In the great bidding war between a hack who gives public relations a bad name and a bunch of bankers hoodwinked by said hack, the bankers won.

I think it was a fair fight.

What’s left to ponder is why bother? Does anybody in Philly care whether what they know is based in reality? Or biased by corporate interest? Or swayed by a good talk from a deputy-managing-so-and-so?

I mean, if we’re living in a world where a mayor and cop-in-chief can say, “Hey, they were twittering, how were we supposed to know?” then who needs a newspaper?

There’s no need to bow down to our new insect overlords; they’re just a passing swarm.

But when they leave, we have significant questions to ponder: Do we want a paper? Is that paper Metro? What, if anything, do we want to survive?

This week brought an interesting and unmarked anniversary. It’s been a
year since Metro newspapers dropped Associated Press content from their
publications, opting instead for the occasional Reuters item and
expanded local reports and commentary.

I don’t know anyone who’s noticed.

So when big media start threatening to pull their content away from
Google, or throw up a pay wall or require a subscription for their
content, remember the Metro. No one noticed.

Tags: anniversary, Google, metro newspapers, reuters

Springtime in Philadelphia can only mean one thing ~ a flashmob on South Street. The Inquirer tells us that “thousands of teenagers” gathered and “swarmed” last night, creating another opportunity for a cycle of bad reporting and hack public relations work to spin out of control for a couple of news cycles.

Combine the two things that many folks understand the least and fear the most — teenagers and technology — and cry havoc. Reporters will spend their Sunday dialing-up the usual suspects to elicit their now routine quote about suing Twitter, monitoring MySpace or blocking Facebook. Their public relations advisors will exploit the opportunity to get their guy on T.V. and counsel gutsier quotes with a greater sense of urgency.

It’s fear-mongering. Keep reading…

Tags: fear mongering, flashmob, Philadelphia, public relations practitioners, teenagers

Here’s a video I created for the Friends of Malik Boyd; very run-and-gun…
Keep reading…

Only a colossal miscalculation could make Facebook look like it cared about privacy.

Google is certainly a colossus. The roll-out of Buzz was uncharacteristically miscalculated.

While Buzz itself is pretty cool, the first reaction to the launch was downright cold. Nothing to do with the service or its features — folks were seriously peeved when they logged into Gmail to discover that people they don’t know or like were suddenly “following” them.

Google seriously misread a chunk of its users — that’s not like them — and it’s important to understand what they got wrong and why they might not be able to correct it. Keep reading…

Tags: Buzz, Facebook, Google, Privacy