Month: June 2014

Friday Five: @JimLukaszewski’s personal action plan from #PRSAMDC

Jim Lukaszewski (photo via www.prsamdc.com)
Jim Lukaszewski (photo via http://www.prsamdc.com)

I’m very glad I was able to attend a portion of the Public Relations Society of America’s 2014 PRSA Midwest District Conference in Springfield, Missouri, on Thursday. I’m especially happy that I was able to hear kickoff keynote speaker Jim Lukaszewski’s terrific presentation on gaining influence. Jim is head of the Lucaszewski group and a big name in the PR and crisis communications fields. He shared a lot of knowledge and great ideas with us today. But the best takeaway of Jim’s talk, for me, was his five-step personal action plan. (And wouldn’t you know it? Those five steps fit perfectly with this blog’s Friday Five format.)

Since Jim so graciously shared his wisdom with us, I don’t think he’d mind my freely passing it along to all of you. It’s a pretty good template that I think would apply to fields outside of PR, marketing, branding and strategic communications. So even if you’re not in the PR, marketing or branding business, you might find Jim’s plan adaptable to your vocation — and/or your life outside of work.

Jim Lukaszewski’s five-step personal action plan

  1. Broaden your interests. In the context of the PRSA conference, Jim asked us to “Broaden your interest beyond the media.” Our organizations’ leaders have broader interests. So should we.
  2. Teach yourself to ask these five questions at the end of every day:
    1. What do I know now that I didn’t know at the start of this day?
    2. What is the most important thing I’ve learned or witnessed today?
    3. What is the most interesting thing I’ve learned or witnessed today?
    4. Who did I help today (and how)?
    5. What new questions came up today that I need to find the answers to?
  3. Teach others. Along those lines, Jim also suggests we find compliment those who learn from us. Beyond that, we should strive to find someone to compliment and write that person a personal, handwritten note. He strives to do this three times per month.
  4. Study leadership. Read biographies or books about leaders who interest you, regardless of their field or discipline. But don’t limit your study to books. Study the leaders around you, including those in your organizations and in organizations you’re affiliated with (as a volunteer, for example).
  5. Do and say things that matter. Jim suggests we learn to moderate the suggestions we make to those who seek our counsel. We should keep our advice “simple, sensible, positive and constructive,” and make sure it helps our leaders achieve their objectives as well as the objectives of our organizations.

A good plan — for work and for life.

Follow Jim Lukaszewski on Twitter at @JimLukaszewki.

Making a spectacle of scientific research

In my 23-plus years in the higher ed PR and marketing business, I’ve had my share of encounters with university researchers that go something like this:

Me: Dr. So-and-so, I heard about your latest research project, and I think it would make a great story to share with the news media. Would you be willing to work with me on a release to share with some reporters?

Professor: I’m not interested in talking to the news media. They never get their facts right and they generalize everything.

Me (pondering the irony of a professor generalizing about the media’s tendency to generalize): Are you sure you don’t want to work with me on this? It’s a great story, and something that the public would be genuinely interested in.

Professor: No thank you.

And so I go on my way to the next potential research story to pitch to science news journalists.

Most researchers are not at all like the ones I describe above. (And of course I’m generalizing here to make a point.) But there are enough of them. And even some faculty who are willing to work with their university’s PR staff are skeptical about the news media’ ability to accurately convey the significance of their research in a series of short paragraphs or sound bites. This Ph.D. Comics cartoon about the science news cycle rings true to many of them.

The science news cycle, according to PhDComics.com
The science news cycle, according to PhDComics.com

So it’s with mixed feelings that I write about what seems to be two edges of the same media sword in today’s world.

One one edge, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson, a real live scientist (he’s an astrophysicist) and host of the TV series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. He’s brought the 1980 Carl Sagan program of the same name into a new era, and is making science accessible to a broader audience than Sagan’s PBS series ever did. Over the past several weeks, millions of viewers of Fox (a company not always perceived as friendly toward scientific ideas like evolution and big bang cosmology) as well as National Geographic (a more science-friendly but less mainstream network) have tuned in to hear Tyson explain the mysteries of the universe.

On the other hand, we have two recent, high-profile stunts designed to showcase scientific advances. Both fell flat, for different reasons — and that raise the question of whether efforts to publicize scientific achievements are becoming too spectacular.

Wired reported on these two events on Friday. “It’s been a wacky week in science,” wrote Wired‘s Greg Miller. “First there was that computer that supposedly passed the Turing test, a 50-year old benchmark in artificial intelligence research. Then, yesterday (Thursday), a 29-year-old paralyzed man in a robotic exoskeleton took the opening kick in the World Cup in Brazil.

In both cases, the researchers behind the demonstrations have made grand claims about their importance as scientific breakthroughs. And in both cases critics have complained that they’re little more than publicity stunts. The Turing test chatbot didn’t look so great under closer scrutiny, and the long-awaited exoskeleton demo turned out to be a lot less dramatic than what was initially promised, at least judging by what was shown on TV.

