A new Wiki platform

MindTouch has released a beta version of an "instant wiki" system at the rather nice wiki.com address Says the Guardian's Jack Schofield on his Webwatch blog. It really is a beta, as I discovered by doing a quick bit of copy-and-paste to create a wiki about Pictures at an Exhibition. It's also not clear how anybody else would add to it.

Blogging in Lebanon

The conflict between Israel and Lebanon has spawned a host of weblogs, many of them in English reports the BBC.

They offer a variety of diary-style reportage, eye-witness accounts and photographs, and intense scrutiny and analysis of the coverage of events by traditional media.

Not only can bloggers respond and interact almost instantaneously, they can also use digital photographs, provide clips from TV reports, link to podcasts and make use of satellite mapping imagery.

They are also influencing media reporting as well.

Microsoft blogging service

Microsoft has launched a blogging software as part of its Windows Live service that makes blogging easier for technophobes reports Pocket Lint.

While most blogging services require that the users has some understand of web encoding, Windows Live Writer features a what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface, so that it just requires you write and format as you go.

Blogs and legal issues

A blog can be a good way to get your company noticed. But it can be a potential legal nightmare says PC Advisor.

Companies have begun to view blogs as a valuable tool for many purposes. These include marketing products, building goodwill and brand loyalty, putting a human face on the corporation, countering negative publicity and facilitating communications with current and potential customers.

Some firms have official corporate blogs, or policies to encourage employees to set up personal blogs that can be used to promote the business. But while blogging can benefit companies, it can result in legal liability.

More Blogger updates

Pocket Lint says Google has been busy the last few days. The company’s self-publishing platform, Blogger, has announced a new beta version that makes it easier to blog.

Blogger now lets users tag their entries so that posts are more easily categorized.

Drag-and-drop functions have been added, to make the templates less HTML-based, and users can now choose to make blogs private or public.

Search 200 years of news with Google

Web giant Google is further expanding its online empire with the launch of the Google News Archive Search reports the BBC.

21CN steps up mobile comms channel options

IT Pro reveal Businesses and consumers living in Cardiff will be the first to benefit from BT's£10 billion 21st century network (21CN is designed to offer communications from anywhere to any device).

This can include interactive posters at the bus stop and rail station, Skype phones, Xbox and many other communication platforms.

Pump and Dump

The BBC reports that spammers hoping to manipulate the stock market have begun approaching firms, offering to raise their share price in exchange for a percentage fee.

They are Farrington Fodder "The badly spelt and poorly punctuated e-mail in fact offers two services in one go: "boosting" the company's own share price, and offering "information" about other prospective share price rises."

College gives away free iPod

A college in Dover has a surprise for this term’s students; they’re each eligible to get one of 250 iPod nanos purchased by the school. They are being given out to encourage students to listen to podcasts of lectures

One Minute News

I get bombard with news so I thought I would pass on a digest of UK 'new media' news over the last few days. One thing that is notable is the amount of new media already in use across the UK.





An attempt by a UK cabinet minister to discuss proposed environment policy using a wiki has ended in embarrassment after pranksters made merry at the expense of the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs' reports The Register .


Horsham Today reveals news of a podcast on West County Council's website, launching a new service designed to offer help and advice to listeners using the latest mp3 technology.The very first podcast offers parents with children moving up to secondary school the chance to hear a specially recorded interview with Peter Senior, former headteacher at Steyning Grammar School.


The Guardian has revealed that a Syrian blogger has been arrested by the country's security forces without explanation, raising fears that President Assad's government is seeking to curb freedom of speech on the Internet. Ali Sayed al-Shihabi, an English language teacher, has not been seen since he was summoned to a meeting with security agents in Damascus on 10 August. It is believed his detainment may be linked to articles he has written on a political website.

LEADING Liverpool council officials and others named on a controversial website about town hall dealings are preparing legal action against its author. City lawyer Mark Manley confirmed he is acting for several people who want to sue the (now silenced) author of the Liverpool-Evil-Cabal blog for defamation.

In Mobile Digest we discover that a next-generation iPod phone (dubbed the iPhone) would not be a huge success.

A digital music survey of 3000 British consumers suggests that most people would either keep phone and music player separate, or want a phone that plays music rather than a music player that makes phone calls:

• 46% of those surveyed said they would prefer to use a phone that played media files.
• 21% said they'd use a music player on its own.
• Over one-third said they'd never use a combined phone and music player.

