Journalists and bloggers, alike, have learned that most traditional online newsrooms are little more than dusty repositories of old press releases – not news and not helpful.

Not surprisingly, most online newsrooms are seldom visited. Besides, that’s not how reporters find the material they need for stories … they usually turn to Google and find out what others are saying about you.

The objective of the digital model for online newsrooms developed by the team at The News Group Net LLC – of which I am a partner – is to make a company or organization the go-to online resource for balanced and legitimate news about its industry and business sector.

At the same time, it is a site that reflects stories, voices and news that appeals to the company’s most meaningful audiences – such as investors, the financial community, business partners, employees, customers, consumers, contractors and vendors … and then, maybe, the media.

In other words, we build online newsrooms – such as ISCNewsroom.com and LouisianaSugarNews.com, among others – that quickly become the most credible information resources about an industry as well as the company. In an era of media chaos and turmoil, we create sites for organizations to showcase their own news, targeted to audiences that make a difference.

In the case of Imperial Sugar’s online newsroom, its popularity reflects a 181 percent growth in shareholder value. The site has become the highest rated site of any sugar company in the world, soaring to an Alexa.com ranking of 135,000 in the U.S. (among 12-million sites online). More than anything, Imperial Sugar’s online newsroom has significantly expanded the company’s brand awareness as a leader in the food industry.

When you achieve such transparency, credibility and openness, you get the news media’s attention. That’s how it works in today’s digital era.

Executive Search: In Need of a New Coat of Paint

It’s a familiar story – a seasoned PR veteran is approached by an executive search firm, hyped over an attractive-sounding corporate position, strung out through a series of interviews, and then, told that the evaluation process is too far down the road for further consideration … or some other lie.

For the communication pro, it turns out to be largely a waste of time. For the head hunter, they make their fee.

PR agency leaders are peppered often by calls from job head hunters, seeking names of possible candidates. It’s not unlike realtors seeking leads except the threshold for competence and knowledge in executive search is much, much lower. Anyone with ordinary hygiene can be in executive search.

Executive search is, indeed, a sales job that requires little authentic competence. It is a fairly generalized business, and most people assigned to filling corporate communications slots lack experience, contacts and knowledge. I never met one … or know of anyone else who knows of a head hunter … who possesses more than a thimbleful of savvy about the field they are placing people in. They are merely seeking warm bodies who might interview well.

Let’s call it what it is – Executive search is a field that attracts ego-driven demigods, no intelligence, education or training required. Yes, there are exceptions … there are some people who work hard at doing a good job for clients and candidates … but in the field of communications and PR, they are in a tiny minority, in my opinion.

Executive recruiting in the PR/corporate communications field is more a beauty contest than search for competence and expertise … and it is a disservice to corporate clients of the search firms and an insult to communications professionals. I think it’s a business badly in need of an ethical and professional makeover.

I heard my old acquaintance Scott Simon at NPR interview Dolly Parton a few years ago. While I don’t recall specifics, Scott asked her about some criticism of her work, and I do remember her response.

Ms. Parton said, “Honey, I’ve reached the age where if someone doesn’t like what I do, tough.” I’ve loved Dolly ever since for her independence of thought, and I have reached that point in my life, too.

Here’s what I think:

