SeanReadsTheNews

CNBC: PR Score for London Custom Tailor As Recession Narrows Waists

I can't tell if I love or hate Antonia Oprita's CNBC.com article reporting that a custom tailor in London has seen the average waistlines of his clients shrink since the recession started.

According to tailors Norton & Townsend, British men have lost more than half an inch off their waist because of the credit crunch, as expense accounts slimmed down or totally disappeared.
“The majority of our clients are at executive level who would have seen a business lunch almost as part of their daily working life,” said Austen Pickles, head of Norton & Townsend, in a statement. “But that is no longer the case with expense accounts and lazy lunches out of keeping with the downturn in the economic climate.”

On the negative side, the story has only one source, no direct quotes, no data.  It basically reads as if the reporter spoke to the tailor for 10 minutes and found the combination of recession, social technology and clothes keywords irresistible.

 On the positive side, it's pretty hilarious and hey, who says the informed opinion of people who are close to those in the know about the state of the economy can't be illuminating.

Who hasn't dreamed of making "stuff my clients do every day," an economic indicator - the free version of expensive detailed academic research that gets you ink.

As a matter of PR alone, this was a nice score for the tailor.

 

It's Time: Let's All Agree to Stop Calling the Economy Uncertain

This post will be about an emerging pet peeve and shouldn't be taken as an indictment of The Washington Post or Chris Jenkins, who just happened today to publish an article on D.C. entreprenuers meeting to swap tips.

The mission is simple: help people handle their own business in this time of economic austerity and continued uncertainty.

The economy has always been uncertain and launching a business has always been high risk.  Even if you launched a business in 1996 or 1997, the odds were still against you.  So why do PR people and the media insist on pointing it out as if it's novel in every pitch, press release and story?

Just like adding "on the internet" to your product didn't make you newsworthy during the dot com boom, "during this time of economic uncertainty," doesn't help now.

 

I Read Today's WSJ, Oh Boy...

I don't have much of a post here but I should be able to pull my morning paper out of the wrapper without being confronted with a cover flag for a story on the horror of overweight pets.

Buffy, Hershey and Fridge are pets battling excess weight and obesity. As more Americans confront their own weight issues, furry housemates increasingly struggle alongside them. New data due out this week indicate the problem is reaching epidemic proportions, with more than half of U.S. dogs and cats now overweight or obese.

Again, you already own the New York Post - that's where the stories on overweight pets go.  Love both papers but they each have their own missions.

The fact that a veteran, talented small business reporter like Wendy Bounds was sentenced to this trifle just makes it worse.

TheStreet.com - Social Media is The Next Bubble

Lauren Bloom's Street.com article on how social media sites like Facebook are being over-valued by the market follows a very tired trope of comparing any company's rise to what happened during the dot com bubble and noting the same thing could happen again.

The sudden, meteoric explosion in value of online social media sites like Facebook and Twitteris eerily reminiscent of the rise, about 15 years ago, of the online businesses that created the "dotcom bubble." The Internet was far less widely used than it is today, with many consumers feeling a little queasy about sharing personal and credit-card information with businesses that lacked brick-and-mortar facilities. Still, visionaries saw the potential for the Internet we have today, so virtual companies sprung up and grew like weeds as investors threw money their way.

Two points: 1) this no longer counts as insightful analysis and 2) you work for TheStreet.com.  If there was a future for TheStreet.com, isn't it likely there is one for Facebook?

Ok, that wasn't really fair as the investors who bought into TheStreet.com initially did lose their shirts in the bargain but any article that uses "Pets.com" as a cautionary tale in 2011 is looking hard enough at the examples.

Signature Story: NYT Compares Comedian Stewart to Murrow

So many ideological bloggers have already made mincemeat of this New York Times story by Bill Carter and Brian Stelter comparing comedian Jon Stewart to Edward R. Murrow that SRTN almost feels like we should let it pass - but really - Stewart is only like Murrow in the bad ways.  That would be the way the radio reporter turned ideologue himself after moving to TV and deciding that his reports should just tell the story but enforce his view of the story as well.  It also repeats a historical inaccuracy that his hit piece on Joe McCarthy aired before America had already turned on the Senator and not after (something that is acknowledged even in "Good Night and Good Luck").

Edward R. Murrow turned public opinion against the excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Mr. Thompson noted that Mr. Murrow had an even more direct effect when he reported on the case of Milo Radulovich, an Air Force lieutenant who was stripped of his commission after he was charged with associating with communists. Mr. Murrow’s broadcast resulted in Mr. Radulovich’s reinstatement.

Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are also politically tinged entertainers whose opinions move Congressional action from time to time - any bets on the next time one of them gets compared to Murrow?  Really guys - not up to your standard here.  It's like you want Andrew Breitbart to make fun of you or something.

 

SRTN: Yesterday's News Today!

There were several interesting business news stories yesterday but I didn't have time to blog them so here we go with bullets.  Today we are adopting the "royal we" for the blog even though we usually don't.  We aren't sure why.

