Mayor's Spokesperson Calls TAB Photo issue "Contrived"

The sun has finally come out in Newton, but Newton TAB photographers aren’t capturing that light at the Newton North High School construction site, because they aren’t welcome.

As Dimeo Construction pours cement, puts up dry wall and affixes windows around the city’s single largest expenditure, the one that will act as the legacy for a mayor who has spent more than 2 decades in elected office, the question remains: does the local paper have the right to photograph the site as it’s under construction?

The TAB believes it does, saying that the people of Newton need to see what their tax money is buying, that their photographers are trained to tell a story with their images and that it’s unfair for Dimeo to allow city officials to snap photos, but not them. Dimeo, it should be noted, gave a TAB reporter a tour of the site, but prohibited a photographer from coming along.

And apparently most of the people running to fill the soon-to-be-vacant mayoral seat agree with the TAB. Though, the skeptic in me says it's an easy position to take while running for office.

Of course, there are photos being taken of the site and posted on the Newton municipal Web site,

buried in a not-so-pretty way and offered up with no context or captions. One such image is shown here.

When asked about this, Mayor David Cohen's spokesperson, Jeremy Solomon, noted that the city “compelled” Dimeo to offer up the photographs and they’re being taken by someone who has other construction duties. In other words, just a guy with a camera. Solomon believes this is enough to satiate the curiosity of the general public.

“I don’t think there’s a huge public outcry about being informed of the progress of the school. Right now Dimeo has its hands full trying to meet a very aggressive construction schedule. It doesn’t make sense to have a construction worker spend even more time to caption photos after he’s downloaded them,” he said.

“There are a least a dozen photos published each and every week on the city website. When the construction manager advises that they do not wish to have outside photographers on the site, defying that sentiment we believe does not serve the public interest.”

When asked whether the city could request specific photos or ask for additional information about each image, since this has obviously become an “issue” around the city, Solomon shook off the idea that the photography flap is an issue at all. He said the city, and the mayor, are better served focusing on getting this job done on time and on budget, “not on quelling controversies that are being contrived by the media.”

Yes, you read that right, “contrived.”

“The issue that the TAB is raising here is the TAB’s issue. In terms of informing the general public of the progress, these photographs serve the purpose.”

Solomon said that he would only change his stance when he felt public sentiment shift. While the writers on various blogs have been rather outspoken on the topic, Solomon laughed on the idea that these opinions mounted to much. “I read blog traffic, and I take it for what it is,” he said. “I’m not certain advocating to alter public policy based on some blog traffic makes sense.”

As for what kind of outcry or feedback he’d deem enough, Solomon would only say: “There is not one singular channel of communication; there are multiple ways we keep in touch with the people of Newton. Mayor Cohen has been doing this a long time, I have been doing this more than 5 years. We have seen real issues that are decided by the people. We think that the people of Newton are best served by receiving the building that people that we expect on time and on budget.”

Take that for what it is, considering that Cohen has been famously derided for being out of touch with his electorate.

I tried reaching Dimeo to talk about this issue. In fact, I'd love to speak with the photographer(s) working on this project, but my calls and emails were not returned.

Don't Shoot! Local Press Tries to See the Money

Here in Newton we're watching a new high school grow up on the site of the old-old Newton High, the one that pre-dates the current brick fortess that we call Newton North High School. If you live in Massachusetts you've probably heard it derided in the press as an overpriced bungle; at $200 million it is the most expensive high school in the state. Of course, it's a high school that is also a vocational/technical school and community center, but everyone likes to call it just a "high school."

In any case, the local paper wants to photograph the site as part of its reporting. Back when construction began Dimeo, the company in charge, told the Newton TAB that safety prohibited them from allowing a news photographer on site. However, they did agree to supply a photos. The company has followed through on that promise, though while you can view the images here you can't embed them or download them to use on another site. Also, you can't view historical images, just those that the company currently wants you to see. A better method may have been to share them on Flickr and allow all of us to download and use them.