Meanwhile Pocket Lint revealed a survey commissioned by the government Home Office that shows people do more to protect their gadgets at home than they do their passports. Only 22% of the 1064 people polled by FDS online lock their passports away, compared to the 28% that said their iPods and jewelery were locked up, with another 44% saying they were “kept securely”.



Farmers Weekly report on a survey of nearly 6500 consumers for Sainsbury's the UK supermarket chain which revealed there is no such thing as the average shopper. Which is encouraging and give comfort to those of us who think social media is ideal platform for individual conversations. The theory of the long tail rules!


The BBC reports that Children in Britain are among the most lazy in the world, the survey found UK children spend an average of 9.4 hours a week playing computer games or watching TV, but less than one hour a day being active. The report, commissioned by supermarket chain Tesco, surveyed 3,500 young people from 10 countries around the world, including Britain, the US, Australia and India. Ranking the 10 countries in order of their children's fitness, Britain came in as the seventh fittest nation.

Contractor magazine found out that Silicon Valley is the worst technology hub in the US from which to start-up a business in the USA. A survey of the region’s enterprise leaders says the region comes last on a long list of potential locations for tech start-ups because of its high house prices.

Here is good news for Rupert Murdoch. E-consultancy reports the 2006 Digital Music Survey, carried out by Entertainment Media Research, which shows the likes of Bebo and Myspace have a strong influence over the way listeners’ discover and purchase music online. Almost a quarter of visitors to social networking sites said they have a “massive” or “big” impact on their music purchases, while 31% said they had bought music they had discovered on these sites. Nearly half (49%) also said they regularly or occasionally recommended artists to other users of social networking sites.

It looks like Rosie O'Donnell's blogging days might be at an end , since Barbara Walters - Rosie's new boss on The View - doesn't really like it very much. It is still up and running .

eGov Monitor reported that almost one in four EU households is now connected to the internet via high-speed “broadband” links. Broadband’s popularity grows with household size – only 12% of single households have it, compared with 34% of those with four members or more. And, of those households that have only “narrowband” internet connections, 40% do not wish to upgrade, either because they are satisfied with the speed of their dial-up connection or because they do not use the internet enough to justify the higher cost of broadband.

Roy Greenslade on the Guardian tells us that Traditional media In Britain are seen as the most trustworthy source of information, according to a survey by Telecom Express. The report finds that newspapers and TV are far more trusted than websites or blogs, with TV topping the poll at 66%, papers receiving 63%, and radio getting 55%. However, websites get a 36% rating while news blogs are the least trusted sources with just 24% of the vote.

Wensleydale Dairy Products has launched its own blog to raise support for a campaign to protect the origins of Real Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese reveals Digital Bulletin. The blog, created by PR agency Green Communications , has been launched following the company's application for a Protected Designation of Origin mark, which protects EU foods produced in a given geographical area similar to the protection won by Parma Ham and Parmesan Cheese. The website will include members of Wensleydale's 190 staff giving regular updates on developments at the creamery.

The London Times has launched a daily comment blog called Comment Central , which is to be edited by Daniel Finkelstein.

Finkelstein, a long-time columnist at the paper, is a former adviser to Prime minister John Major. He will edit the site, selecting the newspaper's best writing, and give a guide to opinion on the web. "Blogging is an incredibly exciting form of journalism, especially in the field of comment. Just as the role of a newspaper is to filter and edit the best for the reader, the role of Comment Central will be to bring the online reader the most fascinating comment and analysis on the web," Finkelstein said. I bet he would love to lunch with Colin Farrington.

In Computer Business Sun Microsystems' CEO Jonathan Schwartz's latest blog is a great example of how to help to cross-sell your biggest partners/customers without it being immediately apparent to everybody that what you're doing is cross-selling your biggest partners/customers.

The Observer reported that a Syrian blogger has been arrested by the country's security forces without explanation, raising fears that President Assad's government is seeking to curb freedom of speech on the internet.

Yahoo! will launch a service today that allows users to ask other people's advice , when looking for anything from a good hotel or bar to an apple pie recipe, rather than rely solely upon electronically generated search results. The search and online portal operator will promote Yahoo! Answers with its largest advertising campaign in Britain since the dotcom boom.

