Flatiron Communications: Recent Episodes
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It’s been over seven years since I last wrote about which media I regularly consume. In that post, titled “Rachel Maddow: Journalist First,” I recounted how my wife constantly nudged me to consider “the other side” of the mediaverse. My default response: No thanks. I prefer actual journalism, not both-sides commentary or so-called news reports of dubious origin and questionable accuracy, e.g., CNN and Fox News, respectively.
Ochs Box (circa 1996)It was therefore edifying to plug into Peter Kafka’s latest “Channels” podcast for a timely and provocative conversation with the publisher of The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, whom Peter last interviewed at the Code Conference in January 2019. The video link to that convo is here.
Peter Kafka with New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger at Code Conference in January 2019My personal interest in the “newspaper-of-record” dates back to high school when I read Gay Talese’s seminal tome, “The Kingdom and the Power.”Many years later, I found myself professionally representing that very paper at pivotal moments in its nearly 175-year history.
My work included supporting the 100th anniversary of the Ochs-Sulzberger family’s ownership of the paper, the transition of “The Gray Lady” to a full-color broadsheet, the launches of “New York Times of the Web” and “New Yortk Today,” and The Times’s first attempt to erect a paywall at a time when digital eyeballs were thought to be monetizable. That last effort, TimesSelect, was both premature and prescient, but ultimately failed. Today, paying Times subscribers comprise the bulk of The Times’s revenue base.
As a regular visitor to West 43rd Street and then Eighth Avenue, I developed a deep, abiding appreciation for the practice and principles of journalism “without fear or favor.” I remember one incident involving the renaming of West 43rd Street to Adolph S. Ochs Street to mark the family’s 100th year as owners. We gathered early that morning in front of The Times’s iconic headquarters for an on-the-street presser to unveil the new sign. A.G.’s father, grandfather, and Mayor Giuliani were slated to speak.
Giuliani’s advance person soon approached me to say he did not like the angle of the sign in relation to the press riser and asked that we reposition it for the media photo-op. For any other client, I might have acquiesced, but not for this one. No fakery here. The sign stood firm. I recall a similar incident in which a late-arriving news photographer asked the president of The Associated Press (another past client), at a 150th anniversary presser, to re-take the podium for photos. That did not go over too well, nor did Lou Boccardi acquiesce.
During Peter Kafka’s latest podcast, there was one particular exchange, of many, that resonated for me:
A.G. Sulzberger: “The news source that is worthy of your trust should be challenging you on some regular basis. And if you find yourself just nodding along with your news source, I would recommend expanding your news diet.”
(I suppose this is what my wife was trying to convey.)
Peter Kafka: “What news source are you consuming that would surprise people listening to this conversation? Are you a Steve Bannon ‘War Room’ fan?”
A.G. Sulzberger: “I’m less interested in the so-called talk ecosystem, you know, the pundit ecosystem…I’m looking into the reporting ecosystem. I’m less drawn to cable. I basically watch no cable, and I’m less drawn to the podcast ecosystem.
The folks I read most closely, after The Times: The Journal, The Post, The FT, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine…so that ecosystem. And then a bunch of digital media…Substacks and newsletters that find their way to me.”
A.G.’s media diet uncannily aligns with my own, but without the journals and reporters who cover my clients and their industries. I also follow many influential, digitally native outlets like The Information, Axios, Puck, Semafor, and Pro Publica, plus various newsletters and podcasts.
Yet you might ask: how is this an “expansion” of your “news diet?” Why isn’t Fox News, the Daily Caller, or Newsmax in the mix? The answer is simple: these outlets do not practice journalism. The media I consume offer fastidious reporting that is rich in quality and varied by topic, not solely created through a political or cultural lens.
Furthermore, the notion that the news media are “liberally biased” is a political talking point fabricated to undermine the Fourth Estate’s constitutionally protected power to hold wrongdoers to account for their malfeasance. (Gay Talese didn’t choose the title of his book by accident.) In fact, liberal dominance of today’s media ecosystem is a fallacy, according to a recent study by Media Matters for America, which found that:
“Right-leaning online shows had at least 480.6 million total followers and subscribers — nearly five times as many as left-leaning.Nine out of the 10 online shows with the largest followings across platforms were right-leaning, with a total following of more than 197 million.”
Sadly, the years-long campaign to undermine quality journalism has intensified with the second Trump administration’s effort to adopt a model for news reporting similar to that of Putin, Orban, and Modi, i.e., state-controlled. We’re all hoping that the First Amendment will ultimately prevail.
A.G.Sulzberger: “The model of journalism that I’m talking about is about following the facts where they lead….My great-grandfather had a line: ‘I believe in an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.’ Being independent doesn’t mean both sides where you create some sort of false equivalency so you could never be accused of bias by one side or another.”
