Scatterbox by Steven Silvers

CEOs won't say "Twitter" and other contradictions about the hottest social media thing since the one before it

So here's my take on Twitter.

Four years ago, a BusinessWeek cover story said blogs will change your business and influence the course of civilization like the invention of the printing press 569 years ago.

Now a Time Magazine cover story announces that Twitter will change the way we live .

At this rate we should expect another planet-altering social media tool by Labor Day.

That is, unless you don't agree that a free online short-message service deserves to be listed among our generation’s revolutionary information technologies: voice mail, cell phones, the Web, blogs and RSS.

You’re the people who think Twitter is the Internet version of the CB radio fad. 

And you don’t believe that the hot hype of expectations will take precedent over the cold realities of the competitive marketplace.

In "Ten ways Twitter will change American business,"  Time’s writer predicts that the ability to send and selectively receive 140-character Tweets will give business, politicians, media, investors and other interests the ability to “engage” people like never before. For example:

“Twitter … will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce, and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter… having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.”

The problem with this vision is that it assumes consumers will do four things:

… One, that they'll stay fixed on reading and writing Tweets all day long, day after day.

… Two, that they’ll want to receive product announcements, promotions, surveys, celebrity restaurant orders, contests and other sponsored messages, at every turn of their day.

… Three, that they’ll overlook the intrusive advertising and spam that will increasingly pollute their legitimate news and conversation stream.

… And four, that they won’t mind how Twitter reserves all rights to sell any information it has on them so others can identify, locate or contact users.

Consumers don’t behave this way.  They won’t for Twitter.

Twitter’s problem is that the Internet has no walls.  There are no beachheads to dissipate the relentless waves of marketing, publicity and campaigning.  We hear anecdotes like how a suitcase company responded to a customer who Tweeted about his broken handle.  But take that scenario a few years from now – if that long – and that same customer will be inundated by followers, followees and interlopers Tweeting everything from luggage deals and discount travel to political fundraisers and pleas to help some secret princess transfer money. 

Nobody says Twitter doesn’t have huge potential for mass communication.  It does. The Iranian election aftermath shows how microblogging can facilitate real-time citizen-journalism.  But the same holds true for misinformation and propaganda, as the bad guys know how to use Twitter too. 

That's one reason mainstream corporate America isn’t exactly clamoring to get on board. And Twitter's goofy dot-commish name itself alienates the service from thousands of CEOs already averse to social media.

In fact, big brands see less value and more risk in associating with any Internet free-for-alls.

Consider YouTube. Time Magazine reports that despite drawing 99.7 million viewers watching 5.9 billion videos, YouTube's content is generally so bad that marketers have become reluctant to embed their messages within it. 

After paying $1.65 billion to own it, Google told investors that YouTube is "not material,” making the Web’s third-most popular destination also one of the ten biggest technology failures of the last decade.

Why would Twitter do better?  It doesn’t even own the micro-blogging idea, and several competitors offer more features and open-sourcing.  RSS inventor Dave Winer, who PC World calls the father of modern-day content distribution, went so far as to predict that Twitter is the next Netscape.

As for the 29 million users, new research also suggests that Twittermania may have already peaked:

• 90 percent of all Tweets come from only 10 percent of all Twitter users. (Harvard University study of randomly selected sample of 300,000 Twitter users)
  
  
• Only 22 percent of Generation Y -- age 18 to 24  -- use Twitter, though 99 percent of them use social media.  (Pace University study for Participatory Marketing Network)
  
  
• 55 percent of Twitter account holders have never posted a Tweet and 56 percent aren’t following anyone.  53 percent have no followers. (HubSpot analysis of 4.5 million Twitter accounts over nine-month period)
  
  
• 60 percent of Twitter users quit after the first month.  (Tracking from Nielsen Online)
  
  
• Twitter’s growth came to a screeching stop in May, growing by only 1.5 percent.  (Tracking by Mashable)

Then there’s the Oprah factor.

Well over a million people signed up for Twitter in the first 72 hours after Oprah featured the service on her show.  But as Silicon Valley Insider reported, Oprah is already bored with it.  Despite having 1.56 million followers, Oprah herself follows only 14 people and Tweeted just four times in June. 

So what are we to make of all this?  I agree with InternetNews columnist Mike Elgan, who thinks Twitter is simply leveling out to what it really is minus the hype. 

“It’s no longer a new frontier, an elite club or a culture-transforming medium,” he writes. “It's just a service for sending messages.”

And you can get mine at Twitter.com/StevenSilvers.  Or at least until I move on to the next big thing.
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Logos must face away from the face

Valencian football team Club Deportivo Dénia reminds players that goal celebrations are a good time to remember who pays for the laundry.

Managing the unmanageable: Employees talking about your company on the Internet

Over the last year, this has become one of the questions I get asked most:

"How are we supposed to manage what our employees say about us when they're on Twitter and Facebook all the time?"

Almost every executive worried about social media is focused on two things: increased risk to the company and loss of productivity. Both are legitimate concerns. Yet many of those same executives are downright tepid about bringing up productivity. It's as if they're worried about sounding ridiculous, like the old dolt who doesn't get this World Wide Web hullabaloo.

Or perhaps they've seen studies like the one claiming that employees who use the Internet for personal reasons are nine percent more productive. Researchers at the University of Melbourne said "workplace Internet leisure browsing, or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration."

There you go. Can't argue with an acronym.

But even CEOs who buy this W-I-L-B thing are concerned about how social-networking employees might be representing the company. And they should be.

Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey found that three-fourths of all working Americans think it's easy to damage a brand's reputation via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media services. Yet a third of all employees say they never even consider what their boss might think before posting something online.

This is scary stuff. What Deloitte's study says is that a third of any company's or organization's employees could include the same kind of people as the two Domino's employees, aged 31 and 32, who posted a prank video of themselves stuffing cheese up their nose and spitting on sandwiches as they laughed that "somebody will be eating them, yes eating them... Now that's how we roll at Domino's!"

