Tuesday, December 14, 2004

I participated in a panel discussion on "Technology, the Media, and the Delivery of Information" at today's lunch meeting of the Public Relations Society of America's Tar Heel chapter. I was designated blogger, on a panel with Jane Seccombe, biz editor of the Winston-Salem Journal; Karen Koutsky, vp of news for Fox8 TV; Stephanie Martin, a reporter for WFDD public radio; and Mark Sutter, city editor of the News & Record. Audience was PR pros. Much skepticism about blogs. Online definitely not front of mind with the TV, radio, or W-S Journal folks. "Blogs are all just opinion," whispered one panelist to me. "No that's not true," I whispered back. Good serious questions from the crowd, stuff we've discussed here forever, a reminder that there is still a steep adoption curve ahead of us. Q&A: Are blogs journalism? (sometimes); can you trust blogs? (trustworthy ones, you can, can you trust Dan Rather?), etc. My anecdote for this particular audience concerned an article I was reporting for my day job last month. When I Googled the subject matter, up came the blog of a technology consultant who dealt with my issue. No PR people needed, I read his stuff, then called him directly for more info. My advice: get your clients blogging. Lots of practical discussion, plus big picture stuff. Nice of them to have me. 4:04:45 PM    comment []

BizJournal: "USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham is joining the faculty at N.C. A&T State University to establish the Institute of Advanced Journalism Studies." Possibilities abound. I must introduce myself to Mr. Wickham. 3:45:53 PM    comment []

Progress: UNCG and A&T have hired a director for their research park project, the Greensboro Center for Innovative Development. John R. Merrill comes to town from Troy, N.Y, where he ran financial and business operations at Rensselaer Technology Park. 10:23:28 AM    comment []

NYT: "Google is adding major libraries to its database." This is A-1, above-the-fold news in the print edition. Should be, too. In the future when we have those ubiquitous omniscient computers with the sexy female voices, we'll look back at that headline and smile. More from John Markoff and Edward Wyatt: "Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web. "It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library...The goal is to...create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections." 7:40:11 AM    comment []

John Hammer discovers blogs! Well, he calls them "logs," which has its merits in terms of both euphony and etymology, but isn't in common usage. Still, it's good to see the editor of the most blog-like of paper publications join the conversation here in the early 21st century. Johnny is exercised about some doggerel Lex Alexander posted at his log, er blog. Lex was mocking City Councilman Robbie Perkins, who wants a newspaper that is more of a cheerleader for economic development, and wrote an admittedly odd haiku: Paper: Cheerleader with no brains and no panties. That's what Robbie wants. Ick. Sounds like something you would come up with after spending too many hours cruising the photos of nubiles that grace the Rhino each week. Anyway, John wanted to do more than tweak Lex, he wanted to blast the N&R for being negative. (Pause here to savor the thought of John Hammer decrying negativity in the local press.) Unfortunately, the facts of this particular complaint were not on John's side. So he just left them out. Here's how Hammer put it: "Perkins has some legitimate objections to the way the N&R is handling the whole Dell giveaway, and he made his opinion known in a straightforward manner." Here's the same incident described at John Robinson's blog: In an interview with reporter Nate DeGraff, [Perkins] said that he couldn't even get past our headline on the latest Dell story. "Forsyth's pitch for Dell heftier" is what it said. The facts: Forsyth and Winston-Salem are offering about $28 million; Guilford and Greensboro, $12.4 million. Perkins said the headline shouldn't have been published in the "home-team newspaper." Silly stuff all around -- from Perkins, Lex, and now John Hammer. But at least we've got the Rhino talking about (b)logs. 7:33:24 AM    comment []