Without going into the whole history of this project, let me just say that "trust" has emerged as a major issue in regards to its building and handling. A failed vote to pause the project held back in January of 2007 hinged on the idea that the process was not transparent and that as taxpayers we needed to better understand what we were buying. Also, current Mayor David Cohen kept promising that the price hikes would stop at about $140 million but they didn't. This project did, in short, cost him both his job and his reputation.

So you can imagine that the TAB and its readers would have a problem trusting the company put in charge of this project, so would prefer someone else to go in and photograph its progress.

The issue came up again recently when the city put on its public meeting calendar that members of the Board of Alderman were going to get a tour. Believing the tour was public, the TAB sent a reporter and photographer, only to be turned away, told that this was a private tour, not a public meeting. Dimeo agreed to provide the TAB with a tour another day, but without a photographer.

Today the TAB asked the Mayor about this issue at his weekly press conference. The mayor responded that the photographs aren't necessary for reporting the story.




This brings up a few thorny questions:

1. Why is it up to Dimeo and the Mayor to decide how the story should be reported? In this environment in which audio, video and text are produced and consumed from handheld devices, how can you put limits on this? In fact, Alderman Ken Parker (who is also a candidate for mayor) used his iPhone to snap a picture and send it to the TAB (picture above). Parker did not, however, challenge Dimeo on its plan to keep the TAB photographer out.
2. Is this type of photography important to the story? The TAB is free to photograph the construction from just outside the site itself, does it need to be on the property to get the real story?
3. Should the TAB get access to a construction site that a typical citizen would not? I'm a photoblogger and media blogger who happens to live in Newton. I don't have the readership of the TAB, but should I get access to the site too in order to shoot some pictures? What about Doug Haslam or Sean Roche, both of whom have strong local audiences? In a tweet the TAB says it would support a "pool" situation, but how does Dimeo handle that kind of situation? Also, what if one of the freelancers with the Boston Globe asked to have access, can Dimo keep the TAB out but let the Globe in?

In my mind, a lot of this comes down to an old-school media relations tactic of trying to "control" the story. Mayor Cohen and his main spokesman, Jeremy Solomon, continue to try to control this story by limiting access. Dimeo, like many construction companies, seems to be trying to control its image by taking its own pictures and only allowing people to view them where the company can control the content.

But in today's enviornment control is only perceived. I still believe the key issue with this whole school is trust and if you're a company that wants people to trust you, then allow the users a little more control over the information and content.

Of course, that's only if you want to build trust.

Old Marketing Lessons for New Media

Doug Haslam recently had a difficult experience at a bike store. They called at 5:50 after fixing his broken front derailleur and told him he could pick up his bike, but he had to be there by 6pm. He asked if they could stay 5 minutes late so he could get there. They said no.

He wasn’t happy, won’t go back, and shared that with this Twitter and Facebook followers.

Given that Doug has more than 17,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 1000 friends on Facebook, he’s a guy with influence. Throw in the fact that he’s riding in the Pan Mass Challenge, so spends a lot of time on his bike (and his followers know it) it gives his experience with a bike shop that much more credibility. Since Doug has major social media influence there must be a great social media lesson here.

The lesson for the bike shop? Mind your customer service.

That’s not new. My great grandfather could have told you that from running his kosher butcher in Brooklyn. My other great grandparents could have told you the same thing from running their grocery store on Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury.

The only real difference here is the easy with which Doug could express his displeasure and the number of people he could reach.

This got me thinking about marketing truisms and how social media hasn’t really changed anything about marketing, just the tools.

Lesson: Know whether your goal is awareness or action

To take a line from Law and Order, marketing is broken into two separate yet equally important groups. Awareness, which drives customers, and action, which makes them buy something. (dom dom)

During a recent social media breakfast a quick back and forth erupted between the speakers and the audience about how to track ROI on a social media project, such as Twitter outreach. Many noted how Dell recently credited Twitter with driving $1 million in business over a year and a half. This brought up the question of how well Dell could actually track this kind of information.

At least one audience member noted that by providing codes and other such actionable Tweets, Dell could get a relatively accurate count.

