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Your company is about to launch a new product or service that will raise the achievement bar in your industry. You want to make sure that every customer for your innovative offering hears the buzz, and acts on it by buying it – in droves. You write a press release announcing your exciting news, and fire it off to Business Wire, PR Web, several industry magazines, your local paper’s business editor, and the newsrooms of local broadcasters. You post it, with a big headline, on your company’s website. You sit back, and wait for the world to beat a path to your door. Some time later, you notice that your door is still on its hinges. Your hoped-for media response was underwhelming. In fact, it was non-existent. You saw the headline on the Business Wire page. You know it was near the top for several hours on PR Web. But no industry writers called, and your press release wasn’t even run in your local paper’s business pages. Why not? Where did you go wrong? In your business, you’ve no doubt discovered that relationships are what make customers out of prospects. The same principle is in play with media relations – it’s not what you know (or how well you write your press release), it’s who you know. And how they feel about you and your company. When you were developing your business plan, you put an advertising budget in under marketing, didn’t you? Here’s another question: What’s the best advertising in the world? Answer: free publicity. I can hear you – you’re saying…”OK, Casey, but how do I get free publicity?” You develop relationships with reporters who cover your industry, that’s how. Look at your local daily newspaper, and local TV news. Pick up the last copy of your industry’s…

Wow.  Who knew that Anna Nicole had so much to offer a tired, cold, mid-winter media scrum? What a terrific window into the glories of Western Civ, that citadel of freedom of thought, the free exchange of ideas, the elevating power of art.  Whyever would anyone think we were corrupt?  The Great Satan? As the flock of dodos, um, media professionals descended on South Florida over the last several weeks to pick over the slowly rotting, not-so-corpulent-thanks-to-TrimSpa corpse of the late and over-lamented Ms. Smith, the following occured: several thousand people died in Darfur more than 100 Americans died in Iraq more than 1500 Iraqis died in Iraq – and not peacefully in their sleep North Korea continues to wave nukes at the US – unfortunately, the dweebs in DC seem to think Kim Jong Il is waving a white flag.  That’s no white flag, dudes, that’s the puff of smoke still dissipating after the NK nuke test last October… When I started in the TV news business back at the dawn of time – or maybe it was 1980 – the world was a bigger place.  It was harder to get a signal out of the back of beyond, the internet didn’t exist, and the word info-tainment had yet to be coined.  We have, it seems, become a global village – a collection of gossipy grandmas clucking over the latest version of Hollywood Confidential. That noise you hear in the background?  That’s Ed Murrow banging on the inside of his casket in frustration…

OK, I’m slow, I admit it. I completely missed the whole Jessica Cutler/Washingtonienne blog scandale back in 2004 when it was actually going on.  I must have been doing something else right then, like…oh, working for a living outside DC? Now that I’ve emerged from my Cutler coma, I’m shocked, shocked, to discover that a  good looking, if directionless, twenty-something broad was having sex with multiple partners in our nation’s capital.  And maybe even the Capitol.  Da noive!  Why, that little hussy! Not really. I’m not at all shocked.  I’m appalled – but not by Ms. Cutler’s actions, her blog, or the román-a-clef novel, “The Washingtonienne” (cleverly eponymous with her original blog) she published in 2005. I’m appalled that, thirty years since I was wandering the corridors of power (not DC, but NY), so little seems to have changed about how a young woman who uses her sex appeal will go from zero to whore in fifteen-minutes-of-fame flat. I’m amused at the fact that simultaneous-partner guys are still viewed as role models by their peers – go ON, you dog! – but let a woman try that and she’s a slut. We almost have media convergence on the web these days – can we finally admit that we’re out of the cave?  That it’s not even the 20th century any more? Sex is how we all get here. But procreation – organized religion’s opinion be damned – is not the only purpose for human sexuality.  If, as the aforementioned organized religion opines, the human race has dominion over the natural world, why don’t we have dominion over our bodies…and what we choose to do with them as consenting adults? Here’s a revolutionary suggestion – how about we adopt the philosophy of Stella Campbell (formally known as Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and the…

My life at times feels like one long experiment in whatever the reverse of “aversion therapy” is in regard to bugs. Particularly spiders. I can tolerate spiders up to 3/4″ in span, but once they get bigger than that I start to hyperventilate. Which makes orb weaver season here in Virginia a challenge. One of the little dears will invariably, overnight, make a web across the back door. When I open the back door, I’ll almost get spider-face. My favorite, if one can call it that, bug story started when I was eleven, and had its big finish when I was twenty. At eleven, I was living in Coronado CA, in a house that’s still my favorite-I-ever-lived-in. A stucco and tile hacienda-style deal, with a central courtyard that had an olive tree and an entire wall of morning glory vines. One night, I was in my bed reading, when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. On the other of the twin beds, a bug built like a combination between ant and grasshopper – three-segmented body, long articulated back legs – and the size of a woman’s size five shoe was making its way along the side of the spread. Like the good eleven year old Girl Scout I was, I screamed my head off and bulleted out the door to the courtyard. My parents didn’t see the bug and chalked up my screaming fit to imagination. I slept on the couch in the living room for two weeks. Nine years later, I was living on Mt. Davidson in San Francisco, in a basement apartment with two other girls. I awoke one night to banshee screaming – my roommate was dancing around her room, waving her (extremely long) hair around like one possessed. Once she was coherent,…

They don’t call. They make promises they know they’ll never keep. They stand you up, repeatedly. Bad boyfriend! Bad! But they’re charming, and their promise-making is so very seductive that you forget, in the moment, that what they’re telling you is lies, damn lies. But they lie so very well. I came to the heartbreaking realization recently that I had another bad boyfriend…and this time it was my internet service provider. Darlin’, no one can break your heart like an ISP. When I moved in January of 2006, I decided to switch from DSL to cable broadband. My DSL relationship had been fraught with dissention and argument, very reminiscent of Controlling Lover From Hell syndrome. This CLFH was fond of trying to make me think I was stupid and unworthy by imperiously suggesting the technological version of self-improvement was what I needed, not a switch from copper to fiber.  This CLFH was also on the Indian subcontinent and in possession of marginal English skills.  I’ve never enjoyed transcontinental, semi-bi-lingual relationships, so I knew a breakup was inevitable. When the time came, I fell for a seductive voiceover purring the “I’m so much faster” line. I failed to remember that when it comes to seduction, who wants fast? I was moist with anticipation when our consummating date – the install – arrived. The sinuous cables snaking their way into my home office promised a fast and hot experience. What occurred was “failure to launch” – in this case, failure to deliver a connection. Six months of emotional drama ensued – pleading, threats, promises, broken appointments, flowers (in the form of bill credits) – with no resolution, and only occasional bliss in the form of actually connecting. Mostly, it was just like dating someone whose IQ is half yours but who looks good – you know…