The Secret to Making Money from Blogs

You can't make money blogging, or at least you can't make much. At least not now. Well, actually nobody knows. I don't have any ads on this site, the main reason being nobody has ever asked me to put their ad on this site. Maybe advertisers are missing a huge opportunity!

But I think I've figured out the secret to making money from blogs. Get someone to pay you to monitor them.

That's the conclusion I draw from Deborah Brown's op-ed (subscription required) in the current PR Week. Deborah Brown is senior director at Peppercom, a much-awarded small firm with offices in New York, San Francisco and London. She's got a common-sense approach to what she calls "digital media" that reminded me of the John Prine lyric, "It don't make much sense, this common sense don't make no sense no more."

For example, she says:

It’s also critical to understand that your company cannot state the same key messages via digital media that are allowed in other marketing initiatives such as advertising. With digital, the customer is in complete control. You need to understand how to communicate and connect in a new environment in which you have little or no control.

This is true, but it is fast becoming a cliche. Realizing you have little or no control is good Zen discipline, but pretty soon the clients are going to start asking their PR people for something more than a list of "what-not-to-do's." From my perch, I think we're at the point where an old economic idea, "Creative Destruction," needs to be applied to these new realities. From Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, written in 1942:

(T)he contents of the laborer's budget, say from 1760 to 1940, did not simply grow on unchanging lines but they underwent a process of qualitative change. Similarly, the history of the productive apparatus of a typical farm, from the beginnings of the rationalization of crop rotation, plowing and fattening to the mechanized thing of today–linking up with elevators and railroads–is a history of revolutions. So is the history of the productive apparatus of the iron and steel industry from the charcoal furnace to our own type of furnace, or the history of the apparatus of power production from the overshot water wheel to the modern power plant, or the history of transportation from the mailcoach to the airplane. The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation–if I may use that biological term–that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. . . .

"Industrial mutation" — there's a term I'd like to see the PR blogs use more often! The fact is, in a breathtakingly short period of time, mass communications has undergone a profound mutation, to which the PR industry and current practices might not successfully adapt.

In PR Week, Brown quotes Christopher Barger, "Blogger-in-Chief" at IBM, saying the customers "want relationship building" and not "traditional messages." From this article and dozens more like it all over the PR blogosphere and trade media, you get the idea that some PR industry leaders see "relationship building" as just another tactic in the PR professional's arsenal.

I don't think so. Training in the PR industry is notoriously poor, but from what I remember, it's mostly about dealing with the news media, elements of good writing, client relations and "managing for profitability." There aren't many PR agency GMs who could instruct staff to go forth and help clients "build relationships" via "digital media" and have any confidence in how their employees would translate those words into action. Chaos would ensue. It might be funny like "The Office" is funny. But a client shouldn't pay for people to do something they aren't qualified to do.

I don't mean to knock Deborah Brown. Her article is good as far as it goes. She has a clear view of the mutation process, and how control is slipping away. The rather tentative tone of her article is probably appropriate. Nobody really knows what to do, and she doesn't pretend to either.

However, she did make one suggestion that made me laugh.

Monitor…monitor….monitor…know what’s being said about your company, but know when it makes sense to react.

Digital monitoring: It's a tactic PR people can certainly do. It's just like media monitoring, except more billable hours, since, according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project report,

As of last December, 35 percent of Americans had posted to a blog, created a Web page, shared online photos, or otherwise generated content. That proportion is more than double the 16 percent that had posted any content to the Web in January 2002, when Pew first researched the topic.

Can you imagine how many of those posts mention a brand-name company, one that might have PR people in-house or under contract? Monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor… monitor…

Mother Russia Wants More Children

The news that Vladimir Putin's government in Russia is offering 250,000 rubles — the equivalent of more than two years' income for the average Russian worker — to mothers who agree to have second children reminded me of one of the first news stories I ever wrote, for an undergraduate journalism class at Berkeley in 1976.

That was during the time of the refuseniks – dissident Russian scientists, engineers, writers and academics, most of them Jews, who were trying to emigrate but were denied permission by the Communist government. I was assigned (or I assigned myself) to cover an event featuring Professor Gail Lapidus and a scientist who, after waiting almost a decade, finally had gotten out. I recall his first name was Martin, but I would butcher his last name if I tried it now.

At the time, Lapidus' research was focused on the role of women in Soviet society. Then, as now, the Russian population was aging and its economy stagnating, in part because its women were declining to have children. Here is what a Russian woman of today told Fred Weir of the Christian Science Monitor:

"A child is not an easy project, and in this world a woman is expected to get an education, find a job, and make a career," says Svetlana Romanicheva, a student who says she won't consider babies for at least five years. She hopes to have one child, but says a second would depend on her life "working out very well." As for Putin's offer, she says "it won't change anything."

Back in 1976, the notion of economic incentives was heresy. So, as I recall Professor Lapidus explaining, the Soviet government tried to trick women into having kids by getting them drunk.

Hearing this as a college student who spent at least a few hours each month at parties comprised of cheap beer and wine and dozens of single men and women at their reproductive peak, it seemed quite funny that the Soviets would use the same tools, but call it social engineering for the good of the People.

On long train trips, Lapidus said, at a certain point in the evening, the fellows behind the bar — acting on official instructions — would just start pouring drinks for passengers, in hopes that romance, and pregnancy, would ensue. Lapidus was very serious about this, but I'll never forget the sneaky little smile on "Martin's" face as she told the story. I guessed (but of course didn't write) that Martin had been a passenger on the Soviet Love Train a time or two.

Stuff I Didn’t Know About Baseball & Los Angeles

Did you know that if it hadn't been for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the first major league baseball team to move to Los Angeles would have been the St. Louis Browns, in 1942?

Did you know that the Browns had another shot at moving to Los Angeles in 1953, but chose Baltimore instead?

Did you know that the Kansas City Athletics (who are now in Oakland) and the original Washington Senators (who are now the Minnesota Twins) toyed with moving to Los Angeles before the Dodgers did?

Did you know that the only reason Los Angeles was awarded a second major-league franchise after the Dodgers' arrival in 1958 was to thwart plans for a rival baseball league?

Did you know that the Angels' first owner, Gene "The Cowboy" Autry, was originally interested only in broadcasting the Angels, but was encouraged to buy the team when the Dodgers' Walter O'Malley vetoed the choice of Bill Veeck? (Veeck, the goofball promotional genius who revived the Browns' fortunes briefly when he hired a midget to pinch-hit, would have been a perfect fit for Hollywood in the early 60s. That's obviously what O'Malley was afraid of.)

You probably knew that the Angels played at Dodger Stadium from 1962-64, and when they played there, they called the ballpark "Chavez Ravine." But did you know that the '62 team was in first place on July 4th, and was a threat to overtake the Yankees that year until late in the season?

You know that O'Malley as landlord treated the Angels like dirt, so Autry moved the team to Anaheim. But did you know that Long Beach could have had the Angels, but when the city insisted the team call itself the Long Beach Angels, Autry backed out? (In Anaheim, they were known as the California Angels, until 1997, when they became known as the Anaheim Angels. Beginning in 2005, they took on the unwieldy name that only lawyers could love, "the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim." You know all about that.)

These bits of information about Los Angeles' baseball history are included in the Angels' entry in Wikipedia. Thanks to 6-4-2's Rob McMillan for pointing to it. I still can't get over that we almost got the Browns — a baseball team with arguably the most futile history of any major league franchise. In 1942, the L.A. Browns would have been just three years removed from the team that had one of the worst records in major league history, 43-111, a .279 winning percentage.

