It’s getting hard to keep track of the number of pro-democracy protests going on in the Middle East and North Africa. It started with Tunisia and spread to Egypt. From there, Libya, Iran, Bahrain and elsewhere began to dominate world news for the past several weeks.

While there are many differences between the protests in Libya today and the anti-government rallies in Egypt less than three weeks ago, there are surprising similarities. It many of these countries, the government has either completely or partially shut down Internet access and mobile phone access. In Libya, the Internet was shut down for six hours during violent protests against longtime dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. When the Internet was restored, users immediately turned to Twitter and Google maps to spread the news to the world of government brutally attacking the protesters.

Most of the protesters in every country are young men under the age of 30. They are gathering by the thousands in city squares and they are wired in.

Tool #1 for Government Overthrow: Smart Phones
There are many stories describing that when Twitter was shut down in Egypt, mobile apps for Twitter were used to get Twitter messages out to the free world. It’s an example of utilizing many channels of communication to share the same message.

Tool #2 for Government Overthrow: YouTube
All day today, dramatic amateur video has emerged on YouTube showing Libya’s security forces apparently firing at crowds in Benghazi and Tripoli. We saw similar videos from Egypt earlier this month, and from Iran earlier this week.

Tool #3 for Government Overthrow: Al Jazeera
We would be remiss to not point out the extensive influence satellite news provider Al Jazeera has over the region. Through their flickering television screens, millions across the region tuned in to see people just like them stand as one against brutal dictators and demand equality and justice. People from Algeria to Yeman began to believe they could do it too.

Al Jazeera’s signal has been repeatedly disrupted across the Middle East. Earlier this month, authorities in Egypt cut Al Jazeera broadcasts and ordered closure of its operations in the country for “biased” coverage of the protests there. The government of Yemen blamed Al Jazeera for inciting “unrest, violence and sabotage in Arab countries.”

It’s no doubt we’re living through the midst of a historic change in the world. I’m constantly asked, “What’s the future of social media?” when I sit on panels or discuss trends in online media. A year ago, I never thought to answer “Facebook will be used as a tool to spread democracy across the Middle East.” Nope. Never once came to my mind. I hope to see more pleasant surprises.

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posted by Doyle

According to this survey, traditional radio still plays a major role in new music and artist discovery. Who knew? An interesting set of findings, to say the least.

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Frito-Lay announced today that “The Loud Sun Chips Bag is Dead” thanks, in part, to a crack-team of investigative journalists at The Wall Street Journal who couldn’t ask a single question nine years ago about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but dedicated 900 words and a two-minute video to a snack bag (that’s right, I said it). The other culprit in the death of the biobag appears to be a Facebook group called “SORRY BUT I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THIS SUN CHIPS BAG” with 44,421 members.

Hungry people of the world, there is a lesson to be learned here. On second thought, no. However, if you are lucky enough to not be starving, and you don’t worry about tripping off IED explosions on your way to the market, then you probably have time to think about how loud your snacking is. And there is a marketing and PR lesson to be learned here:

All of the product development, expensive ad campaigns and custom-built websites will not do a thing for you if you don’t listen to your customers.

Frito-Lay made three mistakes here:

1. They assumed everyone cares about the environment.
2. They listened to the wrong people (those who aren’t willing to make any minor sacrifice for the sake of the environment).
3. They tried to make everyone happy.

Frito-Lay saw the negative response building over a month ago before the WSJ article initially ran and that Facebook group only had 20,000 or so fans. Realizing there was no escaping the noise, Frito-Lay featured it in some of their marketing. In stores, the company posted signs that read: “Yes, the bag is loud, that’s what change sounds like.”

Cute a clever though it may be, they weren’t responding to their market in any way that was engaging or meaningful. What they should have said was, “We believe there are more people that care about saving the planet than there are people that are inconvenienced by noise. We’re still working on making the bag better, but we think this is an amazing start.” No, it’s not a poster slogan, but it’s a conversation starter. (Maybe the poster should have read, “GET A BOWL.”) What they did was talk at their customers instead of listen to them. People were complaining. They responded with sarcasm. Sales started declining.

