Only one Chicago-based PR pro was willing to comment on a New York Times piece trashing the Tribune. Wonder why. – PR Junkie

That PR pro was me.

I got the invitation to comment from Michael Sebastian while I was a business innovation conference tweeting the Google session. Afterwards I went to teach a Facebook class at College of DuPage. By the time I’d composed my reply and hit the send button it was 11:30. I like to write at night so that explains the lengthy reply. And, I thought the other PR people contacted must be doing the same thing – right?

Wrong. Maybe they didn’t see the request or were too engaged with clients to reply. It’s kind of strange being the only one, especially when I don’t typically categorize myself or my company in the high caliber of PR talent we have here in Chicago – thanks Michael! But, then again, we do advise our clients to stand up and stand out.

To continue the dialogue, I’m sharing my reply here and invite you to add your comments. Here’s the article we were asked to comment on.

In the PR Junkie post called “Are PR Pros afraid of the Tribune Co.? “, Michael Sebastian. also quotes Micheal Long a public relations professor at American University and mentions this study that predicts social media will overtake traditional media as public relations tool in two years.

Thanks to Michael for asking for my opinion and for pulling out the best quotes from the longer piece I submitted, which follows. I answered honestly and thoughtfully. What do you think? What would you advise the Tribune to do?

Hi Michael:

Thanks for asking for my thoughts. See my answers below.

1. Do you, or have you, worked with the Chicago Tribune on stories (pitching, fielding calls, et cetera)? If so, how long has your relationship lasted?

My relationship with the Trib goes back to at least 1995, as a contributing writer, when the paper purchased a gardening article I wrote that didn’t run because a new editor took over after the assignment was made. [Note that my relationship as a reader goes back to the Chicago Tribune being one of the first big city dailies I read growing up in Danville, Illinois. The other was Chicago Daily News.]

My company, CoryWest Media, LLC represents many clients who value coverage in the Tribune.
Once, a Trib reporter liked our press release for an event so well they covered it from different angles two days in a row. That was a real highlight!

Our most recent communications, last month, were 1: socially, at a social media dinner Josh Bernoff, co-authored of Empowered, in Chicago where Wailin Wong, the Trib’s talented business technology reporter, was also present; 2. with TribLocal, whose editor suggested we take the story from a client’s news release and publish it on http://triblocal.com. We did. And 3. A client’s design guide newsletter ran inside the September 27 Sunday ad pack. The client managed the printing and placement. We managed the content production.

2. Have you noticed this frat house culture to which the Times refers?

No, we’re not close enough to see what goes on in-house, but here are the few glimpses I’ve had personally over the last year or so.

In June, I was invited to attend a turnaround management conference as a guest of one of the meeting planners. Tony Hunter, president, publisher and CEO, brought about half a dozen editors along as he presented a speech about the Tribune’s turnaround. An entertaining speaker, his keynote was a highlight for everyone, especially because he compared the Tribune to the Blackhawks and they’d just won the Stanley Cup. That speech sounded similar to this one. My recap of Mr. Hunter’s key points follows.

I have attended at least one Colonel Tribune tweetup, hosted by the original character. The atmosphere was festive and celebratory as the November 8, 2008 event followed Obama’s election.

I also attended a live #journchat event at Tribune Tower where a few Tribune staff members were present, no Animal House odors or behavior were detected.

3. What do you think this does to the image of the Tribune, considering its still in bankruptcy?

According to an article published in the Chicago Tribune tonight, the New York Times story damages the company’s credibility with creditors, not to mention advertisers.

Readers and subscribers aren’t as dedicated as they used to be – to any publication. In Chicago, the Tribune’s growth of ChicagoNow is impressive. But, the entire entity is affected.

This is not the Tribune I know personally.

There may be people who need to clean up their ethics, and if they’re at the top, it’s unfortunate. Why would leaders risk alienating a workforce with sexual harassment? What kind of culture survives and thrives without ethics?

In terms of the bankruptcy situation, what really jumped out at me was this:
Despite the company’s problems, the managers have been rewarded handsomely. From May 2009 to February 2010, a total of $57.3 million in bonuses were paid to the current management with the approval of the judge overseeing the bankruptcy. In 2009, the top 10 managers received $5.9 million at a time when cash flow was plummeting. Mr. Wood, the board member, said, “We think they earned those bonuses. They’ve done a fabulous job in very difficult circumstances.” source

Wow! $57.3 million in bonuses?!?!?!

4. How would you advise the company moving forward?

Certainly, the Tribune Media Group needs to respond. Who is the conscious of the paper? The editorial page? Do they defend the management, apologize to the offended, give away bonuses to charity, arm their ad sales force with a defensive response, start a campaign? With many options, every action must convey integrity, ethics and professionalism. Here are 13 thoughts.