Mark Lazarowicz has put his political thoughts online by setting up a weblog says the Scotsman . The Labour backbencher claims to be the first city MP to have joined the world of blogging.

Another Political blogger

The Conservative Party's increasing use of the web has continued during David Cameron's trip to India. He is writing a blog and posting video clips.

In his first piece for the blog, David outlined why he is travelling to India, and posted a short video he made just before getting onto the plane.

Bloggers have so far responded well to the "David Cameron in India" blog, which you can read here.

I guess, from now on we will have lots of pictures of politicians sent to Coventry if they don't come up to the Farrington standard.

Cheer for Yorkshire Bloggers

This post is for Stuart Bruce and Richard Bailey.

Wensleydale Dairy Products has launched its own blog to raise support for a campaign to protect the origins of Real Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese.

The blog, created by PR agency Green Communications, has been launched following the company's application for a Protected Designation of Origin mark, which protects EU foods produced in a given geographical area similar to the protection won by Parma Ham and Parmesan Cheese.

This means that any manufacturers outside of Wensleydale, where the cheese has been produced since 1150, can not produce a cheese and call it Real Yorkshire Wensleydale.

Some of the posts bring a lump to your throat: " Now, the most famous tea rooms in Yorkshire are backing Real Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese. Bettys, which has six tea rooms across Yorkshire, only uses real Wensleydale made at the Creamery at Hawes." Ahhhhhh!

Picture: Wallace & Gromit Wensleydale

Lets Create Wealth

In one day, years of PR research and study is being made available to everyone in the Public Relations industry.

Three people all working independently created similar wiki's.

• Richard Bailey has created the a wiki about books every Public Relations student (not to mention practitioner) should have at hand in his wiki 'PRbooks'.
  

• Another academic Philips Young has also created a Public Relations wiki called Mediations wiki
  

• And I have been working on my Public Relations Bibliography too.
  

We discovered our mutual activity earlier this week.

Yes a coincidence, yes some duplication and yes competing with other specialists in the field (see this list courtesy PRbooks).

Constantin Basturea is one of the pioneers with The New PR wiki whose seminal work in the field of Social Media is a great resource.

Each of these resources is unique in its way (comprehensive, selective, subject specialist).

Critically, the above are all searchable and editable by anyone who wants to help develop these resources. In addition people can comment about pages and content. These are resources that the PR academics and PR practitioners can add to and contribute their efforts for the wider good. I encourage you all to make your contributions to each.

Other resources are not as easily maintained (as I know to my cost) because they are efforts using non-social media.

Amazon UK: Public Relations
Chartered Institute of Public Relations: Library catalouge (members only)
Colorado State University: PR Bibliography
David Phillips (guilty as charged): PR evaluation bibliography
Northern Kentucky University: History and evolution of public relations
Ohio University: Journalism history: readings and resources
PR Place: Bibliography of PR books
PRSA: PR International Bibliography
The Museum of Public Relations: Reference Library

Richard Edelman and more recently Sir Martin Sorrell, have made their position quite clear: Social media is important and central to future success. It is the responsibility of the PR sector to take it forward and here is a classic case study of social media at work.

If this coincidence had not been two academics and a part time lecture, but three local retailers tempting consumers or a global booksellers to appreciate the niceties of their products, there would have been both a first mover advantage and competition through content. Just as important, all the other retailers would have been wrong footed.

Today's announcements, because of the timing, will create (just watch this space) a buzz about these developments.

In addition, the very nature of this same day event (and as it happens we are all announcing on the same day because we discovered our mutual activities were common and, at the last minute, we colluded to post on the same day), will also flush out other such available bibliographies because bloggers will tell the world. This too will add to the wider knowledge of our industry. In the commercial world, the same things happen. There are ethical issues. Commercially would our collusion over the announcement timing be unfair and ethical?

In this case there is no ethical issue and the whole PR industry benefits. This kind of initiative could have been an industry sector-wide initiative with all the PR institutions creating new wealth for the sector. It is the kind of thinking that we now need to adopt in PR and for our clients. The very nature of organisations is changing. Yes... it is already changing. The Internet and many manifestations of social media are having an influence on the value of organisations.

This is a one off. We just found out that we were all doing similar things. But it is a classic case of social media in action.

Hiding from the social media phenomena as it gains pace is a failure of fudicial duty as much in PR as in corporate governance.

Next up, of course is how we can collaborate and, most especially, involve all PR academics and practitioners to help build on these resources and add value to their industry.

