Morgan McLintic on PR

The weaknesses of RSS

I am addicted to RSS as a method for getting news, but I have a confession to make: I think it has drawbacks. Sacrilegious though it may sound, one of RSS' greatest strengths - its ability to pull information from a variety of sources into a central point - is also its biggest weakness. RSS reduces respected sources of information to compete on a level playing field with personal opinions broadcast from blogs. An RSS reader treats them the same. A well-researched, incisive news piece from The Financial Times competes on a par for my attention with the idle musings of an individual blogger.

While intellectually I am able to discriminate based on source credibility, while I scan my feeds I'm looking for snappy headlines which pull me in. That could just as easily come from a blog as from a publication. So my news download leaps from macro-economic and political, right down to personal trivia within an instant. When I'm in download mode first thing, it all goes in. And that's the risk. If you have say (conservatively) 100 feeds, reading 5 headlines from each, it's not always easy to recall among those 500 stories where you heard a particular news snippet. Was it on a blog? Or from CNN? Fact, gossip or fiction? It's easy to lose perspective.

So while we want a blend of news sources, since RSS makes them all appear as equals, it's important to weight each one according to its credibility.

Nor can RSS entirely replace reading a newspaper or scanning a site for the simple fact that publications still don't put all their news onto the feed. This means you can miss important but niche stories. While dedicated subject feeds go some way to offset this challenge, by no means are the feeds a full representation of the content of a publication.

The other drawbacks are technical. Often news stories which have been marked as read are republished on the feed and show up as new. This means you can end up reading yesterday's reheated news thinking it's freshly cooked.

It's also hugely text-heavy, which is fast but ignores photojournalism almost entirely. Of course images can be uploaded but a photo can make a story, whereas an RSS piece relies on the headline for its appeal. Photography is under-used in media relations as a means to communicate and I fear RSS will only reinforce that trend.

I'm told (by the team at Nooked.com) that rich media will come to RSS, which will make it far more engaging. I'm also keen that a secure version of RSS is developed which allows authentication. Once you know who you are broadcasting to, the messages can be tailored even further. This can be done in part through the use of password-protected feeds, but the management of it is cumbersome.

Do I think RSS is one of the biggest technologies to impact publishing and public relations? Yes. Does it have its failings at the moment? I'm afraid so.

Case studies about the importance of blogs and podcasts

Here's further proof of the impact that bloggers can have on companies and that corporate blogs/podcasts can have on audience interaction. The first is the lead article in PR NEWS in which Matthew Schwartz covers the Kryptonite product recall debacle, which reputedly cost the company $10m. Matthew interviews Kryptonite's PR Manager, Donna Tocci:

"The bigger PR nightmare would have been to release information about a lock-exchange program and not be able to back it up," she says, adding that the company has been in constant contact with the media about the exchange program.

Just how could it have been a bigger nightmare than a $10m recall? The response mechanism of waiting for a press release to be approved meant the damage was done. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but perhaps a short 'We've had reports of a defect, we're investigating it and will alert customers shortly once our investigations are complete' would have shown the company was listening.

Matthew kindly interviewed me for this article, and I think the Kryptonite story shows the power one individual can have on a company's reputation. Equally, the issue would have been different if Kryptonite had its own blog as a direct conduit to its customers.

The second piece is Neville Hobson and Shel Holz' interview with Michael Wiley, director of new media, GM Communications at General Motors. Michael gives candid feedback about the GM Fastlane blog and its podcasts. He highlights that 20% of GM's journalists are using RSS. If you look at the comments, I queried this and Michael clarifies that this was internal research - but fascinating nonetheless. This is excellent testimonial from a senior communicator at a large corporate about the impact of corporate blogging and podcasting.

(Credits - Ian Lipner for the PR NEWS link)

AP launches RSS feeds

Susan Mernit highlights that the AP has launched its own RSS feeds. Must haves for me are the obvious 'Business' and 'Technology' feeds, as well as the enigmatic 'Strange'. Bit like 'Oddly Enough' from Reuters.

Credits - Steve Rubel (who else?). Steve's on a roll with the Google Autolink story - which by the way is a great example of blog, to trade to national (in fact international) story. Go Steve.

Blog readers beware - spyware lurks

Here’s some FUD factor about blogs being a haven for spyware on ZDNet Australia. Seems the baddies are now hiding malicious code in the free tools which many bloggers use to enhance their sites. When readers hit the site, the blog inadvertently becomes a vector for the spyware to download.

Of course if you use Firefox – you’re safe (or safer anyway).

