Day: August 3, 2004

Dan Gillmor was one of the earliest members of the mainstream media to embrace blogs and do some serious thinking on how they intersect with our traditional media.

Part of this thinking is now available in Dan’s book – “We the Media – Grassroots Journalism by the people, for the people.”

Dan has a blog accompanying the book, and the San Jose Mercury News carried an edited version of the book’s introduction over the weekend.

“But newsmakers also have new ways to get out their message, using the same technologies the grassroots adopts. Howard Dean’s presidential campaign failed, but his methods will be studied and emulated because of the way his campaign used new tools to engage his supporters in a conversation. The people at the edges of the communications and social networks can be a newsmaker’s harshest, most effective critics. But they can also be the most fervent and valuable allies, offering ideas to each other and to the newsmaker as well.”

 Robb Hecht is planning to expand his PR blog and is looking for contributors to PR Machine. You can contact Robb directly via e-mail.

 Richard Bailey has reviewed a new book “Hitting the Headlines in Europe” which takes a country-by-country look at the differences in PR practice in different countries around Europe.

 Steve Rubel has an interesting post on how Mozilla is kicking off an “old” style evangelism campaign for its free web browser Firefox. If you’re not aware of Firefox you should take a look –  it’s generations ahead of Internet Explorer and definetely worth the download.

 BL Ochman profiles ten companies who have missed out by ignoring the use of blogs as a tactic in recent campaigns.

 Jim Horton points to another example of sloppy PR practice highlighted on the TechDirt site:

“Just two weeks after we wrote about idiotic PR people submitting press releases to us when we clearly ask them not to, one company has sunk to a new low — and it’s making me wonder if PR pitches are officially spam under the law.”