It took four years to develop the compostable bag for Sun Chips.

The key to being successful in social media is not attention or clever one-liners, or even a viral video. It’s engagement. It’s getting people to buy your product and then tell their friends about your product. It’s getting in front of the right people with the right message. They had a pretty good message. They just responded to the wrong people.

Instead of building a presence with the already established hundreds of eco-friendly bloggers who would happily become prophets of the blessing of the Sun Chips bag, Frito-Lay dumped a truckload of money into developing a website about Sun Chips’ compostable packaging and then developed a separate social media community on “Composting 101,” featuring videos from Sophie Uliano, a bestselling green author. This is a tactic that although features a social media method, is still old-school marketing that involves talking to your customers and expecting them to sit quietly and listen. Who did this site attract? I doubt the Sun Chips site got as much traffic as Sophie’s personal site. Apparently, it didn’t get as much traffic as the Facebook group.

Frito-Lay tried to force a conversation by talking at people. When the people responded with criticism, they shut it down because the narrative didn’t fit the construct of their opinion. You can never be everything to everyone and as soon as you try, you will fail, as apparent by today’s announcement. When you begin listening only to your critics, you make the dangerous mistake of making a minority opinion seem like the majority. People will always complain. You shouldn’t ignore them, but by focusing on the people that will actually buy your product, you make your detractors appear to be exactly what they are – the small minority.

When the narrative doesn’t fit, evaluate your narrative. Maybe you’re not saying the wrong things. Maybe you’re just not listening to the right people. Trying to make everyone happy just means wasting four years of product research and a multi-million dollar ad campaign.

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Once you’ve nailed your key messages, can repeat them in your sleep, and have mastered behavior and style points while under the hot lights of media scrutiny, you’re left with the biggest challenge of spokesmanship: fielding the tough questions – and anticipating those questions before they’re asked.

The wrong answer to a hostile, negative or misinformed question can wreck organizations and ruin careers. We spend a lot of time practicing these scenarios in media training, and take pains to avoid overlooking the toughest of the tough questions. The unexpected question can be devastating, so determining the most likely curve balls is one of the most important aspects of media preparation.

Watching how a story evolves can shed light on this potential escalation. As an example, the initial fear, shock, and subsequent outpouring of relief, gratitude and charity surrounding the recent Fourmile Fire have developed into unexpected forms of controversy. Every day, new wrinkles appear in how the media and the public perceive and understand this story, and new questions – some we didn’t anticipate even a few days ago – are on the rise:

• How are the small mountain fire districts going to maintain themselves when nearly half their tax base has just been wiped out?
• With all the requests for financial aid, where is it going?
• Individuals who lost their homes are mostly insured and affluent. Why should anyone help them?
• If some people chose not to carry insurance, isn’t that their problem?
• There is much collective appreciation being expressed – but what do those who lost their homes have to be thankful for?
• Why were some homes saved, and others lost?
• Who will stay, who will rebuild, and why?
• Isn’t it safe to assume that people will be less safe with diminished fire-fighting resources to protect them?
• Won’t insurance in these communities now cost more and cover less?
• What about the underinsured, or the retired people whose insurance claims aren’t enough to replace their homes, and now can’t get loans since they’re not working?
• Why rebuild a million-dollar home in a forest of black match sticks?
• How will people handle the loss of equity in this burned out neighborhood, in a down real-estate market?
• Who is going to clean this up? How long will restoration take?
• What about the environmental damage from ash and erosion?
• Can we trust the fire districts to do a better job next time?
• Wouldn’t these little, autonomous fire departments be better off it they consolidated?
• Can these rural fire departments remain solvent with all the debt they have on vehicles and stations?
• What is the government going to do to mitigate the future risk across all the rest of Colorado’s wildland/urban interface?
• Is this a sign that, as a society, we should choose against living in the high-risk wildland/urban interface?
• Should people be allowed to expose themselves and others to the fire dangers, the environmental risks, the threats to wildlife and the increased energy demands of this lifestyle choice?
• Is Boulder’s precious backdrop threatened by the very existence of these mountain dwellers?

