I, too, received your solicitation via email, Noel.

It’s unclear how Jeff et al were enlisted. Jeff, for example, freely discloses the apparently innocent purchase of danish pastries by Edelman’s sister, but fails to disclose the content of the conversation that went along with these allegedly innocent breakfast treat(s) (bribe(s)?). What are we to make of it? Damning isn’t the word I’d use for this highly suspicious restaurant rendezvous(s).

Oh, man… Welcome to the Tinfoil Hat Crowd.

Do you REALLY think that Jeff Jarvis can be bought off WITH A DANISH?

Dan Gillmor is probably one of the most resolutely ethical people I’ve ever met. If you knew anything about the man, you would not make such a charge.

Incredible…

philgomes | Thursday, March 16th, 2006 @ 01:42 AM

And my response:

Frankly, Phil, there is nothing lower than accepting a danish bribe. Crooked cops may take pay-offs from the mob, but NEVER do they accept a danish. The occasional cannoli maybe, but a danish? Please!

As for Dan Gillmor, what does ‘resolutely ethical’ mean?

Noel Guinane | Thursday, March 16th, 2006 @ 08:03 AM

dennis lee’s link is http://none.

Another botched Edelman cut and paste?

Perhaps not unlike your botched cut-and-paste email to me (Disclosure: an Edelman employee) inviting me to comment on your blog?

From: Noel Guinane
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 11:18 AM
To: Phil Gomes
Subject: Blog Post on Edelman PR

I checked into the Successful Blog and read your post on the recent flak with Edelman PR and Walmart. We have put up a post on the same subject and would like to invite you to tell us what you think. The view on this blog reflects my opinion, but it may not be your opinion. Please feel free to comment.

For the record, Noel, my blog is Phil’s Blogservations, not the Successful Blog.

I once wrote that PR can be like the ombudsman for the stakeholders (customers, shareholders, etc.), connecting the concerns of the grassroots with the management.

Maybe a better term would be Relational Manger. [...]

The way to avoid such manipulation is by building a large enough brand that they will seek you out–and cannot play one publication against another.

Also, control has got to go. We have no control over how others might Tag us, and we should instead focus on representing our best sides, as people and as companies, at all times.

Another botched Edelman cut and paste?

I came here because of your mention on the show. It’s a great blog….

Also, you have failed to disclose what is on the menu at these allegedly innocent meal venues: oats, hay or a little Guinness to ensure that when you’re at the starting line, you’re in the mood to win that Edelman Cup … even if you’re allegedly racing under your own colors.

That stable aroma is pretty strong in this thread and I for one am not expecting Edelman to don his green wellies and muck it out.

Your use of the words “spin” and “flack” are pejoratives in the public relations business. Perhaps your long tenure working the mainstream media’s “back of the book” left a bad taste in your mouth from that side of the PR profession. It should be noted that Richard Edelman, Harold Burson, and so many other industry statesmen have long advocated for an honest and transparent exchange between the media (the true public gatekeepers) and the clients they represent. Your generalization of the profession as flacks who spin is not only disrespectful (and condascending), but it no longer applies to the more forward-thinking of those who practice PR today.

PH

Danism

Well, if you’re going to run a PR campaign and enlist the support of bloggers and your’re going to give them information/talking points, then hell, yes, the bloggers should be ‘trained’ on who to blog.

This doesn’t go against transparency. This should enhance it.

The essence of any grassroots campaign is honest and personal contributions from individuals who feel passionate about an issue, cause, or candidate. When enlisting supporters to make some sort of testament, it’s necessary to “clue him in about revealing such things”.

The use of bloggers in PR is becoming a ‘practice’ with right ways and wrong ways. If a firm is looking to enlist bloggers, it must ‘train’ them on those rights and wrongs.

PS I’ll take all of last year’s hay anyone wants to throw at me.

The relationship between journalist and politician can be reciprocal and independent. In other words, politicians may exploit the news media to deliver talking points and spin policy positions — but they do not have to rely on journalists for that activity, which is the point of Jay Rosen’s excellent argument about Rollback over at PressThink. Therefore, there is no sense in which discredited news media are automatically a threat to any politician’s ability to communicate.

Not so for public relations firms. If readers and viewers do not trust and believe the news media, the entire enterprise of placing stories, publicity and corporate spin with journalists becomes futile. Instead of reciprocal and independent, public relations firms are parasitic and dependent.

Funnily enough, this means that it is against the interest of public relations firms to be too successful in message manipulation.

Here’s why. If the totality of what we read and see in the news were PR spin, those firms would have killed the goose that lays the golden egg of free and credible publicity. PR content has to be surrounded by enough stuff that does not have a hidden agenda or an ax to grind or special pleading for its partial intervention on behalf of the client to get traction.

Otherwise the client might just as well have paid for it and called it advertising.

walmart needs to give employees all blogs on the walmart site ..

forget the whole ecommerce thing . let million people blog. thats more fun.

Howard is a boring host. replace him . you can take over with a bunch of bloggers.
like a whole hour if you bashing big media.