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© Newswise.
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| Issue No. 200606
| June 2006
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The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
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PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
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Happiness Is Commencement in Your Rearview Mirror
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
The collective sigh you hear from media relations professionals at this time of year is one of relief, because (1) commencement is over and (2) they are still employed. In the catalogue of academic events, few offer so little media-relations upside, and so much downside, as graduation.
Yes, the New York Times does an annual page of commencement speech excerpts and so do a few other outlets. And one of the networks does a college graduation segment where you can glimpse your commencement speaker for an instant as the network blitzes through about 40 of them in 60 seconds.
Public Relations Director to boss: "Did you see him? I'm sure I saw him. At least I think I saw him. Next year let's give our speaker a ball cap to wear with the school logo on it."
Even though the numbers are familiar to all of you, let's review them. There are about 3,000 colleges and universities in this land. The New York Times will run 19 or 20 excerpts from commencement speakers. These are not good odds.
Your president, however, is not a fan of statistics. She expects to see Old Siwash's commencement speaker in the New York Times, especially if the commencement-planning committee has rounded up a "big name."
What's a big name? I'll tell you. A big name is a speaker whose role or identity does not need to be explained. George W. Bush is a big name. So is Katie Couric. Big names often need only one name to be recognizable: Oprah, Seinfeld, Cosby, Madonna, Spielberg, Hillary, Newt. Though sometimes they need three names (think Anna Nicole Smith).
One notch below big names are the "comma people." These are persons in responsible positions, but we have no idea who they are without the help of a descriptive dependent clause. If your commencement speaker is the assistant undersecretary for Latin American affairs in the State Department, then you have a comma person addressing your graduates.
Let me be clear. Comma people often deliver the best speeches. All things being equal, however, the big name has the best shot at gaining visibility for the institution, particularly via wire services whose stories go across the nation. When it comes to the New York Times, though, visibility hinges on something that is often overlooked: the availability of a speech transcript.
So many commencement speakers just stride up to the podium with a few notes clutched in their fist and proceed to wing it. They may deliver a scintillating speech, but their words go into the ether and are gone. However, the New York Times wants to see their words on paper—every one of their words. And if you can't deliver that, then you have no shot at being in their commencement excerpt roundup.
If you have a transcript of a good speech from a comma person, the Times will take that every time over the big name who left 'em rolling in the aisles with his wit, but who did not speak from a prepared text.
This is just one more reason why sales of stomach antacids soar among college media relations professionals in May, and why happiness is seeing commencement in your rearview mirror.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game
by Wendy Greenberg
Media Relations Director, Ursinus College
Let's get this out of the way: Torie Clarke--author of Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game--was a Pentagon spokesperson, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a press secretary for President George H. W. Bush's 1992 re-election campaign, and an adviser to Senator John McCain. Some may not like the politics (and some may).
Like them or not, Clarke was a female public information officer (PIO) advising males at the top levels of government and politics, and although she gushes about her former bosses (especially Rumsfeld) occasionally, there are some lessons here for us in higher-education public relations (PR).
Her premise is that "spin" does not work in this age of transparency, when everyone will find out the truth anyway ("You can put a lot of lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."), and she uses anecdotes from her career to illustrate this point. The anecdotes are different from the ones we usually hear from college and university PIOs, but the PR strategies used are universal. Clarke, if not responsible for coming up with the journalist embedding program at the beginning of the Iraq War, seems to have sold it to the Pentagon brass, and it may be instructive to read how the idea was successfully pitched to this traditionally resistant group. Her description of media boot camp, when journalists prepare for embedding by spending a week in Quantico with the Marines, is both amusing (journalists show up in fashionable hiking clothes) and respectful.
The National Cable Television Association's campaign to create a more positive public perception of the cable industry in its early days is illuminating. The Commission found that Washington policymakers could not recall informative messages but could remember gifts like hats and stress balls. That might make us feel a little better about giving away key chains and neckties with our college's name on them.