It’s getting deeper, and these are tough, emotional and often very personal questions. Some make sense and are reasonable, but many are misguided and unfair – but will be asked anyway. The many communities, companies, individuals and agencies involved in this controversy (it’s not just a “story” anymore) are going to be struggling with the answers for many years to come – along with many more questions yet to be asked…

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One of my favorite television lines of all time is from the prime time comedy Scrubs (anyway, I think it was Scrubs). One of the characters explained that “if you took all the porn off the Internet, there would only be one site left, and it would be www.bring-back-the-porn.com!”

Not quite, but a funny line. What’s not so funny is that the Internet gets a worse rap than it’s offline counterparts when something goes awry.

Bottom line—you can find damn near anything with a few key strokes online. A search for the same thing in the real world may take hours and require some serious time, skill and maybe even a visit to a part of town you’re not too familiar with (or don’t want to be too familiar with).

During the last few month, a myriad of groups, including the United States Congress, started crawling all over online classified ad site Craigslist for it’s “adult services” section, which the site has now agreed to permanently remove.

Let me say now that I find human trafficking to be abhorrent, and “sex workers” face any number of dangers, including situations like the case that started the Craigslist hunt, the arrest of Boston University medical student Phil Markoff, dubbed the “Craigslist Killer.” I’m also not interested in debating here whether or not sex for money between consenting adults should or should not be legal.

I am, however, interested in the fact that Craigslist, founded in 1995, is being seemingly singled out. I’ve not picked up an entertainment weekly in another city for some time, but it sure looks like the print edition of Denver’s Westword weekly newspaper would be out of business if not for ads from bars and nightclubs, medical marijuana dispensaries and—yep—adult services.

I’ll agree with Huey Lewis here: sometimes bad is bad. Again, I’m not arguing for or against adult services ads either online or in print, but shouldn’t what’s good (or bad) for the goose is also good (or bad) for the gander? Certainly, Craigslist is a high-profile success that almost singlehandedly crippled the classified advertising business in daily newspapers, so they’re going to get attention—maybe more than their fair share. But is an ad for prostitution (no, wait, I’m sorry, a massage!) more harmful online than in print? If the various attorneys general and members of Congress feel this kind advertising needs to be stopped in the interest of public safety, why has the investigation pretty much stopped with Craigslist? I’m pretty sure something called the “world’s oldest profession” didn’t start in 1995.

Maybe the answer is simple: Craigslist is (or can be) in any connected American home with a couple of clicks of a mouse. As I noted above, if you’re looking for such advertising offline, it needs to be searched out. However, it’s not like it’s hard to find a copy of Westword—their website boasts nearly 3,000 distribution sites in “high-traffic” locations. A quick look at their website—which can also show up in any connected American home—shows more than 23,000 ads in “personals” and more than 13,000 in “services,” which includes a sub listing for “massage.” If you’re wondering where the Craigslist ads for those services went in Denver, I just found them!

Again, my point is not to condemn Westword or even launch a debate over these ads or the services they advertise. My point is simple: a high-profile website was forced to remove communications that could easily be considered speech protected by the First Amendment while other media outlets continue the very same practice. If others are being scrutinized to the same level, I missed it.

Maybe even more important, is this a first step on a dangerous slippery slope?

Why the targeting? Thoughts?

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The front page of the Boulder Daily Camera yesterday proclaimed “CU-Boulder takes steps to close journalism school.” As I pondered the fate of my profession, I, a former newspaper reporter, posted the story to my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. The fact that I chose to share the information online rather than blasting off a letter to the editor should tell me enough about the future of media to not make me upset about the issue.

However, I was upset.