That, replied Michael Troiano, was action as opposed to awareness.

One of the joys of social media is that the broad reach isn't limited to large companies like Dell, but also open to mom and pop operations. I recently got a free 20x30 metallic print from iPrintFromHome.com, just by responding to a Tweet for their "Tuesday Tweet" and entering a code.

“Wow,” you say, “what a great use of Twitter!”

Well, yes, it is. This small family-run photo print shop reached a national audience of photo enthusiasts. And there are some great tool-based lessons here in terms of how they targeted key influencers and used them to increase their reach.

But it’s also old-school marketing. They gave away a coupon for a service in order to get information about individuals (like me) with which to sell directly later.

Not so revolutionary as it is evolutionary.

Lesson: Direct marketing gets .5 percent to 2 percent conversion rates

In the old days of direct marketing you would target your market, design a piece of mail collateral then buy a targeted list. After paying for the mailing you’d assess your response and if you came through with 2 percent of your total mail number coming back, you considered it a success.

The same holds true today.

Recently I sat down with a VP of Marketing who conducted what he considered a very successful social media campaign. It utilized a customer who had a strong Twitter, MySpace and Facebook presence, galvanized that user’s audience and drove paid users.

The conversion rate of traffic to paid users, he noted, was about 1 percent.

The main difference here is in the cost of driving that 1 percent. Instead of paying for a list and then paying printing and mailing costs, a company needs only to pay for the creative to get the project moving. Social media lets them build the list themselves while online distribution takes care of the rest.

Lesson: You can no longer make money from content.

The newsroom has never been a profit center, it has, in fact, always been a cost center. I spent many years working at TV and radio stations and I found that most general managers came out of the sales side of the house, not the news side.

The reason is simple: news is the loss leader.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but traces its roots back to Joseph Pulitzer. While Pulitzer sunk a lot of money into his news operation, and is remembered for his contribution to news, he was primarily a businessman. His newspapers didn’t exist as public properties, they were businesses meant to make money.

Pulitzer (and his primary competitor Hearst) understood very well that if you lower the price of a newspaper to a penny, practically giving it away, and make it a desirable product by filling it with great stories, you could sell ads to the readers. News provided the channel to the people while the people attracted the businesses that would pay money to have access to the channel.

When the price of news production came down so did the exclusive control over that channel, so advertisers no longer needed newspapers (or any other big media) to reach their audience. In fact, a business like Craigslist, taking advantage of the lower cost structure, was in a great position to steal the classified advertising by simply creating a marketplace and growing it over time.

But news does, in fact, remain as a loss leader. Look at a company like Kaspersky Labs which operates Threatpost, a security blog that provides news about the IT security industry, employing many of the same journalists who used to write and edit industry trade publications like eWeek and Information Security Magazine.

Kaspersky doesn’t make money on the news, but providing information does give them a channel that attracts the audience of security-focused IT workers into which they want to sell. It also provides them a level of credibility as well as influence.

The catch for Kaspersky (and for any company) is to properly manage that news channel and not turn it into a marketing channel. For now, they seem to be doing that pretty well.

To be sure, social media caused some fundamental changes in how people interact with information and each other. Individuals, for example, now have a much louder voice to express their gratitude and displeasure. Information production no longer resides in the hands of the few and now does belong to the masses.

However, for marketers some basics still apply. No matter how new the tools, the goals and the expertise necessary to drive customers remains the same.

Breaking the News Release Cycle

The single biggest problem facing traditional PR firms as they shift to social media lies in their history. Not that they can't change and not that they lack the talent, but everyone in the organization came up through that organization learning to do things a cetain way.

As a prime example look at the idea of "news." A basic PR tactic is to create a news pipeline with the goal being to keep media interest high. A secondary benefit of this is showing customers and prospects a full press room, so when people peek into the online newsroom they see an active company.

It's a sound tactic and one that has served the industry well for a very long time. There's only one problem with it: it assumes "outreach" to a channel that, if not dead is certainly constricting.

