more posts about Twitter ("its been done to death") so I'm breaking my own rule here.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about how Twitter is becoming a primary way for people to get their information. Then I started wondering why we aren't seeing any journalists covering stories exclusively on Twitter. I imagine it would work much the same way that we sometimes see television or radio journalists covering breaking stories: they stay on the scene, and provide constant updates whenever they get additional information. Much of their reporting is observational, but other information comes in by way of eyewitnesses and official reports.

It looks like  Mark MacKinnon had the same idea - he's been Tweeting live from Bangkok as the city "disintegrates."

Since he works for Canada's Globe & Mail newspaper, I doubt that Twitter will be the sole way that he'll report his story. However, I'm sure that people who have been following his updates on Twitter will most certainly read any in-depth story he writes about the situation for the Globe & Mail. The text of some of his tweets will also probably make it into any final copy he writes, and I'm sure that he'll be aided by other Twitter users on the ground providing him with additional information.

In all, it sounds like a win-win situation.

Are there any other examples of journalists using Twitter as their primary way to report on one story?

-Parker

So You Think You Can Intern Toronto

What an innovative idea - MAVERICK Public Relations is offering aspiring young PR pros a chance to win an internship.

According to the blog of Julie Ruscioelli (Maverick PR President and founder), " the lucky winner of the first MAVERICK Idol will be granted an eight-week paid internship at the award-winning PR firm during the summer of 2009."

The contest will take the form of two rounds, giving the participants a total of seven minutes to show that they've got the MAVERICK stuff.  From the news release, it sounds like they're encouraging the applicants to be as creative as possible.

I think this is a great idea for a number of reasons. First of all, it is much more of a real-life experience than a job interview. Being in PR means giving a lot of presentations and having to sell your idea. With a format like this, MAVERICK is more likely to find an intern with the workplace skills they're looking for (and, as sometimes happens with internships, result in a full-time job later on). It also gives the aspiring intern a great chance to practice their presentation skills. Scotty Mac, who works at MAVERICK and is no doubt one of the brains behind this idea, adds that the presentations will only be in front of the MAVERICK judges, rather than in front of all the other applicants as well.

For more information and the full contest rules, check out the MAVERICK Idol event on Facebook

-Parker

PS: what's the deal with PR firms and their insistence on capitalizing their names? NATIONAL? SHIFT? MAVERICK?

The Convergence of Phones and Computers

In what I would say is a very smart and practical move, it looks like Nokia is considering entering the laptop industry. Why does this move make sense? Because as Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasuvo says "we don't have to look even for five years from now to see that what we know as a mobile phone and what we know as a PC are in many ways converging."

From that same interview with Finnish media, he adds that "hundreds of millions of people who are having their first Internet experience on the phone."

Similarly, Taiwanese manufacturer Acer, traditionally known for making computers, has unveiled its new line of mobile phones. Unsurprisingly, the phones are Wi-Fi enabled smart phones that will be running a Windows operating system.

Echoing the Nokia CEO's remarks, Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci said that "for a large part of the world population the first opportunity to connect to the Internet will be via mobile computing, either through smartphones or netbooks."

In a few years from now, I think that you will be hard pressed to make a distinction between a personal computer and a mobile phone, as they will essentially be the same device.

A few years ago (even a year ago), people were rushing to develop websites specifically for mobile phones. These plans seem to have fallen by the wayside as now mobile phones are capable of handling rich content just as easily as computer-based web browsers.

Similarly, it should come as no surprise that mobile banking is expected to explode over the next few years. As TMC.net reports, mobile phones are expected to be used for more than $860 billion worth of transactions by 2013, creating revenues of over $10 billion for banks and other service providers.  I couldn't find any information about the growth of the online banking industry over the next few years, but I imagine that it was pretty similar to what is expected for the mobile banking industry.

(thanks to Textually for pointing some of these stories out!)

-Parker

SEOMoz Enters the Social Media Monitoring Fray

With the launch of BlogScape, it looks like respected search engine optimization experts SEOMoz are entering the competitive world of social media monitoring (SEOMoz.org was one of my "Blogs That You Should Be Reading But Probably Aren't).

