Posted on Seasoned Posts

Peer-to-peer roundtable discusses “How effective is corporate governance in Canada?”

On Tuesday, February 5th Direct Engagement Inc. is sponsoring a peer-to-peer roundtable discussion on corporate governance in Canada, “Capital markets in Canada compete globally for issuers and investors. Scandals in the US demonstrated their fragility. Statistics show Canadian regulators devote a smaller percentage of their total budget to enforcement than the US. Is the present corporate governance system working? Why are some organizations better than others in corporate governance?” Although this is a paid-attendance event,...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Johnny Depp and the History of Social Media

I’ve just spent a very pleasant half an hour messing around with Johnny Depp. To be precise, I’ve been playing with the mash-up on the Sweeney Todd site which allows me to cut my own trailer for the film. If I got bored, I could trawl the blog, throw a Facebook party or – had I been in time – join one of the many Sweeney communities clustered around the ‘mother site’. As an example...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

On the little black book syndrome, personal influence, organizational influence and knowledge management

A public relators’ personal relationship network has always been considered an essential (when not the most essential) part of her/his professional assets. And this by clients/employers, colleagues/competitors and other relevant stakeholders such as business and other opinion leaders. This ‘untold truth’ has always embarrassed scholars and educators, as well as practitioners, because its most immediate implication is that the ‘people I know’ (and here I refer to the Al Pacino film many of you will...

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Objectivity in public relations and journalism: essential for the credibility of both professions, and for different reasons

If we take journalism -as David Demers writes in his very recent and most interesting History and Future of Mass Media (Hampton Press)- ‘journalists should keep their personal opinions and the opinions of their newspapers out of their news stories; All sides to a story should be covered and reported; All sides to a story should be given an equal amount of coverage’ But, if we consider public relations, we could say that: ‘a public...

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EUPRERA STEPS UP ITS PROFILE

Euprera, the European Association of Public Relations Research and Education steps up its profile, launches mid march Euroblog 2008 summit in Bruxelles in partnership with Edelman while extending to end January the deadline for papers to be delivered at its October 2008 Milano Congress on the Institutionalization of Public Relations and Communication Management, including a special grant from the Institute for Public Relations.

Posted on Seasoned Posts

Reinventing diplomacy

I sometimes think that we get a little obsessed with what PR is and isn’t, and I am not always sure that these conversations do anything more than keep us busy navel gazing. What I’d like to think about is what PR is becoming…and that’s everything. My personal belief is that formalized communications evolved because it was the only way to manage as organizations grew in size. What is happening today, in my opinion, is...