Murphy's Law

News broke last week that Dan Gillmor will leave his post at the San Jose Mercury News next month to, in software parlance, go eat his own dog food. It is a very interesting development.

Dan has enjoyed a long tenure at the Merc and was one of the first journalists to embrace blogging alongside traditional media writing.  He has also pioneered a lot of new thinking around how online tools and techniques will change how we communicate online.  His book, “We the Media” continues to provide a fantastic insight into how communication is changing and it’s a must read for any Public Relations practitioner.

I wish Dan well on his new journey. 

I have to say I was somewhat disappointed that I saw a few bloggers claiming that Dan isn’t the first influential journalists to abscond to the world of blogs full-time (they claim they were), but I think it’s clear that Dan is by far the highest profile and the most influential.  Of that there is little doubt.

Of course this doesn’t mean we should go back to the whole “newspapers are doomed” debate which I’m sure we’re all a little bored of at this stage.  They’re not.  At least not anytime soon.

One of the weblog posts I missed during my prolonged absence was written by Shel Holtz.

Shel published an open letter to David Murray regarding his story on the front page of Ragan’s Report entitled “Blog wonks need chill pill”.

Shel’s post is worth I read, as is David’s article, but I strongly recommend you visit Shel’s comments section. 

It provides a wonderful example of the potential that the combination of Weblogs and Comment sections create.  Over the course of 47 comments there is a fantastic rich dialog between Shel, David, some PR bloggers, other Ragan staff and a number of innocent bystanders. Some of it is interesting, some you’ll agree with, some you won’t and some of it you’ll find highly amusing – but whatever your perspective it’s engaging, passionate content.

If you don’t have ten minutes right now, why don’t you (whisper it in case the digital police catch you) print it off to read later.  It’s worth the ink.

Hello.

Well the final medical decision is in and my “mystery” affliction has turned out to be the Mumps and what a pleasure it has been.

I’m reliably informed that the worst is behind me and the major current restrictions are the inability to eat anything thicker than a biro and an appearance that resembles a large, if lopsided, chipmonk.

Lovely. Just as well Christmas is coming.

Morning. 

Sorry to report I’m still not back up and running at this point however I think normal posting should resume in a couple of days. 

Apologies to everyone for slow responses to e-mails etc. All unvoidable.

Greetings.

You may have noticed that PR Opinions has been very quiet this week.  Well the combination of illness, travel and a heavy workload have unfortunately predicated against much posting this week.

All going well I’ll get back to it next week or if I get a couple of quiet minutes even on Friday.

Thomas Mucha has written an interesting article on the collaborative marketing efforts around the Firefox browser.

“Here’s a neat marketing idea: Lock 40,000 people in a room. Combine their brainpower, divergent backgrounds, various skills, and colorfully disparate ideas. Then sit back and let this passionate collective spread your product across planet Earth.”

Oh and if you haven’t already downloaded Firefox, I recommend you do so right now.

Footnote:

• If includes a glowing endorsement of SparkPR’s efforts. Hurrah! It’s Friday and someone has written something nice about PR!
• Business 2.0 also have a feature on “How to Blog Effectively”

Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Day” e-mail is always a welcome distraction.  Today’s entry is particularly interesting (for me):

donnybrook DAH-nee-brook noun

*1 : free-for-all, brawl

2 : a usually public quarrel or dispute

Did you know?

The Donnybrook Fair was an annual event held in Donnybrook – then a suburb of Dublin, Ireland — from the 13th to the 19th centuries. The fair was legendary for the vast quantities of liquor consumed there, for the number of hasty marriages performed during the week following it, and, most of all, for the frequent brawls that erupted throughout it. Eventually, the fair’s reputation for tumult was its undoing. From the 1790s on there were campaigns against the drunken brawl the fair had become. The event was abolished in 1855, but not before its name had become a generic term for a free-for-all.

Why is this interesting? Well Donnybrook is where I work and spend a lot of time.  Unfortunately it isn’t anywhere as interesting as it was in the past….

For the past while Fleishman-Hillard has been fighting allegations over their dealings with the city of Los Angeles, mostly behind closed doors.

On Wednesday, Richard S. Kline, regional president of Fleishman-Hillard wrote a formal response to these allegations in the Los Angeles Daily News.

“In the 58-year history of Fleishman-Hillard, we have never experienced allegations remotely like those facing us today in Los Angeles…….Fleishman-Hillard is a firm of high ethical standards. We would never knowingly tolerate improper behavior and we will not attempt to avoid our responsibilities in this case. But the DWP had good reasons to seek experienced outside counsel and our firm provided a great deal of value in the six years we worked for the department.”

 Elizabeth Albrycht is looking for people join her to share their thoughts on how communication is changing for a blog-based event taking place in January.

“I have written a lot about how I think communications is changing, and others have as well.  But this information is currently fragmented, anecdotal and spread all over the place.  What I decided I wanted to do was to synthesize this information with theories from communications studies, media ecology, philosophy and science and technology studies, and come up with a new model that people can use, test, improve, etc.”

 Also Kevin Dugan has an interesting post on how companies are using blog for market intelligence.

As you have no doubt already heard Microsoft has launched the beta of it’s new Spaces service. Mike Manuel takes a look at the launch from a PR perspective.