In only 48 hours, the gross-out video was viewed by more than a million people on YouTube alone. Internet exposure and news coverage hit like a hurricane. And in only four days of tracking, consumer perceptions toward one of the nation's most popular brands went from great to rotten.

Domino's responded comprehensively and is even being credited with being the "Tylenol crisis" of the new media era. But being a PR case study doesn't account for what that little video prank cost the company in lost sales, bad publicity and ridicule, penalties paid for health-code violations, costs associated with managing the crisis and the expenses of investigations and litigation.

And unlike the Tylenol crisis, the image of a wacky Domino's employee sticking cheese up his nose will keep showing up on the Internet forever.

In a New York Times story, a Domino's spokesman underscored the real bottom-line risk of social media:

"We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea. Even people who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino's, and that's not fair."

Companies must have comprehensive social media policies in place, and many do. But rules alone won't change how many people behave online. In a world where so many employees (and bosses) could give your brand a black eye, it will take considerable internal culture-building and communications programs to ensure they don't.

Technology savvy or not, that gives every CEO good reason to wonder how much time their people are spending on social media, and what exactly they're doing there.
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Links & Resources

• Deloitte | 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey Results
• New York Times | Video prank at Domino's taints brand
• USA Today  | Domino's nightmare holds lessons for marketers
• Domino's | CEO YouTube response: "Disgusting Dominos people"
  
• Scatterbox | Transparent generation realizes downside to growing up online

No, social media doesn't actually sell anything. And no, you can't afford to ignore it.

For all we know, social media services like Facebook and Twitter could change the course of marketing history just like the telephone, the World Wide Web and the commemorative plastic drink cup.

For now, however, social media isn't actually selling anything but itself.

A study from research firm Knowledge Networks shows that while 85 percent of people online use social media, less than five percent visit those networks for "guidance on purchase decisions."

Word-of-mouth is still the greatest influence on what people decide to buy. That's followed by TV, an information and influence channel that keeps hanging around despite its alleged obsolescence.

"Obviously, a lot of people are using social media, but they are not explicitly turning to it for marketing purposes, or for finding out what products to buy. It's really about connecting with friends, or connecting with other people," Knowledge Networks executive Dave Tice told Marketing VOX. "The influence of social media isn't at the bottom of the list, but it is somewhere in the long tail of marketing - about the same as print ads, or online [display] ads."

Lack of tangible results, however, aren't keeping companies from getting into social media as fast as mass media can hype about it.

In a story headlined "Jumping on the Twitter bandwagon," USA Today reports that major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America are "establishing presences on social-networking sites to tap into a growing demographic and to control the conversation about their brands. Yet the economic turmoil, some say, makes it even more important to reach out to customers any way they can."

Okay. So it's just a wee bit of overstatement to suggest that collecting Facebook friends and Tweeting 140-character messages across a free online service will give any company the power to control what consumers want to say about them. That's the hype part.

But as one banking company's spokeswoman told USA Today, "Social media is a whole new world, and you cannot afford to not be a part of it."

That's the truth part.
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Obama anti-business rhetoric strains corporate communications about government partnership

News reports suggest that the business world is upset about what it considers President Obama's purposely divisive anti-corporate rhetoric. As U.S. News and World Report observes, "Another week, another assault on business-as-usual by President Obama. Or is it, as some critics are starting to wonder, an assault on business, as usual?"

Reports Associated Press:

"Relations between President Barack Obama and U.S. corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular.

Executives and trade groups that praised Obama's outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their U.S. tax burden."

A U.S. Chamber spokesman called the President's talking points "an oversimplification of the real world." Another trade lobbyist complained about the same old cynical, political class warfare.

Meanwhile, the White House is throwing out its own doublespeak, explaining that the business community is just a little freaked out by how shockingly supportive the President really is. Said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke in the U.S. News report:

"President Obama has a very good relationship with the business community. He's working extra hard on creating more jobs and stabilizing the financial crisis.... In many ways, he's perhaps surprised the business community with just how moderate he has been and how much he is willing to work with them."

The posturing between Obama and the business community has always been convoluted. As a presidential candidate, Obama ran anti-corporate campaign ads criticizing CEO compensation. But he still raised enormous sums of money from corporate backers including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, National Amusements and Google.

A few months before the election, a Chief Executive poll found that more than 70 percent of all CEOs thought an Obama presidency would be a "disaster."  Yet Business Week reported that corporate leaders gave President Obama "relatively good grades" after his first 100 days. Everyone was still wary on the details, but as the Business Roundtable's president told the magazine: "We're happy with the general outlines of what he's done; things are starting to take hold."

Today's incredible ambivalence between government and business represents tensions that exist within the  forced bond that is unlike anything in history. Taxpayers are now direct stakeholders in the financial and auto industries, and are swiftly becoming the safety net by which the nation's housing, healthcare, energy and even news media industries will be supported while they are dramatically transformed. The President of the United States is both Commander in Chief and CEO.

We're at the point now, writes Wall Street Journal columnist Gerland Seib, that "it seems almost anachronistic to talk about a divide between government and business."

Perhaps the renewed angst about Obama being anti-business means the honeymoon that never really was is way over.  But what's certain is that corporate PR is going to be far more complicated than when all the talk about public-private partnership was mostly just talk.
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Send comments and links to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Get on President Obama's email update list

Drop a note to WhiteHouse.Gov and you'll be added to President Obama's email blast list.

The White House is using official letter-looking emails -- like this one about health care reform -- "as a way to directly communicate about important issues and opportunities." 

The email letters include links to other White House web sites designed to educate and build support for various administration initiatives.

You can get on the official Obama email updates list by clicking here.
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Like so many others, Google finally turns to TV ads

Google's decision to run television advertising is another vindication of the marketing medium that was supposed to have been made obsolete by the Internet age.

But as Advertising Age reports, "even Google is seeing the limits of search ads and YouTube."

It's amazing how even companies that grew to be huge success stories without commercials eventually come to decide they can't live without them. Case in point: Hershey's began running TV advertising in 1970 after relying on only word-of-mouth marketing from the day the company was founded in 1901.

