The BP oil rig explosion just hit the two-month milestone.

At last count, I was one of 10,332 writers (my horseshoe-far number) who weighed in with a perspective or two on BP’s crisis communications.

Make that 10,333, with the BBC highlighting BP boss Tony Hayward’s gaffes.

A byproduct of BP’s PR nightmare involves the resurrection of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill that occurred more than 20 years ago.

Using the Factiva database (global version), we pulled up the number of articles that mention the Exxon Valdez crisis up to its two-month milestone. We also captured the number of articles on the BP crisis that included the Exxon Valdez spill, again using the two-month period from point of accident.

You can see how the data plays out below.

For ExxonMobil brand stewards, this must make for a sobering read.

There have been almost twice as many articles mentioning the Exxon Valdez thanks to BP’s “gusher” than during the equivalent period when the Exxon accident actually happened.

Now, it’s true that the Exxon Valdez mainly serves as fringe fodder in the BP stories. Still, there’s a negative halo effect from the words “Exxon Valdez” being recounted 6,134 times in association with the BP tragedy.

Furthermore, as one rakes through this coverage, it becomes apparent that the BP crisis provides a reason for the media to dust off the Exxon Valdez story with a new peg for standalone attention.

That’s what The Guardian did under the headline “Exxon Valdez, and Still Waiting in Alaska“:

I just tripped across this interesting interview with lawyer Brian O’Neill, who has for two decades represented 2,600 Alaskans who made claims for damages against Exxon over the Valdez oil spill.

Those who subscribe to the escrow-fund-as-shakedown thesis might bear O’Neill’s tale in mind. Exxon fought the claims in court for nearly 20 years:

CNN: Did anything surprise you once you started representing the fishermen and taking on Exxon after the Valdez spill?

O’Neill: I thought that — like a lot of people think now with regard to BP — that Exxon would want to settle the case relatively early and move on and I was surprised a number of times with the fact that this was World War III to them, and they dealt with it that way …

For those counting at home, put this one under the negative sentiment category. 

That’s why ExxonMobil is going on the offensive by starting a blog (two categories: safety and miscellaneous) and flying CEO Russ Tillerson eastward to throw BP under the bus during testimony before the Energy and Environment Subcommittee last week:

Sticking to this system has required us to make some difficult decisions. We do not proceed with operations if we cannot do so safely. The American people have shown their support for deepwater drilling – but they expect it to be done safely and in an environmentally sensitive way.

Equally revealing, ExxonMobil is proactively reminding the world it spent $180 million trying to drill the world’s deepest offshore well before walking away from the unfinshed job because it was too dangerous.

Literally thousands of PR blogs dot - some might say clog - the social media landscape.

When I started Ishmael’s Corner in 2008, I concluded the last thing the world needed was another digital pulpit spewing about embargoes, e-mail blasts to reporters, and the like.

Instead, this blog has strived to address storytelling in business communications, a concept that can be counterintuitive to many executives, particularly those coming from engineering orientations.

With that said, I’ve decided that every 88 posts or so, it’s OK to make an exception to the rule (and perhaps trigger some positive karma according to Chinese numerology).

With the caveat dispensed -

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the often contentious relationship that exists between influencers - defining this category broadly to include reporters, editors, bloggers, etc. - and the PR community.

You can count on a Michael Arrington diatribe about the PR profession every quarter, leaving the reader to conclude that without those pesky PR people, TechCrunch would be more efficient and world hunger would be solved.

Given PR’s focus on specific clients and a media property’s agenda to cover broad industries and issues, there’s bound to be some choppy interactions.

That’s OK.

It goes with the territory.

If the influencer doesn’t perceive a given client as relevant or a client delivers special treatment to certain influencers, it’s bound to cause bad feelings.

Is there a word that describes a relationship as being both symbiotic and adversarial (and don’t say “frenemy”)?

This dynamic existed when I entered the profession and I suspect it will still be there long after I exit stage left.

