Citizen Brand

The Don Imus affair

Don Imus was wrong to say what he said.  The Rutger's womens basketball team is right to meet with him and start a conversation.  We need more of that around the issue of racism in America.  It still exists and we all know it.  We just don't want to talk about it.

As Michael Corleone said in "The Godfather" -- we are all part of the same hypocrisy.  Media pundit Jeff Greenfield hit the nail on the head when he appeared on The Don Imus Show on Tuesday morning.  Greenfield said he and everyone else who ever appeared on the Imus show never once stopped to say that perhaps the comedy on the program went over the edge.  Greenfield said his fellow pundits and the big time politicians love the Imus show because they have a chance to do long form interviews they can't do anywhere else.  Now, of course some of those same people are lashing out at Imus for what he said.

Regardless of our ethnicity, religion or any other label we can put on people, we all have been guilty of either making a bad comment about someone or sitting by quietly while others make comments.  That is the hypocrisy we all have to own up to.

There is another side to this whole incident.  And I will turn to Kansas City Star sports columnist Jason Whitlock to discuss it.  Please read this column.  It is worth the time.

Magazines for kids II

The real power of the blogosphere is in the connections we can create.  I had one of those connections happen today.  A post I wrote on August 31, 2006 resulted today in an email exchange with John Mennell, Founding Director of MagazineLiteracy.org.  I want to share with you some of what John said to me about this incredible organization:

"Our mission is to put wonderful magazines into the hands, hearts, and homes of children and families who would otherwise not have them.  One of our greatest challenges is reaching people who then sponsor the teachers, mentors, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and other literacy agents who help children and families learn and love to read.  We need to engage and leverage every magazine and media stakeholder in the ways that they excel to reach the masses."

As I said in my earlier post, other than making sure a child has the proper nutrition each and every day, I cannot think of anything more important than for a child to be able to learn about the world around them.  Many children have access to computers today, but not all.  MagazineLiteracy.org can make sure that children have access to information through the hundreds of magazines that are published today.  Check it out.

By the way, here is how John told me this organization was founded:

"Once, over ten years ago, an executive director of a battered women's shelter wrote me to explain how children and their moms arrived at her shelter with no belongings, and how wonderful it would be to be able to give each child a magazine with their name on the label.  I held on to that letter for all the years up until reaching a point in my own life when I could launch MagazineLiteracy.org.  Now, we make the necessary connections possible by inspiring and facilitating donations from individuals, groups, and business owners that sponsor magazines to children and families. But we need to reach more people in more communities to reach our full potential."

I think John has thrown the gauntlet down.

William Allen White

Besides death and taxes, there is one other absolute in my life - that I was going to attend the University of Kansas and have a life long love affair with all things Jayhawk.  When I turned 13, another absolute cropped up - that I was going to major in Journalism and become the next Walter Cronkite.  That Cronkite part turned out not to be an absolute.  But that's okay.

All of this background is to say that the marriage of the absolutes revolving around KU and journalism meant I would have the privilege of attending a great school of journalism - the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at KU.  I have been blessed in my career but it would not have happened without the jump start I had from KU and our great J-School. 

So last week I had a great honor and thrill to attend my first meeting of the William Allen White Foundation Board of Trustees -- as a trustee.  I was asked to join this group several weeks ago by the Dean of the School, Ann Brill, and the executive committee of the Board.  The group serves as an advisory group to the KU J-School and selects an outstanding journalist each year to be recognized with the Foundation's National Citation.

Needless to say, for me to be asked to serve on this Board is amazing when I think back about that 13-year-old writing a career paper about becoming a broadcast journalist and going to KU.  The Foundation has been in existence since 1944 and serves to continue the legacy of William Allen White and his incredible influence on journalism and the education of journalism.  The big names of Kansas journalism and media have served on this group over the years and it is an honor to be asked to do my part to continue the legacy of Mr. White.

So just who is William Allen White?  Simply stated, he was a pioneer and a giant of American journalism.  He was plain spoken.  He was a fighter for the things he believed in and did not back down from a fight.  And he didn't do his work from one of the great American metropolises where other giants of journalism were plying their trade.  He did it from America's heartland - from the Emporia Gazette.

William Allen White wrote the original "What's the matter with Kansas?"  He had owned the Gazette for a year or so when he penned this piece that catapulted him into the national limelight of that year's presidential election between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan.  It was a clarion call that focused the eyes of the nation on fundamental economic and political issues of the day that were impacting not only Kansas, but the rest of the nation as well.