For starters, I have a master’s degree in journalism. Is it going to be worth anything in 10 years? I knew when I got my degree that I could make a lot more money if I went to business school, but I chose journalism because I was fascinated by how people chose to communicate information and the different ways in which they share it. It was this fascination that drove me into the newspaper business almost two decades ago and it’s what led me to build my first website in 1996, and start my first blog 10 years later. Besides, I hate statistics classes.

Journalism schools, traditionally, have been horribly inept at providing a cross-discipline approach to the trade. There’s the broadcast department, the news-editorial department, and public relations. Never shall they meet. I remember as an undergrad at Colorado State asking about photojournalism classes and getting a quizzical look from my academic advisor because I was on the news-editorial track. I reminded her that they have pictures in newspapers too.

“But someone else will do that for you,” she said, as if the subject had been exhausted. Not anymore. Reporters are expected to write the story, update the blog, create a Twitter feed and post video to the website all before the 5 p.m. deadline. No wonder the quality of the reporting has been going steadily downhill. They don’t have enough time to focus on anything that could make an impact.

It is the spread of web-based information that is, ironically, leading to this need for better journalists. Increasingly, people are overwhelmed with information via online, on television and in print. In this overwhelmed state, they are developing more and more channels of information. “I’m a mom. Tell me about stuff I care about.” Enter the mommy bloggers. “I am passionate about politics.” Enter MSNBC and Fox News. These are just channels though, microcosms of information that provide no context or perspective. It’s more like a stream of consciousness.

Now, more than ever, we need people that can tell us what is important, why it’s important and explain it to us in a way that we can understand. As one of my old journalism teachers used to say, “Don’t just tell me what happened. Tell me why I should care!”

Despite my concerns, I think it can be a promising and very smart move for the University of Colorado to create a school of information if done correctly. You can’t deny the power or the influence of the Internet and social media in particular. If you stop looking at journalism in the silos of television, print, and public relations — and start looking at it as information sharing — then you get to the heart of what journalism really is.

I shared my thoughts with Sandra Fish, a journalist and journalism instructor at the University of Colorado who specializes in politics, government and interactive reporting. She wrote me back this reply:

“I think the potential to create something new that melds journalism and technology is exciting but we also need to keep in mind that journalism, no matter what the form or platform, is essential to our democracy.”

“What about ethics?” I asked. “And GRAMMAR?!”

Learning to understand and accept my own biases but not letting that overshadow my reporting was one of the most important things I learned in journalism school. I also learned people tend not to take you too seriously if you don’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” I see very little of either proper grammar or ethics on the Internet.

These are all issues that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what the future of journalism will look like. People still need information. Maybe we’ll need more “citizen journalists” who can bring an entrepreneurial culture to journalism and make money blogging, posting videos and podcasting. If that’s true, maybe there will be a need for some of those dreaded business statistics classes.

I can’t wait to find out. The fascination continues.

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One of the great aspects of social media is the ability for far more people than ever before to get involved in communications, but this represents a fundamental change for newspapers. Instead of printing a few letters to the editor each day, representing a tiny fraction of the readership, nearly every online story on most newspaper websites features the ability to comment. Individual stories often receive dozens or even hundreds of comments, even in smaller markets.

That’s usually a good thing–but it can be a bad thing. Sadly, it seems our own Boulder Daily Camera is an example of how this is becoming a bad thing. This problem isn’t limited to the Camera, but because the paper is in our town and I try to read it every day, I’m throwing down the gauntlet: I’m challenging you, Camera: clean up your comments.

Simply, you’ve lost control of your own living room. The comments are often more ridiculous than valuable. It’s time to kick the serial smartasses out of the party and see if your community is able to conduct itself in a better way.

I’m not talking about profanity, threats or other egregious violations. If those things are happening, they do seem to be getting shut down. And I’m certainly not talking about honest, open and respectful disagreement. That is the very best part of an open forum. It’s the myriad of feeble attempts at comedy coupled with mean-spirited comments that don’t further the conversation, but ruin it.