As for the aforementioned Rachel Maddow, I would describe her nightly reporting on the “first 100 days” of Trump’s second term as both revelatory and well within the parameters of fact-based journalism. While we all know on which side of the political aisle she resides, nothing leaves her lips that hasn’t first been vetted by her team of researchers. Same goes for John Oliver, btw. This cannot be said for the right-wing media ecosystem.
I encourage you to listen to Peter and A.G.’s conversation here. Finally, I really hope MSNBC submits TRM‘s “First 100 days” for a 2026 duPont-Columbia Award. The deadline for submissions is fast approaching.
The post A.G.’s Media Diet appeared first on Flatiron Communications.
“Not Gonna Lie” Podcaster Kylie (Mrs. Jason) KelceIn a recent post on resources for discovering podcasts, I noted that 2025 will be a year when those in the PR profession must reconcile the desire by clients for coverage in legacy media versus the potentially greater impact of a whole new cadre of earned media platforms. In the piece, I wrote:
“There is nothing like a prominent Wall Street Journal or New York Times feature, let alone a six-minute segment on NBC “Today” or PBS “NewsHour.” But do these traditional media outlets move the needle as much as a widely followed social media star, top-rated podcast, or heavily subscribed newsletter? Could Joe Rogan have more influence than NPR?”
It’s an important question for our times and the PR industry.
The growing hegemony of podcasts, newsletters, and Insty, TikTok, and YouTube stars may prove more valuable than the productivity gains from AI and machine learning. A well-timed appearance on a top-rated podcast can have a greater impact than an ephemeral story in a paywalled legacy news outlet, with the last election being a primary example.
In her Nieman Lab piece, “Podcasting Becomes the Primary Media Strategy, not an Afterthought,” The Podglomerate’s Joni Deutsch observed:
“At a time where traditional media trust continues to hit historic lows, podcasts can help long-standing organizations establish stronger relationships with audiences and, in the process, drive real change in how people think and engage with the news.”
For years, The New York Times set the national news agenda. A prominent investigative report or fawning profile could easily lead to a Congressional hearing or the A-list, respectively. And while The Times still sets tongues-a-waggin’, its paywalled content does not travel as far and wide as a top influencer’s social media post or podcast episode. Diminished trust in mainstream media is another barrier, but that’s a topic for a different day.
These once-pedestrian content formats are truly ascendant with their ability to ratchet up digital eyeballs and a measurable increase in awareness, product sales, or even stock price. They have legs. It’s no wonder TikTok is doubling down on e-commerce.
As for real-time platforms, Twitter once had the unique capacity to create national story memes, in part due to the myriad journalists and (actual) verified users who loitered and amplified on the platform. No longer. An Elon-remade Twitter has X’d into a cesspool of misinformation, conspiracy, and anger, e.g.,
Thus, many in the fourth estate have abandoned his propaganda machine and migrated to Meta-owned Threads, only to learn that its algorithm suppresses breaking news in favor of titillating content. Strangely, Threads also hinders engagement with others and now, along with its sister platforms Instagram and Facebook, will follow X into the fact-free zone under the guise of free speech.Most recently, BlueSky is enjoying its moment in the sun. Founded, but abandoned by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, this more civil platform has usurped both X and Threads as a safe , real-time resource for journalists. In December, it surpassed 25 million registered users. Don’t ignore it.Here’s a BlueSky post from Julie Brown, the Miami Herald investigative reporter who doggedly broke the Jeffrey Epstein story:
Re-upping this for newbies. When I started this, a lot of our best Investigative journalists still had not joined Blue Sky — so if you have, or know someone who has who isn’t on this pack, let me know. go.bsky.app/G2obm9i
[image or embed]
— Julie K. Brown (@jkbjournalist.bsky.social) November 27, 2024 at 8:07 AM
Then there are the countless newsletters that regularly arrive in your inbox. They reside on self-publishing platforms like Substack, Beehiiv, or Ghost and often feature the work of prominent journalists, many refugees of big-branded legacy media who’ve forsaken their once high and mighty perches to go it alone. Lester Wunderman, eat your heart out.
Some of my favorite newsletters include Casey Newton’s “Platformer,” Jedd Legum’s “Popular Information,” Oliver Darcy’s “Status,” Dan Perry’s “Ask Questions Later,” Taylor Lorenz’s “User Mag,” and any of those emanating from Axios, Puck, Semafor, or The Information.
As for AI, make no mistake: we’re witnessing a whirlwind of promising use cases for PR practitioners. They range from analyzing a journalist’s past coverage before an interview to condensing a laboriously long media pitch to its “Smart Brevity”-style essence. Here’s a piece on one AI platform that I’ve found especially beneficial to the clients of my firm.
What will not change for PR pros who compete in the earned media relations game is the requirement that they stay informed, inquisitive, and immersed in as much client-relevant content as possible, no matter how it arrives.