White got into a public debate about labor rights and free speech with a Kansas governor in 1922.  He was facing arrest and a possible jail sentence.  When the charges were dropped, he wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning editorial - To an Anxious Friend.  This excerpt is as relevant today as it was in 1922:

"You tell me that law is above freedom of utterance. And I reply that you can have no wise laws nor free entertainment of wise laws unless there is free expression of the wisdom of the people - and, alas, their folly with it. But if there is freedom, folly will die of its own poison, and the wisdom will survive."

William Allen White had his private side as well.  Tragedy struck he and his wife in 1921 when their daughter died in a horse riding accident.  His prose was never finer than in his tribute to Mary White.

"A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her nervous, energetic little body sank to its last sleep.  But the soul of her, the glowing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely was flaming in eager joy upon some other dawn."

This legacy of journalism serving the greater public good lives on at the School of Journalism that bears William Allen White's name.  At the Board meeting, we heard about two programs that are great examples.  One is called Covering Communities.  It's a site designed to bring together journalists, educators and citizen journalists to work together to create more meaningful journalism and create stronger and better communities.  These are the guiding principles of the program:

Name Your Aspirations.  You can produce coverage that has the greatest impact when you name your aspirations.

Know Your Community.  The ability to produce journalism that is authentic and carries authority begins with community knowledge.

Engage People.  People find the most meaning in community coverage when they are fully engaged.

Act Publicly.  What does it take for you to maintain credibility with the public?

This is a great project that is a collaboration of the KU J-School, the Harwood Institute and the Knight Foundation.

The second project has KU Journalism students spending time with 6th, 7th and 8th graders in the Rosedale section of Kansas City, Kansas and opening their eyes and minds to journalism as a career.  We had two of the KU students speak to the Board meeting and it was moving to hear the impact they were having on kids who might never have considered journalism as a career.  And to hear about the impact the young students had on the "older" students as well.

Hats off to KU professor Peggy Kuhr for providing leadership on both of these great projects.  Both are a great tribute to the man whose name graces the Kansas School of Journalism.

The day ended with the annual awarding of the William Allen White Foundation National Citation Presentation.  This year's award was given to a distinguished graduate of KU and one of the great photo journalists of all time, Rich Clarkson.  Clarkson was named by American Photo as one of the 50 most influential photographers of all time.

More evidence that the legacy of William Allen White lives on.  Take some time to study White and you will find someone who is as relevant today as he was in his own time.

Staying inside the box

We are fortunate at our company to have Ernie Schenck as an outside member of our board of directors.  For those of you who don't know Ernie, he is one of those advertising guru types.  He would appreciate the use of the word types.

I had the opportunity to spend some quality time with Ernie earlier this year driving to an off site board meeting.  He had just finished a book that is about to be published called The Houdini Solution.  In it, Ernie takes the long held notion of thinking outside the box and turns it on its head.  Hence the title of the book. 

You might recall one of Houdini's most famous escapes involved being chained, roped and otherwise tied up inside a big chest and heaved into a deep body of water.  (I can't remember if it was a lake, river or ocean.  Anyone?)

The point of Ernie's book is incredibly interesting.  Instead of always "pushing the envelope" or "thinking outside the box" - what if we take an idea and go inward with it and work it so hard and drill down so deep that we find just as many, if not more, insights and opportunities to move a brand forward.  That was my take away from our conversation anyway.  I'm anxious to read the book.

Ernie has a great blog called Ernie Schenck Calls This Advertising.  He recently posted one of his book's chapters.  Also, here is another great post he did that tells us why the chaos theory can teach us much about the marketing environment today.

Enjoy.  And here is a shameless plug for Ernie's book.  Go buy it starting September 15.

Magazines for kids

Jack Yan recently pointed us to a great cause that everyone can get behind.  It is called MagazineLiteracy.org

MagazineLiteracy.org helps kids learn to read and to build their self-esteem by mobilizing business and community literacy partnerships that provide wonderful children's magazines to schools, and other reading programs. Your support unleashes the awesome potential of children’s magazines as a powerful literacy resource for kids and families.

Here are some of the programs that companies or organizations can support:

• The Kids Magazine Airlift sends your gift magazine subscription to a school, or homeless or domestic violence shelter to help children learn to read.
• Magazine Mentors are individuals, businesses, and organizations that sponsor children in classrooms, shelters, and other literacy programs in their own communities.
• KinderHarvest matches surplus children's magazines, which would otherwise be discarded or destroyed, to food banks, food pantries, homeless and domestic violence shelters, and disaster relief programs. Individual and business support helps cover warehouse, handling, and shipping expenses.
• 100% of local sponsor pledges are used to provide direct help to the kids and families in community literacy programs.

There is also an accompanying blog.

Other than making sure a child has enough food to eat each day, making sure a child learns to read may be the most important gift anyone can give.  Check this great cause out and pass it on to others.

