The Good, The Bad, The Spin

In case the point has not been drilled home enough, those on the receiving end of public relations ineptitude are fed up. It started last fall when an editor for Wired publicly posted PR people’s email address–those he deemed guilty of overly annoying PR spam. My favorite comment to this post:

“As a VP in the PR industry, I’d like to suggest a few things to these journalists who like to throw a hissy fit….”

The point missing in this statement is the precedent behavior: PR folks spending a good amount of time and effort spamming journalists. The antecedent behavior is the journalists striking back. Rightfully so.

PR people have long been objects of derision, and now they are being publicly outed. This past week, Lifehacker went a step further by not only naming names in a new PR Spammers Wiki, but showing us how to block a very specific list of PR agencies–a lot of the big dogs are on the list–using my favorite email tool, Gmail. The irony is that Lifehacker is a site devoted to efficiently getting things done.

Here are a few responses. Overall some came out as being defensive, some apologetic and one hedged on being threatening.

• PR Squared
• socialTNT
• Stowe Boyd.

I don’t follow sports, so I apologize for being behind the curve on Mike Grundy, football coach for Oklahoma State, who thew a temper tartrum at a press conference about a column written about one of his players. Here’s the original tirade:

Here’s the response by the columnist and her editor:
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Lanny Davis is former special counsel to President Bill Clinton. While in the White House from 1996 through 1998, Davis was assigned the difficult tasks of handling negative allegations against the President.

He had to seemingly work against the formal machinations of the White House in order to give the President credibility in the face of, at times, bizarre allegations of iimpropriety. His experience is chronicled in his 2003 book, Truth To Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself: Notes from My White House Education.

Truth To Tell presents an inside view of media relations at the highest political level and soundly presents the story behind the stories.Davis’ latest book, Scandal: How “Gotcha” Politics Is Destroying America, sets America’s scandal culture in a much broader context by presenting the history of American political scandals through today’s 24-7 news cycle and the resulting extreme partisanship we see today. In the end, Davis presents a voice for commonality among political views. He now works as a litigator focusing on crisis management in Washington, D.C.

This post is the first in a multi-part interview with Davis about crises and media relations. Please check back for future installments. Better yet, click the Subscribe link at right to get new posts by email or into your feed reader.

How did you get into your position at the Clinton White House?

LANNY DAVIS: It starts with my friendship with Hillary Rodham when I was in law school before I knew Bill Clinton. It goes back to when I was in my third year in Yale Law School in 1969. We were friends for that one year before I graduated and then over the years kept in touch off and on. I met her future husband when he volunteered in the Joe Lieberman for State Senate Campaign of 1970. That’s where all roads seemed to cross in New Haven. (more…)