Google's TV ads will promote the company's new browser, Google Chrome.  (Look for the Scatterbox review in early June.)
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Come celebrate 35 years of civic leadership

Come join the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of Leadership Denver, the longest-standing such program in Colorado and one of the most respected in the nation.

Alumni and friends of all Foundation programs are welcome to the reception on Friday, June 5 at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  The event kicks of at 5:30 in the Leprino Family Atrium and will go to around 8:00.  Cost is $55.

Click here to RSVP. Hope to see you there.
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Fear and Loathing in Lost Media

Bulldog Reporter notes how news companies hate that Google doesn't share the money it makes by selling ads tied to news blurbs it "scrapes" to create Google News.  Experts say it would take only a few lines of code to prevent Google from indexing content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and hundreds of the other sources it gleans from.

So why don't they?
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KFC free chicken promotion runs around like a PR stunt with its head cut off

I'd like to think this is what happens when companies show people dancing with food.

But no.  It's just one of the least thought-out marketing publicity stunts since Sony used a decapitated goat to promote a video game.

The idea seemed simple enough.  Strike a deal to have Oprah to "give away" two pieces of KFC's new grilled chicken to everybody in America.   Tell people to download an Internet coupon and show up at a store.  Publicize madly.   Send a Oprah Twitter reading, "You're Getting a Chicken! You're Getting a Chicken!" 

But like many good intentions gone bad, this campaign failed to plan for the most obvious potential PR problems:

Contingency:  Not enough Internet.   The servers crash from so many people trying to get coupons at the same time.  Maybe we understand how the Colorado Rockies weren't ready to sell World Series tickets, but how can one America's largest consumer companies not have the plumbing worked out?

Contingency:  Unprepared stores.   Consumers don't read the fine print and assume that everything with KFC sign is a participating store.  Many stores are overwhelmed. Some lock the doors.  Other tape hand-written "no Internet coupons!" signs to the door.  Police are called. Managers freak out, employees quit. Politicians call for action.

Contingency:  Consumers gone wild.   People who don't get their free chicken behave like they're being denied the right to vote.  In New York, angry citizens stage a sit-in while the world's news media looks on.  The Internet explodes with smarmy bloggers, angry customers, finger-wagging criticisms and conspiracy theories.  Talk shows have a field day.

Contingency:  Caught in an embarrassing hypocracy.   Animal rights activists loathe KFC.  But last year PETA gave Oprah its "Person of the Year Award" for helping to expose factory farm abuses, including a show titled "How we treat the animals we eat."   That's going to leave a mark.

Both KFC's and Oprah's PR machines are in full swing.  They'll survive.

But companies with fewer resources to pay for damage control should be paying close attention.
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Changing our religions

The lack of long-term brand loyalty that defines American consumers extends to even their chosen faiths.

A new study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that half of all Americans change their religions at least once, and many more than that.  Catholicism shows the greatest numbers of members who leave the church for something else.
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One side's propaganda is another's positioning strategy

The New York Times got hold a draft report by a nonprofit "environmental marketing firm" that recommends using better spin to win people over on this whole global warming thing.  The Times reports:

Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about "our deteriorating atmosphere."  Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up "moving away from the dirty fuels of the past."  Don't confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like "cap and cash back" or "pollution reduction refund."...

In fact, the group's surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term "the environment" and talk about "the air we breathe, the water our children drink."

I can hear every good PR expert in the world groaning at this. 

Put aside the fact that this "strategy" insults the intelligence of Americans who know what "envrinment" means.  You're still left with several risks from this kind of calculated euphemism.

Problem number one: You're taking a bus to get to the same point.  Instead of referring to global warming, you're saying that, no, the real problem is our deteriorating atmosphere, which is the result of greenhouse gas emissions that in turn cause global warming.  Rhetoric usually makes things less clear, not more.

Problem number two:  You're hurting your cause.  Global warming is a literal concept, proven by literal events and projected by literal research.  "Our deteriorating atmosphere" is bad packaging.  It sounds like a line out of a Star Trek movie is proven wrong every time one of your critics takes a deep breath.

Problem number three: You act like your spin exists in a vacuum.  It doesn't.  If your research shows that people are uncomfortable and don't like the word environment, then your opposition will find ways to say environmentalists twenty times a minute.  Thirty times a minute if they're Rush Limbaugh.

Problem number four:  If you give up "environment" as a recognized description of your occupation or avocation for its negative connotations, you'll need to come up with even more doublespeak to label what you do.

Remember.  This is how publicists became strategic communications and public relations professionals.
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Business magazines sinking like successful stones in a rising river

Business media are rightly cynical about how many corporations spin bad news.  So it's either funny or sad how failing business publications do the same thing.

Conde Nast announced that it is shutting down Portfolio, the Vanity Fair-type business magazine it launched with great hoopla two years ago.  Editor in chief Joanne Lipman announced the news by telling staff how the magazine was "ahead of its business plan on various business metrics" and that it had won a lot of awards.

What Lipman did at the Wall Street Journal -- like creating the Weekend Journal -- was brilliant.  But to paint Portfolio as an undeserving victim of falling ad revenues is PR talk .  Portfolio was inconsistent, egocentric and overly glossy to the point that many executives didn't want to be seen with it.  It hardly sold at the newsstand, and 20 percent of the 449,000 magazines out there were freebies.

Success is also killing PRWeek, which announced it will publish monthly and start charging people $198 a year to read articles on its web site.

"As our traffic has grown, our subscriber base has not," the trade's publishing director told the New York Times.  "And our subscribers deserve the best content we have."

Given the competitive transparency of the PR world, chasing online readers away to get a few more that pay doesn't seem the best way to get your magazine's head above water.

But hey.  I read Denver PR blog to find out what's going on anyway.
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Internet scammers run like pigs to the Swine Flu trough

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs reports that spammers and scammers are working overtime to profit from public fears of a Swine Flu epidemic.