Of course, the Browns found success as the Baltimore Orioles. In fact, in 1966, the Orioles swept the Dodgers in the World Series, beating Don Drysdale twice and handing the great Sandy Koufax a defeat in the last game he ever pitched. 

The Road Bends, part two

The Road Bends

Floyd Patterson, R.I.P.

World champion heavyweight Floyd Patterson, who died May 11 at 71, was remembered at a memorial today in New Paltz, N.Y.:

The Rev. Dan O'Hare, who met Patterson shortly after the boxer retired to New Paltz in 1973, said, "I didn't understand how this gentle, kind person beat up people."

O'Hare said he later saw photographs of Patterson helping up men he had knocked out.

Another picture, printed on the back of the memorial's bulletin, shows a smiling Patterson and the scar tissue on the knuckles of his big left hand, which the 190-pound boxer used to knock out Ingemar Johansson and retake the heavyweight crown in 1960.

Patterson's son, Floyd Patterson II, recalled going to a dinner where his father left the table for the restroom and didn't come back. He was found talking to fans. His son said Patterson would talk and sign autographs as long as people wanted him to.

Patterson won the heavyweight boxing title in 1956 when he knocked out Archie Moore. He lost and regained the title in fights with Ingemar Johansson and lost the title for good to Sonny Liston. Patterson retired in 1972 with a 55-8-1 record and 40 knockouts. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1991.

Patterson was the first boxer to ever to regain the heavyweight boxing crown after losing it, that history playing out over three classic bouts with Ingemar Johansson in 1959-61. He lost it the second time to Sonny Liston and lost the rematch, both times in first-round knockouts. After the Liston fights, Patterson continued his career long enough to get three more shots at the title, in 1965 and 1972 against Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali, and in 1967 against Jimmy Ellis.

In between the Liston knockouts and the Clay challenge, writer Gay Talese wrote a famous portrait of Patterson, "The Loser." I happened to check out The Gay Talese Reader: Portaits and Encounters from the library shortly after Patterson died, so I read the piece. It first appeared in Esquire when that magazine published the best non-fiction in the country. "The Loser" is truly beautiful, poignant writing — an honest, clear-eyed writer encountering a honest, insightful subject who had a great story to tell. (The Talese collection also includes classic portraits of Joe DiMaggio and Frank Sinatra.)

When Talese visited Patterson at his remote upstate New York training center, Patterson was in training even though, at that time, the boxing world thought Patterson was through — at 29. Patterson continued boxing for the same reason he started in the first place: "I liked beating people because it was the only thing I could do… Whether boxing was a sport, I wanted to make it a sport because it was a thing I could succeed at." But, contemplating his life, Patterson seemingly startles the near-invisible narrator Talese when he claims he is "a coward."

"When did you first think you were a coward?" he was asked.

"It was after the first Ingemar fight."

"How does one see this cowardice you speak of?"

"You see it when a fighter loses. Ignemar, for instance, is not a coward. When he lost the third fight in Miami, he was at a party later at the Fountainebleu. Had I lost, I couldn't have gone to that party. And I don't see how he did."

"Could Liston be a coward?"

"That remains to be seen," Patterson said. "We'll find out what he's like after somebody beats him, how he takes it. It's easy to do anything in victory. It's in defeat that a man reveals himself. In defeat, I can't face people. I haven't the strength to say to people, 'I did my best, I'm sorry,' and whatnot."

Patterson admitted to Talese that he brought a disguise with him — fake whiskers and mustache and a hat — to every fight after his first lost to Johannson. He won every fight from then on until Liston, but after Liston beat him, he used the disguse to slip away, first by car from Chicago to New York, then on an airplane from New York to Madrid, a location he chose upon reading the city's name on a sign at the airport.

"You must wonder what makes a man do things like this. Well, I wonder too. And the answer is, I don't know…but I think that within me, within every human being, there is a certain weakness. It is a weakness that exposes itself more when you're alone. And I have figured out that part of the reason I do the things I do, and cannot seem to conquer that one word–myself–is because… is because…I am a coward."

Amazing for a writer to get a 29-year-old world-famous and successful athlete to say things like this. Amazing that the young man could acknowledge that weakness within his heart — and then work his way back for three more legitimate shots at the top in the next seven years.

(Sports Illustrated recently interviewed Talese about the Patterson story and his other writings on sports. It's here.)

Lonely At The Top

You've seen all those Apple TV ads where the poor, hapless, Bill Gates'-tubby-nephew PC gets ragged on by a cool, Jimmy-Fallonesque Mac. All the cliche problems about PCs form the basis of these ads — the need for frequent reboots, the viruses, the poor interconnectivity. Very cute. You'd never know that PCs outsell Macs by something like 10-to-1. Apple's got the rep.

But Apple better wipe that smug smile off its face. In the market where they dominate, portable MP3 players, the company's getting quite a PC-like reputation. From a consumer column in the Guardian:

Apple iPod owners love their sleek machines. That's when they work. When they don't, they enter a twilight world where they discover their prized music player is considered by its manufacturer as nothing more than a throwaway item.

It doesn't matter that iPod lovers can spend up to £300 on their gizmo. Apple operates on the basis that the iPod life expectancy is a year, and that's it.

Complain that your £200 or £300 could have bought a fridge or TV that would be expected to last five years or more, and a customer services assistant will explain that a one-year warranty is just that, and no more.

Last month Guardian Money explained how the Sale of Goods Act sets out a series of basic customer rights. These are fleshed out by guidelines from the Department of Trade & Industry. The key in all discussions with retailers, which are the first port of call, is that goods should last up to six years, depending on their cost and expected durability.

In the article we told how a reader took a broken ClickwheeI 40Gb iPod back to the Birmingham Apple Centre. Staff said the cost of repair would exceed the value of the £300 model and refused a free replacement. Arguments that iPods are designed to be portable and take a reasonable amount of wear and tear fell on deaf ears.

Which? – formerly the Consumers Association – says consumers should argue strongly with retailers. While the DTI guidelines do not define how long specific products should last, a survey by Which? of manufacturers into how long they believe electrical appliances should last (not including Apple) found that all reckoned five years or more.

Apple has sold more than 2m iPods in the UK and it would be unfair to expect all of them to work without any problems. But judging from the postbag at Guardian Money, while it's easy to fall in love with the design and ease of use of iPods, they can at times be highly temperamental.

The 40Gb Clickwheel, now discontinued, appears to have suffered more than its fair share of problems. Apple says not. Its response, however, captures the dilemma faced by customers offered an extended warranty. Either the product is robust and the rare failure can be absorbed by the seller, or there is a widespread reliability problem which the manufacturer should deal with.

Apple, like most other manufacturers, refuses to accept responsibility for repairs even when machines break down within weeks of expiry of the one-year warranty.

You get the worst of both worlds: A balky product, and an arrogant attitude toward customers.

For all I know, the iPod's many competitors have the same problems. But I never read about them.

The Canadian Media-Disrespect Laboratory

Stephen Harper, the prime minister of Canada, now wants the Parliamentary Press Gallery to put their names on a list if they wanted to ask him questions. In protest against this effort at news management, the gallery reporters all declined to sign up and walked out of a press conference when Harper refused to answer questions put to him by anyone not on the list.

Harper essentially has fired the national media. From the LA Times:

"Unfortunately, the press gallery has taken the view they are going to be the opposition to the government," the recently elected Conservative leader told a Canadian television network Wednesday.

"We'll just take the message out on the road. There's lots of media who do want to ask questions and hear what the government is doing for Canadians, or to Canadians. So we'll get our message out however we can," Harper said.

