commbasics

Bootstrapping a startup generally means things take a while to complete.  We've been working on the New Tech Press design for several months and I'm happy to say... it's done.

I know I'm remiss in getting on with the series on the profession of journalism and I apologize for that.  But the discussion I started with this blog over a year ago is starting to do one of the things I hoped it would do... bring me in some business.  (Yes, Ron W, I admit the blog is an effort to increase revenue for the PR side of the business, but then that's always been the point). What is exciting about the business opportunities has been where they have come from, and it is not where I expected.  In the past three weeks I've talked to law firms, accounting firm, representatives of Consul Generals from various countries, venture capitalists, real estate developers and CEOs of chambers of commerce from different parts of the country.  All of these really interesting people are looking for ways to do communications differently. So it has sucked up a lot of time, plus I have clients that want me to do something for them from time to time... and the...

Really busy week.  Not much time for thought.  But read an article in the SF Chron about Berkeley Breathed shutting down his comic strip, Opus, this Sunday.  His primary reason, other than being disillusioned at the rancor in political discourse, is that the young people he is trying to reach with Opus don't read newspapers, and the only people that remember his previous strip , Bloom County, are not the people he wants to reach. We all know this is true, but here's the real irony: My 19-year-old son started reading the Chronicle for the Opus strip, reading the rest of the paper after he had finished it and using Breathed's perspective to put the news into context.  Opus is more responsible for my son's politics and social view point than any political leader.  Now he says without Opus, he has no desire to read the Chronicle. Breathed's reason for quitting has become a self-fufilling prophesy.

Why am I doing this?   That's a question I get a lot.   There are also people who think thy know why I doing this blog and New Tech Press and the VC communications program, etc., etc.   It occurred to me today that I haven't really stated why. Here's why. I no longer believe in the effectiveness of the public relations practices that we are all used to.   I no longer believe 99.999 percent of the news releases put out everyday have any value.   I cannot see how media and analyst relations practices that have developed over the past century can possibly bring awareness of small, innovative companies.   I believe that everything has changed, from the way information is distributed to the way it is consumed; from the way information is gathered to how that gathering is financially supported. For the past 12 months, I have not taken another client that wants to do business as usual.   I have told dozens of companies that what they want t...

Along with the furor over Cadence senior exec turnover, tiny little LogicVision also announced a shakeup.  They dropped their CFO, VP of marketing and VP of operations and replaced them with new beancounters and engineers. LogicVision has been struggling in the market for almost a decade, primarily because their competition has made a greater investment in marketing than they have.  LogicVision actually has a superior product and one that is uniquely suited to large, complex semiconductor design.  The competition has been squeezing out as much value of old technology as possible, but gets their message out much more effectively than LogicVision ever has. And every year, LogicVision decides to reduce their effort to communicate with the market, fight holding actions on their remaining market share, and ... replace marketing expertise with engineering. Can't be done, folks.  The best technology ALWAYS loses to superior marketing,

Yesterday, San Jose Magazine  came out with a glowing tribute the Cadence Design and it's leader Mike Fister.  Today, Cadence announced that Fister has resigned.  The WSJ coverage also pointed out that Cadence is lowering guidance prior to the October 22 financials. Timing is everything.

Sam Whitmore reported that Wayne Rash, the tech analyst that oversaw eWeek's Knowledge Center was lid off in connection to a site redesign.  The "center" was the place where contributed content resided.  It's still on the overall site but the tab has disappeared from the home page.  Loring Wirbel, in an email, reminded me that Wayne had been at CMP for many years before moving over to eWeek. Besides losing another good journalist the decision to downplay contributed content on the site is ominous for traditional PR.  Without sufficient editorial staff, a publicist doesn't have anyone to pitch stories to.  That leaves placing contributed articles.  But publications are backing away from that content now.  So all you have left to work with is news releases. Over at Greeley's Ghost , Brian Fuller is predicting the end of PR as we know it.  I don;t think he's far from wrong.

You may have noticed an exchange between me a well-known tech journalist last week.   He and several other editors in his publication have taken extreme exception to the philosophies, practices and predictions on this site, most specifically related to New Tech Press. I have a pretty thick skin.   The only people that actually get to me are those that I respect.   So I want to go on record as identifying that this journalist and ALL the journalists at this organization are of the highest quality.   They consistently win awards and deservedly so.   They do NOT deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of the non-human financial demon we have all been enduring since the turn of the century.   I also want to go on record as saying the publications in their media house are some of the finest in the world and should receive significant advertising support from the industry so they could continue their tradition of great B2B tech journalism, In a perf...

Two bits of news on Reed Business Information (RBI) coming in within days of each other demonstrated the paradox of modern publishing and why something has to be done to change the model. . First, RBI last week received the AOP On-line Publishing award for, among other things, it's newsletter program (I receive several and they are all outstanding).  Today, Reuters revealed that declining advertising revenues caused the financing package to keep the publication unit afloat  to fall through. RBI has been on the auction block since February and had several suiters bidding up the price.  But in September, some i nvestors got cold feet a nd backed out after the second round.  Again, the reason was declining ad revenues. So we have an award-winning media business, lots of people reading the publications, and fewer companies want to support the effort with advertising.  There has to be a better way to maintain a free press.

Sometimes you have to think about what you wish for. Last week I tossed off a post about an industry group asking for and RFP and I said we would take a pass because we didn't think it could be done the way they expect it to be done for the budget they proposed .  Well, late last week I got a call from them.  I expected to be chewed out.  I didn't get chewed out.  They apologized for not being clear.  They don't want to do things the way they have always been done.  They want to try something new. And they really want us to come up with an idea. Do I have ideas?  Oh yeah.  Have they ever been done before?  Oh no. But the gauntlet has been thrown down.  It's time for me to put up or shut up. Ya'll pray for me.

The big news to day is that Ann Mutschler is leaving EDN after 7 total years (She came to work with me after two years, bounced around the PR trade and then went back five years ago).  That's bad news for the electronics industry who is losing yet another experienced, credible third-party voice.  It's bad news for EDN, too.  Ann has been a prodigious writer for the Reed publications.   She was brought in by Ed Sperling and survived several rounds of layoffs (including Mike Santarini, Sperling, and Maury Wright) before deciding that she could make it on her own as a freelancer.   She has several contracts lined up and I have her targeted for work with New Tech Press. I'm using this as a lead in the part three on the "profession" of journalism because it proves my point in a timely manner.   In the last entry, I made the claim that journalism really doesn't meet the criteria for being called a profession; that it might be more ...

After I posted part one, I got some thoughtful comments from Brian Fuller and Loring Wirbel affirming the professional status of Journalists. There are several definitions of profession on the web and they all have three common denominators: the existence of a well-known, codified and enforceable statement of ethics, an educational requirement, and a licensing body. The accounting profession has all three and, to a certain degree, so professional sports. In the US, the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association require all three for practice and on separate levels from state to state. Journalism does not have an educational requirement, nor is there a licensing requirement.   There are several ethical codes that are similar to one another. Society for Professional Journalism has one (that I helped create) that was published in 1973, the same year that the American League adopted the designated hitter rule.   In fact there are 13 separate codes nationally a...