After Blogs Got Hits, CBS Got a Black Eye (washingtonpost.com)
September 20, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
the latest on CBS and Dan Rather from Howard Kurtz, a great reporter/writer, and his take on how ‘blogs’ played the pivotal role in stirring this pot of bizarre happenings …. side note: now, there is talk of links to Rather’s producer Mary Mapes
After Blogs Got Hits, CBS Got a Black Eye (washingtonpost.com) [registration required to read article]
After Blogs Got Hits, CBS Got a Black Eye
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 20, 2004; Page C01Scott Johnson, a lawyer in Mendota Heights, Minn., put up his first post at 7:51 a.m. on Sept. 9. By the time he got to his Minneapolis office, he had dozens of e-mail responses.
One of them was from Charles Johnson, a Web designer in Los Angeles, who promptly posted his own thoughts on the subject
more on Mary Mapes - who broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse story
Mapes is also responsible for CBS’s reporting on the Abu Ghraib pictures, a story she helped break. According to TV reporter Gail Shister, “The scoop was the result of more than two months’ legwork by 60 II producer Mary Mapes.” In an interview with Charlie Rose, Mapes described how hard she worked to find the incriminating pictures:
“We ended up chasing it, chasing it halfway around the world and back again. Trying not just to chase the rumors of it, but—but to find out what the reality of it. And in the beginning, a lot of it was whispered accounts of pictures that existed somewhere, an investigation that was going somewhere against someone, and we were able luckily to narrow that down and get our hands on the pictures which really gave us our first real hard proof that this was real.”
- from The Mudville Gazette
The ‘pen’ is mightier than Kryptonite (blogging deals blow to once mighty brand)
September 19, 2004 by Robert · 2 Comments
The ‘pen’ is mightier than KryptoniteTM
Students! Here is your challenge. You are an employee of KryptoniteTM. Sorry ’bout that! You are ‘the’ PR practitioner that will lead the team’s response. How do you handle this fiasco? Blog about it.
Here is one way! Will it do the job? Will it save their brand? Blog about it.
A simple pen, blogging and forums deal blow to KryptoniteTM.
Videos with instructions (on how to use a pen to pick a lock) were posted to the bikeforums.net site (on 09-12-04, 10:16 PM). Then, word spread through blogs and was picked up by the NYTimes.com (registration required). Then CNN, The Boston Globe and ABCNews were also in the fray. (Links to those stories are available here.) Now, bikeforums.net has been ‘slashdotted‘. ["Seen by over a quarter of a million people!" - bikeforums.net (as of 9:55pm central this evening)]
Kryptonite U-Lock Security Flaw
from the new-york-bike-thieves-not-impressed dept.
posted by michael on Saturday September 18, @22:59 (Security)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/19/0120225
Ouch! A company’s famed product - rendered utterly useless - by mouse-clicks. It only took one forum post and one blog entry to get the boulder rolling - downhill - toward Kryptonite’s TM brand - and crushing it. This is a chilling reality. It has been seven days, almost to the minute, for this to reach Slashdot (ok, well ‘me’, really - I don’t know when Slashdot got it) and then be sent out via their ‘Stories for 2004-09-20‘ and ‘Headlines for 2004-09-20‘ e-mails. That is how I learned of this story.
God created the world in six days. The internet seems to have destroyed a company’s product in seven. That isn’t fair, really. The company did it to themselves. If your ‘lock’ can be ‘picked’ by the ‘non-business end’ of a ‘BicTM, or any knock-off, then the company did it do themselves.
Research! The first rule! Product testing! The other first rule! 
Can you say, “New Coke“? Sure, it is easy to criticize - 20/20 hindsight vision is flawless. But, let this be a lesson!
Speaking of ‘lessons’ … look at what I found:
See Microsoft XP for Latin America
Do not let it be a lesson like this one or this one, however. This one, we need to talk about.
Soldier Blogger in trouble
September 9, 2004 by Robert · 3 Comments
From Jeff Jarvis:
: The WSJ and the LA Times report that a military blogger in Iraq is being disciplined for allegedly revealing too much on his blog. Says the WSJ:
David Weisman notes a poliblog (from the “other end of the political spectrum”) with comments about this issue of the military closing blogs seen as unaccceptable.
But, there is another side to this. As a reminder of how ‘open’ blogs are, Perry de Havilland provides this “… salutory reminder that your blog posts can be read by anyone, inculding the enemy.”
JEFF JARVIS is former TV critic for TV Guide and People, creator of Entertainment Weekly, Sunday Editor of the NY Daily News, and a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner. He is now president & creative director of Advance.net.