Even attemps to remake the press release don't dissect it entirely, they just try to rearrange the

facts in a way that are more palatable to the changing taste of the percevied consumer of that release: bloggers, podcasters and reporters who now need more multimedia content.

But these attempts don't get at the core of the issue: news is content and should be treated as such. To that end, companies must look at their news pipeline not as a reason to write another release, but as an editorial calendar. The traditional news release, distributed over services such as PRNewswire and BusinessWire are still valid, but only as a single channel of communications within a much broader universe.

One of my favorite examples of a non-news release type scenario came from Google. If you bring yourself back to September 2007 you may remember the anticipation leading up to the announcement that Google would be entering the mobile world. On November 5, Andy Rubin put up a blog post titled "Where is my GPhone?" in which he announced the open handset alliance and Android.

If you read the post it has all the elements that would go into a traditional release. It talks about the partners, the technology and even uses the word "annnoucing." But it was not distributed over BusinessWire, does not have the usual list of editorial contacts and doesn't say "Google, the leading provider of search services to the planet Earth..."

Of course, this is Google and they can do that sort of thing for a highly anticipated annoucement, but for most companies there are pieces of news expected by their core constituancies. Customers may be looking for a product upgrade or partners may want to know about expanded programs. If they have an existing communications channel with which to follow news, then reaching them is that much easier.

The fact is, news is information and can be anything you want it to be. What works for you?

Isn't the New York Times Already Pretty Social?

You can read all about the New York Times new social media editor nearly everywhere today. Or, you can just follow Jennifer Preston on Twitter and hear from her directly. Of course, there's the original memo announcing her new role, the CJR article telling us, um... not much, and Mike Volpe's on target criticism of her hiring, pointing out that a single person can't do it all, that social media needs to extend through out an organization. Though, to be fair, when I read the original memo I felt that her hiring was as much an internal educational move as an external outreach play.

All that being said, if all Preston takes away from this job is a few ideas from the peanut gallery like creating standardized hashtags for breaking news, then I'd call this a failed experiment.

Isn't the Times already a pretty good community? They have content, people who come to read the content and the ability for people to comment on that content. In fact, they have multiple communities, not just the readers but also the various communities they cover. Shouldn't the Times be working to galvenize those communities and strengthen them, rather than simply trying to Tweet more?

The Times, and other newspapers, should start inviting their readers to be editors. Their model should be Facebook, letting people interact and use the information as the basis of that interaction. I touched on this concept back in 2005, but I think it's much more important now.

The social media world has taught us that people follow people, but that organizations such as the New York Times and its more localized sibling the Boston Globe command trust and respect from their readers. They need to build on that, but also let the people have a say.

And not just on Twitter.

Branded Journalism: It's already happening

Dave Chase has a great post on Reflections of a Newsosaur about the problems in online ad sales. He's right that news organizations need to make basic changes to their ad sales channels in order to maintain revenue in the short term. Boston.com admitted as much during the launch meeting for Boston.com/Newton in which the sales executive noted that many advertisers complained that ads on Boston.com were too high. The solution for Boston.com was to focus on a smaller geographical area in order to offer cheaper and more targeted advertising opportunities.

But as I mentioned, I still think the ad model is irrevocablly broken and the while Chase offers a short term solution, something else needs to happen over the long term.

I believe that long term news and information will be supported directly by brands. That is, thsoe brands will hire news people to work independently and they will start to offer information. While to the average consumer this information will appear to be the same as before, there will be a subtle bit of branding going on.

When I suggest this to friends the response is one of horror. The idea that a Coke could be supplying entertainment news sends a shudder through their system, leading them to use terms like "icky."

Of course, this move will happen slowly and will have to be handled carefully, but it's already going on.

Tonight while doing the dishes I turned on the MLB Channel to hear some Hot Stove chatter. The MLB Channel is, of course, owned by the Major League Baseball brand and there to promote MLB teams. Both the NFL and NHL have similar television networks, all look like copies of ESPN, often with former ESPN anchors and reporters doing the work, but focused just on one sport.