This reminds me of Vice President Cheney's controversial decision to ignore the U.S. national media when he shot his friend's face, instead allowing the hunting party hosts to disclose the information to a small Texas newspaper. Cheney then agreed to be interviewed by the friendliest possible national reporter, Fox's Brit Hume. As far as Cheney was concerned, the rest of the national press corps that covers the Bush/Cheney Administration could pound sand.

I wrote about this incident a couple of months ago, citing Jay Rosen's suspicion that Cheney's perceived "bungling" of the shooting story was, perhaps, a deliberate test-run of a new political tactic for dealing with the national media — to treat them as worthy of no greater respect or deference than any other working reporters, anywhere in the country.

The president and other administration leaders owe it to the country to explain themselves through the press. But which press? Are only White House press corps reporters experts on the matters pertaining to the presidency? That's a hard case to make. Are those reporters the creme de la creme, so much better than any other reporters that the nation is ill-served by shutting them out? Even harder case to make. In essence, the only thing that makes them special is that the White House credentials them to work in the White House, based on requests for access issued by leading news organizations. It's a courtesy, given out arbitrarily, based on nebulous factors like the size and influence of the news organization requesting the assignment.

So now, Bush/Cheney's conservative neighbor to the north has taken it one step further and said he won't talk to "the gaggle" at all.

Here's how the Globe and Mail covered the story today:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper thinks you won't be interested in reading this article because it's just "inside Ottawa stuff."

Despite this, Mr. Harper, who claimed Wednesday the Ottawa press corps is biased against him, was forced to talk again yesterday about his continuing dispute with the Parliamentary Press Gallery and about how to decide who gets to ask questions at his news conferences.

He was asked by a reporter in Vancouver whether the Ottawa-based press corps has become "elitist" and out of touch with the interests of most Canadians.

Mr. Harper said: "I don't think this story is really of much interest to ordinary people. I think what they are interested in is what is the government doing, and do they agree with it or do not agree with it."

The news media, he continued, "will always have their opinions about government policy," but the public will ultimately make up its own mind.

While cooperating with the PM's request to join a list, the provincial reporters sounded like they were standing in solidarity with their colleagues in Ottawa. But that's just this week. How long can the media keep writing the story of Harper's "feud?"

A lot of politicians and PR people south of the Canadian border will be watching with great interest.

100 degrees, a Balky Modem and a Meditation Agenda

I'm out here in the desert, where it's 100 degrees before lunchtime. Perhaps there's a connection, perhaps not, but the cable modem here frequently expires of exhaustion long before you'd think it should and demands a nap. And, yet, he still demands to be paid! I guess the work ethic is different out here than back in busy Los Angeles.

So, for the next few days, posting might or might not be on the light side. (And, reader comments might remain in limbo for longer than usual. Don't blame me, blame Cable USA!)

Just as well… since I have a lot to think about… some quiet meditation seems called for… so, unless the modem and I get an unexpected burst of energy…talk to you this weekend sometime.

P.S. Some characteristically ambiguous news on the Net Neutrality front.

A bill that seeks to prevent broadband providers from offering an exclusive high-speed lane for video and other services has taken a step closer to becoming law.

By a 20-13 vote Thursday that partially followed party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would require broadband providers to abide by strict Net neutrality principles, meaning that their networks must be operated in a "nondiscriminatory" manner.

All 14 Democrats on the committee (joined by 6 Republicans) supported the measure, while 13 Republicans opposed it.

That vote is a surprise victory for Internet companies such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that had lobbied fiercely in the last few months for stricter laws to ensure that Verizon, AT&T and other broadband providers could not create a "fast lane" reserved for video or other high-priority content of their choice.

"The lack of competition in the broadband marketplace presents a clear incentive for providers to leverage dominant market power over the broadband bottleneck, to preselect, favor or prioritize Internet content," said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican who heads the committee.

In an unusual twist, many members of the committee said they were voting for the legislation not because of strong concerns over Net neutrality–but instead because of a turf battle. They said they were worried that a competing proposal already approved by a different committee last month would diminish their own influence in the future.

That other bill, called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement, or COPE, Act, says the Federal Communications Commission "shall have exclusive authority" to investigate violations of Net neutrality principles. It's backed by Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and does not include strict Net neutrality mandates.

Because the FCC is overseen by Barton's committee, that proposal would effectively cut off Judiciary Committee members from being able to hold hearings on Net neutrality antitrust violations, give speeches about corporate malfeasance and solicit campaign cash from affected companies–the lifeblood of modern Washington politics.

That resulted in an unusual situation in which politicians who weren't enthusiastic about the Judiciary bill nevertheless voted for it on Wednesday. "I think the bill is a blunt instrument, and yet I think it does send a message that it's important to attain jurisdiction for the Justice Department and for antitrust issues," said Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.

Good news for neutrality advocates, or just an arcane, boodling procedural pas de deux in dark labyrinth? Who knows? My desert rat modem voted with his feet. Must be time to go swimming.

Blogging as Lobbying*

Remember how you'd cringe when Greg on The Brady Bunch would talk about a "groovy chick?" I have a feeling a lot of people will have flashbacks like that if they delve into the "Net Neutrality" debate. Because both sides are supplementing the usual battery of PR and lobbying tactics with blogging! Cool, daddio!

First, and most painfully, we get this soporific blog entry attributed to former Clinton spokesman and now Washington communications consultant Mike McCurry and attorney Chris Wolf, who run the telecommunication industry-backed "Hands off the Internet":

We need the freedom to figure out the answers to numerous questions: Who will pay for the pipes that will deliver the next generation Internet? What is the best way to ensure packets of information get across the Internet in the most efficient manner possible? How will traffic be managed when 100 million movies are being downloaded at any given moment?

These are complex questions, and over the coming months, we will do our level best to explain not just why the Save The Internet crowd is wrong, but where their online supporters have their wires (or these days, their wireless) crossed. And that’s why we’ve set up shop here in the blogosphere.

We’ll drop in from time to time, but for now we’ll turn this over to the Hands Off the Internet team, who will keep this blog updated and alive, hopefully even lively.

I'm not holding my breath. In "About Us," they describe those krazy "Hands off the Internet" kids as "a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation."

In other words, this is a coalition of executives at ISPs who need to maintain high shareholder value, and are bored with the money they're already making from all of us who pay them for high-speed access.

Corporations are about growth. Shareholders don't want to be told, "The cable modem/DSL market is nearly saturated and we're going to be fighting an expensive fight simply to retain the customers we've got." For the stock price to rise, the ISPs need to charge more, and apparently figure they should have the unfettered ability to offer new services to justify premium prices. Content providers are free to create content that opens up new streams of advertiser or subscriber revenue — why not the ISPs?

This ISP hunger makes the content providers — big players like Google and Microsoft, but also entrepreneurial netizens who have faith that the next killer app is a gleam in their eye — nervous.

The ISPs control the pipes. What if they decide they want to make money off of searches, or user-generated wacky videos? Couldn't an ISP somehow disfavor Google or YouTube in favor of similar providers they control? What if you had a great new idea? Doesn't this give ISPs leverage to extract payment or even co-ownership in return for access to their customers?

Hence, "Save the Internet." Actually the net neutrality advocates are somewhat less centrally-directed, I think because a constituency exists that is motivated by actual beliefs, not just corporate prompting. Some have started their own activist sites, but "Save the Internet" seems to be where the big money is being directed. But, unlike "Hands…", "Save the Internet's" blogroll includes lots and lots of real bloggers, from bigfeet like Instapundit and Atrios, to dozens of obscure local bloggers, to "Charmed" star Alyssa Milano.