Finally, as we head into 2025, I’d like to give a shout-out to some of the newer media outlets that have embraced quality journalism. Paramount among them is ProPublica for its essential, First Amendment-protected investigative reporting that holds wrong-doers to account.
Happy New Year.
Peter Himler is the founding principal of Flatiron Communications, a NYC-based PR and digital media consultancy. Follow him on BlueSky or Threads.
The post The Mediaverse in 2025: And It’s Not All About AI appeared first on Flatiron Communications.
Since the election, I’ve wondered whether Kamala Harris’s decision to take a pass on Joe Rogan’s #1-rated podcast may have cost her the Presidency. Her communications consigliere Stephanie Cutter later explained the ill-fated decision to Crooked Media’s “Pod Save America” podcast:
Yet, VP Harris did find time to trek to New York to appear on a half-century-old linear TV show that averaged 5.4 million viewers through 2024, most of whom already were in VP Harris’s court. Her appearance that evening drew 6.6 million, 40% less than Rogan’s.
By contrast, Trump’s stultified appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience drew an audience of about 50 million and, more significantly, a pivotal Presidential endorsement from Rogan himself on the eve of the election. Ouch.
Unlike other communications counselors, I don’t relish the role of Monday morning quarterback, especially over the Democrats’ failed messaging and media strategy.
To her credit, the Vice President did join the #2-rated podcast “Call Her Daddy,” with an audience of one million, only to have that show’s host, Alex Cooper, diss the campaign to Andrew Ross Sorkin at the Dealbook Summit. The Harris PR team also pitched the Veep to “The Hot Ones,” the popular chicken-wing-eating show on YouTube, but they were turned down.
In either case, all this election conjecture is now moot given the world’s richest man’s infusion of $277 million to Trump and the GOP, further drowning the American electorate in a sea of disinformation. Relatedly, Semafor reports that the king of disinformation himself, Rupert Murdoch, is now shopping for like-minded podcasts.
Again, I digress.
In her Nieman Media Lab piece, “Podcasting becomes the primary strategy, not an afterthought,” Joni Deutsch writes:
At a time where traditional media trust continues to hit historic lows, podcasts can help long-standing organizations establish stronger relationships with audiences and, in the process, drive real change in how people think and engage with the news.
I thus want to use this space to explore where podcasts should reside in the PR pro’s “earned media” toolbox and share some useful resources for identifying the most appropriate pods for your company or client — of the millions now in production.
To this end, I surveyed the founders of four ascendant companies that offer searchable databases of podcasts. They include Anuj Agarwal, founder of MillionPodcasts, Greg Galant, co-founder and CEO of Muck Rack, Bradley Davis, founder and CEO of Podchaser, and James Potter, founder of Rephonic. First this chart:
Here is what they told me:
https://millionpodcasts.com
Q: Briefly describe your service and what makes it special:
MillionPodcasts is the ultimate solution for PR professionals, marketers, and outreach managers looking to connect with the right podcast hosts and producers. Our extensive and continuously updated database includes verified email contacts, social media profiles, and detailed podcast information across all niches and hosting platforms.
Q: What makes you special?
Dedicated Research Team: Ensures accurate, up-to-date contact details of hosts and producers.
- Advanced Filters: Allow tailored searches by popularity, activeness, location, duration, and more.
- AI-Powered Categorization: Simplifies discovering podcasts by niche or interest.
- Effortless Export: Generate CRM-friendly custom lists in CSV or Excel formats.
Q: Where are you headquartered and when were you founded?
MillionPodcasts is headquartered in Newark, Delaware, USA, and was founded in 2024.
Q: How would you quantify/describe your subscribers/users?
Our subscribers include PR professionals of all sizes, marketing teams (from small to large-scale operations), researchers, founders, and executives working in the podcast industry.
Q: What am I missing?
We have an in-house research team that goes beyond RSS feed emails, finding personal emails of hosts and producers to ensure comprehensive contact information.
https://muckrack.com
Q: Briefly describe your service and what makes it special:
Muck Rack is AI-powered PR software built for how you work. What makes us special is that we’ve purposely built our AI-powered comprehensive and integrated platform from the ground up with public relations and communications professionals in mind to streamline the PR workflow to get you the right results, faster and more efficiently. We grow businesses by helping them generate positive media coverage, monitor mentions
to manage brand reputation and analyze the impact of PR on business outcomes.
Q: Where are you headquartered and when were you founded?
Muck Rack was founded in 2009 to connect journalists on social media. In 2011, the Muck Rack software platform was born, offering journalist profiles and a media database that gained a reputation for being the most accurate in the industry. We’re headquartered in the cloud! Muck Rack has been a remote-first company since our founding and became fully distributed in 2021. This means no offices and no physical headquarters.
Q: How would you quantify/describe your subscribers/users?