1. Come up with an honest response that apologizes and outlines changes.
2. Appoint a spokesperson with credibility in the journalism community.
3. Report on all the good that’s going on with revenue and outreach.
4. Turn up local focus with outreach to content contributors.
5. Connect more with readers and advertisers in real life.
6. Don’t over react, acknowledge, respond, move on.
7. Plan for the future and let everyone know about it.
8. Run a feature series on corporate ethics with leading Chicago authorities.
9. Work with Loyola University’s recently established digital ethics center
10. Replace questionable management with respected leaders.
11. Invite leading thinkers and influencers in for an open discussion.
12. Honor the legacy and lead the future.
13. Remember that people – inside and out – drive the company, so respect them.

At a time when blemished leaders seem to be more the norm than the exception, rebuilding trust is challenging. While it’s disappointing to see reports like this coming out, we all know that the news business is changing – behavior and ethics aside. The old publishing model is giving way to on demand digital platforms. Now, when being an innovative industry leader with an attractive culture is critical to attracting valuable investors, leaders and employees, companies who slack on ethics will lose their competitive posture very quickly.

5. Feel free to add anything else that comes to mind.

In thinking back on Tony Hunter’s speech and how he impressed a group that is in the business to turn struggling businesses around, maybe the Tribune needs to replay his presentation. And maybe they need to call in those turnaround management guys to clean up the company and get it back in shape before it’s too late.

Here’s what I wrote to my newsletter subscribers on the day I heard Mr. Hunter’s speech:

My morning started by listening to Tony Hunter, president, publisher and CEO of the Chicago Tribune, give a keynote address on: Thriving in Chaotic Times: Strategic Imperatives of Cultural Change.

The Chicago Tribune is part of my life.

I read the Trib on the train on the way into Ogilvie Transportation Center. Two weeks ago, one of my citizen journalism articles appeared in Trib Local, the Chicago Tribune’s local source. Last week, I was a guest host on an internet TV show with a ChicagoNow Blog writer.

When I met Tony, I mentioned how Social Media Club Chicago enjoyed having Chicago Now’s social media director on our ethics and journalism panel.

While my takeaways are still fresh, I’m sharing three highlights of Tony’s presentation with you.

1. “Skate to where the puck is going.” Wayne Gretzky
Simple, yet profound – yes? But. . . . where is the puck going?

2. Mobile will surpass online by 2012
Why spend all energy online when you should be going towards mobile?
Tony asked. By the way, who here is on foursquare?

3. Culture Kills Strategy
I’d edit this a bit to show more of a co-dependent relationship.
But, Tony made a good point that came back up in subsequent presentations. Companies that aren’t doing well don’t have good cultures or good strategies. You need both.

Going back to the May 2009 speech at Community Media Workshop where the Trib said they wanted to be the watchdog, [source], the tables are turned. Other papers, news outlets, sites and people are watching them now.

Barbara Rozgonyi
CEO, CoryWest Media, LLC
Founder, Social Media Club Chicago
Publisher, http://wiredprworks.com
630.207.7530 voice/text
corywestmedia@ gmail.com

Image credit: Barbara Rozgonyi for thesociallens.com from the Chicago Shots: downtown collection c2010 all rights reserved.

Disclosure: I will be presenting a LinkedIn webinar for Ragan Communications on October 26.

Peter Shankman visited Chicago this week and I was there! Now this is one guy I’ve always wanted to meet. I’m a fan of HARO [helpoutareporter.com], more stats on that later, and Peter’s brilliance in general.

Although most people associate Peter with HARO, did you know he’s also the author of Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them, a blogger, a skydiver, an entrepreneur, a marathoner and owner of two fat cats.

Thanks to Catherine Merritt of Morton’s Steakhouse and Allan Schoenberg of CME Group for organizing this event – a 90 minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of dialogue. I took notes and today I’m sharing them with you. Note: this is what I wrote down and may not be completely accurate, especially when quotes come in.

An Afternoon with Peter Shankman in Chicago

wiredprworks: 2010 is the year social media will become ubiquitous @skydiver

wiredprworks: @skydiver live tweeting is a great way to promote your brand

Note: After sending out those two tweets, I switched to taking notes so I could write this post.

We don’t have the right to own social media. If you have to call yourself a key influencer, you’re not.

HARO Help Out a Reporter Statistics
Published three times a day with 30-50 queries per issue.
Approximately 125,000 members
37,000 journalists
93% of journalists return with new queries
target: small businesses – 97.9% of the country
In a few weeks, query emails will be masked and timed. Addresses that email the HARO masked email after the expiration date with a spam pitch will be banned from the HARO database – automatically.