Of course, they've got a blog, too — one that basically repurposes the press releases posted in the press section. Blog entries announce Moby's support, the Christian Coalition's support, an endorsement from the San Jose Mercury News, and lots of long statements by someone called "tkarr" who does not otherwise identify himself. (Presumably, it's Timothy Karr, a Net activist who runs Free Press, but his name never appears anywhere on the "Save…" site.)

Here's how a recent "tkarr" post begins:

The telco cartel wants to gut the Internet and portion it off to the companies that pay their broadband tolls. Companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth seek to get rid of Net Neutrality so they can muscle aside the real online revolutionaries — the small-guy innovators who historically have made the Internet a beacon for democracy, economic growth and new ideas.

In the words of Internet architect Vint Cerf, the Internet is “innovation without permission.” That is the genius of the network that has proven to be a wonderland for new entrepreneurs and ideas, with all the intelligence residing with the end users and not those who control the pipes.

Now, large phone companies like AT&T have unleashed a million-dollar-a-week spending spree to influence Washington decision-makers, pass telco-friendly regulations and change the Internet forever. They want to control online content by placing gateways on the on-ramps and exits to the information superhighway. This is why people on the right and left have joined with every major consumer group, Internet rights advocacy and public interest organization to fight AT&T and their lobbyists.

I mean…it's mostly not a blog. A good blog for "Save the Internet" might be something actually written by a lobbyist. A diary that documents the political warfare as it happens, rather than a compendium of talking points and press releases. Their frontline PR person could contribute to it, too, with accounts (even transcripts) of their discussions with the press.

Don't just lecture us, engage us. The net community is more than just a constituency that will write e-mails and sign petitions. They want a conversation.

I'd give the same advice to the "Hands off the Internet" folks. Right now, they look like a classic AstroTurf campaign, dressed in netizen drag. They are campaigning in exactly the manner you'd expect from a "telco cartel." But lots of people would enjoy reading a blog written by a personable guy like Mike McCurry. He shouldn't hand it off to the "team" (i.e. the underpaid, anonymous flacks responsible for regurgitating the talking points). Write the darn thing yourself!

For a reasonably balanced and comprehensive summary of this issue, I can recommend this piece on Wikipedia. I'm pondering where I stand. I know which side I'm leaning toward, but I want to read more.

My one request to both sides: No blogs from Harry and Louise. Please?

*(Post edited and expanded 5/24, 8 a.m.)

(UPDATE:  The Wall Street Journal posts a debate between McCurry and Craig Newmark that is well worth reading.  What's interesting is both sides claim they are only working to preserve the status quo.  They can't both be right.)    

Googling the Hill

Older readers who grew up like me on the east coast might remember a New York sports columnist named Jimmy Cannon. Before offering pithy opinions about boxers and ballplayers, he'd warn you he was about to say something out of turn. He'd write, "Nobody asked me, but…"

Well, nobody asked me, and nobody will ask me, but… hasn't this story been written before?

Of the billions of searches conducted by Google Inc., potentially its most important is playing out in offices above an Asian fusion restaurant here: the quest for influence in the nation's capital.

The Silicon Valley company's dominance of Internet search is built on its mastery of advanced mathematical algorithms. But like other fast-growing tech titans before it, Google is finding Washington's political calculus harder to solve.

Since opening its Washington office last summer, Google's attempts to establish its presence has moved at dial-up speed — resulting in a slow and sometimes balky connection with lawmakers that has irritated both Democrats and Republicans.

"I think they've been a little bit too innocent in how the game is played," said Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a tech-focused Washington think tank.

Google's efforts to rally support for rules guaranteeing open Internet access — an abstract issue known as Net neutrality — has been called largely ineffective by key Democratic supporters. Heavily lopsided political contributions to Democrats from Google employees have annoyed the GOP majority. And in what veteran lobbyists called a high-profile tactical mistake, a Google executive called before a House panel this year tried to engage subcommittee members critical of the firm in a debate.

I remember stories just like it about Microsoft, Intel, America Online, and every other high-tech supernova — admonitions to start spending more on high-powered lobbyists. It's the only time the press portrays lobbyists as anything but enemies of the people, and campaign contributions as anything but barely-legal bribery.

And what's this? "(K)ey Democratic supporters" objecting to "heavily lopside political contributions to Democrats?"

Two possible explanations.

1. The news media, or at least this reporter (Jim Puzzanghera of the LA Times), wants Google's position on "net neutrality" to prevail, and worries that Google is about to lose the arms race. The net neutrality campaign is all about making sure content providers like Google and Yahoo! don't have to pay a toll to the high-speed carriers like AT&T or Comcast to reach customers.
2. Like a good boxing reporter who wants a story he can hype, this reporter wants to build Google up so he can knock them down later.

I don't pretend to have any pertinent advice for Google, except for this: Don't expect praise if you follow the Times' advice. Expect the opposite. Lobbyists and reporters are natural enemies, because they compete to be the gatekeepers of public policy. 

Hey, Google: Maybe, in the long run, the times are right for a quirky, not-business-as-usual approach to our esteemed representatives. It seems oddly off-key at this moment when outrage at K Street has reached a climax that a major company would be criticized for not buying into the lobbying game.

Just guessing here: When a high-tech winner starts hiring packs of DC lobbyists, the rise in their stock price begins to level off, or go down. If that's true, of course, I can't prove cause-and-effect. These might be two distinct symptoms of a company like Google reaching a sadder but wiser stage of maturity.

Another Exit

Call it symmetry, or call it a good news angle for the PR trades, but the same week my PR career hits an iceberg, another PR guy calls it quits — for the best reasons.

San Francisco's Blake Barbera started his blog, wet feet pr, in March 2005 to document the start of what seemed likely to become a highly successful PR career. In his first post, Barbera said this:

…I recognize that a majority of the PR blogs are written by PR professionals. I also recognize that there are a lot of blog readers that are at the entry level stages of their PR career. I am one of them. I am the guy on the team who scans blogs for trends, company coverage, or just basic insights. I put two and two together and created a blog that is written by the entry level PR guy for the entry level PR guy/girl (got to be politically correct).

(snip)

So, are you ready to get your feet wet? Ready to climb up the PR ladder? I am, so I hope you are too. Just remember, you can't get your feet wet unless you stick your toes in. Lets go!

In the intervening 14 months, Barbera documented personal milestones like his first press hit, his first news release, and various lessons learned along the way. To pick one of many examples, last December he described an in-house exercise called "Media Blitz Day" in which points were awarded to players for getting a reporter on the phone (1 point), for getting some kind of "next steps" indication from that reporter (2 points), and for getting the reporter to agree to a date and time for a briefing (3 points).

(T)he game gets you out of the routine of email contact only, allows you to update your target list as necessary, and gives you some insider information that may be of use to you when approaching that specific reporter in the future. While it is always good to know what your reporters are writing, practicing this exercise is one way to help you keep tabs on them. In addition, it's nice to approach your target list once in a while when you don't have something to pitch them on, but rather just to say hello.

But then, somewhat unexpectedly, this week Barbera announced: "Wet Feet PR retires."

After nearly two years of working in PR and another year spent writing this blog, I have decided to move on from it all. I’m not sure how else to put it, but I’m following what my gut feeling is telling me and it’s leading me in a completely different direction that the one PR has been taking me down. This decision I have made involved many nights of deep thinking and was not easy, especially after investing so much time and energy into this profession. I had every intention of staying in PR for the long haul and I gave it everything I could, but somewhere in-between it all I became more aware of what I wanted out of my life and what I wanted to achieve. With that said, I’m taking a risk – starting from scratch – and pursuing an entirely different career path. To be honest, I don’t think that there is a better time in life for me to make a move like this than now.