While it isn't exactly a stand alone product, as the cost of paying for it would also include a whole bunch of other SEOMoz products and services, it still looks like an incredibly strong offering in terms of its ability to analyze traffic.

Where I think it lacks is in its reach - from the description, it appears to be only monitoring 10 million RSS feeds from what they term "the fast-moving web." Compare this to Technorati who, according to their last "State of the Blogosphere," tracks 133 million blogs.

The good news is that Blogscape assigns a "Blogrank" to the blogs it tracks. From the description, it sounds like this will act similarly to Technorati's Authority number, and will be an interesting way to evaluate the importance and relevance of a particular blog.

One of the main faces of SEOMoz, Rand Fishkin, chimes in on the comments section of the post saying that he "honestly think this is as good and in some ways better than GG Blogsearch, Technorati, etc. and the graphing is clearly way more advanced."

That's quite a bold statement. However, the tools he is comparing it to are free tools. Unless I'm mistaken, SEOMoz's Blogscape is only available to PRO members of their site, and membership ranges between $79-$229 a month.

I'd still be interested in checking it out. Maybe I'll ask for an SEOMoz PRO member ship for my birthday or something.

-Parker

Virtual Worlds: Hype or Here to Stay?

For the last little while my interest in virtual worlds has been growing.  Having spent countless hours playing games like The Sims when I was younger, I can easily understand their appeal on a gaming and entertainment level. My real curiosity, however, is whether they will play a key role in the next phase of social media. My original inclination was heavily weighted towards 'No'. There have been a number of companies, law firms, and banks experimenting and opening offices in virtual worlds, namely Second Life. To the best of my knowledge, many of these have since shut down because their virtual offices were too timely to maintain and, after the initial buzz had died down, they failed to see any inherent value in keeping them open.

That said, the more I learn, the more I understand how virtual spaces may become extremely valuable going forward.

About a month ago I attended Digital Theory's "Playing to Win: Broadcasting and Social Media event, which featured a presentation by Valerie Williamson, VP of Marketing and Business Development for the Electric Sheep Company.  Electric Sheep built a name for itself by creating virtual worlds for a number of different companies. Valerie explained that instead of using two dimensional applications like Twitter and Facebook, younger generations have been raised on virtual games where they create 3D avatars to co-exist with their 'friends'.  She believed strongly that this was the future of social media and online engagement, and the direction in which we are headed.

If what she claims is true, what will the future look like? To begin answering this  question I looked at what organizations are currently doing to tap into this market.

Some brands such as Disney's Club Penguin and Webkinz have built their own virtual worlds, and experienced success by providing a new, rewarding form of entertainment to children. These sites are able to monetize without the help of advertisers, leveraging product sales and/or membership fees.

Other brands such as PepsiCo. are using the popularity of worlds  that already exist to market their products .  This can take the form of advertising within the VW, or selling virtual products to benefit the world's citizens.  PepsiCo. launched into this model last year by sponsoring vMTV's Virtual Hills. They have  since reaped branding and reputation benefits both on and offline (further outlined in Ad Week's Case study: vMTV's Virtual Hills Makes Pepsi Cooler).

Role playing and video games such as World of Warcraft, Counterstrike, and the Halo Trilogy have maintained popularity with slightly older generations (many of my friends included). These games have made significant earnings through subscriptions and virtual product sales. WoW alone makes up half of Activision/Blizzard's earnings, proving VWs to be a highly profitable model.

Although the above examples are largely entertainment focused there are many other useful applications of virtual worlds being explored.

At Mesh09 the #MeshLearn session  focused on education. Although virtual worlds were strangely absent from the conversation, the panel did state that the education sector in the US is larger than both the military and finance sectors combined. If this statement holds true, it is certainly a huge market.  In response to growing demand from educators, Activeworlds launched educational settings a few years ago, betting that virtual worlds will start to play a larger role in the development and education of children and university students.  With this tool, teachers will be able to develop new concepts and learning theories not possible in a regular class room setting.