But here’s the part that bothers me and cuts to the core of relationship-building 101.

Too often, PR professionals only reach out to influencers when they need something in the form of:

* Cover my client

* Meet my client.

* Talk to my client.

Even without the aid of data visualization, one starts to see a trend emerge.

Consider for a moment what happens in everyday life if the only time a person contacts you is when they want something from you; i.e., an introduction, an e-mail address, money (sons and daughters don’t count).

When PR professionals fall into this trap, it limits how the relationship evolves.

But if you make a point of contacting influencers specifically when you DON’T need something, now you’ve got the basis of genuine relationship-building.

Of course, the information you’re sharing needs to be relevant - better yet, relevant and not in the public domain - to what the influencer tracks.

If the PR profession jumped on this bandwagon, we would go a long way toward resolving what the warden in Cool Hand Luke called, “a failure to communicate.”

P.S. Tom Foremski wrote in SiliconValleyWatcher about the importance of hyperlinks in e-mail interactions with media properties, which is worth a read and ties to the big picture of helping the influencer do his or her job.

Tiger takes center stage tomorrow to publicly share his mea culpa.

Every pundit and his brother has weighed in with a view. The local NBC affiliate was in our office today to interview our crisis guru John Radewagen.

So I’ll keep my view brief.

The statement on Tiger’s Web site doesn’t lead me to believe that tomorrow will have a happy ending:

Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00 a.m. EST on Friday at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future, and he plans to apologize for his behavior.

It sounds like he’s hanging out with the guys over beers.

I also think it’s the wrong move to not field questions after he speaks.

Yes, I understand as articulated on his Web site that “Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between him and his wife.” By not fielding questions he hopes to control the tawdry side of this ”little” crisis.

His quandary is that the more he strives to control tomorrow, the less likely he’s going to come across as sincere and truly apologetic.

Because a Q&A session forces Tiger to be Tiger.

You can’t script questions.

There is one move Tiger could make that would absolutely show remorse.

If he shared that he continues to need more time to focus on his family and, as a result, won’t be playing in the Master’s this year.

That would show the man’s serious about rehab.

There’s nothing more precious to Mr. Woods than winning more major titles than Jack Nicklaus.

If he was willing to give up a shot at the next major, the making of “Tiger, The Sequel” could begin.

Alexandre Bilodeau winning Canada’s first gold medal in the men’s freestyle moguls on Sunday got me thinking.

Every Olympics reveals terrific human interest stories such as Bilodeau and his inspiration coming from his disabled older brother. You certainly don’t need a media kit to write up Team U.S.A.’s historic beat-down of the Russian hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

But these high-drama moments don’t occur on a daily basis, which begs the question:

How is the Vancouver Organizing Committee, affectionately dubbed VANOC, facilitating storytelling at the games beyond the athletes?

For answers, I took a look at the media centre on the official Winter Olympics Web site and was greeted with the words:

These resources help tell the story of the 2010 Winter Olympic games.

Encouraged, I pulled up the “Quick Facts about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games” (under media kits)  expecting compelling information, anecdotes and perhaps an obscure tidbit or two. Instead, nine pedistarian facts came to the fore:

17 days of Olympic Games events

10 days of Paralympic Games events

5,500 Olympic Games athletes and officials (projected)

1,350 Paralympic Games athletes and officials (projected)

80+ countries participating in Olympic Winter Games

40+ countries participating in Paralympic Winter Games

10,000 media representatives

3 billion worldwide television viewers

75 million visits worldwide to vancouver2010.com (projected)

Of all the documents in the media centre, the one with the most promise proved to be the backgrounder on ice making, which started:

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will see the world’s best winter athletes compete on the coolest fields of play: ice. Making great competition ice is not an easy task. It requires the world’s top ice makers, known as ice meisters, as well as state-of-the-art ice making equipment and a dedicated team of specialists whose job is to maintain perfect surfaces for figure skaters, speed skaters, short track speed skaters, curlers, wheelchair curlers, sliders, ice hockey and ice sledge hockey players.