So what’s next? Well, I’m off to pursue work with at-risk youth. From there I plan to continue to play a role in the field of Corrections, either as a Probation Officer or as a Psychologist. The decision to pursue a career in this field came from personal experiences that I went through in my younger years – in which I have now come to realize that working with people in the same situation I was once in, and helping them see that they can lead a better life, would be a profession I know I would enjoy. This is a very exciting step for me and I hope to have your support.

And:

My words for the next generation of young PR professionals are this: PR is a very fun and rewarding career and there couldn’t be a better time to be in this profession than now. As Eric Eggerston noted to me a while back – you (younger PR people) should be aware of the huge bubble of managers who are nearing retirement age. Within the next 10 years a bunch of management positions that have been hoarded by aging baby boomers are going to come open. While picking a middle-aged person with lots of experience is the obvious choice to fill these positions, other companies are going to be looking through their ranks of up and comers. You can either think of yourselves as a rank amateur, with very little to offer the company, or you can think of yourself as a future leader who just needs to get a nice wide range of experience and accomplishments under their belt over the next 5-8 years in order to be ready to grab a senior position.

If I had to pick only two things I liked about working in PR, mentoring younger, entry-level professionals would be one of them. Since I didn't start out in PR, I was always fascinated by the kids who did so, and tried to do whatever I could to keep them inspired while introducing them to the realities of the business and helping them sharpen their skills. A guy like Blake would be just the kind of guy I'd have felt privileged to manage. And I'm sure he would have made me look good — another thing managers look for in younger staff!

From listening the recent trial, you'd think PR was all about billing. The fact is, most PR people are like I was: Completely focused on clients, issues, strategies, expanding your contacts and knowledge base. Upper management was where the focus shifted to profits, projections and what Wall Street needed to know about your business. My story is a cautionary tale, to be sure, that at every level, you need to pay more attention to the billing process, no matter how confusing your particular company's system might be. But absorbing the excitement of the young man or woman for whom everything is new — and channeling that excitement into results for clients — was what made me want to come to work each morning.

I'm sure Blake's colleagues and clients will miss him, but I have no doubt he will bring his thoroughly professional attitude into the field he's now chosen. In the meantime, his blog is still up, and I recommend that everyone in PR, young or, uh, "aging baby boomers" should read it.

The Heroes of Palomar

At the end of the special showing of "The Journey to Palomar" at Cal-Tech Friday, the applause was long and loud. The auditorium was mostly comprised of men and women who looked to be in their 60s, 70s and 80s. My family was there because the documentary film was the labor of love of two of my best friends, Todd and Robin Mason.

It was the first public showing of a completed version of the film — a film whose progress my wife and I have tracked for about five years. The subject is George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer who was also an impresario of astronomical science, the man without whom the giant telescopes at Mt. Wilson and Palomar would never have been built.

As told by the Masons, Hale's story has elements of P.T. Barnum, Albert Einstein and "A Beautiful Mind." Hale was the son of a Chicago industrialist, and he brought to his scientific endeavors an entrepreneurial zeal one generally does not associate with astrophysicists.

Among Hale's patrons were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, President Woodrow Wilson. Hale was not afraid to shake down these powerhouses of politics and captains of industry for the money needed for his projects — for the development of Cal Tech itself, and for the telescopes that would eventually validate the idea of an expanding universe, measure the immensity of the universe and the distance between galaxies, and discover such faraway phenomena as quasars, the unimaginably bright objects hundreds of millions of light years away that devour suns by the thousands.

The centerpiece of the story is the Palomar Observatory, for decades the largest telescope on earth with its legendary 200-inch diameter mirror. The final decades of Hale's life were dedicated to the creation of this great tool of discovery, beginning with his success in persuading an offshoot of the Rockefeller foundation to fund a telescope of this size in 1928.

The observatory was not completed until 1948, ten years after Hale's death.

Particularly fascinating is the story of its enormous mirror, which was made from Pyrex by Corning Glass Works in a process that gives a whole new definition to the word "arduous." There's a little PR story in all this. The nation got very excited about this mirror, and followed its saga from the New York-based factory's giant ladles full of superheated molten glass, to its cross-country trainride to Pasadena for polishing, to its climb up Mt. Palomar to be placed in the telescope structure where it is still used today.

Imagine it: People lined up alongside the train tracks to watch this huge mirror packaged for travel go rolling by. Platforms were built at Corning to allow VIPs to see the glass being poured. It was a publicity bonanza for Corning, although, as the film shows, they finally had to remove the audience to allow the workmen to concentrate on the mirror.

Hale put everything on the line to make the Palomar Observatory a reality — including his sanity. To use terminology of the times, Hale suffered from neurasthenia, which probably referred to a combination of extreme stress and chronic fatigue syndrome. Hale is presented in the documentary as a man of great charm, energy and persuasive power, but the effort to maintain that luminous personality caused several nervous breakdowns, frightening hallucinations, and periods during which Hale retreated from the whirlwind of activity he himself had created.

I knew the film was going to be great, having had pieces of it screened in my living room or on my computer over the past few years. But seeing it whole, with a gray-haired audience at Cal Tech, was unexpectedly moving. To most Americans, Hale is a forgotten man — hence the need for "Journey to Palomar." To the 300 500 people in the audience Friday, I imagine Hale is a kind of saint, an icon of the religion of science.

Hale is one of that small group of men — along with Einstein, Lemaitre, Hubble, Gamow, Friedemann, to drop a few names — who gave us our understanding of the universe and, in doing so, answered (for some of us) the fundamental questions that religion tries to address: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

Some of these great scientists answered these questions theoretically, using mathematical equations. Others found answers through observations of the sky that penetrated the veils of time — all the time that has ever existed. For many years, Hale's telescope at Palomar was the essential tool for making those observations, and discovering the answers to those ancient questions. It was a great scientific achievement, but also a colossal, exhausting feat of schmoozing and cajoling to make it happen.

Hence, the long, loud applause by the Cal Tech alums. In their youth, I imagine some of them spent cold nights at Palomar, a mountain in San Diego County just a little west of the Anza-Borrego desert. Or they helped with research, performed critical calculations, or analyzed spectroscopic data for red-shift.

Today's astrophysicists stand on the shoulders of giants, but the ladies and gentlemen at I met Friday at Cal-Tech stood by their sides, and lifted these giants skyward. I felt very grateful that Todd and Robin had done so much to honor what they had accomplished in their paean to George E. Hale.

P.S.: The story of 20th Century astronomy is very much a California story, in particular a Pasadena story. California ought to have a holiday to honor our state's proud heritage as a center of scientific understanding. I don't mean another day off for ski weekends — I mean a day when everyone, especially students, would be encouraged to learn about California's legacy of scientific achievement, and pay homage to the men and women who worked, mostly in obscurity, to bring them about. It would be great if each year's celebration included a showing of "Journey to Palomar" on public television.

Political Consultants in a Gilded Cage

I've already written about political writer Joe Klein's plea to rid politics of consultants who, he claims, have hijacked the quadrennial national dialogue that our presidential campaigns are supposed to be, and made them into bland, pointless and unspontaneous exercises that fail to engage voters.

Reviews of his book, Politics Lost, have been mixed. Some reviewers have said Klein is merely stating what everyone already knows, while others say he's wrong to blame the consultants and should instead blame the weak-willed candidates who listen to them. In his Washington Post review, Peter Beinart (a next-generation Joe Klein type who edits The New Republic) suggests that the consultant problem is just a mask for the Democratic Party's larger confusion:

Klein rightly flays Gore and Kerry for not being true to themselves. But he is also harshly critical of the old liberal orthodoxies that Democratic political consultants devote so much time to camouflaging. All of which raises a large and difficult question that he never quite answers: How can contemporary Democratic candidates be personally secure in their beliefs when their party is not? Even if Democrats could liberate themselves from the intellectually and morally stifling grip of consultants like Shrum, would they have any coherent ideology to espouse?