Virtual worlds are also being used for collaborative learning, allowing students and/or professionals to engage, learn, and share over large distances. In 2003 students from three universities developed a fashion line (Ratava's Line) and show rooms using collaborative VWs. In a final report, students described it as  "a perfect medium to marry culture, collaboration, visuals, 3D, and social spaces" .  Collaborative VWs can easily translate into other business settings as well ie. training, safety, architectural design, business strategy, etc.

As the economic downturn continues to rear its ugly head, we will likely see more companies taking advantage of VWs to host job fairs. Dennis Shiao's Blog Post "Economic Downturn to Spur Virtual Job Fairs" does a good job of outlining reasons for this growth.

Given their collaborative nature, popularity with younger generations, and ability to adapt to a wide array of applications a strong argument can be made that virtual worlds are here to stay (and may even be highly profitible).

I'm interested to hear any of your thoughts on the business of virtual worlds - do you see them as the next wave for social media? Or just a lot of hype?

iPhone Unpopular in Japan? I'm Not Surprised.

The first time I ever owned a cell phone was when I moved to Japan to teach English in August of 2004. With the help of some friends, I picked out a phone that cost one yen (about one cent Canadian) with a fairly reasonable month plan.

It was a flip phone with one large, very bright color screen on the inside and another smaller screen on the outside. The phone was capable of taking photos and video. Similar to a Blackberry, the phone could also send and recieve emails.

The web browsing capabilities were limited only in that I don't think there was much mobile content out there at that time, most of that which was there was in Japanese too complicated for my limited vocabulary and was otherwise difficult to navigate on such a small screen.

The phone was capable of playing mp3 ringtones. I never investigated whether or not it would work as a music player because I had just upgraded my Panasonic Shockwave Discman (!) for a buggy, Toshiba Gigabeat mp3 player.

The point is that this was one of the cheapest, least complicated phones available in Japan in 2004.

Five years later, it doesn't really surprise me that the iPhone isn't very popular in Japan and that carrying one around would be considered "lame."

-Parker

Driving Under The Influence (of Video Games)

From the Honolulu Advertiser today comes the news that it is still legal to play video games while driving on the island of O'ahu. I don't know what happened that prompted the vote, but last month the island's city council voted 7-1 in favor of a bill that would make it illegal to play video games; or write, send and read text messages.

The fact that the mayor vetoed this vote shows that at least he has some sense - for every specific, dangerous activity like this that is banned, someone will come up with something even more ridiculous to do while driving. Ban video games? Someone will figure out a way to get in a car crash while playing board games.

The whole thing reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer has a multitude of accessories plugged into his car's cigarette lighter. Since none of the appliances, from a snowcone maker to a fog machine, were video games he'd probably get around the law that the O'ahu council attempted to pass.

It also reminds me of the time that I was living in Japan and once saw a kid playing Gameboy while riding his bike, slowly wobbling back and forth across the road but making forward progress nonetheless.

-Parker

Get Outside and go Hyperlocal

I recently came across outside.in, a self-described "hyperlocal news and information service" that helps you "get news for the places and neighborhoods you really care about." The site tracks 35,312 towns and neighborhoods. You can either enter a post code or the name of the neighborhood you want to get stories about. Results are sorted by date and tags.

Neighborhoods can also be searched by categories such as 'Arts and Culture', 'Bars and Clubs' and 'Education.' This will result in an alphabetically sorted list of places with news and blog posts about them.

If you want to get even more local, you can use the radar function. It's customized to exactly where you are and what’s going on right around you. Enter a location and you'll see everything happening right around you: Blog posts, news stories, discussion posts, and Twitter updates.

The site can be a bit messy. You can't search local places by tags, just by categories. Why, for example, isn't there simple search for a 'news' tag? The category search also needs be refined, e.g. the robbery of a pharmacy was listed under services...

These little issues aside I think the basic premise of the site is great: Being informed about wherever you are.