Muck Rack has two user groups: Our customers are primarily communications and PR professionals, with about 6,000 companies using our platform to generate earned media and analyze and report on their coverage. Founded as a journalist tool, we also have tens of thousands of journalists using Muck Rack’s free tools to showcase their work with online portfolios, analyze news about any topic, and measure the impact of their stories.
Our podcast database offers a variety of filters, including geography, languages, and domain authority, and users can search by a specific podcast name or keyword.
Q: What am I missing?
This question: What should PR pros consider when it comes to podcasts and incorporating them into their strategies?
The recent election results have sparked an awakening among corporate executives to rethink their approach to media relations, with an emphasis on nontraditional platforms like podcasts. But this shift is hardly news to PR pros. PR teams have been focusing on targeting niche outlets and audiences for years. At Muck Rack, our customers have been pitching podcasts since we introduced them to our media database in 2020 and have added 153,117 podcasters and 885 podcasts to their media lists just last month alone. The key here is that CEOs and business leaders are finally catching up to the value of niche targeting, which their PR teams have been trying to convince them of for years. Getting in front of the right, albeit sometimes smaller, audience means shifting KPIs from large-scale (impressions) to smaller-scale (engagement).
https://www.podchaser.com
Q: Briefly describe your service and what makes it special:
Podchaser is the intelligence engine for the podcast industry, complete with 5.5M podcasts, podcast reach, audience insights, and 2M+ validated contacts
Q: Where are you headquartered and when were you founded?
Podchaser was founded in 2016 by a group of like-minded podcast enthusiasts who met via a humble Reddit thread. With the optimistic goal of creating the ultimate platform-agnostic podcast database, the small team worked to build a company from the ground up. The company has been fully remote and distributed since its founding. Podchaser was acquired by Acast in 2022.
Q: How would you quantify/describe your subscribers/users?
Hundreds of PR agencies, many dozen brands, and media organizations use Podchaser Pro. The majority of Pro users leverage podcast data for earned media, including guest booking and media monitoring. A growing number use Podchaser for podcast advertising use cases. The media orgs use Pro for research and insights, including competitive intel.
Q: What am I missing?
As traditional media continues to fracture and decentralize, the importance of podcasts has never been greater. We frequently hear from clients how Podchaser breathes new life into their businesses in the face of shrinking newsrooms and media contraction.
https://rephonic.com
Q: Briefly describe your service and what makes it special:
Founded in 2020, “Rephonic is an all-in-one podcast outreach and research tool that gives access to detailed listener demographics and contact information for over three million podcasts. It simplifies the process of discovering relevant shows, pitching them at scale, and managing outreach campaigns with real-time data, saving users hours of manual work.”
Q: How would you quantify/describe your subscribers/users?
PR professionals, marketing agencies, individuals pitching themselves, businesses seeking sponsorship opportunities, and podcasters looking to cross-promote their shows. They range from solo entrepreneurs to teams at major brands.
Rephonic also has:
- Lots of advanced search filters (e.g. show me podcasts likely listened to by mechanics)
- Ability to create and collaborate on target lists with your team
- A concierge service to find better contacts
- Full-text episode transcripts
Q: What am I missing?
Rephonic also has:
- Lots of advanced search filters (e.g. show me podcasts likely listened to by mechanics)
- Ability to create and collaborate on target lists with your team
- A concierge service to find better contacts
- Full-text episode transcripts
I‘ll leave you with this observation from Matthew Belloni of Puck in his piece on entertainment PR agency PMK’s defections and the lawsuit they spurred:
You don’t need me to tell you that talent P.R. is a much different job today than it was even 10 years ago. Now, a well-timed Deuxmoi post can be far more effective than an EW cover. Chicken Shop Date is the new Tonight Show.
Still, there’s nothing like a prominent Wall Street Journal or New York Times feature, let alone a six-minute segment on NBC “Today” or PBS “NewsHour.\” Do these traditional news organizations move the needle to the same degree as an influential social media star, top-rated podcast, or heavily subscribed newsletter? It’s an important question for these times and our industry.
If you can’t spring for one of the above services, here is a (free) list of:
The Top 50 Podcasts in the U.S. on Spotify for 2024. But, oops, Kylie (Mrs. Jason) Kelce’s “Not Gonna Lie” podcast just leaped ahead of Joe Rogan’s to take the top spot.