Just days after the first headlines, more than two percent of all Internet spam tried to get people to click on hundreds of new Swine Flu-labeled sites selling everything from "survival guides" to fake prescription drugs.
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As conceived, InDenverTimes will fail miserably

Investors have pulled out of InDenverTimes, the online news site started by former reporters and staffers of the defunct Rocky Mountain News.

Actually you can't called them investors.  They're more like Toe-Dipping It Sounded Like A Good Idea for the First Month Money People.

I would have yanked out my money toe also. 

One, there are too many people hanging around hoping to get paychecks.   Start-ups have skeleton staffs, not departments. 

Second -- and most of all -- InDenverTimes is simply a bad product.   Today's home page is dominated by a story about how the Rocky Mountain News would have been 150 years old today, and how InDenverTimes is made up of people who used to work for the Rocky Mountain News, and how it wants to pick up on the rich history of the Rocky Mountain News.  

Most of the rest of the home page consists of appeals for subscribers, promising that they'll get better content and the chance to talk to editors and reporters "real time." 

There are many accomplished journalists at InDenverTimes.   But gang, listen...

Good intentions and a dead newspaper are not a business model. 
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• Westword  | Only 3,000 subscribers signed up for InDenverTimes
• Scatterbox  |  Rocky road for online news site
  

Ten years later, the face of Columbine looks in a mass media mirror

National media played up Oprah Winfrey's decision to pull a previously-taped show that was to commemorate the Columbine High School massacre ten years ago.  Winfrey decided that the show "focused too much on the killers."

One of the people on the canceled show was Columbine High School principal Frank DeAngelis, who's had a constant presence in media coverage leading up to and during the ten-year anniversary.

Some critics argue that media is focusing far too much on Columbine's principal as well.

Westword media columnist Michael Roberts finds something "unsettling" about how eagerly DeAngelis seems to be engaging with the press, considering the criticism and lawsuits that alleged he had not done enough to prevent two teenage boys from murdering 12 students and a teacher. Roberts writes:

Perhaps he's simply trying to be responsive to press inquiries, of which he's no doubt swamped on a regular basis -- although saying "yes" to every request tends to reinforce the equating of Columbine and school shootings, as opposed to emphasizing that the school has moved on...

Or maybe he's interested in establishing himself as the person most responsible for bringing Columbine back from an unimaginable nightmare, as opposed to helping to fuel problems that may have contributed to the event.

Sure, DeAnglelis wants credit.  He deserves it.  But to suggest there's no more to it echos an unfortunately typical black-or-white, sincere-or-insincere interpretation of people who put themselves in the media limelight after such tragedies.

People are more complicated than that.  And that includes people like DeAngelis, who looked a killer in the eyes and missed being killed himself by a few inches before kids slaughtered kids in his school.

"You start reading about yourself, and people are saying you have blood on your hands," DeAngelis told the Denver Post. " You receive threats on your life. And it gets to the point where you ask, 'Are they right?  Am I a bad person?'

Being public through mass media seems one way that the face of Columbine is helping to answer to those questions.
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(Photo courtesy of the Denver Post)

Just in time for taxes, the government buys a marketing publicity stunt

Steve Hughes, a presentation coach who has done work with lawyers, ginned up a little publicity for himself by proclaiming April 14 as National Be Kind to Lawyers Day.

Self-serving?  Silly?  Sure.  But even an arbitrary, nonsensical marketing promotion has a way of rolling around the information glut until it becomes legitimized.

Sometimes we citizens even pay for it.

Case in point:  The U.S. Census Bureau made Mr. Hughes' National Be Kind to Lawyers Day the subject of its April 13 "Profile America" series, a daily 60-second radio feature that promotes "key events, observances or commemorations." 

Seriously.  Listen to the taxpayer-paid radio spot here.

And now that it's on the official calendar, don't be surprised to see more babble about this made-up commemoration next year.
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News from the Front

Death-defying popularity.
The deceased mayor of a Missouri town won his fourth reelection with 90 percent of the vote.

Eat out tonight? Forkin' A, man.
The Colorado Restaurant Association hopes to stimulate dining out with its "Fork the Recession" advertising campaign.

A good time will be had by all.
North Korea's official news service announced that "Pyongyang, the venue of the 26th April Spring Friendship Art Festival, is seething in a festival mood now."

There wasn't much going on today, anyway.
The Los Angles Times placed a pretend news story on its front page to promote a new NBC police drama

Except they don't use the word solutions in every other sentence.
A New York Times editor in Washington says many of his anonymous sources are like "human press releases."
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Former Rocky city editor named Denver communications director

Former Rocky Mountain News city editor Eric Brown will join Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's staff as Director of Communications on April 20.

Eric was one of the many good people who lost their jobs when the Rocky was shut down in late February 2009. 
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Free advice about social media

Here's a short "white paper" outlining some tools and tips to manage a broad social media presence for you, your company or client. Compliments of media directory and monitoring company BurrellesLuce.
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Inside Denver's economic development machine

Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation's new blog gives an inside look at how the region's business community works to attract new employers and investments.

"Clark's Cone of Silence" is named for Metro Denver EDC honcho -- and decent electric guitar player -- Tom Clark, who is referring to the old Get Smart gag about a big transparent cone that was supposed to keep conversations confidential but didn't.

"We've also learned that this mechanism doesn't work," Tom said in an announcement.  "So we thought, let's give people outside of our 'Cone of Silence' an inside look at not only what we do every day in economic development, but more importantly, why we do it."
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If no one hears a Hummer knock over a tree in the forest, does it still get a ticket?

It might.  A new report from ISO's Quality Planning Corporation names the Hummer H2 and H3 as the most-ticketed vehicles on the road.  The study counted violations for every 100,000 miles driven, then showed results as a percentage of the average.

"The sense of power that Hummer drivers derive from their vehicle may be directly correlated with the number of violations they incur," said Quality Planning President Dr. Raj Bhat.  "Or perhaps Hummer drivers, by virtue of their driving position, are less likely to notice road hazards, signs, pedestrians, and other drivers."

The study didn't measure how negative perceptions toward Hummer owners influence the number of tickets they get for not noticing speed limits, smaller cars or kids crossing the street.  But many people assume a connection.

