Tag: news

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How Do You Learn About Your Local Community?

Television remains the top source of local news for most Americans but many now turn to the internet and cast a wider net for information on specific topics, according to survey results released Monday.

While local TV news was the main source for staples such as weather, traffic and breaking news, the internet was the preferred resource for finding more specific information, according to the survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project.

Local news and information is filtered best via community, perhaps even more so in the digital age. People continue to show faith in community, whether learning news via word-of-mouth at the supermarket or via local sources and neighbors on Facebook and Twitter. Fifty-five percent said they get their local news via word of mouth at least once a week compared to 74 percent for television, 51 percent for radio, 50 percent for the local newspaper, 47 percent for the Internet, and 9 percent for a printed community newsletter.

Read the rest of my post and check out the full survey at KCET’s The Public Note blog.

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Crowdsourced Mobile App Waze, ABC7 to Help Angelenos Beat Carmageddon

kabc and waze beat carmageddonCrowdsourced social mobile traffic app Waze‘s partnership with KABC-TV hit the wires this morning (press release below / Techmeme link).

Here’s the story and video from ABC7. WSJ, NYT, Reuters, and Fast Company are already on it. Video and press assets can be found here. Some other goodies:
* Carmageddon promo
* Carmageddon Resistance

Continue reading “Crowdsourced Mobile App Waze, ABC7 to Help Angelenos Beat Carmageddon”

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If Donald Trump is a “Possible Republican Candidate” for President Then So Am I

donald trump republican presidential candidate
Donald Trump uses a patented circular-breathing / arm-pumping technique to add heft and bounce to his billion-dollar hair (AP photo)

Attention-starved real estate tycoon and reality television superstar Donald Trump is going to run for president in 2012, according to the media.

Visibly embarrassed after being shamed by The President, The Donald, and The Public at large after seeing the clamp come down on a far-right fringe group called The Birthers, the media establishment gladly passed the mic off to Trump on Wednesday.

“I am so proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish,” an elated Trump said to a crowd of people cheering, no doubt in anticipation that the billionaire would hand out a thousand-dollar bill with every handshake.

And with that, the 64-year-old businessman who has erected major skyscrapers bearing his name in the majorest of cities became the frontrunning candidate to win the 2012 Republican Presidential primary.

Many media outlets reported that The Birthers stated an intent to scrutinize the document but failed to reference the group’s conclusion as posted on birthers.org Wednesday: “…[f]orgery or not, now we can debate the true meaning of a natural born citizen.” Whatever that means.
In today’s media climate, when even the New York Times mistakes an Onion parody cover of Teen Beat featuring President Obama as the real thing, we’re calling on Donald Trump to fill the L.A. River aqueducts with naturally flowing spring water, fund the salaries of laid-off LAUSD teachers and while he’s at it, to find life on Mars.

Continue reading “If Donald Trump is a “Possible Republican Candidate” for President Then So Am I”

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BP Oil Spill: When Crisis Management is Compounded by Social Media

I had the privilege of guest lecturing in Bill Imada’s graduate class at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism (my alma mater). The title of the class — JOUR 568– is Critical Thinking and Crisis Management and I was asked to demonstrate the importance of social media in crisis communications and to present a case study. Well it turned out not being so much of a lecture — or even a case study for that matter — as it was a critical review of BP’s [lack of] response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster of April 2010 and the ensuing oil spill that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly 3 months unchecked.

Click through to the videos in the presentation. Especially BP Spills Coffee. Riotous, no? But there’s truth to every bit of the parody. While BP was too focused on its record-breaking earnings and deflecting blame, it needed to address the reality of what was — and is — a very human tragedy in the eyes and on the active social networks of the public. And BP was way too late to that game.

The U.S. government just approved the first permit for deep-water drilling in the gulf since the disaster and there remains no known fix should history repeat itself. But our consumer culture didn’t get to where it is today out of an abundance of caution. This is where crisis management runs counter to traditional public relations. Organizations cannot wait to get involved on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, they must be proactively engaging and listening to their audiences. Sometimes communication is the only viable regulation.