- The Joe Rogan Experience
- Call Her Daddy
- This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
- Crime Junkie
- The Daily (New York Times)
- The Tucker Carlson Show
- Huberman Lab
- Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
- Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
- Shawn Ryan Show
- Up First from NPR
- Serial Killers
- The Journal* (Wall Street Journal)
- SmartLess
- Lex Fridman Podcast*
- The Mel Robbins Podcast
- Morbid
- Rotten Mango
- New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
- What Now? with Trevor Noah*
- Bad Friends
- Stuff You Should Know
- Anything Goes with Emma Chamberlain*
- Dateline NBC
- Conspiracy Theories*
- Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast
- NPR News Now
- Kill Tony
- 2 Bears, 1 Cave with Tom Segura & Bert Kreischer
- Hot Mess with Alix Earle*
- Malevolent Mischief: True Stories of Horror
- Distractible*
- Science Vs*
- On Purpose with Jay Shetty
- The Ben Shapiro Show*
- MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
- Pod Save America
- The Viall Files
- 20/20
- PBD Podcast*
- Today, Explained
- The Comment Section with Drew Afualo*
- Cancelled with Tana Mongeau & Brooke Schofield
- Rotten Mango Video*
- The LOL Podcast*
- Modern Wisdom*
- Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend
- The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett
- Andrew Schulz’s Flagrant with Akaash Singh
- Murder in America
Peter Himler is founding principal of Flatiron Communications, a NYC-based PR and digital media consultancy. Follow him on BlueSky and/or Threads.
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I recently penned a piece on NotebookLM, an AI platform now in beta at Google Labs. Toward the end, I wrote, “I’m pretty sure I’m just scratching the surface of what this cool new AI tool is capable of doing.” The PR world is ablaze with those claiming to use AI and machine learning technology in their daily workflows. I sense that most are not. (There’s considerable hyperbole in our space.)
Some AI-infused resources I regularly use include Muck Rack, Grammarly, Rytr, and Otter.ai. But for this post, I thought I’d talk about a few of the free GenAI chatbots.
We all know about OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 and Google Gemini (formerly Bard), but my default for surprisingly informed conversations is Pi.ai, “the first emotionally intelligent AI.” My wife and I have held congenial conversations with Pi on a range of subjects, including which mortar to use to mount ceramic tiles, the caloric count of lobster meat, and when to harvest the garlic we planted in the fall. No keystrokes needed. Pi’s easy to talk to and prompts further discussion on the subject at hand.
As for NotebookLM, I just used it again for an upcoming editorial board meeting we arranged for a client CEO with an influential national news organization. To prepare, I inputted onto the platform all the editorials and opinion pieces (<20) the publication ran this year on the industry in which my client resides. I then posed to it the following questions: what is the publication’s position on this issue? What are the ten likely questions a CEO from this industry will be asked? Almost instantly, I had what I needed to greatly enhance the meeting prep document.
I have used both ChatGPT and Google Gemini for business queries including recently to help identify a high-profile individual to serve as a co-chair for a big citywide extravaganza. Both yielded excellent choices — except for when they didn’t. Barbara Walters and Sally Ride were not available.
A client recently asked me to put together some background information on an influential reporter poised to meet her CEO. In addition to the usual fare, e.g., name, title, bio, photo, and past pertinent articles, I found in my Dropbox an audio file of the CEO’s last meeting with the reporter two years ago.
Dropbox offers audio-to-text transcription, as does my premium service Otter.ai. I ran the audio through both. The results required a manual listen alongside the text to identify who was speaking. Otter.ai fills in the names after the first few speakers are ID’d. Dropbox doesn’t, while its formatting — one contiguous text with multiple spaces between words — is too time-consuming to correct.
Enter the third LLM chatbot, and my new favorite: Claude from Anthropic, which just released its next generation. FWIW: Amazon just invested $2.75 billion in Anthropic, even as it seeks to build its own chatbot — Olympus. Claude 3’s benchmarks apparently outperform those of ChatGPT4 and Google Gemini.
Back to my use case: I took the unwieldy text from the audio of the conversation between my client CEO and the reporter and cut and pasted it into Claude3’s text box. I then asked, “Can you organize and summarize the transcript of this interview?” In less than five seconds, Claude produced a document in sections with headers and bulleted points my client made under each.
I followed up with a second question: “Thank you. Can you now summarize the reporter’s questions?” Again, in under five seconds, Claude produced a list of the ten questions this reporter posed that day two years ago. It was followed by a paragraph summarizing the reporter’s interests: “In general, the reporter was probing for details on…”
Again, the key to AI adoption by our (or any) industry lies in the use cases the technology can create and the smart, time-saving productivity that results. Claude certainly delivered on the promise.
The post On the Matter of AI in PR appeared first on Flatiron Communications.
Google LabsIn a rare visit back to TwitterX, I fortuitously stumbled across a conversation between the prolific author Steven B. Johnson, now editorial director of Google Labs (who knew?), and This Week in Startup‘s host and MAGA wannabee Jason Calacanis. In the convo/demo, the erudite Mr. Johnson kvelled over his latest creation, NotebookLM.
While the world marvels at the large language models (LLMs) of OpenAI and Google Bard, the really cool stuff (IMHO) is happening with what I call SLMs or smart or small language models. In this particular SLM, the user is given the chance to upload 20 documents of any length to create a custom dataset to which one can pose questions and receive back intelligent, insightful, and prosaically written answers based on the uploaded content.