1. Health care – The seemingly never-ending debate over health care in Washington is not about health care. If it were, the politicians would be talking about the epidemic of obesity sweeping America and the need to ban high fructose corn syrup, a cause of obesity and Type II diabetes. No, the debate in Washington is over money, greed and power. It’s not about the American people; it’s about enrichment for the pharmaceutical and insurance companies and members of Congress. If they were serious about improving heath insurance coverage for Americans, they would adopt a European-style socialized medical program and be done with it. Members of Congress, by the way, will never need to pay for health care for the rest of their lives.
2. Social media – It is truly astonishing how Twitter has revealed how needy many people are. While the online tools of social media could be used to imaginatively create competitive edges for organizations and companies, social media instead is just being used to push the same boring and predictable marketing efforts that never worked in the first place. Users – individuals and corporations – are turning social media into a dull and vast online wasteland.
3. Mainstream media – The news media … journalism … is vanishing. The only legitimate nightly news program with a meaningful Web site is PBS NewsHour. The rest of TV news has been dummied-down to a nonsensical, entertainment-driven Gong Show, as Jon Stewart characterized it. CNN’s coverage, for example, of the recent tsunami threat to Hawaii was reduced to someone holding a low resolution mobile phone connected to Skype, revealing there is little left behind the curtains at CNN. Media giants – like Media General and Post-Newsweek – have compromised print media ethics in favor of chasing dwindling advertising revenue. The New York Times remains America’s best newspaper.
4. Illusions – We live in a society filled with and driven by illusions represented to a complacent and ill-informed population as reality. Once a mighty manufacturing country, the U.S. is reduced to a service and consumer culture. We buy and sell to each other items made in China or elsewhere. Cheap crap. Toyota advertised safe cars for years and people bought into the myth until the bubble burst, and it was revealed that Toyota cars are among the unsafest on highways. Many people wouldn’t know because they don’t or cannot read. We like to think of ourselves as high-minded and ethical while we cheat in business and on our taxes.
5. Reality – AT&T mobile service sucks.
6. Comprehending Up from Down – We’ve become a process-driven society, generally with ill-defined purpose or goals. Just make-work checklists. What’s lost in the dust are the skills of critical analysis. Issues, challenges and problems are solved by critical analysis, not checklists.
7. Technology – As a guy who launched the popular baby boomer online magazine, BoomerCafe.com, in 1999; began blogging in 2003; and now is considered somewhat of an expert in the online world, I am amazed that so many PR and communications people today barely know how to login to email, much less comprehend all the other exciting things happening in the digital era. Hey, people … take the pulse of your Googleability.

Bottom line – Many people seem so angry they no longer care about anyone or anything. The anger is mirrored in TV and motion pictures and seems to be metastasizing into decay. TV news picks up on the anger and would appear to foment anarchy for ratings.

What I believe – America is a country that has lost its spiritual compass. Maybe what we need is what David Brooks of The New York Times wrote about on March 2: “……a serial outpouring of love and nurturing.” Wouldn’t hurt.

In the last year, social media – things like Facebook, Twitter, etc. – has eclipsed porn as the most popular reason for people to be online.

There was a time a few years ago that porn had a commanding share of Internet capacity … more than email, governments and business combined. But it lost it to social media’s popularity.

Now, supported by investment and involvement by some of America’s largest corporations who have a major stake in profits from porn – as detailed by former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges in his new book, “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” – porn is fighting back.

Most visible are aggressive efforts by the evil and invisible porn empire to hijack Twitter, Facebook and blog accounts and use them to promote lonely, sexy girls looking for company. If you make the slightest mistake and click on an innocent-looking direct message, clever virus software will snatch control of your account. The tactics of this war for the Internet are sophisticated technology, dark, dirty and vicious.

Hedges chronicles that enormous money is behind pornography online. Comcast, AT&T and GM “rake in approximately 80 percent of all porn dollars spent by consumers.” Shareholder value of these corporates depends on porn.

Wait a minute! Aren’t we taxpayers a major shareholder in GM?! Yes … even GM is involved.

Toyota cars with faulty accelerator pedals

So, today, what can Toyota do to rebuild trust and attempt to salvage its reputation? Time is critical, and Toyota is doing nothing … nothing … except for a few “We’re working harder for you” TV commercials which do not engender trust.

Toyota must earn back the trust of American car buyers … or its executives should look for another line of work.

A brand is not a slogan or advertising campaign. Certainly not in today’s digital era.

A brand is how an organization behaves – how it walks and acts and accomplishes tangible and authentic deeds that we all can see and measure for ourselves.

Toyota’s brand is not about what the company says it is or is not doing but rather how we perceive the company. Clearly, no one at Toyota comprehends that, as yet.