Sure, there is an advertising play here, but advertising is just one of the revenue opportunities, the rest are about attracting viewers to promote the MLB brand and that of its associated teams. This leads to other licensing opportunities and sales of MLB branded materials.

The "news" is the loss leader.

Pitching, Bad Pitching and Blogger Griping

Every once in a while I read bloggers complaining about PR people.

OK.... more than every once in a while. Probably about once a week. The latest is on the Church of the Customer blog, which starts out by saying not to pitch reporters and then falls back a bit encouraging PR people (and their customers) to cultivate relationships instead.

This is, of course, sound advice. It is also how things SHOULD be done across the board. In PR we're taught from the start to read our assigned publications, learn the reporters, talk with them and only call/email/IM when we have something worth sending. The issue isn't what PR SHOULD be, it's what PR is, meaning all this bitching and moaning is about a lot of bad PR, not PR in general.

But in the Church post is this:

PR companies could actually become more strategic service providers by helping their clients cultivate relationships with existing, well-connected customers. Appeal to the people who already love your clients and foster those relationships.

(I'm really trying not to take an overly snarky attitude on this one.) OF COURSE we do that! We can't do our jobs without having our clients' customers work with us. But the reality is, especially for smaller companies, customers don't always want to talk. Different companies have different reasons. I've had situations in which my client would be competing with a small part of Microsoft and the customer wouldn't go into a public forum and say "this is great!" since it could hurt their contract deals with Redmond. In other cases the deals are relatively small for the size of the customer, so they just don't feel it's important enough to discuss.

In other cases it's a pure marketing issue. While it may be great exposure for my client to get on a technology-focused blog or in a similar publication, their customer may only care about reaching teenagers, aged 12 to 18. Those audiences don't often mix, so the customer doesn't see it as worth their time to get on the phone and talk.

It's fine to toss off comments like "PR should build relationships" or "make your customers work for you," but giving solid advice on how to do that is a different story.

When I work with junior members of my teams I will often assign a large list of publications, bloggers and podcasters, then tell them to focus most of their attention on a much smaller and more strategic list. On the large list they are responsible for keeping track and getting coverage, but the smaller list are those publications they should "own." After a few months on the account they should be at the point that the blogger/podcaster/reporter calls US for information.

That means talking to these people on a regular basis, not just when we put out a release but sometimes calling to say "what are you working on?" Sometimes it's directing them to other people in the agency (or even outside the agency) who can help with their reporting. When you become a trusted part of the reporting process, only then do you have a truly working relationship.

Doing Journalism in a Social World

From a journalistic point of view, using FaceBook and MySpace to find friends of victims of the Virginia Tech shootings makes complete sense. In fact, it's good, solid journalistic practice.

Granted, no one likes to talk with friends of victims and ask them their feelings at that moment, but it comes with the job of being a reporter. Some journalists may handle it better than others, and I've heard stories recently of students complaining that they're being overused by the media. And I'm sure they probably are.

But Dan Kennedy is right when he disagrees with FaceBook's objection that the site is being used for this purpose. It's not different than when a local TV crew descends on a neighborhood after a shooting and starts knocking on doors to find friends of a victim. The only difference is that social networking makes this all a little easier.

NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty also ran a decent story on the same issue.

When colors talk: how newspaper graphics color meaning

This is a cross post from something I originally wrote for TheGardenCity.net.

The concept of the Red State and the Blue State remains one of the enduring legacies of the 2000 election. The major networks colored their maps to tell viewers how each state voted, since the country faced a growing divisiveness in its politics.

States that voted for Republican George Bush were turned red, while those pulling for Democrat Al Gore turned blue. And so the legend began, culminating in such use of the colors on political blogs like the conservative Red State and liberal Blue Mass Group.

So I was a little annoyed when I clicked over to the map the Newton Tab had created to demonstrate how different wards in the city voted in the election on Newton North*. Those few wards that voted "no" turned red, the others turned blue. The implication was clear: vote against the school and you're conservative. In a city that traditionally tilts as liberally as Newton it struck me as a little odd.