I immediately decided to put it to the test for one of my PR clients whose CEO is a well-respected subject matter expert in his industry. I was lucky to have the audio of the CEO’s six most recent media interviews, which I transcribed using my Otter.AI account. Those transcripts were the first documents I loaded into NotebookLM.
I then ventured over to my client’s website and grabbed the content from the last two industry white papers his company had produced. They went in, which was followed by a couple of his speeches, some independently published scientific studies, an industry trade association report, pertinent news from government and regulatory authorities, and several deep-dive think pieces from reputable news organizations and trade journals.
Now the fun begins. What does the CEO think of this trend in the industry? What is his company’s position on this important issue? How does his industry view the latest industry data? You get my drift.
Voila! Each of these questions produced very substantive and well-written, answers that exactly reflected the sentiment of the CEO, his company, and the industry in which they reside. Here’s a screen shot from the demo Steven gave to Jason. On the left are the inputted five chapters from Johnson’s tome “Where Good Ideas Come From” and in the center is NotebookLM’s output after being prompted with a question:
NotebookLM lets you copy and share the output, add notes, and rate it. The platform also saves your inputted content and queries. I will say one thing: I’m pretty sure I’m just scratching the surface of what this cool new AI tool is capable of doing. Google Labs describes it as “an AI-first notebook, grounded in your own documents, designed to help you gain insights faster.”
On that level it surely succeeds.
Google Labs
Steven B Johnson
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Instant, Uncanny, but Still Lacking for PR ProsOver the weekend, I read a piece in the WashPost on how the high cost of EVs is a deterrent to the green energy transition, even with the $7500 federal tax credit. Others news orgs including the LA Times and Axios have weighed in on this theme, no doubt pegged to the news of Tesla’s price cut and the growing competitive EV landscape.
Another meme filling my news streams involved OpenAI and its uncanny, AI-driven content creation tool ChatGPT. I thought I’d try a little experiment involving both media narratives by putting the following query into the ChatGPT engine:
Draft a story proposal to the New York Times Opinion section on the subject of the high cost of electric vehicles.”
Within seconds of hitting return, ChatGPT churned out the following well-written and organized prose.
Title: “The High Cost of Going Green: The Financial Burden of Electric Vehicles”
Synopsis:
Electric vehicles (EVs) have been touted as the solution to reducing carbon emissions and fighting climate change. However, despite their environmental benefits, many people are deterred from buying EVs because of their high cost. This is a significant barrier for many, particularly low-income households and communities of color, who are already disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change. This opinion piece will explore the financial burden of EVs, the reasons for their high cost, and the potential solutions to make them more affordable for all.
Body:
The cost of EVs has been decreasing over the past few years, but it still remains a significant barrier for many people. The average price of a new EV is around $55,000, while the average price of a new gas-powered car is around $37,000. This means that even with federal and state incentives, many people still cannot afford to buy an EV.
One of the main reasons for the high cost of EVs is the cost of the batteries. The batteries used in EVs are expensive to produce and are one of the most significant components of the vehicle. The cost of batteries has been decreasing over the past few years, but it is still a major factor in the high cost of EVs.
Another reason for the high cost of EVs is the lack of competition in the market. Currently, there are only a few major manufacturers of EVs, which limits competition and keeps prices high. Additionally, the lack of infrastructure for charging EVs, particularly in low-income communities and communities of color, also adds to the financial burden.
To address the high cost of EVs, there are several solutions that can be implemented. One solution is for the government to provide more financial incentives for people to buy EVs, such as tax credits or rebates. This would make EVs more affordable for many people. Additionally, the government can invest in infrastructure for charging EVs in low-income communities and communities of color, which would also make them more accessible.
Another solution is to increase competition in the market by encouraging more manufacturers to produce EVs. This would drive down prices and make them more affordable for all. Additionally, research and development into new battery technologies can also help to decrease the cost of EVs.
Conclusion:
Electric vehicles are an important step in reducing carbon emissions and fighting climate change. However, their high cost is a significant barrier for many, particularly low-income households and communities of color. To address this issue, the government needs to provide more financial incentives, invest in infrastructure, and increase competition in the market. This way everyone can have the option to go green and fight climate change.
I don’t know, but something seems to be missing in ChatGPT’s output. It could be a lack of prosaic flair or simply a point of view. Yes, it’s well-written and its conclusion is correct. It also includes a stat or two to support the premise. Nonetheless, it needs more. You decide.
Does ChatGPT have value for PR pros? It most certainly does! Minimally, the quality of its “writing” surpasses that of many PR firms (in my experience). However, I’d caution against using unedited, AI-created content as the final product for content marketing and journalist engagement.
And in some late-breaking news from Axios, the folks at OpenAI have introduced a tool that can decipher between AI and human-created content, lest you want to pull one over on an editor.