What is especially exciting for me is that this is an example of how a wide range of values is presented to an audience. These values are presented in a token that could be called 'bibliography'. There are a host of such tokens (both wikis and bibliographies on line) these particular tokens are relevant to the PR industry. Here then, are tokens with values relevant to a particular group of people. It is not beyond the realm of the possible that these wikis will find resonance with practitioners and relationships will be created. This is classic for the theory of the Relationship Value Model. It will be a case study worth following especially as the channels for communication are blogs and wikis.

The employers of 3000 press and public relations practitioners in the UK public service might find these works helpful for the continues professional development of their practitioners. The consultants who can now so easily access the reference works that underpin the veracity of their practice might point to these contributions and the institutions that represent the industry will no doubt reference these works as evidence of a thriving practice.

Here then is a place where knowledge can be accessed quickly for practitioners who want information or access to the leading thinkers and researchers in in the PR sector.

What would now be fantastic would be help so we can all collaborate and really develop a single global, detailed and always up-to-date resource for the industry.

Picture: The Library of Alexandria

bibliogrpahy
public relations
research
wiki
richard bailey
philip young
david phillips
new media

Social Media Rules

It took no time at all for Constantin's Post to rock 'n roll.


Simon Collister: This is something the UK’s CIPR should take note of...

Terpin Communications Group: Apparently, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, except for PR professionals (and Stephen Colbert).

Alex Pullin: Gets a response from Contantin: he would like to see: 1. a mechanism that will allow PR pros to correct false information 2. a codethat PR pros could subscribe to - something that will back them when their clients will ask them to do act unethical in Social Media Commons as Wikipedia, del.icio.us or digg.

An invitation

Dear public relations industry.

The first World Congress on Communication for Development is seeking practitioners who can deliver communication which . . .

• Is, first and foremost, about people and the process needed to facilitate their sharing of knowledge and perceptions in order to effect positive developmental change - media and technology are tools to this end, but not ends in themselves.


• Is based on dialogue, which is necessary to promote stakeholders' participation. Such participation is needed in order to understand stakeholder perceptions, perspectives, values, attitudes and practices so they can be incorporated into the design and implementation of development initiatives.


• Follows the two-way, horizontal model and not the traditional one-way, vertical model of Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver and increasingly makes use of emerging many to many forms of communication made possible through new technologies. Even when used along more unidirectional models (e.g., campaigns), communication needs to facilitate the understanding and taking into account of people's perceptions, priorities and knowledge.


• Gives voice to those most affected by the development issue(s) at stake, allowing them to participate directly in defining and implementing solutions and identifying development directions.


• Recognizes that reality is largely socially constructed. The implications are that there can be different realities (or different perceptions of the same reality) for the same situation according to specific groups' perceptions and needs. Thus the role of development and by extension communication is not to "impose" the correct reality, but rather to foster dialogue to facilitate mutual understanding among different perspectives. Communication for development therefore, respects and works with the different social, religious and cultural foundations of the people, communities and nations engaged in development processes.


• Is contextual. There is no universal formula capable of addressing all situations and therefore it should be applied according to the cultural, social and economic context.


• Uses a number of tools, techniques, media and methods to facilitate mutual understanding, define and bridge differences of perceptions, and take action towards change, according to the particular needs of the development initiative. These tools and techniques should be used in an integrated way and are most effective when used at the beginning of development initiatives.

Sincerley,
World Congress on Communication for Development

The gravy train is listed here.

See y'all in Rome.

Our world is global - time to act global?

Constantin Basturea is one of the most aware 'New Media' practitioners in the world. This blog post is very significant. He says: The problem of edits by PR firms for client — or any “pay for edit” arrangements — is not going to disappear. This is not only about using Wikipedia to promote one’s clients - it’s also about accuracy and reputation. As Wikipedia’s readership, popularity, and position in search engines results will grow, companies will become more and more concerned about the accuracy of Wikipedia’s entries and on how their reputation is affected by it, and will not stay idle if the entries on their organization, leaders, or products are inaccurate.

