Get out your best pitch, Oprah has signed a $55 million deal over three years with XM Satellite Radio to start her own channel called, “Oprah and Friends.” The channel will read more...

Most of us know that good public relations practitioners facilitate access and operate in the background.

Apparently, George C. Deutsch, 24, didn’t see it that way. According to an Associated Press article, Deutsch restricted the press access to Jim Hansen, a noted NASA climate scientist, and insisted that a Web designer insert the word "theory" before any mention of the Big Bang.

I can understand that Deutsch might have some personal opinions about these topics, lots of people do, but his personal beliefs should not intrude on the read more...

I will be in the Houston area next Monday, February 13, 2006, and John Wagner, who writes the On Message blog, is graciously hosting a blog community meet-up (dutch treat, of course).

If you are in the Houston area that day and want to come, please send an e-mail message to John, which is in his profile, or leave a comment in this post and we’ll get you on the notification list.

We will let you know where we will have it as we get closer and get an idea for how many will read more...

Lest we think too much of ourselves...

A new Gallup Poll study shows that 60 percent of Americans never look at blogs.

In an very unscientific survey of my parents, many don’t even know what a blog is:

Example

Dad: What have you been up to lately?
Me: Well, I’ve started a blog about public relations
Dad: Really? What is a blog? I mean I’ve heard about them a little when some talk show hosts have someone on who writes a blog, but I don’t really know what they are.

OR my Mom after visiting my blog for the first read more...

Many of you know how I love to find new metrics for measuring the impact of blogging. We’ll here is one that I think merits some attention and maybe modification. Stowe Boyd, a consultant on social media tools (who is also working with Shel Holtz), has a great post about a new metric he invented called the Conversation Index. The number in his metric, which was updated by one of his readers, gets read more...