By Melissa Lewelling, Account Executive, The Hoffman Agency . As a former journalist, I tend to find PR events featuring journalists and the ethereal question, “How can PR help you do your job better?” — frankly — comical. These types of events often feature panels of journalists who don’t want to be there, don’t really …more
Turning to the front page of The New York Times business section yesterday, I did a double take. Sitting above the fold found The New York Times taking on the story line of Amazon constructing buildings around oversized greenhouses in downtown Seattle. I wouldn’t exactly call this a puff piece, but it sure does come …more
Sure, the Golden State Warriors just landed one of the top free agents in NBA history and will now enter the 2016/2017 season as prohibitive favorites to take back the championship crown from LeBron. But the behind–the-scenes winner in the Kevin Durant sweepstakes was “owned media.” Eschewing the conventional news release and press conference, Durant …more
Failure. Point to a movie or a book that captivates, and I’ll show you failure. Shrek. Absolutely. Something more high-brow, like the best-selling novel “A Little Life.” Again, failure underpins the story. For it’s the failure — something going horribly awry, the more pain the better — that creates the tension in a story. As …more
If you missed it last week — perhaps studying the latest numbers from the Department of Labor? — BuzzFeed proved what everyone has always believed in theory. If you stretch enough rubber bands across a watermelon, it will eventually succumb to the pressure in one glorious Kodak moment. The New York Times used the BuzzFeed …more
Earlier this year, The New York Times celebrated the 20-year anniversary of its website. My Tuesday post shared a back story leading up to the site’s launch, compliments of Pete Lewis who was the paper’s foreign correspondent for cyberspace at the time. Today, we look at the actual words from Jan. 22, 1996 (my takes …more
Earlier this year The New York Times celebrated the 20-year anniversary of its website. Prior to the launch, the paper’s online reach depended on that “pioneer of online media,” AOL. Friend, colleague and periodic co-trainer for our storytelling workshops, Peter Lewis, wrote the introduction story. But before taking a look at his words from …more
The grab bag returns with three vignettes from the wacky world of communications. Financial Times Rejects Business Storytelling The job description for columnists always includes the verb, provoke. In this regard, I suppose the column by FT’s Lucy Kellaway, “Stories Are Best for the Bible and In Novels” works. After all, I’m taking the …more
The relationship between journalists and PR is never going to be a perfect fit. Each party has a different agenda. But I do think it’s possible to diffuse what is too often considered a contentious relationship between PR and journalists. Specifically, framing the issue by supply-and-demand economic theory would go a long way to solving …more