"Hummer drivers feel like kings of the road because of their elevated driving positions," auto expert Mark Foster told Wired.com.  "As these statistics show, they are leading the pack when it comes to violating the law, which may reflect their driving attitude."

Even casual environmentalists have long hated the Hummer for being the worst polluter on the road -- and because being a "utility" vehicle makes it exempt from fuel economy regulations.  With GM's potential bankruptcy adding to the Hummer's PR problems, owners can probably expect a few more angry stares.  And maybe a few more traffic tickets.

(Below: The 2009 Hummer H3T)

America's pundit problem

In the aftermath of Wall Street's collapse, experts are pointing to the negative impact of experts.

An Emery University brain-scan study, for example, asked college students to consider making several decisions regarding their personal finances.  When those students were given advice from a recognized expert, the decision-making and calculating parts of their brains simply simply shut down.

What makes this really scary is how experts are so often wrong.

New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof recalls how professor Philip Tetlok spent 20 years tracking 82,000 predictions from 284 experts.  Tetlok found that the pundits were only slightly more correct than random guesses.  It didn't matter if they were doctors, politicians, economists or financial advisers.

"Indeed, the only consistent predictor was fame - and it was an inverse relationship," Kristof writes.   "The more famous experts did worse than unknown ones.  That had to do with a fault in the media.  Talent bookers for television shows and reporters tended to call up experts who provided strong, coherent points of view, who saw things in blacks and whites.  People who shouted - like, yes, Jim Cramer!"

Will past mistakes mean fewer experts in the marketplace of ideas?  Hardly.

Pundits are to mass media what baseballs are to the major league.  They're cheaper than staff researchers or reporters.  They compete to get in the game by being available and quotable.

Most importantly, subject-matter authorities aren't usually held accountable by an infotainment industry that relies on them for content.  Sometimes they're even celebrated for being so wrong.  A few years ago, the Rocky Mountain News profiled a "controversial" aviation consultant who had become a national news media darling by giving "colorful" sound bites insisting that Denver International Airport would go bankrupt.  DIA hasn't lost money since it opened in 1995.

The public brain-freeze over pundits is what makes John Stewart's skewering of Mad Money's Jim Cramer so telling.  Mainstream media is full of experts laying blame for the financial crisis.  But it took a comedy show host to publicly chastise one of Wall Street's biggest media celebrities for his part in it.

One thing we can count on are partisan watchdogs like the conservative Business & Media Institute and the liberal group Media Matters, which recently launched a new website targeting financial news and opinion.  But groups like these are biased in their criticisms and don't reach nearly an audience like The Daily Show with John Stewart.

But they're among the closest things we have to Consumer Reports Guide to Pundits.  And right now we need all the critical reviews we can get.

At least, that's my expert opinion.
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Photo courtesy Associated Press

PETA responds

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals President Ingrid Newkirk responded to my post, "PETA president says eat me when I'm dead" by suggesting I don't understand the importance of protest theater.

What I said was that PETA's publicity stunts -- like asking that her remains be made into a purse -- are fanatical by design.  She says the same thing.

Here's the entire letter:

Dear Mr. Silvers,

It seems that something has blinded you to the importance of political protest ("PETA President Says Eat Me When I'm Dead," 22 Mar.).  Just as Lady Godiva felt compelled to make her point by riding nude through Coventry, and colonists made theirs by throwing tea into Boston Harbor, PETA must be colorful in order to get animal issues into the public eye, even if some of what we do makes us look a bit silly.

My will came about one day after the plane I was in almost crashed.  It left me wondering how my advocacy for animals in trouble could live on after I die.  That's when it hit me that I could use the various parts of my body to protest grotesque forms of cruelty such as force-feeding geese and ducks to make foie gras (hence my liver is to go to France for a demo) and killing animals in order to make them into fashion accessories (some of my skin will be made into a wallet).  I will have no use for my body when I'm gone, animals need help, and getting media coverage reaches the most people.

Please go to PETA.org for information on a cruelty-free lifestyle in which no one gets hurt.

Very truly yours,

Ingrid E. Newkirk
President
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)
501 Front St.
Norfolk, VA 23510

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PETA president says eat me when I'm dead

Many organizations have contingency plans for managing the death of a key executive.

The animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has already made it another promotional controversy.

In her "unique will," PETA president Ingrid Newkirk asks employees to make purses out of her skin and barbecue what's left to remind the world that humans and animals are the same.

Sure it's fanatical.  That's the point. 

"Probably everything we do is a publicity stunt," Newkirk told USA Today in 1991.  "We are not here to gather members, to please, to placate, to make friends; we're here to hold the radical line."
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Rocky road for online news site

An enterprising bunch of newspaper people thrown out of work after the Rocky Mountain News folded are launching an online news site called InDenverTimes.com.  Rather than rely on advertisers, however, Denver's newest news outlet is asking for 50,000 subscribers to each pledge at least five bucks a month.

Former Rocky financial writer David Milstead is among InDenverTime's reporters and editors.  I asked if he thought this approach would succeed in recreating the Rocky as an online-only news source.

"I don't know if it will work," he wrote back.  "But I know what's not working: Everything else."
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Wikio compilation | Denver Times

Trouble is our business

Advertising and marketing blog The Denver Egotist names GBSM, Inc. as Colorado's best crisis PR firm.  The Egotist's "recommended talent" listing goes on to read:

The firm is stacked heavy at the top (i.e. experienced) rather than at the junior level.  They have been through it all at least a few times.  Steven Silvers, in particular, has an incredible Rolodex.  They are the quiet firm in town that handles a lot of the crisis stuff you don't hear about.

I'm blushing.  But the truth is that my colleagues at GBSM are the incredible ones.  Whether it's executive consulting, strategic communications, public affairs or crisis management -- you simply won't find a more talented and personable bunch in this business.

Drop me a note or give GBSM a call at (303) 825-6100.
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Newspaper business sections going extinct

Following a trend among the nation's struggling newspapers, the Washington Post is doing away with its stand-alone business section.