Why rely on the local press when you can utilize a multitude of information? All the more, given that some local markets are completely dominated by one media conglomerate and its products. Breaking monopolies on information is certainly a good thing.

To utilize the site's potential even better I'd suggest the implementation of a democratic catalyst – aka a voting system a la Digg – as this would bring noteworthy local stories to the attention of more readers, a function the traditional press still excels in.

The site should also be optimized for mobile devices to exploit its potential best; another possibility would be an app for the iPhone which instantly let's you know what's happening in your hotel's/ business partner's/ friend's neighborhood. Wherever, whenever. GPS detection would even make make entering a post code redundant.

You could combine the service with a program like Calibre. Calibre has built-in ‘recipes’ to download articles from news outlets' RSS feeds to present them in a much more streamlined e-book type format, and can then transfer this information to mobile readers. By this, the articles can also be consumed offline.

Imagine customized RSS-feed turned into your own personalized local newspaper complete with all the sections you'd normally expect from a press outlet. From politics to sports, complete with illustrations, except with more updates.

The potential of sites like outside.in is tremendous. No wonder the future looks tough for the traditional press.

-Jens

Like CNW Group? Show your love on Facebook.

That's right, folks. CNW Group now has a Facebook page where you can show your love for Canada's number one newswire or sign up to hear about upcoming events, like our Breakfast with the Media series.

I didn't have much to do with this, but I know that CNW Group's all-star Communications Coordinators Jessica Sine and Amanda Laird have great plans for it.

In the meantime, do you have any other great examples of brands/companies using Facebook pages?

-Parker

(as usual, this and all other posts on BlogCampaigning reflect the opinions of the author, and are not necessarily those of CNW Group)

The Media isn't Dying, it's Changing.

A little while ago, someone started a Twitter account with the name TheMediaIsDying. Although their bio says that their aim is to help "flaks pitch better and update lists," they seem to take delight in reporting they primarily seem to report on stories of print, broadcast and web outlets that are folding or cutting staff as a result of the rapidly changing media and economic landscapes.

To make the claim that the media is dying is to make the claim that it will no longer be possible to receive news or entertainment.

Yes, I'd agree that the traditional media is probably dying. I feel that I'll probably see the death of the traditional, printed newspaper in my life time. In fact, I can't believe that it isn't dead already. Someone wiser than myself once made the point that if today you proposed the idea of printing out thousands of copies of a general assortment of news every night, then hand-delivering them to people's homes early each morning, you'd be laughed out of the room. It is an outdated business model.

But that doesn't mean the newspaper industry will die, only its printed form. The websites of major newspapers are and will continue to be a primary source of information for many people. Thanks to the hard work of people like Mathew Ingram (and despite the head-in-ass stance of people like Christie Blatchford), newspapers will evolve to meet the needs of an online world.

The same goes for other forms of media. While JPG Magazine might be folding, how many great photography sites and online photoshop tutorials have you come across?

As I Tweeted earlier, For every print publication that @themediaisdying reports dead, how many well-written, unique websites pop up?

Did the invention of the printing press kill off the spoken word? No. It just meant that hand-lettered books were no longer necessary, and it gave more people access to literature and information.

Did the invention of radio kill off the written word? Again, no.

Did television indeed kill the radio star? No, but it might have forced some radio stars to adapt to become more television-friendly. And it also created a whole knew breed of radio stars.

Did the internet kill television? Again, no. If you're like me, you might not use an actual television set but you probably still enjoy watching television shows on your computer or portable device.

As a result of cringing and loving to hate almost every single tweet that @themediaisdying makes, I've started an alternative twitter account to spread good news about any media organizations,  journalists, broadcasters, writers or videographers that are getting by just fine and adapting to the change we're seeing in the media world.

So if you've got any stories about how the media is changing (rather than dying), hit me up by emailing mediaischanging@blogcampaigning.com or on twitter: @mediaischanging. (and feel free to follow me on twitter, too. I'm @parkernow)

The media isn't dying, it's changing.

viva la media!

