August 2007 – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: 1-2-3-4! edition (or, A tribute to Hilly Kristal)

I figured the guys over at Punk Marketing might write something about this, but they haven’t, so I guess it’s up to me to put a marketing/PR spin on an obituary mainly relegated to the music scene.

Hilly Kristal, the man who put punk rock on a stage and let it scream at the world, died on Thursday at age 75 from complications of lung cancer. Kristal was the owner of the seedy New York club CBGB’s, a venue that put early punk and new wave on the map — and gave performers like Ramones, Blondie, Television, Patti Smith and Talking Heads their start when they had few other options. (That’s him on the right, sweeping up outside the club sometime in the 1970s, probably.)

CBGB’s, which closed last October, was the birthplace of punk rock, and Kristal was punk’s father figure. In the words of The New York Times‘ obit, Kristal, “with his bushy beard and ever-present flannel shirt … cut an unusual figure as the paterfamilias of the noisy downtown music scene. But for nearly 33 years his club was an incubator for generations of New York rock bands, and performing within its dank, flier-encrusted walls became a bragging right for musicians everywhere.”

So what does it have to do with higher ed marketing? Absolutely nothing — at least not on the surface. But punk rock never was an overt operation. Punk was underground and viral, and its roots are entrenched and entwined in Kristal’s dingy club at 315 Bowery.

As Alex Remington explains in his tribute to Kristal (linked below): “The music that blared across the Bowery soon emanated across the Hudson and ever outward from there. In London it got politicized by anarchists and spiked with eyeliner by goths; in Los Angeles it snarled faster harder until it became hardcore; and here in Washington it turned into an underground movement described by two phrases: DIY (do-it-yourself) and emotional hardcore. It could credibly be described as the parent of both indie rock and current emo, whether or not it recognizes its own paternity.”

The roots of punk — with its DIY ethos, amateurish attitude, underground vision and scabrous, anti-corporate stance — have sprouted an above-ground movement that flourishes in today’s disintermediated marketplace. We who make our living in trying to keep everyone “on message” in a world where the middleman is quickly vanishing have Hilly Kristal to thank for making the traditional aspects of our jobs more difficult — and the less traditional aspects much more interesting. Punk gave rise to The Cult of the Amateur, which writers like Andrew Keen disdain. Heck, you could even trace blogging’s roots to punk rock, maybe. The idea that “any idiot can do this” — whether it’s play three power chords, scream 1-2-3-4! into the mic, or create a blog on the Internet — is a very punk thing to do. Of course, even more punk would be to not do any of these things, a sentiment which probably makes no sense to some of you, and makes absolute sense to others.

But I digress. This is a Friday Five, after all. So, in memory of Hilly Kristal (may he rest in raucous rock-n-roll heaven), here are five links that have something to do with him, CBGB’s or punk rock:

Alex Remington‘s tribute to Hilly via Huffington Post. “He was an entrepreneur who saw promise in a neighborhood crawling with junkies, poets, beatniks and bums — not that there was much of a difference between them all — and built a bar in a former flophouse.” And with his death, “American degeneracy is more aimless than ever.”

Hilly Kristal’s last interview, from his hospital bed in July. “We all have regrets. I’m not satisfied with anything that I’ve done or not done. With the club, I did most of the things I wanted to do. But I regret that I don’t have much time to go places or the money to do things that I’d like. But I’m an optimist. I will make time to do more things.”

The artists speak. Rolling Stone talks to Debbie Harry (Blondie), Chris Franz (Talking Heads), Patti Smith and others about Kristal. They all share good words, but the best sentiment comes from a commenter: “Put Hilly on the cover, he is most deserving. Hilly cared, in an industry that mostly doesnâ€™t.”

A song for Hilly. Listen to Ramones cover Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” (mp3 file).

Ode to CBGB’s, a podcast of early punk tunes put together by some old washed-up punk wannabe.

Keeping your website relevant: 10 ideas

Anyone in the throes of a web relaunch — and who isn’t these days? — may benefit from this iMedia article, 10 ways to keep your site relevant, by Krista LaRiviere, co-founder of CMS provider Hot Banana. Naturally, she advises you have a partner from outside (No. 4 on her list) — unless you can do it all in-house, from branding to search engine optimization, ecommerce and cross-browser compatibility. “It’s never been more important to make sure your site’s structure, layout, content and technologies are up-to-date, optimized and following the latest best practices,” she writes.

I, crisis communications expert

[shameless self-promotion]
Just thought I’d let readers know that I, a guy who usually tries to get reporters to interview other people, was interviewed myself as a *ahem* media expert by InsideHigherEd.com for a follow-up story to the whole Dalhousie/Facebook/puppy murder flare-up (Proving you’re not a puppy murderer, by Andy Guess).
[/shameless self-promotion]

Guess’ story views the Dalhousie situation — a resurgent Facebook group of 22,000-plus members that accuses Dalhousie of conducting inhumane research on puppies — in terms of crisis management in the age of social networks:

One of a public relations officerâ€™s worst nightmares is a lie that wonâ€™t go away, and Dalhousie University recently confronted a doozy: that it was experimenting on cuddly, doe-eyed puppies and kittens.