Edward R. Murrow

I decided early in life I wanted to be in radio and television.  At first, I thought sports broadcasting was my calling.  But when I entered the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas in 1973, Watergate was in full swing and we all wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.  At least I did.

That was until I began to learn about Edward R. Murrow.  I was just a bit too young to have seen Murrow in his prime on CBS News.  But as I learned about him and began to study his career as part of my journalism studies, it became clear to me that Murrow was the foundation on which great broadcast journalism was built.  He, of course was most remembered for his showdown with Senator Joseph McCarthy documented in last year's great film, Good Night and Good Luck.

I wrote one of my best papers in college on that fascinating period of history.  But what I found more interesting were his days on the radio during World War Two as he reported from London during the darkest days of the ceaseless bombing of that great city.

I'm moved to write about Murrow tonight because of a great PBS program airing this week as part of the American Masters series.  I hope you have a chance to see it.  His was a life that not only changed his profession, but led to changes in society as well.  There were few issues he did not take on over the years on his famous "See It Now" program or later in productions that redefined the television documentary.  His most famous documentary was Harvest of Shame which documented the horrible existence of America's migrant workers in 1960.

I end this post with a line from Murrow's closing comments in his program that brought down Joe McCarthy.  These are words we need to continue to think about even today:

"Let us not confuse dissent with disloyalty."

Edward R. Murrow was a true citizen of the world.  Take some time to read more about him.  It will be worth your time.

Times they are a changin'

Need evidence change is in the air?

Jeff Jarvis recently told us that television and YouTube are going in opposite directions, viewership wise.

Steve Rubel pointed us to an Associated Press story saying e-mail is officially old school already.  Consider this quote from the article: 

“In this world of instant gratification, e-mail has become the new snail mail,” says 25-year-old Rachel Quizon from Norwalk, Calif. She became addicted to instant messaging in college, where many students are logged on 24/7."

But wait a minute, maybe the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Back at YouTube, as Adrants points out, the days of no control by the 'Tube may be on the wain.  Freedom of the airwaves can only last so long I guess.

Half lives are getting shorter for everything it would appear.

Anyone want a used Blackberry?

Breaking thru the clutter

Thanks to Andrea for pointing us to a site that rounds up some of the most hard hitting cause ad campaigns going today.

Take a look at Houtlist and see the real power of great issue advertising.

Some of these make the old "your brain on drugs" campaign look very tame by comparison. 

Lunch

As we head into a long holiday weekend in the States, check out this new magazine called Lunch.  Just when you thought maybe there were no new, refreshing magazine concepts left to launch, here comes Lunch.  What is it?

"LUNCH is a magazine for the smart, savvy (post)consumer aged anything between 16-60 years old; LUNCH is more an attitude than an age. Value-conscious but increasingly aware of living a lifestyle paradox: responsible, trendsetting but also trend-driven. Wears Blackspot as well as Converse. Loves shopping, buys organic food and drinks Diet Coke, wears People Tree as well as H&M, weekends in the country, frets about global warming but flies EasyJet, wore a MakePovertyHistory band, loves festivals, breaks into a trot when approaching Selfridges. Has probably boycotted Nike, Nestlé et al, albeit temporarily. Loved No Logo and Supersize Me, reads Vogue and Closer.
Recognise anyone?"

Thanks to Audeamus for pointing this out to us.

Newspapers are 400 years old

The CEO of McClatchy, Gary Pruitt, is on a whirlwind tour of the Knight Ridder papers he and his company just purchased.  His tour brought him to my hometown paper, the Kansas City Star.  I like what he had to say and I like his passion for a business that is four centuries old and working hard to remain relevant.

Pruitt also wrote this opinion page column for Saturday's Star.

Now I'm sure the headline of his piece will stir up all kinds of people crying bull - "Newspapers are Still the Center of the Media Galaxy."  But if people take time to actually read his comments, I think his premise is on target.  If you simply published a newspaper today, your relevancy would be in question.  But newspapers are not only moving their core products online but many are also creating special online products.  Some are entering the blogosphere while others are also integrating with other media such as broadcast or cable television.

I really like the fact that he is on the road right away meeting with the staffs of the newspapers McClatchy is buying and is working to complete the sale of the 12 newspapers they have decided not to take in the Knight Ridder purchase.  His efforts are the kind you like to see the heads of companies take when there is big change going on in their organizations. 

Whether or not you agree with his ideas about newspapers, you have to admire the way he is leading his company.

As for the 12 papers not being bought by McClatchy, Jay Rosen told us this week about how this sudden freedom from any parent company could create some interesting opportunities for the dozen orphans.