The book's organization creates some confusion, however. The chapters are grouped by guiding principles, rather than by events, which results in some events cropping up in multiple chapters to illustrate a point. Many of the lessons are PR lite: be responsive, be accurate, be truthful, speak candidly to the press. As we know, it is not always easy to adhere to these simple rules. Still, I had hoped for more analysis in places, and less breeziness.
The last chapter of Lipstick on a Pig chronicles 9/11 at the Pentagon, a story often overshadowed by those from and about lower Manhattan. Clarke was in the Pentagon when the plane hit. Later that day, she insisted that a briefing take place inside the building to show that the government was still open for business--a crisis communications plan in action, during a most major crisis.
Torie Clark's repeated insistence to her bosses that spin is not an option--and their seemingly quick buy-ins--reminds us to constantly advise our own bosses to be up-front. But what about the agonizing, the overthinking about possible outcomes of a spin-less approach, and the hours, or days, during which draft copy makes the rounds among administrators? Doesn't this happen in government or at the Pentagon? Hmm, perhaps just a touch of lip gloss was used here.
Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game
By Torie Clarke, Free Press, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2006
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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Headlines that Get Results
by Roger Johnson
Newswise
Headlines can help or hurt the effectiveness of your news releases. At
Newswise we take the packaging and delivery of news very seriously and
policy is shaped by reporter feedback and data. In this report we show how
data can be useful in such a simple decision as writing a headline.
"Shorter is Better!"
The charts below dramatically demonstrate that brevity helps headlines.
Headline length is inversely correlated with the number of times a story is
read. Stories with shortest titles consistently received more hits than
those with longest titles. A "hit" means that a journalist read the
headline and/or lede in a browse menu and then clicked to the full text of
the story.
Since the success of your news release may depend on the length of your headline, you should exclude attribution information and expository words. Your institution name is already a prominent part of the packaging of your article, both on the Newswise site and in the wires, and is displayed in color. Phrases such as "New Study Finds" and "Research Shows" lengthen your headline without offering any meaningful information since most Newswise articles are research news. They dilute impact and are more likely to be overlooked. Journalists expect that we will avoid redundancy.
The contribution page on the Newswise website offers constructive guidance about composing a headline. Our help page advises specifically that contributors "keep the headline brief—no more than 55 characters. Avoid attribution and institution names in your headline. Your headline should provide very terse context for your story." These basic principles can help you create an appealing headline for journalists. A brief headline that omits attribution and expository material is not just a Newswise policy; it is effective in making your release noticeable to journalists.
Headlines can be shortened by applying simple techniques, as demonstrated in examples below. We encourage you to shorten headlines and welcome your creativity.
"Teenage Binge Drinking is a Major Underlying Cause of Suicide Attempts"
vs.
"Binge Drinking Predicts Suicide Attempts in Teens"
• Active verbs condense and energize headlines.
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"Mutual Fund Investors Should be Wary of Over-Cultivating Star-Performer Funds"
vs.
"Mutual Fund Investors: Don't Shoot for the Stars"
• Punctuation creates options for abbreviating lengthy headlines.
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"University of Educators' (UE) Psychologist Investigates Benefits of Pessimism"
vs.
"Benefits of Pessimism"
• Removal of institution clears redundancy.
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"New Health Research Study Finds that Low-Carb Diets May be Unhealthy for Kids"
vs.
"Low-Carb Diets: Unhealthy for Kids"
• Unnecessary phrases muddle headline impact.
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"Physical Contact with Pets Makes People Happier"
vs.
"Petting Puppies Puts People in Positive Moods"
• For the ambitious, pithy, humorous headlines attract more readers.
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The headlines in the various Newswise wires (eg. Daily Wire--see
sample ) and the online browse menus do have
certain requirements, first for word length and second, uniformity of style. Because the Newswise
wires are our primary interaction with journalists and represent all of our clients and Newswise,
a consistent, uniform style and the highest standards of professionalism are essential to maintaining
loyal readership among journalists, Newswise staff edit headlines based on these criteria.
So shorten your headlines to increase readership. After all, we call them
headlines rather than titles.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
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