Social Media Rules You Need to Know

1. Transparency
Admit it, right away, when you screw up. Say how you’re going to fix it. Eliminate PR spin. For example, when HARO is late people get a reason and an apology.

2. Relevance
The media landscape is fractured. Peter asked where and how people got their news in the morning. He gets his from podcasts that he listens to while he’s running or working out. To be relevant, be where people are and ask them what they want. For example, Amazon started out as “The Earth’s Biggest Book Store” – the last thing Peter bought from them was a blender, not a book.

3. Brevity
In the 80s, the average attention span was 3 minutes. Today it’s the time it takes to read a text message or about 2.7 seconds. So how does twitter fit it? Putting all of your bets on twitter might not be the wisest move. Until twitter makes $1 one, they are pets.com waiting to happen. Look at myspace.com – it got “Arsenio-ed,” a new verb.

Peter advises trust in the concept of short-message, not so much the brand. Surveys say that 90% of first contacts in the future will come through the written word in the form of a 140-200 character message.

How to make sure you understand brevity: Learn to write.

“Stop hurting America.” Jon Stewart

For example, make your emails easy to read and respond to right away. [test: how much more precise could your emails be? Measure: response time and actions taken.] If you get an email from Peter that says your email was in his spam folder, chances are you don’t know how to write.

Get their interest in short bursts, then write a novel.

4. Top of mind or presence of mind
Peter told the story of Barry Diller, a former president at Paramount, who talked to 10 people every morning. Where did he get the names and numbers? His rolodex . Peter explained what a Rolodex was/is to the under 25 crowd.

How does this idea work for Peter? Every morning while he’s having coffee, he checks into Facebook. His “Rolodex” is the birthday list. Everyone gets either a wish on Facebook, via email or live on a personal call.

Peter says we talk to 3% of our network on a regular basis. “That’s pathetic. Why are we there?” To know what’s going on in your network, you have to stay in touch.

After Peter’s presentation, he took questions from the audience and covered these topics:

The Future of Social Media

Looking out 24 months to October 2011, Peter mused that Facebook and Google will own everything. He asked us to imagine a world where everyone you meet is in your network.

A plasma screen on the wall in your bathroom greets you with your network home page. Updates from people closest to you run in ticker-type fashion on the bottom of the screen.

Right now, Facebook doesn’t completely understand relevancy. Soon, we’re going to live in a world fueled by relevance.

The Future of Public Relations

Your job is now how to get other people to do your PR for you. No longer is it about you telling people how great you are. Now, it’s people telling you how great I am. That’s why great customer service and building trust and relationships is so important. It’s not just about pitching reporters. It’s about crafting the message.

Social Media and Business

For businesses, traditionally information flowed from outside our network in. Now, information is flowing from inside the network out.
To monitor social media use these free tools: filtrbox and peoplebrowsr

Personal Networks Becoming More Influential

When Peter’s Delta flight had to make an emergency landing [the wing fell off], Southwest answered the Peter’s tweets before Delta did. Great customer service always wins, but “if you can’t trust your employees to make decisions, at the end of the day, nobody wins.”

Peter recommends all businesses read Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach to Customer Service by Ken Blanchard, published in 1993.

Twitter Observations
The art of twitter is not in the tweet.
The art of twitter is in the value of the retweet.
The loneliest person on twitter is the person who only talks about himself.

Future of TV Journalism

More than 50% of CNN’s election coverage came from citizen journalists. Citizen journalism is becoming real journalism. By 2015, TV will be more about analyzing and less about reporting.

Peter Shankman Videos

Hope you enjoy this Peter Shankman HARO channel I created on Yubby.

What questions would you ask Peter about HARO, social media, PR, journalism – or anything?

Rather than print out pages of handouts, I’m posting my Digital PR workshop materials here for the world to enjoy.

First, we’ll talk about how to become your own publicist using the PR P-R-I-M-E-R

Next, we’ll go over the Digital PR=Publicity Repositioned presentation.

Then, we’ll cover essential elements of online and social media press releases.

And, we’ll cover some real-life success stories. Have to join us in person to see those, but here are some videos to inspire and inform.

Disclosure: image provided by shutterstock.com

Have you tried do-it-yourself online PR? What lessons would you share?

Does age matter in media relations? What is a credible source? Do journalists get SMPRs?

Thanks to Middelberg Communications for contacting Wired PR Works with the preliminary Findings from the Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World. Because the survey is in progress, journalists can still participate in the new media and communications survey. Final results will be presented at the New Communications Forum in Spring 2009.  It’s worth taking some time to browse through the results in progress; here are three areas I thought you might find interesting.