Here are four things the car maker could do … this moment:

1. Listen and engage – Provide an online site for customers to express their frustration, anger, questions or praise … and the company must respond at once with legitimate solutions or responses to every person. Such a site could be established in a matter of hours.
2. Express empathy – People have died and have been injured by Toyota cars with technical defects. Say you are sorry and ask what you can do will begin to create goodwill, again, with the public (those forgotten people who buy your cars). Forget that the attorneys counsel against it because you will get sued, one way or the other.
3. Be open and not afraid of facing the public – Toyota’s U.S. CEO and no one else must begin visiting towns and cities across America to meet with dealers and customers alike. No speeches … he must listen and talk with people, not at them.
4. Fire all the Washington lobbyists – Toyota must stop doing business in America by buying favor in Washington. Yes, greasing palms with cash might delay recalls of defective automobiles for a while but it is a cowardly and dishonest business model for a company that once had a pristine reputation.

Toyota has revealed how it’s gotten problems solved in the U.S. – the company hires legions of Washington lobbyists who get problems – such as potential recalls for defective cars – swept under the carpet, the driving public be damned.

In a city where the primary commodity is influence, influence is bought and sold. No place is influence more available to buy than in the halls of Congress. Money gets action. Toyota knows how the game is played. It is called corruption.

Excuses are flying over why the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) didn’t respond as early as 2007 with a recall over Toyota’s accelerator problems despite deaths on the highways around the country. Chances are that NHTSA was told to back off. A Toyota lobbyist made a call to someone who made a call, and the problem went away. No fingerprints, except on the money.

NHTSA, by the way, is under the Department of Transportation, whose Secretary Ray LaHood has no apparent credentials in the field of transportation beyond driving to his restaurant in Illinois before becoming a politician.

Toyota so far has not sent any signals that it is authentically concerned about solving its issues or even more importantly, the safety of its customers. It was simply been too easy to buy influence. But, that only works for so long …

Joseph Stark

“Daughter calls father a HERO!” screamed the banners across TV screens.

But, did the daughter really mean to give that response about her father or was she tricked during a shocking moment in her life? Wasn’t it the cable TV anchor who first said it? That’s what I heard. The question by the TV news reader was inappropriate, not journalism and only intended to be sensational in tone. It worked. Stark’s daughter later backed down from the statement but by then, it was too late.

Stark was no hero; he was a murderer.

If you scan the cable TV news channels, what appears to be happening is growing competition to be shriller over a theme that would seem to foster revolution … give power back to the people. It started with Beck and Limbaugh, both actors, and has spread to other cable TV news channels as they desperately grab for audience and the resulting advertising revenue. Now, even CNN is onboard … power to the people … take control back! (Where’s Huey Newton when we need him?)

What cable TV news is doing is dishonest. It’s not news. It is drama. News became entertainment and has now become drama with inflammatory tendencies.

Other than PBS NewsHour and HD Net’s World Report, there is very little television news reporting left on the air.

My concern is that cable TV news will spur other crazies to act out in violence and murder.

Watching Woods for a while during his televised “apology,” I was struck by how scripted and disingenuous he appeared and sounded. He was just words, read off paper. I wondered how many attorneys and agents had screenwriting credits.

As we all know, the televised Tiger Woods event was tightly managed and controlled. All the people chosen to be in the room had a stake in reporting nothing but moderately okay stories about the golfer.

But public reaction may not be so kind.  Longtime CBS Sports reporter Jim Nance reported from an airport while changing planes that he saw people snickering as Woods spoke and making sarcastic comments.

Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred perhaps best described the Tiger Woods televised apology as a “staged public relations stunt.” (Allred, for the record, represents at least two of the golfer’s alleged 12 mistresses.)

I don’t know anything more about the whole episode than anyone else … but I do know that in today’s information world, no brand can hope to survive by remaining closed off, out of sight and unresponsive. Woods is a public brand, and as such, has responsibilities to his public … more than his responsibilities to the business of golf. I think he has gotten bad counsel and waited too long.