• This blog doesn't usually cover The Economist because of its non-use of bylines.  We are making an exception today because this article on the incredibly prolific Nigerian film industry and the social problems it is causing in Africa is really interesting.  But we aren't making a habit of it.
• We were annoyed by this Gary Weiss article from Portfolio.com on a health industry PR man writing a tell-all about fighting Obamacare.  The annoyance doesn't have anything to do with the journalism, it's an excellent article on the practice of issue public relations and worth reading unless you're already an expert in such things.  We were annoyed because we oppose Obamacare and the article takes a snide attitude that company leaders using PR to fight for what they believe in is bad - and implies that the other side wasn't also using spin to make their point.  That is b.s. - the pro-side also spun like a centrifuge (remember when it wasn't supposed to increase the deficit?) It was a fair fight and making it seem like the anti-socialized medicine side isn't entitled to advance their side of the argument is pernicious.
• Fortune ran its annual "Worst of the Year in Business" piece yesterday.  What's interesting is that many of the missteps weren't just bad business decisions but compounded by the result of bad PR.  Tony Hayward and BP feature prominently.
• Steven Rosenbush of Portfolio.com had a great story about how the taxi commission and tax regimens in New York City have reduced the noble independent cab driver from a mini-small business to a virtual indentured servant.  It is somehow entertaining to read even though the subject is basically how guys who used to control their own somewhat limited destinies have had their freedom stolen from them.
• Julie Schmitt of USA Today mystifyingly dedicated a long article to how homeowners are fighting foreclosure by demanding paperwork from their lenders, something that has been covered almost daily for months.
• David Streitfeld contributes an article on how a California law intended to protect homeowners from unscrupulous lawyers claiming to be able to help them fight foreclosure has actually stopped troubled borrowers from securing legitimate representation.  The two stories both deal with paperwork problems in home lending - but USA Today's contained no information we didn't already know while The New York Times' uncovered a dramatic and troubling new side to the story.

Reuters on Surviving the Office Party

At least Reuters didn't assign one of their own reporters to this cliche advice article by etiquette expert Jo Bryant on how to survive the annual holiday party - but I still question its news value.

Was photocopying your backside ever a good idea?

People who drink too much at office parties are taking the risk of seriously harming their professional careers. The chemistry you thought you had with Jennifer at the holiday office party may seem less than romantic in the clear, sober office environment. And management may think twice about trusting you with their biggest client after your drunken Karaoke rendition of Lady Gaga's latest hit song. The safest way to avoid any embarrassing situations is to stay in control and limit your drinking.

You know how The Wall Street Journal runs the same editorials ever year on Thanksgiving and Christmas?  That's what this reminds me of.

 

Another Silly Survey Scores Major Coverage

Jessica Dickler of CNNMoney has a hard-hitting story today on how many people check their e-mails over Thanksgiving.  You can't really blame individual reporters for these kinds of stories - I get the feeling some shadowy editor somewhere says "get me something about Thanksgiving that will drive clicks," and you do what you can to get out of the office in time to go shopping.

That said, there is no place in the universe that a survey from Xobni on how many people check e-mail over the holidays is news.

The majority, or 59%, of working Americans check their work e-mails during Thanksgiving, Christmas and other traditional holidays, according to a survey by Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards), a Silicon Valley startup that organizes Microsoft Outlook inboxes and address books.

We could use some dignity here.

BW's Golden on Veterans and Education

Daniel Golden of BusinessWeek, who has been covering the education sector for a very long time, today writes about how industry leader Kaplan is targeting veterans, an interesting link to Armistice Day that represents itself the next step in the media's war on the for-profit sector.

Enrolling veterans helps for-profit colleges exploit a loophole in a 1992 law capping the proportion of revenue they can derive from federal student aid at 90 percent. Tuition paid to for-profit colleges under the GI Bill counts as nongovernment revenue. Kaplan University, which derived 87.2 percent of its revenue in 2009 from taxpayer-funded education aid such as Pell Grants for poor students, may have exceeded 90 percent if revenue from the GI Bill and U.S. Defense Dept. tuition assistance for active-duty military was added, says Bradley Safalow, chief executive of PAA Research, which analyzes higher education stocks.

Most of the article is along these lines - it's assumed that any education that is done at a for-profit institution is suspect, even though the non-profit sector treats itself much more opulently and draws even more subsidies.  Golden interviews one student whose income dropped after taking a Kaplan course to indict the entire company.

There are many reasons to criticize elements of the for-profit sector for the way they survive on government handouts - but this article's tone alleges exploitation without proving it.

CNNMoney: Use Apps To Track Kids on Halloween

Since I blogged a great Wall Street Journal opinion article on the economic opportunism that underpins Halloween paranoia, I am obligated today to note that CNNMoney falls into that trap big time today with an article by Jennie Bragg on iPhone apps you can use to follow your kids on Halloween.

Halloween is supposed to be fun, but it is also the one night every year that many parents allow their kids to wander the streets of town alone for an entire evening.

Instead of being a nervous nelly at home or the one parent tagging along with the kids while they trick or treat, check out some of the new technology that will allow you to track your children's whereabouts.

This is the worst kind of cheesy, opportunistic, a-factual PR stunt outreach and it galls me that it worked.  Linking overhyped risks with overhyped Apple technology to produce a value-free advertisement for a private company.  Great work there CNNMoney.