Highlights from the Middleberg/SNCR [Society for New Communications Research] Study

Although the study reports many findings, the credibility factor jumped out first. The 30-49 segment gives the highest credibility marks across all new media communications, except for online video. Boomers don’t find blogs very believable, but they rank corporate websites fairly high – is this a matter of perception? What if the corporate website is a traditional site/blog hybrid?

Journalists Prefer Email, Phone and Meetings over Social Network Message and Twitter

Our media contacts love email. Phone calls come in [or go out] when we need to screen a story idea for interest, check on details, or set up interviews. Recently, we sent out a part one part two email. The first contained the release and mentioned that an identical email that included an image attachment would follow immediately. Two media outlets emailed back to say they got message one, but not message two and they wanted to run the picture. Sometimes we get better pick up on our client’s images than we do on their stories; having a mix is good. One reporter asked for additional images to create an online slide show. How do these responses compare to your media connections’ preferences?

Social Media Press Releases Work for 21%, not for 17% and 62% don’t know what they are

Now here’s an interesting finding that goes against all “the press release is dead” proclamations. Is it the insider terminology that throws off the 62%? What if the question asked journalists to rank SMPR components like multi-media attachments based on value – do you think the response would be different? How can the PR industry let journalists know about the SMPR? Almost two years ago I wrote a post about the social media release called “Give Whoever Whatever They Want” that outlines 10 reasons why SMPRs don’t work for everybody. 

Source of all graphics: Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World

Where PR Comes In: Storytelling, Engaging, Communicating

The study goes on to note implications for public relations practitioners, including making the case for placing social media responsibilities with PR professionals who are “storytellers who understand how to build relationships, collaborate, engage in conversations, understand changing influence patterns, and how to communicate with journalists in the channel of their choice.”

Your Turn

How did these results help you?

Sometimes a seemingly tiny crisis can turn out to be a major ordeal. Little things can blow up into big matters very quickly – especially online.

This week, United Airlines’ stock nose dived and almost crashed due to a story, published in 2002, about United’s bankruptcy filing. According to some reports, as much as $1.41 billion evaporated in a few hours before coming back, still short of where the stock stood before the story’s actual date was confirmed.

Did United see this crisis coming? How could they?

What might happen to your business or organization in the event of a public, personal or internal public relations crisis? How would you respond in the event of a natural disaster or even a power outage?

Wait – is a power outage a crisis? On the smaller end of the crisis spectrum, our local Trader Joe’s was without power the Friday of Labor Day weekend. I didn’t know that when I pulled into the almost empty parking lot. As customers walked up to the dark store, employees greeted them and apologized profusely for the power outage, handed out the manager’s business card, and told us they expected to have power back within three hours. But, we should call first so we didn’t waste a trip.  Couldn’t they have just taped a sign on the door? Yet, but that’s not the kind of personal service we expect from our Trader Joe’s. Does the response have to match the way the brand or organization relates to its community?

crisis

noun

1
an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty; “they went bankrupt during the economic crisis” 

2. 
a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something; “after the crisis the patient either dies or gets better” 

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.

Planning ahead and preparing for a crisis while things are calm can help you minimize the impact.

Here are a few ideas to help you strategize your crisis PR response . . .

• Study the Basic Principles for PR Crisis Communications from Global PR Blog Week
• Take a Crash Course in Public Relations from Forbes
• Draft a plan; use this outline as a template Crisis Communication Plan: A PR Blueprint
• Prepare to respond – immediately. Buy some time by answering with when you will be prepared to talk: “We’re aware of the situation and we’re working on a response to be given at _________.”
• Update frequently, even if it’s only to say when you’ll be giving another update.
• Appoint a designated spokesperson ahead of time and let everyone in your organization know that this person, and this person only, will respond to media inquiries. You can always bring in other people as the story unfolds.
• Answer: What was your organization’s place in the crisis?
• Take a reality check: how big is this crisis? to who? why?
• Make sure your media list is up-to-date and your connections are fresh. Calling your friend Joe and finding out that he’s been reassigned to another paper won’t help.
• Form an alliance group. Round up allies who support what you do and will be willing to speak on your behalf, if you need them.
• Expand your allies from personal to partners to online connections.
• Monitor the crisis conversation everywhere, especially online in social media circles from Advergirl
• Set up Google alerts that let you know when your organization in mentioned. Check into Serph, HowSocialbe and Twitter search to see who’s talking about you. Join your industry forums to track and reply to comments there.
• Prepare for a PR crisis that might emerge from the blogosphere with Steve Rubel‘s Blog Crisis and Communications Planning guide
• Refresh your media room regularly so you appear current and active

Your Turn

Do you have a crisis communications plan in place? What would you add?