Category: media relations

Business is booming for one UMR summer camp

[blatant, gratuitous gloating]

We made the New York Times today. When I say we, I mean one of our most popular summer camps, one that lets kids blow stuff up. How much fun is that? And great news coverage, just in time for Independence Day.

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Students at UMR’s Explosives Camp watch a watermelon go boom (photo by Peter Newcomb for the New York Times).

Yeah, I know the timing isn’t the best, with all that’s been happening with car bombs in the U.K. this past weekend. Some people might think we’re training future terrorists at this camp (though regular readers of the Times should know better). Anyway, timing schmiming. It’s the New York Times! UMR doesn’t often get this kind of coverage in the Times.

This camp has gotten some terrific coverage this year, its fourth year. Beyond the Times coverage, explosives camp also made:

  • The International Herald Tribune (carrying the Times story)
  • NPR
  • AP’s ASAP wire
  • The Honolulu Star Bulletin (our first big hit in Honolulu, to my knowledge)
  • A couple of big-time blogs (Boing Boing and Wired’s Geekdad). Those hits in turn spawned more buzz and chatter in the blogosphere.

    But what does all this mean? Were we lucky? Sure, there’s always some element of luck. But the coverage UMR got from this summer camp boils down to more than sheer luck. It’s about having a great story to tell, and telling it well. We didn’t back off from the controversial nature of the camp. Instead, we embraced it. Hence the headline in that news release: Summer campers to practice the art of blowing stuff up

    It also boils down to having a unique story. When it comes to explosives and explosives camp, UMR is one of a kind. And our PR staff, building on Seth Godin‘s famous purple cow theory, has been trumpeting this program as being truly remarkable. Because it is. Ours is the only university in the nation to host an explosives camp. Ours is the only university in the nation to offer a minor in explosives engineering. And if all goes as planned, one day soon we’ll be the only university to offer a degree in explosives engineering.

    [/blatant, gratuitous gloating]

    Wishing all of you a happy, safe Independence Day.

    • Participatory PR

    Back in my college days, when I was learning about how to be a news reporter, I became interested in the notion of participatory journalism. Of course, back then, video display terminals (VDTs) were slowly replacing IBM Selectrics in newsrooms across America, the term referred to journalists like George Plimpton, who would play a role — for Plimpton, it was as a quarterback for the Detroit Lions — and then describe the experience for readers, listeners or viewers. (I was more interested in the participatory style of renowned gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, but that’s a topic best left alone for the moment.)

    These days, participatory journalism refers to the readers, listeners or viewers actually participating in the process of gathering and reporting the news.

    Now, Micro Persuasion blogger Steve Rubel in introducing another concept: participatory public relations. According to Rubel, it’s a brand of PR in which the flack (and I use that term as a term of endearment, for I am one) moves away from the time-honored practice of “pitching” a story idea to a media outlet to one of contributing and sharing — e.g., participating — in online social networks.

    Also according to Rubel, PR agencies aren’t quite ready to give up the pitch for participation. “Many in PR seem to be treating Web 2.0 as simply an extension of the traditional media – another venue for buzz. They are pumping thousands of email pitches into the community every day.”

    I just wrapped up an email interview with a fellow blogger who asked me about the state of readiness among higher ed PR flacks to enter into this world of participatory journalism. I’d say we aren’t much further along than our corporate counterparts. At UMR, we’ve been using blogs (here, here and here) to connect with some of our audiences, and to talk about some big changes on campus. Difficult as it has been for some of us (read: me mainly), we’ve dropped our “press release voice” when we blog, opting for more authentic, real tones in our writing — stepping out from behind the curtain, as Rubel suggests all good PR practitioners do. We’ve even posted some video on YouTube, and some staffers in our communications department share feeds from our blogs on their Facebook pages. But we’ve got a long way to go before we achieve Rubel’s vision of participatory PR.