The class is comprised of professionals who really want to understand today’s media, and the nuance and subtleties of communications in the digital era. None worked for a communications agency, and when I asked, none indicated any interest in doing so. They were more interested in achieving significant results in today’s new world of communications. Steve, a veteran journalist, is among the best to point the direction.

One student, however, brought up a good question – how do you get social media experience. She cited, with amusement, a help-wanted ad from an organization that wanted to hire a social media expert with at least 10 years experience. We agreed that it would not be a meaningful place to work because today’s online social media has only been around a couple of years and continues to morph each day.

My advice for jumping in to learn social media is to start a personal blog. You need five things, and it will cost about $125 the first year … less in subsequent years:

1. Domain name or Web site address – Visit Godaddy.com to find something clever. The cost is about $10 a year.
2. Web hosting (this is your portal to the Internet) – I recommend ThisWebHost.com which will cost $3 a month.
3. Wordpress blog software – It is the most common blog software in the world and free. Click Wordpress.org.
4. Blog theme (the look and feel of your blog) – There are literally thousands of themes available for Wordpress. Just Google “Wordpress themes.” The best and easiest themes I’ve found are from Solostream.com. A good theme costs about $79.
5. Imagination and creativity – A winning blog is only limited by your own imagination and cleverness.

You need no technical or code skills to launch your own Wordpress blog but I recommend reading the blog start-up tutorial at Wordpress.org. The only tricky part is configuring a Wordpress blog database but the people at TheWebHost.com will help. Also check BlogStrategies.net for free advice on Wordpress blogs.

By the way, I suggest forgetting about free blog services, like Blogger and the free version of Wordpress. If you want to make an impression, be distinctive!

That’s it. Then, just start writing, posting photos and video and join the online conversation!

Kevin Smith

Here’s where Southwest Airlines really fumbled in handling its customer and social media crisis caused when filmmaker Kevin Smith was kicked off one of its flights because he was deemed to be too fat for one seat:

Southwest responded in a traditional, predictable and completely ineffective method. Rather than the airline’s CEO Gary Kelly acting like a leader, apologizing and putting an end to the online image and media crisis for his airlines, Kelly left it up to the in-house PR and Twitter staff to attempt to patch things up with Smith. Not surprisingly, it did not work.

If Southwest had turned to its PR firm for help, chances are the support was minimal because most agencies are not skilled at working in the online world or social media. The larger the PR agency, the greater the lack of competence.

It all begin early on Valentine’s Day when Smith (Twitter: @ThatKevinSmith) was asked to leave a flight before it departed. The pilot reportedly thought Smith was too fat. Smith walked back into the terminal and begin Tweeting to his 1.5 million followers:

“Dear @SouthwestAir — I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?”

Additional Tweets came fast and furious from Smith, who also posted a 90 minute podcast to explain the whole episode.

Since then, mainstream media and online media coverage has spun out of control for Southwest Airlines, largely because the airline has been hiding behind prepared statements posted on the company Web site like the one below. CEO Kelly has acted like an old-school corporate executive with either disdain or lack of awareness for the influence of today’s digital era.

What it all signals is a lack of savvy corporate leadership and not an intelligent comprehension over the importance and power of online social media by Southwest. Any company that hides behind prepared statements is asking for brand reputation problems to continue … and recovery from such self-inflicted damage to brand reputation will be costly. And, it could have been avoided.

Should Southwest CEO Kelly come out of the shadows to act as a leader, the voice and face of his airline? Yes. That’s the responsibility of authentic corporate leaders in today’s world, regardless of whether responding to a filmmaker, like Kevin Smith, or any time his company screws up. It’s called being accountable and responsible. Kelly is signaling that he does not understand his role.

It had caught their attention, and they wanted to know why … what’s the secret for its success.

It comes down to one word … Style.