Tab Editor Greg Reibman tells me the map offered some valuable information, since it is interesting to see how the city voted as you moved around, with the south side mostly voting against the site plan. He also said that someone suggested turning the "no" tiling wards blue and the "yes" wards orange, the colors of the lawn signs.

Not a bad suggestion.

But my bigger problem is in coloring the wards in any full color. The fact is, was a "one person, one vote" kind of election. Unlike the Presidential race we didn't elect representatives to then do our voting for us. Not all the delegates from ward 3 would be voting "yes." But if we wanted to study how the geography affected the vote perhaps gradual shading would have been more telling.

In fact, after the 2004 election I started seeing national maps that to the red/blue data to new heights, showing how the country was more purple. Massachusetts leaned more to a bluish purple, while many southern states looked more reddish, but the point was pretty clear.

The point of the Tab's map was not.


*On January 23rd the city voted on whether to accept a site plan for the new high school. The vote took place because a group of citizens received enough signatures to force a vote on a plan originally approved by the city's Board of Aldermen. The city approved the site plan 8531 to 6038

Blurring the line between distribution and competition

An interesting article in yesterday's New York Times talked about the arrest of a producer of "mixed tapes." That is, a DJ who puts together mixes of different pieces from different rap artists and then sells those through vendors.

I didn't realize the extent to which these played a role in the rap and hip hop communities, but according to the article this is a vital part of the viral marketing employed by many record labels.

The article is worth a read. But it also brings to the forefront an increasingly touchy issue: where does a distribution channel and and competition begin? Back when I bought vinyl records and dropped a few of my favorite songs onto an analog cassette for friends, the record industry never blinked an eye. But now that I can share more of my music library more easily, the record companies want it stopped.

The same goes for the news industry. The other day I heard a Boston Globe editor talk about how the bloggers help the Globe get news distributed, since most point back to articles (just as I did for the Times in this entry). He's right.

But I wonder what happens when certain blogs raise in stature. I edit a "Placeblog" called The Garden City, which has picked up quite a bit of interest lately given a local election about building a new high school. The local paper also has a blog, but it doesn't have the same number of contributors, though it often has more reporting behind it. We link to each other's stories, but are we, at some level, in competition? Where is that line?

Making Music

I've known Peter Kohan since both of us were struggling through puberty. Not a pretty site.

But by now we're both grown and mostly through the awkward stage. Peter is in the music industry and just launched the blog Appetite for Disruption, yes, a takeoff on the Guns-n-Roses debut album.

From his introductory post:

From a very young age I was obsessed with listening to music; my father had a turntable and I played his copy of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band until it wore out. This is nothing new here. We are all exposed to music in its many forms throughout our lives and feel certain types of music deeply, while other genres or artists we can take or leave or downright dislike. I was never able to master a musical instrument, so I couldn't translate my particular passion into a creative outpouring. I have, despite that handicap, been able to develop for myself a nine-year career (thus far) in the music business.

To be fair, Peter did try singing in a cover band we once put together, complete with a horn section (I played the trombone). Ambitious, but it only lasted two or three days.

That said, considering the metamorphosis the music industry is experiencing, his thoughts are definitely worth a read.

Big names but no meat

I represent mostly small companies, those with a lot of great ideas but no true track record. Often their technology is as good, if not better than that created by the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, IBM or [enter big software company here].

Still, it amazes me how easy it is for these big companies to keep the spotlight. I may call a reporter and hear him/her say "oh, just another [enter name of topic area here]" and then go on to ignore everything I say. Then, of course, they'll do a big story on the Microsoft Zune, which, to be honest, is "just another [mp3 player]."

But it's from Microsoft.

Which is why the story about the media companies working on a competitor to YouTube made me chuckle. The companies have been meeting but have no real technology and no site. Just content.

But, they're household names... of course it's a story!

What they're forgetting about YouTube is that many companies tried and failed to create content destinations. YouTube isn't about the content, it's about the people who create and view the content. The media companies are starting with the content and expect to build something from that.

I'd be amazed if the "major" players can get it right.