Lets face it, some organisations have a pretty pathetic presence in Wikipedia compared to others that understand its value. For an example of how to really offer people information one might look at an example like this one.
It highlights how significant this medium is and so Constantin is right in making this point: The (PR) industry should start working now on the rules of engagement on Social Media Commons — social spaces like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, YouTube, digg, MySpace, and Second Life — that will allow organizations’ participation in a way that is transparent and respects the communities’ rules.
Indeed, it is about time that the Global Allience got stuck in. It has been heel tapping for a long time. The Wikipedia entry for PR is a complete mess. Its about recent American agentry and misses a wider Far Eastern, African and European practice that goes back centuries. The people involved at Global Allience who need to work out what is needed to develop Social Media policies are: Sharing Information and resources: Colin Farrington (UK)

• Website (expansion and changes): IPR/PRSA lead Marie York and Robyn Michaels with some members (CPRS) to help
• Building bridges/research: Toni Muzi Falconi (Italy)
• PR Landscape Juan Carlos Molleda (PRSA), chair; members to be added

If the web site is reasonably up to date, to ensure the entries refelect the global nature of PR one might expect some effort by: Marketing: Jean Valin (Canada)

• Media relations and promotion: Chair Ann Mealor (UK) with existing committee
• Print handout on Global Alliance: Vacant
• Newsletter: Colin Farrington/Marie York (UK) & others to be approached
  

Go for it guys. If its global - you are the right people.

Mobile PR

Lets make no mistake about this, if you are planning a PR campaign think about Mobile.

If this extract from the BBC Newsnight programme does not tell you something about the opportunities join the Foreign Legion.

Paul Mason (pictured) in his blog about the making of the programme was pretty excited.

If you are planning ahead five years think how half a million mobile telephone chips will have affected communication:

1) High spec mobiles with Wifi (being shipped now).
2) A lot of basic phones will ship with a technology called Near Field Communications: its basically an Oyster card and a card reader on your handset (being shipped now).
3) In Tokyo (as well as Norwich - almost) they are already rolling out WiMax : a powerful public version of Wifi. In theory that means you can use your mobile handset to go on the Internet, make an Internet phone call, and bypass your mobile network.
4) Ever more devices being slotted in under the cover - a GPS satnav, Wimax, even a tv receiver. Its just a question of a few more rounds of silicon development.

The future is different. Its open says Paul Senior of Airspan.

Orange the mobile network company is happy about 'broadband everywhere - We will use what is optimal' - a revolutionary thought and not the half baked, half powered, deferential system available in Norwich.

Danny Sullivan Leaves Search Engine Watch

I have this from the IAOC blog: Yesterday Danny Sullivan announced on his blog that he is leaving Search Engine Watch. This was big news in the web developer and marketing communications community, but so far it has prompted little comment in the PR community. This is surprising, when you consider the impact PR, including the lowly news release, can have a search engine visibility. You would think that PR people might have paid more attention to the departure of the person whose name has been synonymous with search engine optimization strategies.

He has many admirers, me among them. Thanks Danny for your dedication over so many years.

The new literature - is important to CIPR

Thirty billion page views in one month by a newspaper owner is a number that should bring every PR practitioner up short. How would anyone get that number of eyeballs on newspaper and magazine article and advertisements. Rupert Murdoch doesn't. The eyeball count he likes are in Internet media.

This media attracts the equivalent to one and a half times the membership of the CIPR clicking on a web page every second of every minute of every hour of every day. These are audience numbers that PR has to engage with. We have no choice. We have to use every method for communication available to reach these audiences.

Our competition is no longer an alternative agency. David Siffrey shows one competitor. It is the 50 million bloggers. The audience, the public, the stakeholder is also the medium. Two new blogs are created every second. These are people like Rt. Hon. David Milliband, Sir Peter Stothard, Oliver King, Andrew Lloyd Webber and the President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations. Some are not quite so erudite as others but together they are publishing 18 articles every second. Of course one in three of these articles are in Japanese and probably only one in 16 emanates from the Europe. So just short of 750 posts are made by Britsh bloggers every second. Its not that many really. Just 13 million articles a month.

Wait a minute..... It is more literature generated by our population that at any time in history. It is even more powerful than the penny post. It is a literature that, like these people taking part in the BBC programme is engaging a generation. It is also a public literature.

If your profession is to engage with public literature. It would seem extra-ordinary not to engage with the most prolific of all literature in all time.

Of course this literature will change, it will morph, like all media and all literature before it, it will mature. That is no reason to ignore it.

