Sunday, December 17, 2006

Celebrate good Times


Strange I would have thought I would feel a bit more elated if I was given Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Oh well something to add to the C.V. I suppose.

How apt that after three months of hearing endlessly about UGC, new media, democratisation of the media, and my personal favourite "the death of the journalist", Time Magazine recognises all of this and gives everyone the award.

Man of the Year - Got a nice ring to it.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Some Faith Restored...


Good old David Attenborough. It was almost a fore gone conclusion that he would win the BBCs Greatest Living Icon poll. Macca and Mozza were both interesting competitors with plenty of support but Attenborough is a cut above.

The passion and desire for his field is unrivalled and yet he suffers from none of the over the top self indulgance so many others afford themselves. Planet Earth is just the latest in a plethora of fantastic nature programmes with Attenborough at the helm. Be it in front of the camera as in his earlier days or now as a narrator he always brings that level of a quiet, unassuming, unintrusive but ultimately intelligent and knowledgeable voice.

ITV may think that programmes like EXTINCT (not my capitals - awful I know...) are "nature shows" and that by making them interactive (ohh you can vote to save an animal! It's like X Factor but with animals!) it will be engaging.

But actually what Attenborough has done by bringing the world of nature into people's living rooms in an interesting and informative way and letting the images speak for themselves is provide a legacy of shows that will beguil and entertain many generations when, sadly, many of the animals featured will either be extinct or only visible in zoos.

How jolly decent of the "Great" British public to recognise this now.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Yawn

Blogs - they are everywhere...

Interesting that "200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs. "

I'm going to try and keep going though. I imagine my posting during Christmas will significantly fall as (a) we don't have broadband at home and (b) it's the Christmas holidays...

A Tall Story




Yet again news outdoes anything fiction could ever come up with

Friday, December 08, 2006

"I'm in Public Relations."..."My relations are already a little too public." (Arrested Development Genuis)


Finally worked in an Arrested Development reference, C'mon!

A few points from the PR lecture of the last of the Reporters and the Reported series.

Simon Lewis was a jolly nice chap and managed to skilfully avoid answering most questions and yet convince us until after the lecture that he had answered them. One person tried asking the same question twice after he took her point of view apart the first time. Needless to say this didn't work and was rather amusing.

For me the most interesting point he raised was the idea of the difference between image and reputation. It's true, as he said, that repairing image, or changing image, is not too difficult. It's like people: a new scarf, a different hair cut, a fancy pair of shoes - the image is altered. But the reputation of that person is still the same. Beneath the image the reputation and this is far more important.

A company can cope from an image crisis. But it can rarely cope from a reputation crisis. Once people lose faith, they ain't going back.

As for the old "PR v Journalists" debate Simon was of the opinion we need to get along as we will be working closely along side one another and require each other in order to benefit the public. This sounds like a very fair way of viewing it. After the recent internet debates that took place on the PR thread I think we can all agree that this is a reasonable course of action.

And I think we need to understand that arguments and confrontation are not an inherently evil thing. Charles Reiss, the first of the R&R speakers (what a nice loop) was quite adamant that if you weren't having "blazing rows" with your contacts in the press offices then something was seriously wrong.

And just for the record I will never go back to Vodafone no matter how much good press they get. My personal opinion of their reputation is simply not good enough.

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Top 10 Albums


I have again been tagged to do a Top 10 List. This time it's albums and by Will Dean. I have picked one per artist and all studio albums. Except for Grace as the first one they are not in order.

I will probably update this to give a brief reason why I chose each album but right now I am too busy, although not too busy to do this much of the post. Cheers.

Peace and Goodwill to all Men - but not Children


Is this extreme parenting, a clever lesson, a waste of police time or just another example of CraZy! America? Whatever it is, it's an interesting story...

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