Corporate communications professionals and PR people learn to write, take photos and to do things in a PR style and that is counter to the appealing, credible and captivating style of news. Poles apart.

In PR, people are selling an idea, concept, service or project. They are in push mode. Like saying, “Listen up, I want to tell you something …”

Push no longer works in the digital era. We as consumers have gotten smarter. Inundated … bombarded by messages, we have learned what makes sense and what doesn’t. That is reflected partly in the demise of trust in traditional advertising and ineffectiveness of such PR tactics as news releases. We prefer, instead, to trust peer opinion over advertising.

Most online newsrooms of corporations and organizations are presented in push mode. They are selling something … and no one cares.

ISC Newsroom and the other corporate journalism initiatives by The News Group Net are presented as balanced news. We call it corporate journalism. The writing, photos, video and look and feel are news style that reaches out and engages audiences. It’s like saying, “Let me share something with you … ”

I think PR style is taught in university while News style is a discipline learned through experience.

These styles live at opposite ends of a spectrum – PR to promote, news to engage. Poles apart.

What emerged during my conversation was consensus that we live in times when the only way to cut through competitive clutter and differentiate a brand is through the more open, balanced, engaging and transparent style of news.

Screen shot from Toyota "commitment" TV commercial

All of the problems, the issues, the crisis, the severe damage to brand reputation currently facing Toyota are self-inflicted by the company. And, there are revelations each day that Toyota has been aware of safety issues for not days or months but rather years … and did little or nothing about it.

Today, nearly every model of vehicle made by Toyota worldwide is impacted by safety problems, including brakes and accelerators.

Judy Woodruff reported on PBS NewsHour last evening:

State Farm Insurance said today it reported concerns about acceleration problems in Toyotas in 2007 to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA.

But a Democratic congressional staff memo said neither Toyota nor federal regulators have identified all of the causes of the uncontrolled accelerations.

One wonders whether Toyota simply turned to its Washington lobbyist to sweep the issue under the carpet, as is often the custom in this city. I don’t know but I suspect so.

It was announced in PR Newser just today that Toyota is adding more lobbying firms to its Washington roster, not necessarily an assuring signal from a company that it is actively making cars safer for drivers. Rather, it suggests a company seeking to buy even more influence in the nation’s capital, a city where influence is bought and sold. Washington lobbying firms lack the skills, competence and credentials to manage any crisis of this scale (or any crisis, for that matter, because it’s not what they do.)

In the critical area of brand crisis management, Toyota is fumbling badly. Toyota’s PR in the U.S. is reportedly being handled by Robinson Lerer Montgomery, a rather old-school PR agency that’s not known for being too digitally savvy.

Toyota today faces a crippling crisis of brand trust and reputation over whether its vehicles are safe. A company that built its brand on safety (as did Volvo) is now perceived by many consumers as not a safe brand.

Toyota’s so-called “commitment” television commercial (below) that debuted this week not only seems like disingenuous vanilla coating but is simply not fully truthful. The commercial begins with a grammatical error in the first line – “For over 50 years …” It should have been, “For more than 50 years …” to be grammatically correct. But the commercial states that Toyota has stopped all production to address safety issues for customers, which we find is not the case. The car company reportedly is in chaos over how to address its multiple safety related problems.

Toyota’s “commitment” TV commercial, created in what I’d call a Hallmark Card-style (with apologies to Hallmark), features an overly sentimental-sounding announcer with gentle New Age tinkling piano background, which reminds those in Washington of similar radio spots by Lockheed Martin to lobby for military arms and fighter jets. It’s an old-fashioned style that misses the mark to work for Toyota in order to rebuild trust. The TV commercial is another self-inflicted wound to its brand.

The face and voice of Toyota must stop hiding behind TV commercials and prepared statements. It must authentically and credibly get before the people of America through mainstream media and online.

As Judy Woodruff noted during the NewsHour segment on Toyota’s perils, “Toyota declined our request for an interview.” (The car company is a NewsHour underwriter.)