All of which raises the question: Are spectacles like this bad for science? Or can taking science out of the lab and into the limelight serve a greater purpose?

Wired asked Hank Greely, a Stanford law professor who specializes in bioethics, to share his opinions on the matter. If you’re really interested in this topic, you should read the entire interview (it won’t take long). But the main takeaways for me are that:

1. Spectacles aren’t all bad. “When they attract public attention in a positive way, they can help build support for science in two ways. They can build political support among the masses, and they might spark some people to learn more or even go into science.” (Just be sure your science — or engineering — is working before you attempt the spectacular. I recall an incident in which a robot designed and built by students from the University of Pennsylvania was picked to throw out the first pitch of a Phillies game and fell short.)

2. Researchers need to share their stories. I agree with Greely here when he says: “In general I wish scientists paid more intention to communicating with the rest of world. Some of that is talking to journalists or serving as expert witnesses, and some of it is thinking up ways to publicize and dramatize the cool stuff you’re working on. Science needs to toot its own horn because it’s under threat.”

Our role, as PR and marketing professionals, is to help the researchers tell those stories. We just need to make sure we don’t make a spectacle of ourselves or our institutions in the process.

 

Friday Five: Good reads for #highered

Some recent-ish posts from the higher ed blogging community that I’ve enjoyed reading and thought were worth sharing:

  1. Pay more attention to the attention price you pay. This post by Karine Joly hits home on several levels and is well worth reading by anyone who is struggling with cognitive overload.
  2. Why are we still writing press releases? Tim Nekritz takes on the time-honored tradition of pelting media outlets with “news” they don’t care about and asks if there’s a better way.
  3. Startup U? That’s the question posed by Kyle James, in infographic form, on .eduGuru. Most thought-provoking to me is the idea that “universities that prepare students for a creative economy prioritize the same three things that drive successful startup cultures.”
  4. Why repositioning your brand is like pushing water uphill. Deb Maue of mStoner discusses the challenges of rebranding. “[W]hether you’re a shampoo or a college, brand repositioning is extremely difficult. Why? Because you’re not starting with a blank slate.” Her advice is for universities to “stop wishing they were someone else and embrace what they are.”
  5. How to spot good social media marketing research, by Chris Syme, provides some great tips and resources for finding good social media research products or embarking on your own research project.

Have a good weekend.

AP style vs. substance

AP StylebooksWhat has gotten into those crusty curmudgeons who edit the Associated Press Stylebook?

For those of you whose own in-house editorial style leans heavily on the AP Stylebook — the self-proclaimed “journalist’s bible” — you may have heard about a couple of big changes to the rules. AP announced them earlier this spring.

They are:

More than vs. over

In March, the editors ruled that the use of over to define quantity is acceptable as a synonym for more than. This change, as Poynter noted, “rock[ed] copy editors to their very cores.”

Prior to the change, over was acceptable only when describing physical proximity. Our plane flew over Kansas on the way to Colorado. Now, over may be used to describe quantity. We have over hundreds in stock.

Nitpicky? Sure. But for those of us reared (not “raised”) on the rules of AP style, this is a significant change. We’ve been replacing “over” with “more than” for years, and some of us took a certain sort of perverse joy by explaining to the edited why “over” was unacceptable. As a colleague told me the other day: “How am I supposed to feel superior to others now?” It’s a dilemma for sure.

As for me, I’m not bothered by this change. “Over” is more economical than “more than,” so it saves space. Five spaces, to be precise. And it saves me the hassle of trying to explain why I took such pains to change a simple word in copy. So, I’m OK with over, even though some aren’t. As for the debate, I’m more than over it.

Spelling out state names

While some of us were still reeling over the AP’s acceptance of over as a synonym for more than, the stylebook editors throw another curve ball just a month later.

In April, AP announced that starting May 1, state names should be spelled out in body copy. Even when following a city. So instead of writing “Rolla, Mo.” (using the antiquated, pre-postal code abbreviation for the state) we’re supposed to write “Rolla, Missouri.”

What the…?

Another arcane AP style rule bites the dust.

As Poynter reported, AP made the change “to be consistent in our style for domestic and international stories. International stories have long spelled out state names in the body of stories.”

I can buy that. We live in and communicate with global audiences. Consistency is good.

But the AP’s historic tendency to favor economy (i.e., shorter is better) falls by the wayside here.

I can live with this style change, too. But I have compassion for those of you in Mississippi and Massachusetts.

* * *

It boils down to this: Language and our use of it evolves. It’s good to see the AP — often considered a dinosaur of journalism and writing — evolving along with it.

Photo: “The old school rules, spiral bound” – by AllaboutGeorge on Flickr