Now that I' ve published a few e-mail threads in the raw between me and
various public relations officers for the companies I'm covering, some
valuable feedback to the experiment is beginning to arrive that has me
rethinking the idea of automatic transparency (in other words, for the
sake of great transaprency, post threads now, ask questions
later). In his blog,
Andy Lark, who recently vacated his post as vice president of
global communications and marketing for Sun Microsystems appears to
approve of the idea and carries it forward as an example of the sort of
transparency that public relations professionals should practice.
Can you imagine the potential of that -- a transparency thread that
connects the transparency of journalists to the transparency of the
public relations community? But, in his Media Guerilla blog, Voce Communications' Mike Manuel has a slightly different take saying:
But then it got me thinking, this practice (if it catches on) has
some interesting implications for PR folk --- particularly the command
and control types.
Case in point, every PR practitioner I know of has (at one point or
another) had to intercede on a line of questioning in an interview.
Perhaps the journalist is looking for dirt or prying for information
that shouldn't be shared or is just leading the interview down a weird
path. How odd would it be to have that interruption recorded and then
later distributed with the story?
Can you say A W K W A R D?
Manuel wasn't alone in expressing some reservations about the idea
of full-blown transparency. Via e-mail, I was notified by one of
my sources of how the grapevine within the hi-tech PR community was
buzzing with rumors -- all true of course -- that I was publishing the
full text of some my e-mail correspondences with public relations
personnel, including their original pitch to me. For example, my exchanges with the folks at Good Technology and RIM for a blog entry I was writing and then my correspondences with representatives for VMWare and IBM regarding some potential coverage of those companies.
An e-mail
from that source (whose asked not to be identified) does a much better
job than I can in describing the thoughts that might go through the
minds of a PR professionals when dealing with journalists who are
practicing automatic transparency. Of even more interest
was the fact that the source subequently sent me a pitch regarding a
controversial issue and when I said I did not agree, the source's first
response was "Please tell me you're not going to publish this on that
transparency channel thing."
Many journalists might be reading this and saying screw the PR
people. Everything they send you is on the record unless
otherwise noted and is fair game. And, if you know me and my no
holds barred style, you probably could see me doing just that (screwing
the PR people). But brushing off the PR community in the name of
transparency would not be a very strategic move for any
journalist -- especially those who understand how the blogosphere
is increasing the competition for eyeball-minutes (sort of like
man-hours).
Looking back over my career as a journalist, some of the work that I
consider to be my best stuff could not have been accomplished without
the assistance of my contacts in the public relations community.
These contacts are often the decision makers who can make or break a
journalist's access to key executives and interviewees. In
a landscape where there's intensified competition among a growing
supply of content providers for eyeball-minutes, the highest quality
content with the best access to sources will rise to the top and get
the most attention. The PR community and the relationships that a
journalist cultivates with its members are some of the most important
assets that a journalist has at their disposal -- assets that not every
content provider has. In other words, they're assets that someone
who makes there living being a journalist like me must think twice
about before taking those relationships for granted and risking
alienation.
Now, I'm not for one minute suggesting that a journalist shouldn't
keep themselves as a respectful arms distance from the people they
cover. This isn't about getting cozy and forgetting
transparency. It's about journalists figuring out how to best
deliver transparency without being disrespectful to the people that
give them their competitive advantage (as journalists). The
aforementioned e-mail with my source turned into a thread out of which
grew some very concrete facts, ideas, and recommendations. I am
taking these on as action items and am looking for feedback from all
corners.
1. Publish an explanation of why I'm practicing transparency.
2. Publish a transparency policy that explains how it works. That
policy should include but not be limited to the following explanation
of my practices (feel free to comment)
- Emails like the ones I published will not be automatically
published without the permission of the sender and without giving the
sender a chance to review the policy. In the interests of
transparency (and protecting the policies of certain PR outfits), I
should be flexible in my requirements as to what must be
published. For example, some PR agencies would prefer that
certain information like the names and specific contact information for
their staffers be redacted.
- I honor all Off the record statements and Non-Disclosure
Agreements (NDAs) but a clear indication should be made in any
correspondence when statements being made are not to be repeated,
off-the-record or not for attribution, or being conveyed under the
auspices of an NDA.
- Dispute resolution: Supply my contact information in the
event that information published in the transparency
channel is innaccurate (bad cut n paste, wrongly attributed, etc.) and
is need of correction.
- Initial inquiries made by me (as opposed to pitches made by
public relations) are fair game for publication as I am the
author. The policies listed above apply to the replies.
3. A reminder in all correspondences that transparency is in "effect" and where -- online -- to get the details.
This is obviously just a start but, per Jay Rosen's suggestion, I
wanted to get my thoughts down when I had the chance. I worry
that I already may have forgotten some of my ideas.
Already, my exchanges with various PR folks has molded my
behavior. In preparing my coverage for a new version of Skype,
I've been exchanging e-mails with Skype's public relations officer
Kelly Larabee that discuss a bug that I encountered. After
several e-mails flew back and forth and she acknowledged the bug, I
asked if I could publish the entire e-mail thread
(with contact info redeacted) and she wrote back "that would be
great, no problem at all." So, here already was a case
where a thread contained some sensitive information and instead of
disrespectfully just publishing the thread, I checked with the
source. By doing so, I sent Larabee a message that not only
indicates respect for her and her job, but that set her expectations
instead of blindly suprising her. My expectation now is that she
will continue to be open and honest with me knowing that when she is,
she's not running the risk of having everything she says become public.
One final aspect of this is what I call the "the system spec." In
an e-mail to me, Andy Lark wrote "for transparency to emerge -- we need
a new system -- and that system first needs a spec and a
playbook." I couldn't agree more. As you can see, from the
journalist's side of the equation, I'm attempting to develop the
playbook and am looking for feedback. This needs to be a collaborative
process. But a playbook alone won't do the trick. For
transparency to work, a journalist cannot be expect to go through the
hoops that I have so far gone through in order to offer the minimal
degree of transparency that I have so far offered. Here are some
examples of the heavy lifting that I've had to do in order to offer
some very basic instances of transparency:
- I've had to cut and paste e-mails in a way that formatting is
very screwy and I have to and fix it. Also, redacting senstivie
data is cumbersome and could use automation. When I receive an
email, I should be able to forward it to a system and tag it with, at
the very least, the sender's name and a title for the editorial project
that the story is associated with. The system should respond via
e-mail with a URL for editing the entry which I can click on an review
before publishing into the transparency channel. The system could
for example provide me with a way to look for specific text to redact
and then do a search and replace on that that text (instead of me
having to do it by hand)
- The system should include a database of contacts and a tickler
that helps the journalist to understand whether or not a source has
been notified of the journalist's transparency policy and how that
source has responded. For example, the source may provide blanket
approval to publish all notes or may say "Ask First." A
more advanced feature could include a way to provide redactable text
strings. For example, a boolean (true/false) field that goes with
a source's e-mail address to that indicates whether the source is ok
with having their e-mail address published or not. Let's say the
answer is no. The "Redact Email Address" field would be set to
true, and the next time I forward an e-mail into the system from that
sender, the system automatically redacts all occurences of the e-mail
address from the text (but still gives me the opportunity to review
it).
These are just some quick thoughts that I jammed out. When I get around
to it, I will break these out into a separate category called
Transparency System Spec and each spec item will get its own
entry. As always more to come, and please comment.
6:23:43 PM 
RadioEdit
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