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COP27, the annual UN Climate Conference, drew a vast audience with one shared goal.
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In my last post, I offered some personal observations and select conversations from several media panels at the 2022 Collision Conference, which just concluded in Toronto. Here I’d like to share some memorable moments, which included taking the ContentMakers Stage alongside three path-breaking entrepreneurs who built their companies by helping gamers and influencers monetize their… Continue reading Where Founders, VCs, Creators, and Journalists Collide
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It’s been three years since Web Summit’s sister tech conference, Collision was physically held at Toronto’s Enercare Centre. This year the tech confab returned big time, with a sold-out audience of 35,000+ and more than a fair share of forward-thinking founders, entrepreneurs, VCs, and established tech giants and luminaries to fill the nearly four days of programming… Continue reading Collision’s Audacious Return to Toronto
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Want to work in PR? Test your mettle.
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Paywalls be damned! If you’re an avid news consumer, like me, or your profession demands it, like mine, you’re no doubt alarmed by the toll your daily habit is taking on your wallet. A quick tally of the digital news outlets to which I subscribe puts my annual outlay at around $1635. You do the… Continue reading Making Cents of News Subscriptions
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How the Explosion in News Creators impact Communications Pros It was inevitable. The ability to profit from a personal news brand through the creation and distribution of original content has gotten even easier. “We the media” started 15+ years ago with CGM/blogging and, to a lesser degree, podcasting and has evolved to the point where established journalists… Continue reading Substack, Media Fragmentation & PR
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Can An Industry That Advocates for its Clients to Embrace ‘Social Good’ Practice What it Preaches? It’s been a long-time pet peeve of mine to observe how many reputable firms in the PR industry will accept clients whose business or advocacy goals raise ethical questions. We’ve seen big oil companies retain PR agencies to publicly tout their social good… Continue reading PR Firms: Doing Well, But Doing Good?
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Did @PressSec’s Staff Seek Journalists’ Questions in Advance? I suppose it’s all relative. Compared to the horrific daily White House press briefings of the last four years — when there were any — the transparent and truthful approach of President Biden’s new Press Secretary Jen Psaki and her team is a breath of fresh air. Didn’t I read that… Continue reading White House Communications Team Encounters Turbulence
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Media Manipulation or Good PR Strategy? Journalists bristle at the notion of being manipulated by PR people as if they’re some cog in a company’s marketing communications program. Some of their biggest gripes include the PR person’s request to see a reporter’s questions in advance or review his/her story copy prior to publication. More often… Continue reading Embargoes and Exclusives
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Dogma Be Damned: Set Real Journalists Free
For many, it would seem unusual, if not highly suspect, for a long-time public relations executive to opine on the state of journalism and to offer remedies for its preservation. After all, aren’t most PR pros charged with positioning their clients more favorably in news and feature stories? (There are strategies to achieve this.)
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The short answer is probably not. That is until the Democratic leadership recognizes a significant shortcoming in how their brand is perceived and the urgent need to mount a communications plan to fix it. Sure, “one America” resonated loudly with an electorate that was tired of four years of division and demonization by Trump, his… Continue reading Can the Dems Find Their Soul and Take Back the Senate?
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I belong to several private groups for communications professionals on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Slack. In following the conversation strings, one can’t help but notice a palpable frustration by many practitioners that PR as a marketing communications discipline is DOA during the coronavirus crisis. This is mostly true, except for the brand-focused story angles that are… Continue reading Where PR is Needed Now
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This is the opening line for far too many PR story “pitch” letters emailed to journalists. To call it a cliche would be to state the obvious. In fact, it’s such a hollow greeting — often sent to reporters with whom the publicist has no prior relationship — it becomes a non-starter, if not a… Continue reading ‘I Hope All Is Well’
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Washington Post Headline More than a few media watchers have audaciously proclaimed that this week’s viral performance by the “President” spells doom for his prospects of re-election come November. I disagree.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the age of Trump, scandals big and small simply dissipate in a matter of days, if not hours. Some never rise to the level of national awareness, while others that normally should have legs, don’t. The ephemeral nature of today’s news diet is in part a result of the fragmented media landscape where mind-boggling revelations reported by once-trusted national news organizations fail to make an indelible impression. All this while a White House/GOP/FoxNews/Facebook-led cabal is working tirelessly to deride quality journalism as we know it.
From the Mueller Report to Presidential impeachment to child separation (and jailing), we are in an age where only freshly reported news can create awareness and action. Joe Biden’s primary win in South Carolina and the endorsements that emerged leading into Super Tuesday were still on voters’ minds when they gave the moderate Democrat wins in every county in Michigan and five of the six states voting three days later.
Granted, the coronavirus pandemic may be the biggest story of the last three years, one that is far from disappearing from the leads of every newspaper, TV news, and streaming news report. However, I predict that by the end of the summer, the U.S. government’s gross negligence in addressing this crisis will have faded in Americans’ rearview mirrors, not unlike Mueller, Ukraine, and incarcerated children, which brings me to the subject of timing.