Here are some recent examples:

The Emich sisters, former owners of Boulder’s Trilogy Wine Bar, are looking at opening a new business combining wine, yoga and other elements. Comments like this (taken from the Camera website) are just plain ridiculous:

“There are already too many yuppie Yoga places, coffee shops, and health clubs for egocentric stay home moms. Boulder men need to put down their man purses and run these wenches out of town.”

Or:

“What about tofu, granola bars and bean sprouts? Got to get all that no-MSG, all natural, range-fed, no artificial coloring, all organic, unsalted, no sugar, no preservatives food in order to survive in a world that will soon be crowded with windmills and solar machines. Haight-Ashbury, 1968. Bleeeeeeech!”

This is just a sampling of the mostly critical comments following this story. Are these thoughtful or an extension of a good discussion? The story talks about three women (full disclosure, friends of mine) who ran a business in Boulder, paid rent, employed people and contributed to the local economy for nearly 10 years, and you’d think from the comment thread they were planning to open an Opium Stand outside of a local grade school.

The point? I certainly don’t get it. Disagree with the concept, comment on the service–good or bad–once it opens or ask an honest question. But to just jump on and tell the world you hate something–to be clear, something that doesn’t even exist yet!–is narcissism at its worst.

Comments following the coverage of how cancer recently claimed rock legend Ronnie James Dio were mostly respectful. But Xenu007 (who seems to think none of the rest of us in Boulder can enjoy any story without his pithy input) left this gem:

“Who?”

Perhaps if you would have read the story (which is from the Associated Press) you wouldn’t need to ask. But really, it’s a waste of electricity to even fire up the computer and type that.

A June 25 article on the mosquito problem at a city softball facility has attracted 27 comments so far. Twenty-seven comments on mosquitos! Most of them are nothing more than snarky remarks, some even criticizing the players and the sport they choose. Bottom line: not much worth reading. Certainly not the best our community has to offer.

So what do I recommend? Let me stress again: differing opinions should be encouraged, not squelched, but there’s a difference between differing opinions and random ridiculous remarks. Honestly, an occassional, very clever quip can further the conversation, but I see precious few of those. Here are a few thoughts:

Eliminate anonymous comments. Nearly every newspaper requires that letters to the editor be signed. Occasionally the identity of the writer will be withheld from print, but such a decision is made with the consent and consideration of an editor and typically only when there is some sort of serious issue (whistleblowers still working at the target or similar). Allowing people to completely hide their identity behind names like Xenu007 (his/her avatar is a photo of John Travolta) practically encourages bad behavior.

Moderate more strictly. Let’s not just wait for profanity or the report of another user. Let’s use your skills as editors and reporters. Comments like “let’s run these wenches out of town” simply don’t have a place on the Daily Camera’s website. To wait until something really bad happens is a bit like pulling over speeders in a school zone only after a child is injured.

Set up a system to alert you to users that comment constantly, and watch their content. Readers leaving several comments on several stories every day are certainly engaged in the community, but are they good comments or simply random snark? It’s easy to jump on and leave a derogatory remark for nearly any story, and that seems to be activity of many of your most active users. Five good, conversational comments are far better than 50 dumb remarks. Encourage people to engage with quality content, not simply quantity of content.

Engage your community to help. I realize you’re facing shrinking revenue and lower payrolls, and here I am recommending additional work. Perhaps volunteers from the community could serve as a frontline defense. Try putting something inappropriate on Wikipedia and an army of volunteers will have it down in minutes. Again, the goal is not to squash disagreements, but to allow discussions of all kind to flourish in a respectful environment. I’ll bet there are many members of the community that would volunteer to monitor the posts and remove the stupidity.

Shut down comments on stories that get out of hand. When a string runs amok on any given article, shut it down and remove the offending string. This will make it clear you’re serious and will help strings stay on focus. I remember one string about a domestic incident resulting in death in Boulder that started out thoughtful and interesting and devolved into a running commentary on the couple’s tattoos. Shut that stuff off when it happens and before long it won’t happen near as often.