Beinart and Klein both point out that the successful Republican candidates of the past 30 years have not been so in thrall to their consultants. The GOP treats consultants like hired hands — professionals who produce and place the ads, write the press releases, put message points in the hands of surrogates and organize get-out-the-vote campaigns, but who wouldn't dare tell the candidates to say things they don't believe in. So, it would appear, the consultant affliction is something Democrats will have to address. If they do, Klein suggests, they might find their lost souls.

However: Left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas (Daily KOS) has been writing in Slate this week about Klein's book in a epistolary debate with Republican media guru Stuart Stevens. In yesterday's entry, Moulitsas suggests Democratic candidates are helpless against the power of party-approved consultants:

(C)onsultants run the Democratic Party bureaucracy. Party officials dole out contracts to well-connected consultants, knowing full well that the happy beneficiaries will be running the show themselves in the next cycle, similarly handing out contracts to those who took care of them during the previous election. So, when Democratic candidates go to the party looking for financial help, that party money comes with a very big string attached: They can get the millions they need, but only if they hire the party's chosen consultants as well.

We can kvetch about the politicians and their penchant for hiring these consultants all we want, but for the average candidate, there isn't much of a choice. Our party establishment foists these losers on their campaigns. And this dynamic is just as true in 2006 as it was in 2004 and earlier. This system isn't going to change anytime soon, unfortunately.

So, according to Moulitsas, John Kerry was given no choice but to listen to Robert Shrum's ill-conceived advice. It was part of the deal that got him the nomination. Kerry rival Howard Dean was done in by the same consultant mob, not because he was a bad candidate, but because he threatened their stranglehold on the party.

Klein wants the next Democratic candidate to be someone who ignores focus groups and polls, takes at least one unpopular position and is willing to be himself. Moulitsas suggests that such a candidate has no hope of prevailing "anytime soon" — due to the greed of consultants who both control the inflow of campaign funds, and insist on their cut of the money raised. Hmm, what to do, what to do?

I know: The next Democratic candidate who will really earn not just the nomination but the White House will be the one who agrees to hire all the consultants — and then ignores them! If all Shrum and co. really want is their payday, let them have it. To a consultant, the commission on an advertising message heavily tenderized by focus-group is the same as the commission on an ad that the candidate him-or-herself writes. It's a perfect solution: Hire the consultants, then trap them in a gilded cage!

Wouldn't they grumble to the press? Don't these consultants have friends at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times that they could whisper to? Sure. In fact, my dream candidate would encourage them to leak like this. Get a story placed on how the candidate is ignoring his consultants, and the whining consultant gets another million dollars in media-buy money to play with. The public would be thrilled, the press would be amazed, when the next Democratic candidate tells the conventioneers, "I spent $25 million on the top-priced political consultants our party has to offer–and I didn't listen to a word they said!"

After the Verdict

I can't write anything specific about the jury's verdict yesterday. The process is not really over. So there's not a lot I can say right now, other than to echo my attorney's disappointment and disagreement with this result.

I'm grateful to everyone who stood by me, and continues to stand by me, during this mess.

There are many silver linings to this episode — nothing is all bad. At least three come immediately to mind:

Silver lining #1 is the discovery of the quality and depth of my relationships and the character of the people who matter the most to me — my wife, my son, my parents, my brothers and their families, my friends, so many of my former co-workers, people with whom I'd lost touch but who found me to express support, and to my total surprise, readers of this blog. I cannot thank all of you nearly enough.

Silver lining #2 is getting to know the brilliant and devoted people at Howrey Simon who represented me in this case, Jan Handzlik and his magnificent team.

Silver lining #3 is the opportunity this period of my life has given me to write this blog, to write a screenplay, and to delve into the seismic changes underway in the industries where I worked for the past 25 years. I will find outlets for the things I've learned so that I can share them with other interested people in the media and PR industries, with readers, and with future clients.

Samuel Beckett ended one of his novels with this famous, haunting phrase: "…you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." Life deals out hard knocks to everybody. They can be painful. But you absorb them, catch your breath, and continue along your merry way.

And as I continue, so will the parade of topics on this blog. So if you liked it before, please keep reading, okay?

Verify, Then Trust

Sounds like Elizabeth Albrycht gave an good talk about Web 2.0/social media at the Demos conference in London. She puts her speakers' notes on her blog today. Albrycht is a specialist in corporate PR, and her talk is focused on the ever-higher bar of transparency that corporate communications of any kind — advertising as well as communications about corporate decisions — must meet.

Albrycht's metaphor for transparency is scientific inquiry and the way scientific facts are validated:

In order to test the potential fact constructed by the original researcher, other scientists perform the same experiments in an attempt to duplicate results, confirming the fact, indeed, exists. In order to to that, they must follow the same paths as the original researchers, provided by the latter through references, data translations, and so on.

I don't want to get into all the gory details here, but the basic idea is that the reason facts are credible is that they can be traced backwards to their origin, and re-constructed.

In order for our messages to be received with some degree of credibility and trust, in today's questioning, distrustful atmosphere, we need to move away from the message delivered as a fait accompli, but embrace communications as something to be tested, then provide the instructions and/or information needed to make those tests. You could even call this process a conversation.

So, what would transparent corporate communications look like? The questions we as professional communicators have to ask ourselves is what information do we need to provide so that others can reconstruct our decisions. Everything from minutes to meetings to interviews with the participants could be made available. They might not agree with the decision we took, but they will at least understand the reasoning, which might buy some goodwill, for one.

We also need to decide when to provide it and how to provide it. Is it only made available when a problem arises? Is it easily searchable on the website and available via a link? Or does the person inquiring have to jump through a variety of hoops?

It's all far more compelling than any comment I could add to it. PR people, especially, should take a look.

Can PR “Manufacture” Tom Cruise’s Religion?

I've always liked PR Week, and just started subscribing to it. It doesn't really take a position in the newly urgent debate over what kind of effective PR can be done in this period of ferment in the communications world, but it interviews interesting people in and around the industry who do have strong views, so it's worthwhile.

That said, PR Week's editorial (link for subscribers only) on Tom Cruise made my jaw drop. The editorial notes that Paul Bloch, co-chairman of Rogers & Cowan, has taken over as Cruise's publicist; and that the deployment of this respected PR veteran might have come too late to save Mission: Impossible III's box office from "the vitriol, the 'you're glib, Matt' bit on Today, the Oprah couch affair, and the Scientology tents." Probably so. But then:

The calculus of celebrity is a wildly unpredictable formula, such that the greater the depths of self-immolation, the greater the potential for a cathartic return to the fold. Americans have this seemingly endless capacity to forgive the celebrities they love, or hate. They also tend to have a relatively short memory and love nothing more than the drama, the pathos of the prodigal star. Martha Stewart's stock is up again. So is Kobe Bryant's. Who knows, but even Mike Tyson may return, a lesser George Foreman, perhaps born again and pitching lean cuisine and mufflers.

The key to resuscitating Cruise will be putting him in a metaphorical closet: fewer appearances, less talking, more smiling. Bloch should take a page from the studio system, circa 1940, when studios had stables of stars who were tightly controlled, whose public "personalities" – including details of their private lives – were as manufactured as possible.