An internal memo published on Politico.com says the newspaper will fold business news into the A section.

At least eight daily newspapers around the country have made similar moves this year. The LA Times eliminated its separate business section in January.  Here in Colorado, the Denver Post moved business news inside the B section, except on Sundays.   The paper also recently added a gossip column that runs four times a week next to top business stories.

Publishing experts say local newspaper business sections never generate much advertising revenue in large part because they are often beat to stories by online and national media.
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When the past becomes today's crisis

History is one of the trickiest areas of crisis management. Even with the most sincere intentions, an organization's presentation of the past can explode in emotionally charged controversy.

Here's a perfect example:

Many veterans are fighting the Indianapolis Veteran Administration hospital's decision to remove an old newspaper from a historical display because it contained the headline, "Japs Surrender."  The hospital replaced the newspaper with one simply headlined, "Peace."

The newspaper had been on display for ten years until a new employee complained that it was offensive.  The VA Ethics Office agreed that the hospital did the right thing to avoid creating a hostile work environment.

Supporters of the decision to yank the newspaper remind people that Congress passed a resolution in 1986 acknowledging that the term "Jap" is racially derogatory and offensive.

That doesn't fly with angry veterans and others who have inundated the hospital, media and government offices with protests.

"Any Marine will tell you that, in this day and age, they damn well know the term 'Jap' is a rude and insulting remark -- that is not the issue," a decorated Vietnam vet told one news outlet.  "But you've got people here who are trying to change history."

It's a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't controversy.

And it's a reminder.  Your crisis plan must not only consider how you respond to events that might happen in the future, but also how you represent events that did happen long ago.
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Bottom photo: Historic newspaper display at Indianapolis VA hospital (Courtesy Indy.Com )

Most popular media sites for bloggers

TechCrunch compiled this list of the 50 media sites that bloggers link to most. The top ten sites:

1. YouTube
2. New York Times
3. BBC News
4. CNN.com
5. MSN
6. guardian.co.uk
7. Washington Post
8. Yahoo! News
9. Reuters
10. Los Angeles Times

(Thanks to The Media Is Dying, a very good media junkie Twitter feed.)
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More good reasons to not do my timesheets

When the going gets calamitous, the calamitous get going:

... Famous book-selling pastor David Wilkerson predicts an "earth-shattering calamity" of Biblical proportions centered in New York City that will spread around the world.

... Prince Charles says we have 100 months to save the world from cataclysmic climate change. That's 8.333333 years. We have even less time because this week is already this week.

... Russian Foreign Ministry School dean Igor Panarin says President Obama will order marshal law this year and the U.S. will collapse before 2011.

... A group called "End World 2012" lists several reasons why the big send-off might coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar on December 24 that year.

... Billionaire Warren Buffett said the nation's economy has "fallen off a cliff."

On the good side, the Wall Street Journal has discovered Twitter and "Octomom's" second publicist quit because his client "got real greedy." Maybe there's still hope for us all.
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A new generation of small-town newspapers

Newsroom layoffs could energize suburban and rural newspapers as experienced journalists look for meaningful lives outside of the large cities.

Former Associated Press reporter Chris Stadelman did just that, and he urges other to do the same.

In a column titled, "Looking for Work? Buy a Weekly Newspaper, Cover a Small World ," Stadelman writes:

"Rather than jumping to public relations or government work, think about whether running a weekly might be the right move for you. All around the country, owners are looking for ways to retire. They want their life's work to continue in the hands of someone who will live it and love it the way they did.

Their communities deserve to have that happen. They're counting on someone to cover their third-grade plays with the same passion they cover their city councils."

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An official blog management process

If you're wondering what to include in your organization's social media strategy, take a look at the pragmatic evaluation-and-response approach outlined in this U.S. Air Force Blog Assessment Chart:

Click here for a PDF version of this chart.

Goodbye, Rocky Mountain News.

And just like that, it's gone.

Colorado's first newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News, closes today just shy of its 150th birthday.  That leaves the Denver Post as the only daily newspaper for a region that the Brookings Institution calls one of the top five emerging economic and political centers of the central U.S.

Many folks around here lament that Denver lost the better newspaper.  The Rocky won four Pulitzers in the last decade.  It ranked high among the nation's best best business sections, sports sections and photojournalism teams.  The Rocky's business newsroom in particular had a remarkable consistency, with veteran reporters who knew far more about the industries they covered than the PR people who called to shill press releases.

You don't see that much in cities our size.  Not any more.

Most importantly, the Rocky's demise means less journalism that matters.  As my friend and Rocky business editor Rob Reuteman writes in his last column:

"There will be many nooks and crannies around this town that won't see the light of day any more.  It will be somewhat easier for all manner of crooks to prosper. Corruption at all levels of government will grow some.  Politicians will escape embarrassment.  Businesses will will hoodwink their employees and shareholders. More taxpayer money will be wasted.  And far fewer people will be looking out for you.  I'm talking about trained, dedicated, experienced journalists who know what to look for and know how to get it bin front of you to read in digestible form."

We can't say when or even if anything will fill the void created by the Rocky's loss. 

In the meantime, we should look back on one of the nation's best newspapers with thanks and admiration.
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The skinny on government anti-obesity efforts

Can so-called "obesity taxes" get Americans to stop eating so much bad food?

Maybe.  Business Week reports that recent studies show kids weigh more if they live in communities where fruits and vegetables are more expensive.  Another study finds that the more alcohol costs, the less American consumers drink it.

With U.S. obesity rates and related health costs sky-rocketing, findings like these are helping push along the kind of government-funded behavioral change campaigns that convinced most Americans to not smoke and buckle their seat belts.

Many states already have taxes on vending machine sweets and sugary sodas.  And New York City won a key victory when a federal appeals court upheld regulations requiring many chain restaurants to include calorie information on menus and menu boards.  Restaurant owners argued that the city violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to emphasize calories over other buying decisions like savory goodness.  That didn't go down well with the judges.