This is why I have cross posted a comment on Stuart Bruces' blog about the apparent view of the principle advisor to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

I have thought hard about whether to comment on this issue. I have commented in the past. Stuart shows who else has engaged in this conversation including Richard Bailey who is a long time observer of public relations education. It does matter to our industry and especially the members of the Institute.

It matters at a number of levels.

The evidence that there are new channels for communication are all round us. Take any train journey and count the number of iPods in use and one gets the idea. Not all are used for music. One may also see evidence of people creating and responding to text messages frantically writing text into their cell phones. In Starbucks round the world people work on laptops using wireless connection to the Internet. The most insular of people must surely see these things round them and a moment's thought shows that these are channels for communication.

But are they legitimate channels for Public Relations communication?

Well, in part, yes. The are the means by which a press releases can be distributed, for example, by email. Cell phones are good for arranging meetings and events. The Web is useful for the delivery of lists of people such as journalists.

But this is not using new media in the practice of PR it is using the Internet to facilitate PR activities.

Detailed, independent, and empirical analysis of the job descriptions of people who work in public relations (PDF) and join PR associations shows that the industry predominantly attracts people whose main work (in the UK at least) is press relations and event organisation.

The New Media involvement of people at home and at work with forms of communication such as Instant Messenger combined with conference and video telephony, Interactive web sites such as blogs, collaborative project management, co-created knowledge bases like, for example, this new PR Bibliography (a wiki), and completely different commercial Second Life like environments, some with very business oriented applications, is a different form of communication and relationship building.

On the fringe of both these forms of communication and engagement (on/offline) are people who have an interest in reputation management, corporate and product brand promotion, investor relations and influence among communities who affect organisational behaviours. These people form a third phalanx of practitioner with interests that are not mainstream to either the traditional party organiser/press officer or New Media relations practitioner.

• That there are people who earn a living from each of these areas of activity is not in dispute.
• That there are companies that invest heavily in these areas of activity a matter of public record.
• That there are communities of practitioners, to a greater or lesser extent, associated with these activities such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), PRCA IABC PRSA is evident.

What is important is the relevance of these associations to the three areas of practice outlined above.

I am saddened that the CIPR's principle advisor is not very serious about committing to New Media practice and practitioners.

The latest comment uses a privileged position in the Institute, is retrograde and flies in the face of the CIPR's own Internet Commission findings (I was its chairman) in 2000/1. Perhaps it is now time for the Institute to publish those papers for all the members, and not just a select few to see the papers that were presented.

The CIPR's spokesman, prescient in so many other ways, seems to dismiss an area of practice that is growing by being critical of a form of Internet Mediated communication, namely blogs.

His comment in Profile Magazine: "If there are any good blogs still around in six months I'll come back to it," may not be directly aimed at blogging literati and Knights of the Realm , senior political commentators or Ministers of the Crown but are, this time, all-inclusive. As, in his own words the principle advisor to the Institute'e Council (For Imediate Release show 160) seems to be that my organisation (the CIPR) is under no pressure to consider, let alone act on, the significance of New Media in the interests of its members.

This view runs contrary to informed opinion among the world's most involved commentators such as WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell (owners of Hill & Knowlton and GCI among other PR firms). In a CNN interview last week, Sir Martin said: "One of the interesting things is that the new technologies, the blogs, the development of Web sites, the development of social networking sites, is really I think probably giving a new driver to public relations and public affairs. Paid-for publicity, it is known from research, is probably less effective than editorial publicity".

Sir Martin makes it apparent that this is an area of development for the most powerful PR agencies in the world and, at the same time makes the connection between New Media and the third phalanx of practice.

It would also appear Edelman's David Brain, who commented last week that Public Relations practitioners are the 'natural inhabitants of this (Social Media) world' is of a like mind. There is agreement that development of skills, models of best practice and working in New Media, is an opportunity for PR practitioners.

The critical issues for Edelman, H&K and GCI and many, if not most other, PR consultants and in-house practitioners are:

• Who will represent the interests of practitioners involved in New Media;
  
• Who will ensure the training, education and mentoring is available;
  
• Who, will take up the sector wide mantle of representations with officialdom as this area of work evolves to the majority of members both in-house and in smaller agencies and
  
• Where is the imprimatur for proposing planned, managed and properly evaluated New Media programmes?

....