These are some odd comments. Cruise hasn't "self-immolated." He's not on drugs, or accused of a crime. No, he's a faithful adherent to a religion that many people find bizarre and cult-like, and his association with the religion shines a weird light on what would otherwise be perfectly normal life events like falling in love and becoming a father.

Is PR Week suggesting Cruise separate himself from Scientology? Or, more disturbingly, are they suggesting he should pretend to separate himself from Scientology? How would he do that? To use PR Week's word, should Rogers & Cowan "manufacture" another religion for him? Will they start sending him to a Presbyterian church or a Buddhist temple? Or will they stage a Cruise defrocking? Religion is pretty personal. Cruise has a First Amendment right to worship however he chooses, and Americans' respect for that right has benefited Cruise. I don't think the movie-going public would believe it for one second if Cruise suddenly renounced Scientology.

Certainly, Bloch can tell Cruise, "quit talking about Scientology, quit talking about psychiatrists, quit talking about depression medication. You're not the expert on those things. You're an expert on acting and your movies — focus on that." Classic PR advice. But "manufacturing" a personality and a private life for Cruise? It's absurd to think that would work.

Worse, PR Week giving that advice plays right into the public's worst impressions of the PR industry — that we "manufacture" a false reality. Sure, some PR campaigns undoubtedly are built around false information, but that's a bad and dangerous practice that most PR folks I know don't follow. Especially nowadays when (to flip Mark Twain on his head) a lie can get around the world 15 times, but the truth will catch up in the 10th lap.

This is ‘New Media’ Advice? It’s SO Last Century

Hugh Hewitt, the articulate Republican cheerleader, syndicated radio host and blogger, portrays himself as consultant to all "center-right conservatives" in their battles against enemies in the media, politics and academia. He writes at least one book a year, in which he provides unsolicited advice to Republican candidates, conservative activists, high-school students and born-again Christians. He's been on the radio somewhere or another for at least 15 years, and spent time as co-host of KCET's "Life and Times." He flogs his books so mercilessly on the air, it's apparent that he believes his book sales figures are an indicator of the nation's well-being.

In addition to being a committed activist, churchman and attorney, Hewitt claims to know something about communications — trumpeting himself as an avatar of the new media as it triumphs over the liberal-biased "old" media. One of his most popular books is "Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World."

So I was struck by this post of a few days ago, "Secretary Rumsfeld and the New Media." In it, Hewitt discusses an interview with Rumsfeld, focusing on the advice he gave the secretary about communications in the new media era:

The SecDef has staked everything on transforming the way the American military fights wars. I worry that all those efforts will be at least compromised unless the Pentagon gets its best minds thinking about how to explain the conflict and its many dimensions to the American public.

(snip)

The information war –fought not just by the Pentagon, but also by the White House the Department of Justice, the intelligence community–has become, like logistics, the realm of professionals*. Let's hope the U.S. gets as serious about it as it is about logistics.

Some suggestions:

The Secretary of Defense and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs are the two most important voices in the military. They need to engage media in lengthy, one-on-one question-and-answer sessions at which other journalists are allowed to attend but not participate.

Volume is not a substitute for quality. The DoD does in fact put out an avalanche of information every single day –too much, in fact. The Pentagon all too often steps on its lead story, and all too often does not respond to breaking information that the terrorists lob on to the battlefields of the information war. The rapid response of the military to such disinformation has to improve.

Finally, the particulars of any day's battles does not matter nearly as much as the strategic overview of the course of the war. Repetition is hated by the Beltway press corps, always eager to get a scoop or at least a new lede.

But repetition is the core of information war.

Finally, new media is far more powerful in its reach than the credibility-challenged and ideologically-compromised old media. The old press rules from the days when the New York Times or the Washington Post made the weather are still in place. They can be upended.

How is this advice — basically PR advice — any different from what Edward Bernays might have suggested to Rumsfeld 80 or 90 years ago at the dawn of the public relations industry? How is it any different from how politics was conducted under under Reagan or Clinton, the two most successful practitioners of the Pat Caddell/Mike Deaver/James Carville "permanent campaign" model that was engineered based on the PR-advertising principles formed when TV networks and a handful of newspapers dominated the news ecosystem?

Isn't this approach precisely what new media acolytes rebel against? That whole "message of the day," "don't step on your own story," "rapid response," top-down media management? What I thought new media is about is transparency, providing more not less, and showing faith in the ability of news consumers–"prosumers" in Alvin Toffler's lexicon–to do their own filtering and editing.

A "new media" approach would have Rumsfeld communicating constantly and candidly, the good news with the bad. Don't have a message of the day, don't shade anything to gain a specific headline. Most Americans have stopped reading newspapers anyway. Instead, use the media tools now available to transmit a body of knowledge about the war to engaged members of the public, who will then be motivated to educate their peers. Rumsfeld or a trusted, high-level spokesperson could do this actively, identifying bloggers with a sympathetic viewpoint and beginning an on-the-record conversation with them. They could be bolder still, and carry on conversations with unsympathetic bloggers, too.

Like most PR problems, Rumsfeld's is not really a PR problem, it's a fact problem. In the initial weeks of the Iraq war, the news was good, thus the PR was fabulous. Now, three years on, the war is a bloody grind, the news is mixed and the significance of each development murky. You can't change that reality with a new policy on granting interviews!

But Hewitt is worried about the enemy's propaganda, and so is Rumsfeld. In the SecDef's words (from his interview transcript):

This is the first war that's ever been conducted, in the 21st Century, in an era of these new media realities, where you have the internet and 24 hour talk radio and news and bloggers and video cameras and digital cameras and instant communications worldwide. And the enemy understands that they can't win a battle out on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. The only place they can win a battle is in Washington, D.C. So they have media committees, and they get up in the morning and figure out how they're going to manipulate the American media, and they do a very skillful job.

This is a misdiagnosis. It might be the first war in a time of blogging, but it's certainly not the first war in which an enemy deployed propaganda through whatever media channels were available at the time to frighten, demoralize or mislead.

The Nazi takeover of Europe derived from a series of expert bluffs, until finally the bluff became reality. But it goes back much farther than WWII, to past millenia when the media of choice were memorized lines of poetry and the misinformation spread, virally you might say, by clever spies. Sun Tzu, writing in the 6th century B.C.: "Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." And, his Strategy 7: "Create something from nothing." Propaganda is not new, and it would surprise me to find out that our nation's war planners were unprepared for it.

Will a "message of the day" media strategy stop the Iraqi insurgents from using the media to broadcast terror and convey a sense of futility to the American public? I don't see how. But the public reaction to scenes of bombs going off and kidnapped reporters isn't the problem anyway. It's the political reaction to the presumed public reaction, of which Hewitt's commentary is symptomatic. He apparently thinks the public's dwindling support for the war stems from the enemy's manipulation of the news media, while with his next breath he claims the news media's influence is waning.

The fact is, Bush and Rumsfeld are quite lucky that the public has tolerated the Iraq war for as long as it has, and it's a testament to the public's sophistication that the media manipulation, the staged acts of terror, have had so little impact on policy. Despite Bush's low poll ratings, I see little to resemble the Vietnam-era public anguish with regard to Iraq. Sure, the war has many critics, but back then, average middle-class people were urgently demanding the end of our involvement in Vietnam, and politicians of the president's own party responded by promising immediate troop withdrawal.

The Vietnam war was an atrocious mistake, but the public's abandonment of it was in large part the result of enemy propaganda. The North Vietnamese were successful in making the militarily disappointing Tet offensive appear to be a rout. Thanks to the perception that Tet succeeded, Walter Cronkite famously declared the war unwinnable. In 1968, that meant a lot.

