LB's Rambles

CBS Marries CNET

In an alphabet soup marriage, CBS has decided to acquire Internet news purveyor CNET, in a deal worth about 1.75 Billion dollars according to Crain's New York Business. It's another example of old media looking for quick ways to expand further into the new media space, and it could make a lot of sense. Certainly, it looks like a good deal for CNET, as CBS will be paying $11.50 a share - up from the closing price yesterday of $7.95. Nice work if you can get it.

There's nothing hostile about the takeover; CNET is recommending approval to its shareholders, while CBS chief Les Moonves is praising CNET's virtues as "a profitable, growing, well-managed Internet company ." On the surface, it's probably a good move for both companies. We'll see what kind of reaction it draws.

The Reporter as a "Hungry Teenager"

Over at the Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog, Brian Pittman interviews Eric Auchard, technology correspondent for Reuters. Read the whole thing, but the best quote:

"The best way for a PR person to deal with a journalist is to treat the reporter like a hungry teenager," says Reuters technology correspondent Eric Auchard. "We're impatient, we need things, we're on deadlines and we need to be fed. If we're not fed, we get angry and have tantrums."

And he even has good things to say about press releases...

Time Warp

A followup on my last post about 3D technology.

There are times I think I have been living in a time warp. Last week, I wrote about a reunion of ABC Radio News personnel, some of whom I have known for more than four decades. After that reunion, I received a video that was put together back in 1969, to promote what were then the brand new ABC Radio Networks. In 1968, ABC became the first US radio network to program four distinct newscasts each hour, each one aimed at a particular group of radio stations. This allowed ABC to have up to four affiliates in each market - very clever indeed.

At any rate, watching that video, I found myself amazed at how far we have come. For example, there are shots of audio tape being edited with a razor blade and a grease pencil. That's how we did it, folks. Even video tapes started out that way. The editors, newscasters and writers all used typewriters. MANUAL typewriters; I was pounding away on an Olivetti until the early 1980s. Video? TV relied on film, which had to be shot, shipped, developed and edited; the entire process took at least hours and often, for overseas stories, days.

The narrator notes, with pride, that all of the ABC news bureaus were linked by private teletype. I remember that one; I was quite proud of being able to type at the machine's maximum speed of 60 words per minute. We also had "facsimile" machines that could transmit documents over phone lines; it generally took six minutes per page. And the newsroom was filled with the clattering noise made by the AP, UPI and Reuters machines, disgorging reams of paper, usually running multiple carbon paper rolls.

Time warp. This morning, I sat and watched people demonstrating console editing of 3D digital video. Punch a few buttons, move a mouse, and a miracle happens. I don't think the people doing the presentation had ever worked with a film doublechainer; certainly not as their primary source. I doubt they were born when that promotional video was made.

Yes, I AM older than dirt.

Time warp.

Help a Reporter Out

The following is a note from Peter Shankman about a free resource that every PR person and journalist should know about.

Sharing with you today a great resource.  You'll want to tell the PR people, marketers, publicists, editors, and journalists you work with about it too, because it's all about them and their needs. 

If you're not already using www.helpareporter.com, check it out.  It's a service much like ProfNet, but free.  It used to be on Facebook, but grew too large for it.  Once you subscribe, you receive about three (sometimes two, no more than four, ever) emails a day with reporter, editor and freelance writer queries, written so you can quickly and easily scan the topics for relevance. 

If the topics do not apply to you or your clients, just hit delete. If they do, you may contact the reporter or editor directly, as instructed.

Note that Peter Shankman, the list facilitator, is very strict about helping out these reporters.  Respond only if your information (or your client's info) is relevant and on target.  If not, you'll get bumped off the list.  Quickly.  I've seen it happen. He's a big believer in good Karma, and he's also quite funny, and tends to also include a link to a fun site, or a funny story about his day in the emails. It's a nice refreshing change from the boring, non-funny emails we usually deal with.

Reporters can post queries at www.helpareporter.com/press, and sources can sign up at www.helpareporter.com - As I said, it's free. Peter asks that if you find it useful, then you make a donation to any animal rescue charity or animal hospital.

You can forward the queries to others who are a fit, but do not post any queries (or the editor/reporter contact info) on any blogs or public websites.  I received permission from Peter to send you this note, since this is a private group and I'm helping to spread the word to both subscribers and media to sign up.

www.helpareporter.com - The more people who use it, the better it becomes.

Remedial Education for the New York Times

The New York Times needs a little remedial help in understanding the relationship between public relations and journalism. At least, that's the impression I take away from its 7600-word article about sinister government efforts to influence news coverage about the war in Iraq. Why, would you believe it, the Times has discovered that the Pentagon actually seeks out favorable coverage from military analysts! Shocking!

Or maybe not. I've read a lot of hyperventilating stories about this in the past few days on both sides of the issue. I think the best response, from the PR side, comes in the Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog from Ronn Torossian, the President and CEO of 5W Public Relations:

For me, it's a given that all organizations (including the U.S. military) attempt to "spin" what the public sees and educate and influence spokespeople who appear in the media. It's not deception any more than the political candidates who are trained to respond in a certain way, nonprofit organizations that routinely use one set of statistics instead of another or CEOs who are media trained on a daily basis by their PR firms.