Some stories simply shouldn’t have comments available. Do we really need to accommodate the potential for issues with every single story? Turning off comments on certain sections would eliminate the need to monitor them. Take Milestones, for example. Do we need to open up potential problems for the announcement of an engagement or, worse, a death? This would allow you to focus on areas that deserve comments but require moderation.

Spell out the rules, and stick to them. You’re inviting people to your house. Insist on respect in your terms of use and eliminate those who don’t follow the rules. Set forth your behavior parameters and, just like a bouncer at a bar, remove the patrons that want to ruin it for everyone else.

The comments are far enough out-of-hand now that I carefully consider recommending to a client that we contact the Camera for a story, and that’s pretty sad. Your reporters are good to work with, and the coverage itself is often beneficial. I’m more than happy to have a thoughtful discussion about my client’s story follow–even if the comments are not all favorable. I’m not willing, however, to subject my client to thoughtless, often stupid comments from the most obnoxious among us.

Your thoughts, Daily Camera? I’d love to get this discussion started. I just ask that we all treat each other with respect in the conversation.

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posted by Doyle

Tonight I wanted to watch the University of Denver Pioneers—my alma mater—take on the North Dakota Fighting Sioux in the semi-final game of the WCHA Playoffs. I’m willing to pay to watch the game, either on TV or online. I would have probably paid $34.95 or so without hesitation.

The funny part? It’s being broadcast on Fox Sports North, which just isn’t available in my area. Bottom line, it’s not like they needed to send a special crew and set up a complete broadcast. That’s already done. All they have to do is set up a stream and charge for it. I’d pay. Lots of others might as well. Let’s say just 500 people pay $30 each to watch. That’s $15,000. I have to believe that a substantial amount for a college hockey divisional playoff game.

Sadly, either no one thought of it or—more likely—there are some issues with broadcast rights that prevent Fox North from doing something so simple. So, I’m paying $8.95 for a very average audio stream.

Stupid.

Everyone involved—the universities, Fox Sports, even the advertisers, who get a larger audience—would win by making this available. When will we stop worrying about the handful of people that might steal the content and start serving—and profiting from—the large audience that’s more than happy to pay?

Soon, I hope.

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I often remark how social media is not a new set of behaviors, but just a new set of tools. We’ve always just wanted to talk to each other, and social media makes that easier than ever. As a professional communicator, social media has provided me with a myriad of new outlets—and challenges—but I believe the basics remain. In order to be an effective member of any social media community, your communications must be clear, honest and transparent.

There is no one that fits that description of communication better than my good friend and mentor Joe Fuentes. I learned today that Joe is fighting for his life against cancer, and it caused me to pause and reflect on the many lessons I learned from Joe while working for him at what was then Adolph Coors Company. The things Joe taught me honed not only traditional communication skills, but his constant example as a warm, caring and open person set the stage for understanding how to use social media 20+ years before any of us had so much as a Facebook page.

It was Joe that told me—again and again, until I got it through my head—that a great editor makes the writing better, not different. An ego is an editor’s worst enemy, he would say. You don’t change it because you can, you change it because your change makes it better.

I remember the first news release I wrote for Joe. I was in my early 20s and, of course, I knew everything. Back in those days, we typed our drafts and handed them off for editing. Joe walked the draft back to my office, literally covered in red ink. No sentence seemed beyond the reach of Joe’s pen. I must have had quite the look on my face, but Joe just smiled and said “oh, don’t mind that… this was pretty good, actually! Let me show you what I did.” And he sat and shared freely more than 20 years of experience as a writer and and editor at the Rocky Mountain News along with another 10 years or so of public relations experience with Public Service Company of Colorado. And consistent with his own advice, there was not a single mark on that page that didn’t make the piece better.