More blogs vs the media

This time on Fox News. Quite a well-balanced piece I think, here are some edits:

"The "blogosphere" isn't so much an alternative to the conventional newsstand as it is a massive extension of it. There are well-edited, well-researched, well-written blogs and there are poorly edited, poorly written, gossip-driven blogs, just as your roadside newsstand carries publications ranging from The Economist to the Weekly World News."

I like the extension message, since clearly bloggers can debate issues in more detail and from a variety of angles. This is a much more collaborative approach, where each enhances the other, rather than polices it. The article wraps up with this extract, which to my mind explains the situation well:

“Blogging's comparative advantage is that it's cheap and it's easy to take up. A good blog also doesn't need the readership a magazine or newspaper needs to survive. The result is a significant expansion of the scope, breadth and depth of public discourse. Good blogs will rise to the top. That means new voices, new perspectives and new reporting. These are things to be celebrated in a free society.

But let's not fetishize blogging, either. There's no reason to think that these new voices will be inherently more or less flawed than the mainstream media voices we've been hearing for generations. There will be good and bad bloggers just as there are good and bad reporters, magazines, newspapers and opinion journals.
 
In the case of bloggers, there will just be a heck of a lot more of them.”

Stopping the presses

A must read from Forbes about the current threats facing the newspaper industry. Key extract:

"People may decreasingly read news from branded and trusted newspapers, but, surveys show, they do want to read it from them online.

There lies the trap for serious journalism. Going online has not yet worked convincingly for many newspapers. Despite spending billions to create online editions, these are read by fewer people, less frequently and less fully than print editions are.

There are exceptions, mostly at the quality end of journalism. The New York Times, for one, has extended its editorial footprint enormously by going online. But even it is struggling to generate the profitability online it needs to support its journalism."

The article seems to suggest that narrowcasting more tailored publications to market segments could be the way to raise revenues per reader.

Communications Forum

Catherine Helzerman, part of IBM's analyst relations team, is just today kicking off a public relations online forum to discuss aspects of media relations, analyst relations, corporate comms and agency life among others. Log in here.

Meanwhile, Ian Lipner's From the Frontlines of PR blog is active once more with several recent posts. Ian is a co-worker of mine and the founder of YoungPRPros.com - an eductional group with over 1,800 members. He is wise beyond his years and has 25 hours in each day, so will not doubt have good advice for us all.

And finally, today my firm received yet another aspiring applicant wanting a career in 'pubic relations' [sic]. Oh dear.

The evolution of language

Wired has an interesting article indicating that the Web is not the death of language. This struck me as odd. It seems there is an assumption that technologies such as IM, or its wireless sibling, SMS, will lead to a gradual corruption of the English language. The outcome of a study into IM conversations of college students revealed this not to be the case - in fact, the majority of interactions were correct:

"They used few abbreviations, acronyms and emoticons, the spelling was reasonably good and contractions were not ubiquitous. Overall, the study suggested that conversing through instant messenger resembled speaking more than writing."

While the Acadamie Francaise may be the guardian of the French language, and occasionally take a bold stand to replace the word 'email' with a French equivalent like 'courriel', I have never felt language is under attack from new technologies or through day-to-day usage. Sure it may evolve, but that is a function of a living language where words take new meaning each day.

More interesting is how the communications technology we use affects the way we interact in terms of tone and style. A business letter is a formal mode of communication, the language is crisp, impersonal and authoritative. But when I as a communicator switch to email, I use a different register, perhaps a more casual tone, even though I may be conversing with the same recipient about the same subject. Email is faster and more ethereal, so necessarily can be less formal.

Moving to IM, I find people are more casual again. I believe IM can be used responsibly in a business context to communicate with co-workers, clients or reporters, but it is far more humorous and relaxed. The immediacy of IM (and SMS) brings intimacy. If you are trying to build a relationship with someone and communicate with them - this is a distinct advantage.

The Web is a good thing for language since it means we can communicate with more people through more modes, more quickly and more frequently. The usage that the Web enables will bring change to our language, which as communicators we should embrace and evangelize. Meantime for those who resist such linguistic evolution, I bid thee farewell and God's speed.

Hunter S Thompson commits suicide

The BBC has the story - just breaking. Big loss of the pioneer of 'gonzo journalism'.

Chris Lewis kicks off a blog

Chris Lewis, founder and CEO of my agency, LEWIS, has kicked-off a blog called Lewis On Global Spin (LOGS). There are few people in the industry with his global perspective and commercial track record, so I'm sure we can expect some lively debate and strong counsel there. I know Chris well and he'll pull no punches about his views on the PR industry. Looks like precious creatives and Britain (!) are first up on the block.

Well done Chris.