Normally in such situations, a university might take steps to release information that rebuts the charges, or it might make contact with the source of the allegations. But in this case the statements in question were online, contained within a group on the social-networking Web site Facebook, and accessible to anyone with an account. The group … was founded by someone who apparently was never even a student there.

Now, after an inital attempt to have the group removed from Facebook failed, the university is considering its legal options. â€œItâ€™s a clear case of defamation,â€ said Charles Crosby, media relations manager at Dalhousie, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The case illustrates not only how a university confronts allegations, but the evolving ways in which damaging information is spreading from multiple, uncontrollable sources online.

This case raises some interesting issues about communicating in the social media sphere. Dalhousie, the InsideHigherEd story points out, “is highlighting highlighting efforts by other students to counter the original group. One, a Facebook group called â€œStop People From Spreading Lies About Animal Cruelty At Dalhousieâ€, was started by a student who works in a laboratory at the university. Still, theyâ€™ve got an uphill battle: Only a little over 400 members have joined that group, which canâ€™t match the visceral hook of a vulnerable beagle puppy displayed on the originalâ€™s page.”

When I received Guess’s email query to chat about crisis communications in the web 2.0 world, I wasn’t mcuh up to speed on the latest developments at Dalhousie, so we spoke in broader terms of how colleges and universities might handle such crises. My lone quote is rightly buried in the story (paragraph nine, if you’re looking). Guess quotes some better experts, such as Rae Goldsmith of CASE and Teresa Valerio Parrot of SimpsonScarborough, whose quote at the end of the story wraps it all up nicely.

The new rankings are here! The new rankings are here!

This is the kind of spontaneous publicity — your name in print — that makes people!

Steve Martin, from The Jerk (YouTube clip).

The new U.S. News & World Report annual college rankings are here! And for the eighth year running, Princeton is again at the top of heap. No big news there. What is the big news about this year’s rankings is what one media report calls “a swirl of controversy.”

The controversy has been brewing for months. It began with a group of presidents from U.S. liberal arts colleges banding together to protest U.S. News’ methodology for compiling the rankings. The protesting presidents, known collectively as the Annapolis Group, object to the “flawed” approach to ranking colleges and universities, especially the subjective reputational survey. The group plans to create an alternative to the U.S. News and other commercial rankings, and many of its members have opted out of this year’s rankings.

But not everyone has joined the cause. Many of the highly ranked liberal arts schools apparently see no need to protest.

And, even as the number of schools opting out of the U.S. News rankings has risen, and the number refusing to complete the magazine’s reputational survey has “plunged to its lowest level ever” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, subscription required), some of the campuses that pledged to end the relationship with the annual rating ritual are having a tough time of it. Breaking up is hard to do, it seems — especially when the ratings help an institution’s reputation.

As the Associated Press reports (“Colleges Struggle to Quit Rankings Habit,” via the Washington Post):

Sixty-two colleges have enlisted in an anti-rankings campaign led by education activist Lloyd Thacker. But a quick Web search shows even some of those schools haven’t fulfilled a pledge to stop using their rankings to advertise themselves. And none of the highest-ranked schools have formally signed on.

Interviews by The Associated Press with top officials at about a dozen elite colleges confirm a fault line in the rankings debate that’s more than coincidence: It irks educators everywhere to see colleges ranked like basketball teams. But it irks educators at the top-ranked colleges a lot less.

If the battle against the ratings game is to be won, it “‘must be led by the beneficiaries,’ Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College in upstate New York, wrote in a recent letter to U.S. News and to fellow college presidents, saying he would sign on to the protest if schools like Harvard, Princeton and Williams do so first. [Way to step up to the plate there, Leon. – Ed.] ‘To end a corrupt and misleading game, the winners, not the losers, have to call it quits.'”

At some of the highest-ranked colleges, officials declined to comment. Some that did said they are sympathetic to Thacker’s case (many already refrain from advertising their rankings, at least in their own publications). And some are cooperating, at least partially. …

But they also say the rankings are a fact of life — and not an entirely bad one.

“In some respects, colleges and universities may have been too immune in the past to any kind of accountability for our practices, and students and families deserve to know as much as possible about the educational investment that they are about to make,” said Robert Clagett, dean of admission at Middlebury College in Vermont, wrote in an e-mail.

This morning’s New York Times offers a similar take on the rankings (“College Ratings Race Roars on Despite Concerns“). “[T]here is little sign that the rankings race is diminishing,” the Times reports, adding that “virtually none of the most select and highly ranked colleges signed on” to protest the rankings.

Indeed, the rankings are so influential, two decades after they were started, that one clause in the contract of Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, promises a $10,000 bonus if he can raise its standing. Frustrated college officials and high school guidance counselors say the magazine is not only reporting on how colleges perform, but is also changing their behavior as they try to devise gambits to scurry into the top ranks.

Despite the criticism, and even as U.S. News faces increasing competition in the higher ed ratings game from the Princeton Review (due out Monday), Fiske, Kaplan’s, Kiplinger’s and a slew of other publications, U.S. News remains at the top of the rankings game. And, just like Princeton, it’s likely to keep its spot at the top for quite some time.