Working for Joe was an ongoing lesson. Long before Google wanted headlines to be less than 22 words, Joe asked what every word was doing there, what role it played, and challenged you to make sure it was the best possible word for the job. If there was to be a drop head, it had to play a part in telling the story. And leads (or ledes, as Joe, ever the newspaperman, would write) had better be strong and to the point. Show up in Joe’s office with a normal PR lead/lede filled with buzzwords and braggadocio regarding your company’s leadership in some area and you were sent back to start again. It was Joe that demonstrated that PR was better for everyone—from company to client to reporter to reader—when the tenets of journalism were followed. “Don’t write puff,” he’ll say, “it won’t get past anyone worth getting past.”

While Strunk and White might have written it first, it was Joe that drove it home for me: “Omit needless words,” he would say, often followed by “I’m pretty sure we don’t get paid by the word around here!”

I’ve had the opportunity to introduce several of my employees to Joe from time to time at different events, and they’d often say, “Oh, you’re the AP Style guy.” And Joe will always smile. “If you want to communicate with someone, you’ve got to speak their language, and AP Style is the journalists’ language,” he’d remind us. Even today, when news releases are more often than not read directly by the general public, it’s maybe more important than ever to have your writing look and sound as professional as any news outlet. It helps give the story credibility. I learned that from Joe.

I remember working on a news release one day, typing feverishly (yes, typing on a typewriter!) when Joe asked me what I was doing.

“Working on a news release,” I answered, a bit incredulously.

“I’m just impressed that you memorized the entire AP Stylebook, since I don’t see it on your desk while you’re writing,” he said. “Make sure it’s all correct when you send it to me.” Joe knows the Stylebook better than anyone I’ve ever known, but his was always within easy reach. Now, I never really put mine away. Like Joe’s, my AP Stylebook is within arm’s length at all times.

But even more important than the writing, Joe is always the professional’s professional. His standards are high and he expects your best work, but rather than yelling or chastising, Joe simply makes you want to do your best because you never want to disappoint him. I’d do anything to meet a deadline for Joe, not from fear, but from respect. Joe and I worked together in a large department that could be difficult at times with office politics and turf battles. Somehow, Joe stayed above the fray, did excellent work and set an example for his staff. Without exception.

I remember one day, Joe got very, very angry with another manager on the staff.

“Darn that guy, he really makes me mad sometimes,” he said in a pretty even voice—and that was pretty much the end of it. I honestly don’t know how Joe put up with my high-strung mannerisms all those years, but he did, and if it drove him half as nuts as I now fear it might have, he never let on. He just continued to show me through example that there was another way to get things done.

In many ways, Joe is a true old-time newspaperman, but at the same time, he has always been years ahead of his time. You see, Joe understands the importance of clear, honest and transparent communication as being the foundation upon which everything else is built. It doesn’t matter if you’re chatting with a friend, writing a news release, completing a column for a major daily or a launching your very first blog, it all begins with clear, honest and transparent communication.

Despite what you probably thought all too often, Joe, I was listening to every word. My very best to you today and every day, my friend.

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posted by Cortney Harvey

The New York Times recently covered Coca Cola’s inclusion of social media in their Super Bowl ads. Some said “Huh?”

I disagree. Though it has been slowly emerging recently, this is yet another brilliant way that socmed can and should be used. Reading this article got me thinking about how socmed will impact this famed sport event and what means for the future of sports and media.

For most, the first thing that comes to mind when they think about the Super Bowl (besides the game) is the commercials. Although Coca Cola still holds two commercial spots for tomorrow’s main event, they are, for the first year, putting their eggs in the socmed basket. So what effect does this rush of socmed into the Super Bowl spotlight have? And why hasn’t this come to the forefront sooner? There has been the slow introduction of communication technologies incorporated into these scenarios over the past few years, but nothing compared to what is possible.

My question: why isn’t there a stronger push being made towards using socmed for this purpose? When used right, socmed can be of such great value… Who cares if it’s not traditional, it’s what’s happening now and will be what’s happening tomorrow. And not only does this mean something for once-a-year sports events, but can have a profound impact on how sports news and updates are communicated daily. The relationship between the two will change sports media forever, because today so many of us enjoy these play-by-play updates on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds instead of the annoying “too much information” one-liners.

Another trend in advertising for the Super Bowl!

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