Even so, local and state governments hoping to influence healthy behavior face many challenges.  At the same time time New York City is forcing consumers to be more aware of what they eat, the state is proposing to raise sales taxes.

On health clubs.
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RELATED NEWS

Washington Post  |  Initiative Takes Aim At Obesity In Children

"A coalition of health groups and insurance companies yesterday unveiled an initiative, billed as the first of its kind, to help battle one of the nation's biggest health problems: childhood obesity.

Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the initiative is designed to give children better access to health care to fight obesity. Participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight."

Repeating an ugly negative to save the brand

A crisis in your industry can become a PR problem for your company too.

This is particularly true in food-borne illness situations.  Media coverage of government warnings and companies pulling products of grocery shelves all add to the public's fears about what they eat.  Every product in a category becomes suspect, if not guilty by association.

When the FDA recalled deadly spinach from one area of California, consumers stopped using the vegetable almost completely.  That followed with a virtual boycott in 2008's tomatoes scare, though the government never proved a link.  The investigation later fingered cilantro and peppers.

The salmonella outbreak and food recall caused by Peanut Corporation of America has generated similar panic.  Though the company's production is only a small percentage of an $800 million industry, national sales of peanut butter have dropped 25 percent.

In response, big brands like Jif and Peter Pan are taking the typically unthinkable position of repeating a very nasty negative.  They're using newspaper ads, media publicity, coupons, web sites -- anything to convince consumers that they're the good guys.

Search "peanut butter" and you might see this astonishing banner ad:

Forget wholesomeness and great taste.  Today's marketing message is that our product won't turn your insides into a festering cesspool.

With 1,000 tainted peanut products already identified, this crisis could set a recall record for human foods.

And for some companies, that makes the ugly hard sell necessary to keep their innocent brands from being seriously maimed.
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Three things we learned from the Super Bowl ads

It's Monday after the world's best-and-brightest brand marketers chunked $206 million on Super Bowl spots.

Here's what we learned about TV advertising:

Animals still sell. | Four of the ten most popular Super Bowl ads featured horses, dogs and monkeys. Many Americans thought the Budweiser Clydesdales had more relevant and interesting things to say than John Madden.

Insipid is still strategy. | The most popular Super Bowl ad was the one that ended with a guy getting a crystal ball thrown into his crotch. Bud Light supplemented it's "drinkability" angle with laugh riots like guys getting thrown out of windows and skiing into trees.

Women are still objects. | So this is how we've evolved: A guy crunches a Doritos and a woman's clothes fall off. College boys gawk at Danica Patrick in the shower. A box of flowers tells a woman that nobody wants to see her naked. A blond TV star slinks on the bed toward the camera. Two women make out in a movie ad. Models thrust themselves before a congressional committee.

You have to wonder why NBC even bothered banning PETA's ad. Women getting frisky with vegetables would have fit right in with the evening's advertainment.
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• USA Today | Watch your favorite Super Bowl ads (Photo: Doritos spot)
• Web Host Industry  |  Go Daddy Super Bowl ad pays off
• Reuters  |  Who won the big Super Bowl ad polls? Who knows?
• Gawker  |  Best and worst Super Bowl ads
• MediaPost  |  Shop Talk: The best and worst of the Super Bowl ads
  

Buzz words for a new, more newer new world

2.0 ... For a second straight year, marketing executives surveyed by Anderson Analytics said they were sick of hearing Web 2.0, a term coined in 2004 to mean a better designed, collaborative Internet.  Today two-point-oh means anything that's supposed to be better than yesterday's anything.  There's Wine 2.0. Sales 2.0. Beanie Babies 2.0.  Even Reuters reports how the global financial crisis has everyone "hoping that Capitalism 2.0... will result in a more equal society."  Sounds good.  But we're already looking forward to Capitalism 3.0.

Change ... Okay, you saw this one coming.  But it's astonishing to hear so many politicos, talking heads and executives talking about change like we just discovered gravity. Maybe they're talking about Change 2.0.  It's possible the word has already become a metaphor for unrealistic expectations: After basing his entire campaign on "change," President Obama used the word only once in his inauguration speech.

Transformational ... Remember when companies stopped selling stuff and started selling solutions? Transformational could become that big.  That means solutions companies will start selling transformational solutions.

And that means we're a fast buzzboat to Transformational Change 2.0.  You heard it here first.
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Links to Google search for:

• "Transformational Change" (158,000 results prior to this post)
• "Change 2.0" (22,000 results prior to this post)
• "Transformational Change 2.0" (No results prior to this post)

Change we can stop talking about now

Change. Change We Can Believe In. The Change We Need.

The word "change" anchored Obama's campaign. Change was the theme, the message, the promise and the deliverable.

Yet the term that defined a candidacy might be less desirable in the lexicon of a president.

In his inauguration speech, President Obama used the word "change" only twice, and both in the same sentence:

"For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

By comparison, Senator Obama said "change" 13 times in his Democratic convention acceptance speech.
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Economy forces Schenkein PR to close shop

From Denver, a reminder of how this recession is going to be especially brutal on the PR business.

Schenkein, one of Denver's oldest and most award-winning PR agencies, has announced it is shutting down.
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Related: How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

Is bailing out the local newspaper no different than funding the zoo?

Longtime Denver journalist Bill Menezes takes some exception to my disagreement with the idea of having a new statewide sales tax to save the Rocky Mountain News and other failing Colorado newspapers. Writes Bill:

"I generally agree with Steve that it's a bad idea to use taxpayer money to rescue an institution whose local management pretty much has refused to take any public responsibility for its own failure. Having said that, I consider the "government oversight" argument against it to be a red herring. The government already is involved with the operation of the Rocky and the Post via the business structure it administers as the JOA and clearly it has no involvement in the newsroom product.

Further, I'd like anyone who is worried that there would be government interference in the editorial operations of a publicly subsidized newspaper to provide examples of any other local, subsidized institutions where this has occurred at such a granular level. Does the stadium taxing district attempt to tell Pat Bowlen who he can hire as coach? Does local government dictate what the Denver Zoo feeds the gorillas? Does it set the playlist for the CSO or wield veto power over plays that may be scheduled at DCPA venues? I'd be concerned about a lot of things relevant to a newspaper rescue tax, but government involvement in the editorial product isn't one of them."