From The Smithsonian:
“The term ‘October Surprise’ was coined by a 1980s political operative but has ever since been appropriated by the media to describe unexpected political disasters in the twilight hours of the campaign. Sometimes they are intentionally positioned by political opponents to impact voters, often days before they head to the polls. They aren’t always successful, but they’ve become a staple of modern politics.”
Does the concept of an October Surprise still hold water with today’s relentless flow of news wherein one scandalous story supplants another in rapid succession? If this health crisis, and the mismanagement thereof, had reared its ugly head in late October instead of in March, I believe its impact on Americans’ behavior in the voting booth will be more meaningful. In this news climate, people simply have short attention spans.
That said, don’t be surprised when Parscale and Trump’s insidious re-election campaign manufactures its own disinformative, headline-generating surprise just before the election. Let’s hope they jump the gun too early and it dissipates by Tuesday, November 2.
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The Internet Research Agency, Russia’s Troll Farm Between Trump and the GOP’s disregard for the truth, and the unwillingness of the major social platforms – Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter – to remove provably false or purposely doctored information from reaching its users, America is poised for a whole lot of hurt in 2020.
Now comes the news, thanks to some nifty reporting by Buzzfeed, of how some public relations firms are offering services that leverage the flaws in how the world gets its news and information. In its piece “Disinformation for Hire: How a New Breed of PR Firms is Selling Lies Online,” the authors write:
“If disinformation in 2016 was characterized by Macedonian spammers pushing pro-Trump fake news and Russian trolls running rampant on platforms, 2020 is shaping up to be the year communications pros for hire provide sophisticated online propaganda operations to anyone willing to pay. Around the globe, politicians, parties, governments, and other clients hire what is known in the industry as “black PR” firms to spread lies and manipulate online discourse.”
In my January 2017 piece “When PR Turned to the Dark Side,” I highlighted the beginnings of this dangerous trend, but held out some hope that the industry, driven by PRSA’s code of ethics, would not succumb to the unscrupulous tactics deployed by a growing cadre of nefarious actors. I’m now beginning to believe that even the most respected journalistic enterprises do not have the capacity to prevent tainted information from polluting the public discourse.
Facebook, which is arguably the most duplicitous propagator of disinformation, this week announced that it will ban “deep fakes” from its platform (but at the same time, wouldn’t remove the Nancy Pelosi video that was purposely doctored to look like she had a bit too much to drink). One begins to wonder whether these pronouncements are more PR than actual, enforceable policy changes. From Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Vice President, Global Policy Management:
“Today we want to describe how we are addressing both deepfakes and all types of manipulated media. Our approach has several components, from investigating AI-generated content and deceptive behaviors like fake accounts, to partnering with academia, government and industry to exposing people behind these efforts.”
To its credit, the Buzzfeed investigative team learned that “…since 2011, at least 27 online information operations have been partially or wholly attributed to PR or marketing firms. Of those, 19 occurred in 2019 alone.
While the Buzzfeed report does not cite any of the big-branded U.S.-based firms as practicing the dark art of news and social media manipulation, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are entities within these orgs that deploy some of these tactics. These include:
Peng Kuan China Taiwanese-based operative’s “Content Farm Automatic Collection System” that he “developed for manipulating public opinion. He told the Reporter, an investigative news site in Taipei that partnered with BuzzFeed News for the story, that automation and artificial intelligence “can quickly generate traffic and publicity much faster than people.”
The Archimedes Group, an Israeli black PR firm, created networks of hundreds of Facebook pages, accounts, and groups around the world, boasting on its website that it would “use every tool and take every advantage available in order to change reality according to our client’s wishes.”
In Ukraine, the PR firm Pragmatico employed dozens of young, digitally savvy people to pump out positive comments on fake Facebook accounts about clients.
In Poland, Cat@Net managed networks of fake Twitter accounts operated by staffers with disabilities working from home, whom the agency hired because it could pay them below-market rates while they received government subsidies.
And, of course, there’s that Russian troll farm, harmlessly named “The Internet Research Agency,” which pumps out divisive, anti-Western disinformation from its offices in St. Petersburg. Separately, The Guardian’s intrepid Carole Cadwalladr reported on the release of thousands of pages of documents from Cambridge Analytica that prove just how pervasive disinformation has become and the deleterious effect it has on democratic elections worldwide. It broke over the holiday weekend and was all but forgotten on Monday.
We’re already aware of how many agencies, on behalf of their clients, create buoyant-sounding, opaque organizations to advocate on issues that benefit their clients, but with which the client does not wish to be publicly associated. What we haven’t seen yet is whether any of the more-established PR agencies have succumbed to the purposeful dissemination of disinformation to achieve the same result. Somehow I think it’s already happening.
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