Who is today's Walter Cronkite? Who pretends to speak for Mr. and Mrs. America? If anyone tried, they'd find Mr. and Mrs. America leaving some nasty comments on their website. Friends of Donald Rumsfeld do the SecDef no favors by telling him to lead a PR effort to combat enemy propaganda, if that effort will distract him from his real job, organizing a winning strategy so America can get its troops home soon. Because, as Sun Tzu says, "There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."

Mike Qualls, R.I.P.

My editor during part of my tenure at City News Service, Mike Qualls, died Sunday at his home in West Covina. Both the Daily News and the Times remembered him with obituaries today. From the Daily News:

Mike Qualls, a former newspaper editor and Vietnam veteran who served as communications director for former City Attorney James Hahn, died Sunday of an apparent brain hemorrhage. He was 63.

Qualls, who also had worked as political editor for the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and as managing editor of City News Service, was discovered by his wife, Debra, when she returned from work to their West Covina home.

Qualls was remembered Monday for his professionalism in all his jobs as well as his easygoing manner and wry humor.

"He was a man of depth, quiet but a hard worker," said Public Works Commissioner Valerie Lynn Shaw.

Qualls was a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and worked more than 20 years as a newsman in Los Angeles.

When the Herald-Examiner closed, Qualls went to work for Hahn, heading up his communications office for 16 years. After Hahn was elected mayor, Qualls moved over to the Board of Public Works where he oversaw its public information office.

Actually, that last paragraph is inaccurate. Qualls left the Her-Ex to manage City News at least seven years before that fabled newspaper folded in 1989. I don't recall when Mike joined City Attorney Hahn's staff; my impression was that he came in with Hahn's election to the post in 1985, but maybe it was later.

At the Her-Ex, Qualls and Joe Scott often shared the byline on a three-dot style political column that downtown City/County types like me pounced on each Monday morning in the early 80s. I was excited when he became my boss at CNS, and enjoyed working for him. When most of the journalistic priesthood tried to talk me out of moving out of reporting and into a flack post with Supervisor Ed Edelman in 1983, Mike was supportive. We ran into each other frequently at City Hall, but didn't really stay in touch. He seemed contented with his shift to "the other side," but to me, the journalistic profession lost a classic, old-style newshound when he left it. Qualls was tough, terse, funny and wise.

Qualls covered campaigns, and the one story I remember him telling was from the campaign trail. He was assigned to Jerry Brown in either 1976 or 1980. He was somewhere in Wisconsin, asleep in a motel room. He woke up in the middle of the night in a disoriented panic, and called his editor in Los Angeles to ask, "Where am I??" Since it was the middle of the night, the editor wasn't sure, so they stayed on the phone talking until they figured it out.

Unsettled Earth

I love the west coast even though anyone with eyes can see it's a dangerous place. It's so mountainous! True, mountains are beautiful. But they are the remnants of violence.

If the face of a mountain is partly striped, as many of them are, you understand that the striping represents layers of sediment, layers of earth that accumulated downstream from somewhere else or settled at the bottom of the sea, then were buried by other layers until the weight was such that the lower layers became rock, way down under the surface of the ocean, or below many additional layers of the earth.

But remember: We're looking at a mountain. The striping is up there, not below our feet. How did it get up there? Not gently. Sediment rose from far below sea level to thousands of feet in the air through a succession of violent movements by seismic and volcanic forces powerful enough to literally rip apart the surface of the earth.

To see it happen, to perceive the violent power of the Pacific Coast's churning geological engine, you'd have to live tens of thousands of lifetimes. Except once in a while, it accelerates, so we can watch. Like now, on Mount St. Helens in Washington:

According to this AP story:

If the skies are clear as forecast, volcano watchers who turn out for the reopening of the Johnston Ridge Observatory on Friday will get a spectacular view of a hulking slab of rock that's rapidly growing in Mount St. Helens' crater.

It's jutting up from one of seven lobes of fresh volcanic rock that have been pushing their way through the surface of the crater since October 2004.

The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day, though it occasionally loses height from rockfalls off its tip, said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

It began growing last November, steadily moving west and pushing rock and other debris out of its way as it goes.

Mount St. Helens has been quietly erupting since a flurry of tiny earthquakes began in late September 2004. Scientists initially mistook the quakes as rainwater seeping into the hot interior of the older lava dome.

But it soon became clear that magma was on the move, confirmed by the emergence of fire-red lava between the old lava dome and the south crater rim a few weeks after the seismic activity began.

The volcano has continued pumping out lava ever since. Eventually, scientists expect the volcano will rebuild its conical peak that was obliterated in the May 18, 1980, eruption that killed 57 people.

The current growth of the new lava dome has been accompanied by low seismicity rates, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases and minor production of ash, the USGS said.

"Given the way things are going now, there's no hint of any sort of catastrophic eruptions," USGS geologist Tom Pierson said. "At any time, however, things can change."

"Any time" defined as from tomorrow morning until 10,000 years from now. A blip, in terms of the age of the Earth.

(P.S. I know, I know, I read the papers, I know what I'm supposed to be worrying about right now. News like this helps put my problems in perspective.)

Blogger with a Guitar

Palm smacks to the forehead: Of course! Neil Young, blogger.

Hasn't Neil always been a blogger? Haven't all his albums been spontaneous reflections of whatever's going through his head and happening in his life at the moment? The rap on Neil was that his recording techniques were often slipshod, that he had no filter, he released too many albums with too many bad songs drowning out the great ones. But that's been his aesthetic since 1970. Write it, record it, put it out.

I remember Rolling Stone's review of "After the Gold Rush," complaining Young hadn't spent enough time on it. From that 1970 review:

Neil Young devotees will probably spend the nest few weeks trying desperately to convince themselves that After the Gold Rush is good music. But they'll be kidding themselves. For despite the fact that the album contains some potentially first rate material, none of the songs here rise above the uniformly dull surface. In my listening, the problem appears to be that most of this music was simply not ready to be recorded at the time of the session. It needed time to mature. On the album the band never really gets behind the songs and Young himself has trouble singing many of them. Set before the buying public before it was done, this pie is only half-baked.

Time has proven their judgment on that classic album to be wrong, but a good many of his subsequent albums, which he approached in the same haphazard way, are terrible. So what?, Neil seemed to say. I can always write another one, and maybe it'll be better. He's hit the mark enough times that you're compelled to at least check out anything he does.

Neil Young also freely, merrily contradicts himself — especially about politics. He's about the only baby-boom era classic rocker who had the nerve to release a few songs over the years with almost jingoistic right-wing messages. He hates the Iraq war now, but in the post 9/11 "Let's Roll," he waved the bloody shirt.

You've got to turn on evil,
When it's coming after you,
You've gota face it down,
And when it tries to hide,
You've gota go in after it,
And never be denied,
Time is runnin' out,
Let's roll.

Long ago, Young embraced Ronald Reagan for a time. But he's also tacked way to the left many more times, as he does with the new music on "Living With War."

"Living With War" is an audio blog. If you delve into his web site you'll learn he wrote and recorded all its songs in just the past few weeks. At this writing you can't buy it, and you can't download it, but you can listen to it as an audio stream, so long as you're willing to hear it from the beginning. You can't skip tracks. Eventually it will appear in CD racks, but by that time it will be a souvenir. Its impact is being felt right now. Bloggers all over the world are invited to link to it. He wants his fans to hear it now, while its themes are still hot.

This is a real Marshall McLuhan moment. Up to now, the Internet has been seen as just another channel to present music. But "Living With War" is music for the Internet. I don't know if it's the first example, but given Neil's fame and huge international fan base, I predict it will have immense influence.