A laggard returns to Twitter

It’s funny, but my friends think I’m a digital wizard. After all, I maintain 3 blogs and have a life in 6 social networks (not all are on FriendFeed). For a 55-year-old geezer, some think I am seriously connected. Now I add one more network.

After bailing out of Twitter more than a year ago, I have returned for a look around. And I like what I see.

This isn’t a post to extol the virtues of Twitter. I’m still learning my way around the application and observing the culture. Nor is this a mea culpa for my occasional criticism of “twits” over the past 15 months.

But I will say this: Twitter is more useful and interesting than it was in the summer of 2007, when I sampled it then dropped out. I didn’t get it then, but I am no earlier adopter. Today, I find on Twitter has a critical mass of interesting people I can learn with and learn from. It makes an old professor smile.

What defines the ethical organization?

I’ve been studying public relations ethics for more than 20 years and leading seminars on the topic for 15.

My favorite seminar exercise asks participants to identify organizations they consider “ethical” and those they consider — well — less than ethical. I won’t be naming the bad guys in this post, but I’ll describe the exercise and some of the conclusions I’ve drawn since 1993.

I call this exercise the “Ethical Organization.” Participants break into teams of 5-6 and spend 20 minutes identifying organizations the consider “ethical” and those they consider “unethical.” Teams establish their own criteria for labeling the organizations. We don’t define ethics in advance.

Each group nominates an organization in each category, “ethical” and “unethical,” and they list reasons to support their nominations. A spokesperson from each group then presents its nominees. As moderator, I post the names and the reasons on the whiteboard.

Over the years, the Ethical Organization exercise has produced a list of “usual suspects” on both sides of the discussion.

Redneck and proud of it! What’s wrong with this picture?

Unlike many of my left-leaning colleagues, I like to keep politics out of the classroom. Ditto for those thorny social issues. We don’t discuss abortion or gay marriage in my classes unless it’s somehow in the context of the day’s lesson.

Well, it’s a good thing I’m on sabbatical this fall. Were I in the classroom today, campaign strategy and communications would certainly have been dragged into the discussion. And I would almost certainly have been ranting about this…

Yesterday, at a political rally in nearby Greene, Ohio, Gretchen Wilson sang her hit song, “Redneck Woman,” after which she introduced VP candidate Sarah Palin as someone with that “same maverick attitude.”

I applaud the “maverick” label for the McCain campaign, as it helps to separate the ticket from W’s administration. And McCain has earned the badge. But “maverick” and “redneck” just ain’t the same thing, dadgumit.

To the gathering of her faithful here in Ohio, Palin opened by saying: “Someone called me a redneck once and I said, ‘Why, thank you.’”

Reputation grows from behavior, not PR campaigns

Surprise Update 10/27/08: Stevens Found Guilty (Duh!)

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What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

While reading this AP account of the Ted Stevens trial, I was reminded again that actions speak louder than words. The 84-year-old Stevens, longtime U.S. Senator from Alaska, is accused of accepting gifts from those who reaped the government contracts he engineered. Stevens said they weren’t gifts at all, and that the prosecutor has it all wrong.

From the AP:

But prosecutors say he had a history of accepting gifts — including an expensive massage chair in his Washington, D.C., home — and omitting them from financial disclosure forms. Stevens has insisted repeatedly that the chair was a loan from a friend, although it has been in his house for seven years.

”How is that not a gift?” Prosecutor Brenda Morris asked.

”He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift,” Stevens said. ”He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift. We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us.”

Yikes! Is it possible that an elected official can be this arrogant? OK, dumb question. But really, has Stevens maybe been growing and consuming some of that wacky weed allowable under Alaskan law?

Wanna teach PR? Here’s your chance…

Some of you think I have the best job in the world.  And you’re right.  If you like what you see in this post, maybe you’ll decide to join me here at Kent State. If not, I hope you’ll help me pass the word. We’re looking for a new professor of public relations.

According to my Facebook profile (an impeccable source, to be sure), my job involves “molding young minds into focused, mature professionals.” In a nutshell, I spend my days gathering information about public relations and devising ways to impart that knowledge to bright, energetic young people. It’s a blast.

Outside the classroom I maintain close relationships with PR professionals who do the hiring — and they do lots of it.

Kent State PR grads leave our school prepared to do polished, professional work. Some 92% land jobs in public relations and closely related fields like marcom within six months of graduation. That’s our “bottom line,” and it ranks us among the top PR programs in the nation.  (Thank you, Diz.)

Just like you, I work way more than 40 hours a week. But I have three things most of you don’t: June, July, and August. The job involves a 9-month contract, plus a 4-week break at Christmastime. Time off, as we all know, enables quality of life.

Sound good so far?  Then I hope you’ll read on…

Rush was right! But did we listen?

More than 20 years ago, Rush warned us that our world was in deep trouble. We didn’t listen, and now look at this mess! Worldwide financial chaos, terrorist threats all around, violence, famine, disease. I don’t want to depress you, but if it gets any worse our kids may have to move back in with us! (Note to self: Call locksmith.)

Rush Kidder

Before you think I’ve lost my mind, the “Rush” I’m referring to isn’t the right-wing pundit on Clear Channel, but Rushworth M. Kidder, now head of the Institute for Global Ethics.  In the mid-80s, Kidder interviewed 22 world leaders in government, business, education and religion. He ask these leaders to identify key concerns society would have to address in order to negotiate the coming century.

Most of the answers won’t surprise you: the nuclear threat, the degradation of the environment, the population explosion, the economic gap between rich and poor nations and the need for educational reform. But there’s one more Kidder writes about:

The sixth (issue) surfacing in interview after interview caught me by surprise: the breakdown of morality. It was as though these interviewees were saying, “Look, if we don’t get a handle on the ethical collapses going on around us, we will be a surely doomed as we would be by nuclear disaster or an environmental catastrophe.” (From Kidder’s “How Good People Make Tough Choices”)

Celebrating a Classic Case Study: ‘Building the New Lodge’

No one popped champagne corks in Lansing to celebrate it. And had I not contacted Jack Pyle, the 20th anniversary of the “New Lodge” might have passed without note. This classic public relations case deserves a retrospective. So here you go.

This isn’t the lodge where you gather after a day on the slopes. It’s the John C. Lodge Freeway (M-10), a major artery that connects downtown Detroit with its northwest suburbs. In the mid-1980s, the Lodge was a real mess, in need of regrading, resurfacing and new drainage. But when the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) proposed closing alternate sides of the highway over two years, many protested.

Closing completely the 9-mile stretch of highway would displace 120,000 motorists daily, forcing them onto surface streets or alternate highways. It happens all the time where you live, right? But thanks MDOT’s campaign called “Lodge-ability,” your highway department and mine have learned the value of public relations to support major road projects.