Category Archives: Media

Counselors Academy: Monday afternoon sessions I’m hoping to cover

The afternoon sessions promise a good look at the present and near future:

Julia Hood: Town Hall luncheon interactive conversation with the editor-in-chief of PR Week

Not sure what to expect of this session.

Josh Hallett: Bloggety, Blog, Blog

The conference program says: “From Newsweek’s cover to CNN broadcasts, blogs are the most hyped tool for today’s communicatiors. Find out if the hype’s justified. And discover how our new communications world can evolve into a practitioner’s dream – or nightmare.”

I’m looking forward to this session. Given the profile of its membership, Counselors Academy is a good indicator of the extent to which social media tools have been adopted by small and mid-size firms across North America. At last year’s session in Phoenix, the people who attended Giovanni Rodriguez’s blogging workshop showed only very early awareness of RSS feeds and newsreaders. It will be interesting to see how much farther these media have proliferated in the past yer.

Tom Foremski and Robert French, moderated by Giovanni Rodriguez: The Future of Newspapers/The Future of PR

Another forward looking session. It’s advance billing: “This panel … will look at the financial stress that many newspapers are under and examine a number of possible causes. What does this mean for the future of newspapers? What does this mean for the future of public relations? The panel will debate and discuss a number of recent trends including the impact of Craigslist; competing sources for news; citizen journalism; and new media (blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, etc.)” Hmmm. Wonder what the “etc.” could be…

Mesh Day One: Can Blogs Influence Politics?

This session featured a panel of well-known Canadian political columnists Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne along with Brad Davis, the Director of Internet Communications for the Michael Ignatieff Liberal leadership campaign. Warren Kinsella moderated the discussion.

Paul Wells got off a couple of great zingers (doesn’t he always?)

  • “We are being flooded by commentary by people who “don’ know jack, can’t write the english language and give it away for free.”
  • “99.9% of Sun columnists don’t add anything to anyone’s day.” (You have to be Canadian to understand this reference. The Sun Newspaper chain fashioned itself after British tabloids in order to build an audience. They now are having the greatest problems adjusting to sweeping changes in the media market.)