Day: August 30, 2004

 Kevin Dugan takes Forbes to task on their ignorance of RSS.

 Jeremy Pepper writes in favor of Blogservations and fair play to him.

 Steve Rubel shares the results of a PR Week online poll covering the topic of whether you should allow comments on a corporate blog. [30% allow them, 16% keep relevant comments, 14% review all comments, Require e-mail from posters 33% and Don’t allow comments 5%]

 Neville Hobson is a big fan of Ned Lundquist’s JOTW which was recently features in the WSJ. You can sign up for JOTW here.

 Mike Manuel has a tabular comparison of blogs and message boards.

 Shel Holtz tackles the thorny subject of employee communications: “I would suggest that the internal communications profession needs to take a hard look at itself and figure out how to turn this situation around, lest management find someone else who can produce the results they need.”

  The Toronto Free Press questions PR firms’ involvement in some recent political events.  It claims that PR firms have been involved in some questionable practices *which* if true are outrageous.  However, the article itself has little or no facts and the only involvement of the accused firms is a third party quote pulled from a French magazine.  It’s hardly balanced, factual journalism…

Although the subject matter�which reinforces some less attractive sterotypes about our business�may not be to everyone’s taste, a new book is now available with a PR/Spin Doctor/Flack type individual as the central hero (anti-hero).

The storyline of “Slick” concerns our hero’s [A rising star in the world of public relations, Scott is a master at manipulating the news, especially when the news isn’t good for his clients. To journalists, he’s the dark prince of deception. To others, he’s merely the product of an amoral corporate culture. Not that their opinions matter to Scott, who shelved his ego years ago. It’s the only way to stay sane in a business that gets crazier by the day.] efforts at saving an actress’ reputation.

Why am I promoting the book here? Well it is PR-related�for better or worse�and its author Daniel Price did a nice PR pitch on me (and I’m sure many of the other PR bloggers).

Why was it good?

• It was personalized
• It was humourous
• It was very honest
• It was creative

So if we’re going to complain about bad blog pitches we should praise the good ones.  Well done Daniel and best of luch with the pitch. The book sounds like a perfect present for Lizzie.

Here is a link to the opening pages of the novel.