Right. Read the whole thing. I'm afraid I have to agree with John Podhoretz writing for Commentary Magazine:

I think, based on many years of experience working at various newspapers, that there is an explanation for the extreme length — 7800 words — of the story and the fact that it manages to find nothing more than an effort by the Pentagon to get good coverage. The Times thought it was on to something very big, ended up with something very small, and then took what little they had and tried to make a silk purse from the sow’s ear that was reporter David Barstow’s investigation.

Public Relations is an exercise in presenting the best possible face to the world. Favoring those who help you is part of the game. If the New York Times weren't wearing its ideological blinders, they would acknowledge it.

In Praise of Openness

Another round in the never-ending argument over who is, and who is not, and who should or should not be, a journalist, and how to report responsibly. If you are a witness, are you a journalist? A reporter? A citizen? Are your beliefs and biases relevant, and does your reader deserve the right to know them? Is reporting open to anyone, or just to members of the club of professionals who observe (or ignore) a particular code of ethics?

It's an old debate, of course, but I think Jeff Jarvis makes several good points, debating a journalistic colleague, Michael Tomasky, who is in favor of requiring a code of ethics. Jarvis believes, rather, in openness - and that, in turn, covers the witness-journalist as well as the professional.

My own take (duly noted in the comments to Jarvis's post):

Transparency is, or should be, the rule, whether one is talking about “professional” journalism or “citizen” journalism.

In a way, that should be easier for print media, if only because - despite the constant claims of “objectivity” - so many publications make their biases and beliefs quite clear. The New York Times and the Washington Times may represent different ends of the political spectrum, but it is pretty clear to me as a reader which is which, and I tend to read their stories through those presumed prisms.

The same is often true of blogs. Certainly Jeff has his own perspective on issues regarding communications, and he makes them very clear to the reader. There is a difference between Daily Kos and Hugh Hewitt, and it would take an awfully dim-witted reader to be unable to uncover their points of view.

Weekend Reunion

There's a big reunion in New York City this weekend of veterans from the radio newsroom where I began my...um...notorious? nefarious? whatever...career. I mean, these are people I worked with before many of you were born, folks. Some became famous; more became and remain infamous. Last I heard, there were nearly 150 people coming.

Can't wait. Stay tuned for a followup report either here or in the Police Gazette.

Say Goodbye to Katie?

UPDATE: Crain's New York Business says CBS denies the story. You pays yer money and takes yer chances...  :-)

There are reports all over the media - online and off - that Katie Couric will be leaving the CBS Evening News, possibly after the inauguration next year, perhaps sooner, depending on whom you're reading.

There's not much of a surprise here. As everyone except Rip Van Winkle knows, Katie Couric was brought in by CBS - at a huge salary - to try to rescue the sinking CBS Evening News. The experiment has failed, and that's putting it mildly.

In fairness to Katie Couric, I'm not sure anybody could have done better than she did. The trouble is, they're trying to revive a dinosaur. Speaking as a person who spent more than a dozen years working on one of the network newscasts (not CBS), the days of the 30-minute-wrapup-at-dinnertime are over. People do not wait until 6:30 or 7 at night to find out what has happened during the day - not given the virtually limitless sources of news online, not to mention the 24-hour cable news operations. Whether you get your spin from CNN or Fox, you know what has happened long before the old network news comes on.

So - if the rumors are true - wish Katie Couric well. And suggest that perhaps it's time for CBS - and ABC and NBC - to figure out a better way to use the time. Investigative reporting? Maybe. But the old ways aren't working. Katie Couric is as much the victim of that fact as she is a symbol of it.

Hat tip: Shop Talk/TVSpy (with LOTS of links to more articles)

Deadly Blogging

In what is unintentionally one of the funniest articles I've read so far this year, the New York Times weighs in on the terrible and deadly toll taken among...bloggers.

That's right, the stress under which we poor souls are laboring is killing us off at a massive rate. Why, the Times cites the case of two - TWO! - bloggers who died of heart attacks in the past, um, four months. A quagmire!

After several paragraphs about the killing stress that apparently has been taking such a heavy toll among bloggers, the author does have the grace to note:

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

(I'll wait while you stop laughing.)

Seems to me as if we've just knocked down the premise of the story, right?

Look, most of us blog because we like blogging. And it tends to relieve stress. It can even give us a chance to vent.

But I will admit that I'm careful not to let my life insurance lapse...

Going 'Topless' at Meetings

That's 'topless' as in 'laptopless.' An article in the Los Angeles Times - yesterday, so it's probably no joke - notes the growing tendency in some offices and schools to ban laptops and other communications devices, particularly Blackberries, from face-to-face meetings or class sessions.

What makes this surprising is it's not a luddite reaction to technology - the story is about how prevalent this phenomenon has become in Silicon Valley, still regarded as the heart of high tech. Too many companies and college professors were finding that meeting/class attendees were paying more attention to their external communications than to the people in the room with them. This was not only rude, it tends to make the meetings unproductive.

Personally, I'm a little mixed. I've never used my laptop for external communication (email, surfing, social networking) while in meetings - but I do rely on it for note-taking. Like a great many other people, my handwriting is sufficiently bad that I have a hard time reading my notes, much less keeping up with note-taking by hand. The laptop has rescued me many times over, and I rely on it. So, while I can see the motivation behind the trend, I would have a hard time leaving my laptop home. But then, I'm a touch-typist, and have no problem looking at you and carrying on a conversation with you while my fingers do the note-taking...

Hat tip: IAB SmartBrief