See the section War Blogs: Soldiers in my ‘Blogroll’ (menu column, near bottom of list) for more ‘War Blogs’.
newspapers’ rush to contrition
August 25, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
ya’ gotta read this one - from the Christian Science Monitor:
This just in: the factors behind newspapers’ rush to contrition
To judge from this year’s rash of apologetic postmortems, American newspapers are a very sorry bunch.
The New York Times acknowledged downplaying skepticism about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. USA Today explored how it let a top foreign correspondent fool editors for years with fake reports. Earlier this month, The Washington Post ran a front-page story that said the newspaper’s prewar coverage “in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.” And, perhaps most amazingly, a Kentucky newspaper in July admitted that it had virtually failed to cover the civil rights movement.
…
Halfhearted efforts, she says, will risk being like many of the recent internal exposés - “more public relations than public information.”
found this link via timporter.com
in my opinion, the Christian Science Monitor is one of the finest newspapers. sadly, they’ve been experiencing financial problems of late - but still a terrific newspaper. owned by the church, but independent with regard to content. i just renewed my subscription (online ‘treeless’) - i let the print subscription lapse some time ago. i miss it.
B.L. Ochman’s weblog - When is a Blog Not a Blog?
August 22, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
B.L. Ochman’s weblog - Internet strategy, marketing, public relations, politics with news and commentary: When is a Blog Not a Blog?
When is a Blog Not a Blog?
When are blogs just blogs, and when do they become full-fledged publications?
‘kerry swift boat’ - ever wondered about the progression of a news story over time?
August 21, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
truthlaidbear.com has followed ‘kerry swift boat’ through Google News for two weeks … see the chart in his blog
consumer-generated media (CGM)
August 20, 2004 by Robert · 4 Comments
MediaPost From Media Daily News at www.mediapost.com
Next Big Player In Consumer Media: Consumers
By Ross Fadner
Staff Writer
Friday, August 20, 2004Peter Blackshaw, Intelliseek chief marketing officer, had an unusual firsthand experience with the impact of online word-of-mouth. It started with his purchase of a hybrid car. Blackshaw was initially very satisfied with his purchase–so satisfied, in fact, that he took the initiative to do what many early adopter/influential types across the globe now do on a day-to-day basis: write about his experience on a Web log. Blackshaw founded HybridBuzz.com, which became a mouthpiece for Blackshaw and other early adopters with fuel-efficiency on the brain to talk about their like-minded enthusiasm for hybrids.
…consumer-generated media (CGM). CGM refers to commonly archived online content that is readily accessible by other consumers or key marketplace influencers. Blackshaw uses the term CGM–and not word-of-mouth–because there is one crucial difference between the two terms: CGM is highly measurable, although very few market research firms do so.
see HybridBuzz.blogspot.com, and see another hybrid site located at mixedpower.com
Read more
openness of Weblogs = credibility?
August 12, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
Transparency Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere
The openness of Weblogs could help explain why many readers find them more credible than traditional media. Can mainstream journalists learn from their cutting-edge cousins?
Whom do you trust in online media today? … the answer from “Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and president of Advance Internet, … “I have learned to trust the voice and judgment of my fellow citizens.”That answer may have drawn snickers a few years ago. No longer. “I was heartened at the reaction,” Jarvis says by e-mail. “Where I had seen dismissive skepticism of this blogging thing at similar gatherings in the past, here I found eager curiosity. And I was impressed with the desire, in varying degrees, by everyone in this group to enhance the transparency of our business, journalism,” with the goal of building and rebuilding readers’ trust.”
You know of Advance.net, but you don’t know it. Hmm? Advance.net is the ‘keeper’ of al.com which is affiliated with The Birmingham News, The Huntstille Times and the Mobile Press Register. They also handle CondéNet for Condé Nast publications. They publish a wide variety of magazines from Vanity Fair to Brides and Wired to Vogue.
convergence - readings
August 11, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
PoynterOnline.org launched the Convergence Chaser newsletter/column Convergence Chaser on Sunday, December 8, 2002
Common Convergence Questions (from By Forrest Carr, Special to Poynter.org):
Convergence creates a new voice, a type of journalism not seen before. When one story is published at the same time on multiple platforms, the story has far more reach and impact than that of other stories.
Read moreCIA PR Offensive (uh, campaign, not ‘their PR is offensive’ - or is it?)
August 10, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
from a Boston Globe article found via Swedish PR practitioner Hans Kullin’s site media culpa which is linked to a radio station site (KSL Newsradio Salt Lake City, UT) - CIA PR Campaign to protect their turf in the pending restructuring
holy trackback! don’t ya’ just love the internet …. phht!
it got ugly … then they started - O’Reilly v. Krugman
August 9, 2004 by Robert · Comments Off
Tim Russert, shame on you! What? Are you now the ‘Don King’ of poli-fight promoters? Hey, he almost came to blows with a sock puppet.