The timing of the CIPR statement was not good. Within 48 hours the Economist in an article headlined 'Who Killed the Newspaper', suggests that current media relations practice (the rock and foundation of CIPR member numbers) will have to change. It is not the first publication to identify the online threat to newspaper survival and journalists in-post.

Are PR practitioner members to die with the print media? Is there nothing the CIPR can do for them - such as retraining for the New Media. The present stance seems not to serve even the core membership well.

Critical comments from a leading official of an influential PR association (even if research of its membership demonstrates a focus that leans towards relationships with print journalists and party planning) are not helpful to those who make a living advising organisations about managing their social media presence (including Edelman, Hill & Knowlton and GCI,). This is especially true when many of these agencies boast significant membership of the CIPR and other like associations world-wide. Such criticism has, to an outsider and however misleadingly, the ring turf wars, splits and division.

The CIPR seems to be selectively representing its members but not the practices of public relations identified by Sir Martin or David Brian.

Colin Farrinton's exposure to a Public Relations audience in numbers well in excess of any CIPR conference platform in an interview in For Immediate Release (a New Media public relations specific podcast), experience of the President's blog and a scan the Institue's own Commission papers would at least have shown that there is a place for members who are active in the New Media.

...


This most recent statement, to return to the blogging issue in six months, indicates that client investment to engage a community of people who comment about client brands, products and behaviours can wait for six months or so before further guidance is available.

Indeed, it would seem an even later date because that is as soon the Institute will vest time considering the significance of this New Media for members.

Meantime:

• Member can see comments online about their clients companies and professional practice but have no professional guidelines.
  
• There is discrimination between New Media member practitioners and other members.
• It even has policies.
• The Institute is willing to accept freely donated articles in its magazines and training in this area during such a New Media moratorium.
• Its regional organisations are running well attended New Media events.
  
• The Institute is even charging members money to attend these activities.
  
• There is a miss-match in the education programme.
  

The CIPR New Media strategy, to a casual observer would seem to be dysfunctional. A dichotomy, or worse?

Who distinguishes the private comments of John Presott and Governement policy or the comments of Colin Farrington and The Chartered Institute or PR practice in general.

This apparent public voice of Public Relations in the UK, (the CIPR)

• Suggests that practitioners working in New Media are less than welcome into the fold because they are:
  

• At best, too far ahead/different to mainstream practice (press release writing, pitching and party planning and something called 'spin')

• At worst, engaging with people (that is, bloggers like the Rt. Hon. David Milliband, Sir Peter Stothard and Oliver King) who fall outside some, as yet, ill defined but hoped for blogging elite.

• Already has (a) blogging policies:

• a policy against bloggers astroturfing (but does it have a credible capability to campaign, advise members or even align itself with the real, global, campaigners who are working in this area?), which suggests a deep understanding of the blogersphere.
  

• Wants to profit from New Media:

• Does not have a publication, white paper or guidance note about New Media. Its five year old Commission Report is out of print and its text books do not even mention Technorati or Google Blog Search.
  
• Is able to accept voluntary contribution (e.g. articles in magazines, books) to generate wealth on its expertise (?) in New Media (Profile cover price is £4.75)
  
• Takes money from members and non-members attending events associated with New Media.

• Seeks educational organisations to prepare and educate young people for the industry
  • Is prepared to engage trainers who have no experience of social media to teach it
  • Is prepared to teach new media techniques without a prior foundation in new media context, strategy, planning, monitoring or evaluation
    
  • Endorses F/E courses that do not include New Media modules by default
  • Provides no franchise to F/E establishments to examine the social and economic consequence deriving from the semantic Web as it affects the practice of PR.

I start writing the the second edition of the CIPR's book on Internet mediated PR this week. It shows that there is a commitment in this area.
I begin teaching New Media courses at first degree and Masters level in a month's time which shows there is commitment among CIPR recommended FE establishments.
The regional branches are, evident in the course I ran for the west of England last Thusrsday, running new media courses. With people like Juliet making their first ever blog posts.

This is evidence of an underlying groundswell of interest, support and commitment to New Media and that is important.

However, it shows there is inconsistency and that is not helpful.

Picture: Rupert Murdoch

Introducing Juliet Spare

My name is Juliet Spare and I'm currently studying for my CIPR Advanced Certificate in Public Relations at the University of Central England.

My chosen critique subject (which has a deadline looming), will hopefully hone in on a strand of social media: namely blogging. I'm hoping this lecture will inspire my essay!