It’s tea time in Appalachia; I’m in a parallel universe where communication and logic are lost

Is this the end of civility?

I don’t watch the TV pundits, liberal or conservative. And I don’t listen to the radio numbskulls like Glenn Beck. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t influential — and scary.

I’ve spent the past 10 days in rural Western Pennsylvania. I grew up here, the grandson of union coal miners – one a Democrat, one a Republican. They were smart and civil men, and they made up their own minds without any help from the likes of Beck or Limbaugh. They read the newspaper, they attended union meetings, and they went to church. They thought things through, and they believed in community.

PR Interns Part III: You get what you pay for

I’ve been placing interns for 18 years and mentoring them for 30. And I’m still surprised when I learn so many of them work for free. That’s nuts.

Or is it? Why don’t most employers actually “employ” their interns? Is it a budget issue? Or don’t they see value in the interns’ contributions?

My predecessor at Kent State, the late E. Zoe McCathrin, set the tone for paid internships long before I arrived here. She cajoled every employer in the area to pony up at least minimum wage, and in some cases she outright bullied them into it. If you knew Zoe, this won’t surprise you.

PR Interns Part II: Interviewing and Selection

The last post focused on finding the best intern candidates for your PR firm or department. Now lets discuss the selection process. If you’ve done a good job promoting your internship, you should have plenty of applicants.

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Email/resume/samples. For most internship candidates, the email and its contents create the first impression. And it’s usually an accurate one. You don’t need my help evaluating these packages, but let me recommend you focus on these questions:

Did the subject line break through? Did the message offer a clear and concise introduction of the candidate’s qualifications? Was it accompanied by the the writing samples you requested — or links to them? You did request writing samples, right?

One caution: Don’t expect students to be too creative or flashy. They’ve likely been advised to make a simple, crisp presentation — and with good reason. If you find a few smart candidates who also write well, test their creativity later.

PR Interns Part I: Finding the right candidate

About now, PR firms and departments are reviewing resumes and interviewing internship candidates for summer positions. If you plan to hire interns this year and you haven’t begun the process, get a move on. The best of the crop are interviewing now.

How do you find the best intern candidates? As one who’s been guiding internship placement for nearly 20 years, let me offer a few tips:

Why passion, alone, won’t make you successful, with apologies to Chris and Gary

Last week I posted a review of Gary Vaynerchuk‘s book, “Crush It!” What I neglected to include was the subtitle: “Why now is the time to cash in on your passion.”

Chris Brogan

Then, last Friday, I spotted this post from Chris Brogan. The title: “How passion powers everything.”

I’m sure you see the common thread.

Is passion critical to reaching your goals? Absolutely. But it’s only one ingredient to success, and that’s a lesson that students and young professionals must learn early on.

Putting people before profits: Classic PR case study, but without the fairytale ending

In class this week, we discussed a case study that PR experts have lauded as “excellence” in employee relations. It involves a CEO who put the welfare of his employees ahead of his own bottom line. He did so in the most trying of circumstances, and his leadership landed him in the textbooks.

Fire at Malden Mills, 1995 (firenuggets.com)

In late 1995, a fire at Malden Mills put 3,000 union jobs at risk. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The 90-year-old manufacturer in Lawrence, Mass., has seen its revenues triple and employment double since emerging from bankruptcy in 1982. It’s popular Polartec and Polarfleece fabrics were one reason. A loyal and productive workforce was the other.

In a time when offshore manufacturing became standard procedure in American business, Malden Mills’ CEO Aaron Feuerstein opted to stay put and to rebuild his factory on the very site where his family had made textiles for 90 years.

Latest social-media books are long on evangelism, but a bit short on balance

A quick look at “Trust Agents,” “Twitterville” and “Crush It!”

Regulars in the social media space won’t gain a lot from the books cited in this post. All 3 are penned by SM evangelists and tend to target the late majority in the space. They sing the praises of social media, but the evidence is anecdotal and the outcomes nearly always positive. Nonetheless, newbies in the 2.0 world may find 2 of the 3 books useful.

Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Had Dale Canegie lived in the digital age, he would have liked Chris Brogan. For me, “Trust Agents” is a digital rendition of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The authors take Carnegie’s relationship-building concept and translate it for the online space.

If you’re looking to expand your influence in social media, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 may help you get there. Brogan and Smith call it “becoming a trust agent.” I call it networking. But it comes back to the relationships that Carnegie wrote about in 1934. People haven’t changed all that much, but thanks to technology, the sociology of networking has.