This year’s PRSA conference is being held in the Detroit Marriott, which is connected to General Motors’ global headquarters.  We’re right on the river and I can literally see Canada from my hotel room window.  GM is also the premier sponsor of the conference and the place is swarming with their communications staff members, of which I learned there are 500 around the world.  This morning, Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman of global product development, addressed the attendees.  First of all, this guy is a terrific presenter and an unrelenting believer in the power of PR.  And he practices what he preaches.  Bob writes a blog for GM called the FastLane.  When asked how to drive traffic to a corporate blog,  he said he didn’t have a formula for that, but instead spoke to the importance of executives doing their own writing.  He said, “No one wants to read pre-chewed, pre-digested information with a heaping side of corporate arrogance.” 

In fact, he spoke a lot about the importance of writing in our field.  He said, “The state of writing is deplorable.  Nothing gets under my skin more than poor writing.”  He talked about how it infuriates him when he sees the phrase, “sneak peak.”  He joked, “You mean a stealth mountain?”  Ah, a man after my own grammarian heart.  I could tell he had at least 37 more examples, but held back.  Rats. 

He also accused corporate executives of using too many superlatives in their media materials.  This is a conversation we often have with our clients.  It’s important to resist the temptation to call a product or service best-in-class, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, etc.  Bob said, “Those types of words trigger antibodies in journalists who resent being told how or what to write.”  His recommendation, if you must use superlatives, was to do so using phrases like, ”It was our intention to create a best-in-class car.”  I’ve always felt it was inappropriate to use words in a release that no self-respecting journalist would ever use in an article.  But I like Bob’s compromise.

Or the “Prissa” conference as the new mayor of Detroit called it earlier today.  I thought for a moment that’s how people referred to the organization these days; it has been a while since I attended the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) annual conference.  This year, Rose Communications is a sponsor of the event.

Today’s keynote speaker was Craig Newmark of the wildly popular Craigslist.  What a humble guy.  A self-described engineering geek, Craig talked a lot about “continuous engagement” with his online community and how his success is the result of “doing what feels right.”  Upon realizing his managerial deficiencies, Craig shifted into a customer service role.  He literally reads and responds to hundreds of emails from site users each day while someone else runs his eponymous company.  That translates into about 50,000 responses per year.  Yes, I’d call that continuous engagement.  When the time for Q&A rolled around, someone apologized in advance and then asked the question surely on many people’s minds, “How do you respond to the newspaper industry’s claim that you’ve dramatically hurt their business?”  He said the decline of classified advertising revenue was only one of the many financial challenges faced by daily and weekly newspapers in our country.  After this attempt at minimizing his company’s impact, he said he felt the role of newspapers should be to expose the truths that would prevent us from making bad foreign policy decisions (as opposed to serving as a marketplace for used cars, jobs and lost pets, I assume).  He said there should be more fact checking.  Amen, Craig!  But who’s going to pay for it?  Most outlets charge less to a subscriber than it costs to print the paper.  In fact, Craig mentioned www.factcheck.org as a great, non-partisan source of truthful information about the current presidential election.  Yet another sign that the role of the daily newspaper is fading deeper into uncertainty.

In 2006, Ben Goldhirsh, the son of the founder of Inc. magazine, founded a new publication called GOOD.  Written for “people who give a damn,” the magazine covers social issues, politics (from a non-partisan perspective) and sustainable living.  What’s most fascinating about this nascent medium is its business model.  All subscription fees are donated to charity.  According to Wikipedia, the publication has donated more than $800,000 to charity since its inception. 

I decided to subscribe to GOOD a couple of months ago.  In addition to exploring a host of intriguing subjects, the publication offers a wealth of information in a very accessible manner.  For example, a full-page graphic depiction outlines which states have banned smoking in the workplace vs. restaurants vs. bars.  It also shows which states have the highest percentage of smokers.  I noticed while in Starbucks last week that they’ve published a series of GOOD sheets for the coffee-drinking crowd.  Each sheet tackles a different issue.  The one I picked up explained how our economy works — from the NASDAQ and NYSE to GDP and the National Deficit — and the various dimensions of the current financial crisis.  GOOD recently changed its url to drop the word magazine.  This better reflects all they do: events, a blog, videos, etc.  Critics have questioned the sustainability of this new title and characterized it as the expensive hobby of the son of a mogul.  All I know is this current issue seems to have more advertisers than many publications I read.  And we keep hearing how people are more inclined to give a damn these days.  Time will tell, but this could be the start of something good.

Just after posting a photo of my daughter on my Facebook profile today, I received an email from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) saying that Facebook now has over one petabyte of photo storage.  I did it.  I know I did.

I suspect I am not the only person in the public relations industry who has wondered why I didn’t think of Peter Shankman’s “Help a Reporter Out” service. I applaud him both for the idea as well as the commitment of time required to gather and disseminate three story opportunity-filled emails each day. I saw Shankman speak a little more than a week ago at the PR News Platinum Awards reception. The woman who introduced him read his bio and misstated the number of subscribers to his site by a factor of four. That’s how quickly the awareness has spread. I believe a service like HARO is not only a useful tool for unearthing media opportunities for your client or cause, but it also provides a sense of what’s newsworthy among a diverse range of influencers. A seasoned marketing colleague asked me if I’d heard of HARO just last week. Someone he knows in PR had mentioned it to him saying, “It’s a great service for journalists, but not so much for PR people as the chances of getting a story placed are slim with so many people subscribed.” I couldn’t disagree more. It’s a free service filled with “live” story opportunities. If you have a relevant, credible source (and a smart pitch) it’s far better than a proverbial shot in the dark. We’ve placed a number of stories we found out about on HARO (and the similar, long-standing paid service ProfNet, run by PR Newswire). Shankman, a PR man himself, sells sponsorships and surely benefits in the way of journalist contacts and new business leads. Perhaps the person who questioned HARO’s value wishes he’d thought of the idea himself.