-Parker

Photographic Expectations

First I read that the AP has suspended the use of photos from the Department of Defense, and then later in the weekend my roommate sends me an article saying that Victoria's Secret model Karolina Kurkova doesn't have a belly button, and that they insert it digitally in any midriff-baring pictues of her.

Why is one use of a doctored photo acceptable, while the other results in outrage from a news agency?

Unlike the Iranian missile situation from this summer, neither photo was edited in an attempt to change the news or what it was reporting.

The line at which is acceptable to edit photos has been blurring for a long time. At what point will we stop caring?

-Parker

The Magazine Biz

Magazines and newspapers are cutting staff. Ebook readers grow in popularity and functionality. Environmental concerns begin to outweigh the need to print out such disposable items like magazines and newspapers. There isn't really much of a future for the print industry, is there?

Actually, I think there is. And while I think that the discussion about what newspapers will evolve into is certainly worth having (I personally think that they will come to resemble blogs more and more just as the top blogs will come to resemble newspaper website, blurring the line), I'm not going to get into it now.

Instead I'm going to talk about magazines.

I love reading magazines and I buy them all the time. My preferred publications are normally surfing magazines, but I also buy RADAR if it looks like an interesting issue. Since my roommate subscribes to Toronto Life, I'll often read that (along with Fashion, the magazine that accompanies it). When the mood strikes us, we'll also sometimes pick up Vanity Fair. I've even seen a few copies of GQ lying around my other roommate's room but he doesn't seem to read them when I'm around.

The point is that there is still a market for these. People like the tangible feel of a magazine. "I love magazines," writes Alana Taylor, lamenting the discontinuation of one of her favorite magazines. "I still would like to write for one and I still enjoy buying & reading them and I still love ripping out pictures to create collages on my bedroom wall."

I've heard people remark before that the reason newspapers have failed to adapt to the internet era is similiar to the way the horse and buggy industry failed to adapt to the era of the motorcar and steam train. Rather than seeing themselves in the transportation business, the horse and buggy industry saw themselves as being what was an increasingly unfashionable horse and buggy business. Similarly, newspapers saw themselves as being in the newsaper business (rooted in paper publications), rather than in the news gathering and distribution business.

I think it is interesting that a few people have used similiarly equine analogies to describe the magazine industry. Former Conde Nast editor James Truman likens magazines to horses in that they used to be something that everyone could afford and that were enjoyed and used by the masses and are now increasingly becoming a luxury item. Along the same lines,  Howard Junker, editor of ZYZZYVA apparently compared magazines to ponies in that they don't serve any real purpose but people keep them around because they like to look at them.

Truman thinks that the direction the magazine industry will take is to offer even more luxurious, glossy and otherwise tactile objects of luxury such as those created by fashion icons like Karl Lagerfeld ("a ninja" as Truman refers to him). As a firm believer in the idea that science-fiction often provides a prescient glimpse as to what our future might hold, I think it is worthwhile taking a look at the book Grey by Jon Armstrong. In it, the main character continues to buy magazines despite the fact that he lives in a futuristic, connected world extrapolated a few years down the road from our own.

This model doesn't apply only to fashion magazines - I recently bought a $15 magazine about Metal Gear Solid 4 because it offered such great art and compelling articles. When I lived in Australia, I used to buy a magazine called Monster Children. This skate and surf mag was printed in a unique format (length-wise, so that the spine was on the shorter side) on high-quality paper and always had amazing photos and graphic design. In fact, their team must have had high standards when it came to accepting advertisements because all of them were also beautiful from an art perspective.

The magazines' websites then become promotional material for the actual publications. Pages and pages of advertising might become a thing of the past as companies either create their own publications or work more directly with the writers and editors to see their product or service featured, perhaps going as far as to sponsor certain sections. I'd see no problem with this, as magazines have always been a vehicle for delivering advertisements.

Do you still read magazines? Which direction do you think the industry will go in?