I had no idea the temperature of the ice varies depending on the competition.

For example, figure skating ice is the softest of the Olympic ice surfaces at −3° C which helps skaters dig in for jumps and spins. In contrast, speed skating ice can be as cold as −9° C since it’s all about speed as opposed to grip.

Good stuff.

I also liked the concept of ice meisters. The backgrounder goes on to identify the ice meister for speed skating, the ice meister for curling, etc.

With that said, they could have humanized the story by sharing how each of these ice meisters came by their gifts. Perhaps one was a prodigy, complaining about the density of ice cubes in his or her soda pop at a young age.

In spite of this deliverable, the vast majority of content in the media centre is a tad dry.

VANOC did work out an arrangement with the AFP news service to feed stories to the site under the News section (not technically part of the media centre). This means for every drab release on how to clear security or the revenue generated from Olympic swag, we also get stories such as “Women Lugers Bemoan Abnormal Child’s Start:”

I shared half of my list of favorite posts from a cruise through the past yesterday.

Here’s the remaining five.

6) Iron Reporter: Wall Street Journal Versus NY Times On A Russian Train

I came up with the Iron Reporter concept for scrutinizing how two different reporters cover the same topic. In this case, my investigative reporting instincts dug up a tweet that possibly explains why Paul Glader from the Journal didn’t fair well against his compadre from The New York Times:

7) Power Of Contrast Comes Through In McDonald’s Story

Given the countless meals at McDonald’s during my youth, this was a disconcerting walk down nostalgia lane:

I can’t believe they’re doing away with the fiberglass seats. It was almost a rite of passage for every kid to misbehave in McDonald’s, inevitably fall off the chair and get conked on the head as a reminder from the karma gods to listen to their mom.

8) Borrowing From Crocodile Dundee, “Now That’s An Anecdote”

Media coverage on the Bilski intellectual property case before the Supreme Court spiked in November, allowing me to make my own case for anecdotes (like the Piggly Wiggly patent) and do some original reporting on the side:

I found Mr. Saunders’ Patent No. 1242872 and couldn’t help but notice the filing date of October 21, 1916 and the issue date of October 1917.

It’s comforting to know that even back then, the U.S. Patent Office moved at its own pace.

I love the language in the actual patent:

The object of my said invention is to provide a store equipment by which the customer will be enabled to serve himself and in so doing, will be required to review the entire assortment of goods carried in stock, conveniently and attractively displayed and after selecting the list of goods desired, will be required to pass a checking and paying station at which the goods select may be billed, packaged and settled for before retiring from the store, thus relieving the store of a large proportion of the usual incidental expenses, or overhead charges required to operate it, all as well be herinafter more fully described and claimed.

Apparently, English teachers back in 1917 were a bit more tolerant of run-together sentences.

9) A Mass Comms Curriculum Alone Short-sheets Tomorrow’s PR Pro

Social media extraordinaire Steven Farnsworth gave me a pulpit to address the future of PR skills, which I also posted in Ishmael’s Corner:

One of my favorite modern artists is Chuck Close who takes portraits to a different level. His painting and photography talent serve as only the starting point for his pieces.

Close has immersed himself in the printing process ranging from carving linoleum blocks to applying acid to his etching plates. Geometry – the use of a grid to break the face down into incremental units – and even topology also come to play in his art.

This collision of creativity and science produces stunning results not possible with only the “arts.”

10) The New York Times Interpretation Of An Enterprise Computing Story

It’s not easy to crack the mainstream media with an enterprise computing story. You need that fresh wrinkle to make for an entertaining read:

The story explains how the University of Minnesota took proceeds from licensing the “code” to Honeycrisp apples to help pay for a $6 million supercomputer.

Can you imagine the university’s computer scientists going door to door selling chocolate bars to raise this kind of dough? No way could they equal the windfall from the apple IP.

That’s a wrap. Now back to 2010.