News Bypassing the Pulitzer Muster

Posted on January 10, 2012
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One has to have great sympathy for the members of the juries that award the Pulitizer Prizes – editors and other newspaper people – as they watch their craft being contracted, not only in numbers, but technique, too. They seem to be trying to draw the line, of all places, at Twitter, and that’s an unfortunate stance. When word gets around that some breaking event or other is being reported on Twitter, a tweet at a time, that’s likely to take the edge off traditional reporting, it’s true. But tweeted dispatches are no less valid as timely input, just untethered to newsdesks.

As Andy Weiss notes on the Digital Pivot blog, NPR’s Andy Carvin might have reason to be unhappy over the Pulitzer board’s stance, though broadcast news outlets have never been eligible for Pulitzers in any event. During the Arab Spring demonstrations last year, Carvin relayed tweeted reports, some of them pretty graphic, from the demonstrations, scooping everyone else. But again, broadcasters aren’t eligible anyway.

It doesn’t seem, though, that a guild system can hold much longer for reporting the news. We say reporting, rather than covering, because it’s a more actively pertinent term. “Covering” can be interpreted as who’s assigned to view, or dig into, an event. And that can have little immediately to do with when information actually starts arriving in another town or on another continent. So the Pulitzer Committee’s Breaking News category is for “breaking news” of its choice and definition, not necessarily events as they unfold.

Things were simpler when a couple of reporters relied on “Deep Throat” to keep them advised and there wasn’t any competition from Twitter or other forms of social media.

Postings From the Other Blogs We Do

Posted on March 13, 2011
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Despite my best intentions, I haven’t gotten to restarting my Beetle’s Beat blog, largely because of the time involved in gathering and writing up posts for the other blogs I do – Flack Me, Encore Insights and Barrier Briefs.

But it’s occurred to me that a way of priming the pump for Beetles Beat is to post links to my pieces on those other blogs. They certainly reflect my views on such matters as public relations and crisis communication, technology and security.

Wherever Beetle’s Beat may be headed into rarified areas of communication, these other posts are markers along the way – and I’m pleased, henceforth, to be noting them.
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Back on the Beat – Reporting on #blogchat

Posted on August 22, 2010
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I haven’t posted to Beetles Beat since last October. Been too busy with other blogs, but have been wanting to get back to my own. And, now, here’s the perfect incentive: to recognize and pass along the word about a Web community on blogging.

The last post I did was about community in my old neighborhood on Long Island during World War II and the post-war years – I’m big on community. Where it exists, it needs to be cherished and extended.
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Before TV, We Communicated; Social Media is Such an Opportunity Now

Posted on October 12, 2009
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I went to a seminar on social media today and both enjoyed and bemoaned it – enjoyed it because I got reaffirmation of what social media is about, bemoaned it because the presenter didn’t make that clear enough. It’s about a change in life and listening style.

Social media is about attempting to recreate the wonderful lives we had before television. That is, the way we interacted with friends and neighbors in the suburb I grew up in on Long Island, N.Y., N.Y., before television arrived in the early ’50s.
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Be Wary of ‘Emotional Hijackings’

Posted on July 31, 2009
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At their next meeting, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley might consider forming a “Cool It Club” that should have chapters in every community in America – especially in Washington, D.C.

I wasn’t there, but by all accounts, what appears to have happened at the Cambridge home of Professor Gates shortly after noon on July 16 was, in Daniel Goleman’s term, an “emotional highjacking.” While complicated by race, the incident seems to have been an emotional flareup that could happen to any of us, if we’re not mindful of what may be occurring. That’s because we all have human emotional systems.
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Crisis Communication Becoming Locally Global

Posted on May 18, 2009
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The best laid plans of corporate and governmental communicators for providing – and controlling – information during a crisis are being undone by the growing use of social media.

People building personal networks on Twitter, Facebook, Craigslist, Flickr and other social media today would be turning to them tomorrow to ask questions and spread information should a crisis strike.
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Baldridge Criteria Can Improve Communication

Posted on April 16, 2009
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In communication terms, as well as those of production, organizations can do well by adopting the Baldridge Criteria for Performance Excellence, whether they intend to seek the national quality award or not.

Boiled down, which is what Quality Digest does handily in its April issue, the Baldridge criteria are leadership; strategic planning; customer focus; measurement, analysis and knowledge management; workforce focus; process management, and results.

These can be as much of a mandate for a deliberate, attentive approach to organizational communication as they are for production quality. Communication, too, has results and we often are blissfully unaware of them, especially if they’re unfavorable.
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Countering Information Overload

Posted on April 2, 2009
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There was Kathleen Parker on the op-ed page of The Washington Post writing about a “TMI-addled nation.” Her reflections coincided with the 30th anniversary of the accident at my former workplace, and I thought for a moment she was exaggerating the anniversary’s impact a bit. But no, she was reflecting on “Too Much Information.” Now there’s a concern for these times.

Ironically, information overload is occurring at a time when newspapers, the core of the traditional media, are disintegrating. In my own Pennsylvania neighborhood, the two Lancaster papers just merged and my hometown paper, The Lebanon Daily News, will shortly be printed by a sister paper in York, 53 miles away. (It will be interesting to see how the delivery time holds up there.)
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We’re Back, With a Focus on Communication

Posted on April 1, 2009
Filed Under Communication principles | 2 Comments

We’re back, with a little sharper focus than before. On the beat, we’ll be talking about communication – communication that occurs in groups, organizations and society at large. It may, or may not, just happen – good communication usually doesn’t occur that way – but we’ll be looking for examples of situations that were either improved or weakened by communication that worked, or not. Don’t know how readily we’ll find them, but feel free to contribute as our readers and partners in this interest.

We’ll also be looking at risk and crisis communication, as examples or needs arise.
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Posting Suspended, Pending Site Improvements

Posted on January 13, 2009
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Posting on Beetles Beat is temporarily suspended while changes are made on the Resource Relations website to reflect the growing importance of social media and to launch a second blog, this one on organizational communication. All should be up and running fairly soon. We are looking forward to a wider conversation, and new relationships, with our readers.

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