Andrew Lark

Six Apart Has A Cool New Look...

Worth a surf... It's like one big blog.

So Let Me Get This Straight...

At CNN you aren't allowed to accept gifts but you can give them? Or, you can't take "bribes" but you can give them...? OK, so this is all history and past tense - and the gifts were probably crap, but it does point to the importance of David Berlind's media transparency channel...

From The News...

NYT reports resignation at CNN due to growing influence of blogs (kind of)... Are we really a lynch mob?

The online attack of Mr. Jordan, particularly among conservative commentators, appeared to gain momentum when they were seized on by other conservative outlets. A report on the National Review Web site was followed by editorials in The Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as by a column in The New York Post by Michelle Malkin (a contributor for Fox News, CNN's rival).

Mr. Abovitz, who started it all, said he hoped bloggers could develop loftier goals than destroying people's careers. "If you're going to do this open-source journalism, it should have a higher purpose," he said. "At times it did seem like an angry mob, and an angry mob using high technology, that's not good."

Blinks...

Great Video From XLRecordings... Gotta love their stuff. This one is a beauty...

And get a load of this lovely little phone.

HP's Top Marketer Moves On...

CNet breaks the news of Allison Johnson's move to Apple. Echoed in the WSJ. Congrats!

Hey, You Thought Getting Fired For Blogging Was Bad...

This is taking brand protection to the extreme... drinking your competitors product on your own time is a sackable offence, it would seem, at Miller... Miller time must mean 24x7.

Kiwis Rock LA

Short segway from the usual content to revel in the Kiwis win at the Rugby 7s in LA. Was a great way to spend a weekend... And this, if you haven't seen it before is the Haka...

A Nice Little Blog Innovation... Blink

Hylton's got a nice little Blog innovation over at Corante [disclosure:: I write for Brandshift on Corante].

"...the intent of the Blink is to differentiate its content from the longer, meatier posts and to provide a space in which you can provide short pointers to interesting items/articles/blogs that don't require much commentary. As well as to provide a vehicle that allows you to dump things into the blog, integrates a linklog, keeps the blog fresh, etc..

Take a look at Suw Charman and Copyfight to see this in action. This is great in terms of architecting information delivery in the sense it provides a simple way for the reader to visually filter content on the blog outside of category clicking...

PR's Bad Press

This time from the NYT...

"The Armstrong Williams scandal is an example of the close coordination between the advertiser and the commentator," said Sheldon Rampton, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy, a left-leaning nonprofit group that tracks abuses in the public relations business. "In terms of journalistic traditions, that violates disclosure and conflicts-of-interest principles."

....Temptations to push the ethical envelope abound. "We're going through a period of a huge jolt, and now more than ever we have to teach our account people a moral compass," said Richard W. Edelman, president of Edelman, the nation's largest independent public relations firm. "Every piece of information we put out, in theory, can go directly to the end user without any mediation. But our job today is still to bring to the media a credible story."

The Death Of...

Here we go again. More "death of" remarks... This time from the Economist which, in an otherwise great story on Robert Scoble, ponders if Blogs are the death of traditional public relations. Seems blogs are going to be the death of everything...

Bruce Lowry, PR boss at Novell, another software firm, also wants to get his executives blogging. Boring old press releases—where everybody is constantly resigning “to spend more time with the family” and what not—are totally ill-suited for responding to most PR issues, such as rumours or independent commentary, he says. He can imagine blogs completely replacing press releases within ten years.

Ten years from now? That's what I call hedging ones bets. Many a PR pro is hoping its going to happen lots quicker than that Bruce. And maybe you could drop a note to the SEC asking them if it's OK for blog entries to be regarded in the same light as press releases in terms of fair disclose.

I tend to agree with Schwartz - also quoted in the article:

(Scoble)... thinks that there will always be a place for traditional PR, with its centrally controlled corporate message, alongside the spontaneous cacophony of blogs. Microsoft's official PR boss will not even comment at all on the subject. Sun's Mr Schwartz is also circumspect. “It's not the end of PR but the end of the old PR department,” he says. “The clarifying force will be credibility and reputation.” The truth is, nobody yet knows how corporate blogging will evolve.

The important message is that social networking technologies and participatory communications will force structural change on PR departments. Change in terms of the people required, budget allocation and focal points. And as with all change involving networking technologies, the advantage will go to the first movers.