-Parker Mason

Piracy and DRM: Thanks for the Entertainment

XKCD absoluteley nails the explanation of why DRM sucks:

And in related news, Ars Technica reports that the entertainment industry has basically been making up stats about how much piracy is costing the U.S. Economy, while Larry Lessig (via Techdirt) argues in favor of decriminalizing musical piracy and remixing.

When will the entertainment industry learn?

-Parker

Dear Globe & Mail, (a letter to the newspaper industry)

Dear Globe & Mail, I really like you. I don't have a subscription to you because I'm normally too busy to read you every day, but I often buy a copy of you from the newstand in my building because it is simply easier (and more environmentally friendly) to share you with my coworkers, or to simply read you online.  As I've written before, one of my favorite Saturday activities is to buy your weekend edition and read through it over a coffee.

Despite what everyone says, you also seem to be pretty popular with the fickle blogging crowd. I mean, as of today you had a almost 60,000 blog reactions on Technorati, and over 200,000 inbound links according to Google blog search. You're still a primary source of information for these people.

If the recent debacle of CNN erroneously reporting that Steve Jobs was in poor health is anything to go by, citizen journalism is as flawed as Andrew Keen says it is. As a traditional media force, people still respect you.

But then you go and do something like trying to charge me $4.95 for a newspaper article that I've already paid for and read, and this hurts me (telling me that this content will only be available for 30 days only adds insult to injury).

Your greatest asset is the thousands and thousands of pages of information and news stories that you have in your archives. People want to view this content, and just as they have endured advertising in your print publications, they'll endure the same kind of advertising on your website.

I understand your thinking when it comes to locking up this content behind a pay wall: it is valuable information, so people will pay to see it.

The problem is, you are only half-right. It is valuable information, but only when it is easy to access. In the age of Google, people will quickly move on and find the information elsewhere, somewhere where it easier to get at.

I know that you have a lot of people working for you (like Christie Blatchford) who don't understand very much about computers, the state of media today or even life in the 21st century. But that doesn't mean you have to end up as a failure. It just means that you have to pay attention to the people that want to help you.

Change your ways, Globe & Mail. or we're through, and it won't be because I'll stop reading you. It will be because everyone stops reading you, and you'll cease to exist.

Love,

Parker

PS: You should probably forward this letter to some of your other traditional media friends. I know that they are going through some tough times as well.

SMR? SMPR? SMNR?

If you're involved in PR and social media you've probably heard people talking about social media releases, social media news releases or even social media press releases and the accompanying acronyms. In the olden days, journalists were called 'the press' (an example of synechdoche) because the primary form of media was the newspaper, which was printed on

If Google trends is anything to go by, the majority of people still think that those releases that go out on the wire are called 'Press Releases.'

However, most modern-day communicators will probably agree that this is an antiquated term, and that we should be calling these 'News Releases' or 'Media Releases' instead.

So, that gets rid of the term 'Social Media Press Release' and its ugly acronym "SMPR."

We're now left with Social Media Release and Social Media News Release, and I'm going to argue that the former is better than the latter.

I'm fine with calling a traditional release a News Release or a Media Release, and I think you'll agree with me that calling it a Media News Release or a News Media Release is a little bit redundant (and referring to it as just a 'release' sounds odd unless you're talking to people from the industry).

So why do we need to refer to PR's hottest new tool as a Social Media News Release? Yes, it has a bunch of fancy Web 2.0 features that enable it to be easily shared. That aspect is covered by adding "Social" to the front of 'Media Release.'

I'd actually be happy with either Social News Release or Social Media Release, but I think that the latter sounds better.

So, can we agree to standardize the name as Social Media Release?

-Parker

image courtesy of vivid tangerine on flickr

Sarah Palin: Wolf-gunning Bikini Babe?

Between this story on Slate about what "Aerial Wolf-Gunning" is and why Sarah Palin supports it and the picture (left) of her that I got from this post on I09, I think we're going to have a pretty interesting few months (or years, depending on the election outcome). I never know if stuff like this fills me with Canadian pride or makes me wish I was American.

-Parker

The Diverse Faces of the Google Chrome Team

All images take from the Chrome Comic Book.

-Parker