Given that this is -- I hope -- a rhetorical argument, I appreciate Bill's point about subsidized zoos and stadiums. But I don't think it rationalizes using taxpayer money to "save" a single commercial media outlet under the guise that it has an exclusive relationship to the well-being of an informed citizenry. It doesn't.

Many of the people arguing this bailout idea are the same folks who point to "new media" as the channel by which millions and millions of Americans brought about the most historic political transformation in U.S. history. As much as I hope the Rocky stays in business, this still would have happened if Denver had been a one-newspaper town.

I don't think you can minimize the government oversight issue, either. Bailing out a daily newspaper isn't the same thing as building a football stadium or arts complex.

Imagine how more convoluted the separation of church-and-state would be when you've got a commercial enterprise newspaper that must inject the interests of taxpayers along with the already competing interests of advertising profits and journalism ethics.  Taxpayers and their advocates will put every word of every day's paper in context to how they believe they agreed to bankroll a newsroom full of subsidized employees who decide what news to cover and how.

To say government won't interfere denies who government works for. You can't say on one hand that taxpayers must buy out a newspaper so they're informed, and then say on the other hand that they won't exercise authority when they become so.

My two cents.
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Stop the presses. Should taxpayers bail out their local newspaper, too?

Former Denver spokesman and Frontier Airlines communications director Andrew Hudson is arguing for a statewide sales tax to save the Rocky Mountain News and other Colorado newspapers.

The 150-year-old Rocky was put up for sale in December by its owner, E. W. Scripps Company in a prelude to shutting it down, leaving the struggling Denver Post as the city's only major daily.

Writes Andrew on his Denver PR Jobs website:

"A newspaper is a critical part of our state's economic engine. The loss of the Rocky Mountain News as a source of information could be quantified as an economic loss to this community in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Not only does the newspaper help to promote our state to the world, its reach and power provides readers and businesses with critical information that drives transactional and investment decisions.

A newspaper creates an important level of transparency that helps to keep government and elected leaders accountable and honest. However, without any type of objective scrutiny of government spending, abuse of power, elected officials' positions on issues, and investigations into overall government conduct, it puts the average citizen and a community at large at a serious disadvantage. Citizens rely on this level of scrutiny.

For example, a recent Rocky Mountain News article by reporter Kevin Flynn exposed the City of Denver for failing to determine if the red-light camera enforcement was actually reducing red-light running by motorists. While red-light cameras are quite a lucrative exercise for the City, we have no idea if it is actually solving a public safety problem as promised. Will critical articles such as this be read by a community on a blog? Will bloggers attend boring zoning committee meetings or City Council meetings? Will they attend press conferences?"

My friend Andrew makes some heartfelt points. There are many cultural and civic reasons to support the survival of a major daily newspaper, especially one with the Rocky's heritage.

But they don't justify his proposal for a taxpayer bailout, or for having a government-appointed commission oversee a newspaper that is supposed hold government accountable.

The potential closing of the Rocky Mountain News represents the market-driven loss of a delivery product, not the wholesale elimination of news and journalism. It's a very long stretch to conclude that we're all one newspaper failure away from an information anarchy of lazy amateur bloggers.

Who's to say that the remaining Denver newspaper might not do a better job at serving the community? Or some other?

More importantly, why would business and government watchdog reporting be any less likely, complete or impactful just because the majority of media consumers choose to read, listen to or watch such information through an online news site as opposed to via a print edition? Or news weeklies, magazines, television, radio, social media, RSS feeds, email alerts, podcasts and every integrated combination of technologies we haven't even thought of yet?

There are plenty of reasons to believe that the unlimited space and connectedness of always-on, Internet-driven media ultimately make our institutions more transparent, not less.

A "newspaper bailout tax" is unlikely, of course. You'd have a better chance convincing taxpayers to buy the Denver Broncos than the city's newspaper. But it's interesting to read the many reactions posted to Andrew's proposal for a couple of reasons.

One, because it underscores the emotion and complexity of the transformation to a new media economy.

And two, because this entire conversation wouldn't be happening without the same Internet responsible for killing the newspaper that some people think we are obligated to save.
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• Scatterbox:  Help save the Rocky Mountain News
• The Canadian Journalism Project  |  Keep the presses rolling: Crisis spurs discussion
  

Playing to beat the recession

"Defense wins championships. But, in a tough economy, offense is what sells those luxury suites."

... Denver Post columnist Mark Kizla, on the logic behind Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen's decision to hire 32-year-old rookie head coach Josh McDaniels. The former offensive coordinator for the New England Patriots takes over a Broncos team with the fourth-worst defense in the entire NFL.

Trend-spotters say the darndest things

The conviction of politico Tony Rezko and criminal charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have again made "Chicago-machine style politics" synonymous with corruption.

Which makes you wonder what prompted the  PRSA Tactics newspaper to include this happy 2009 prediction from "trendspotter" Marian Salzman:

"Barack Obama's hometown of Chicago has become the focus of intense global interest.  Its combination of heartland values and big-city, multiethnicity vibrancy could make it the epicenter of a more resourceful and responsible era."

Since 1971, some one thousand thousand Illinois politicians and business people have been convicted of public corruption.  This includes 30 Chicago aldermen, three Illinois governors, several city clerks and treasurers, suburban mayors, appointed government officials, judges, lawyers, insurance executives and trucking company owners.
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Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Ten big-picture predictions for 2009

Welcome back from the holidays. Here are 10 predictions that might influence what you'll be communicating about in 2009. Or not:

1.  A dean of Russia's foreign ministry academy predicts that the United States will explode in civil war in 2010, leading to the nation's collapse and disintegration. (Colorado will be part of a new Canadian-controlled republic. But we're not playing Kanuck football. That's where we draw the line.)

2.  James Carville says the Republican Party will be confronted with a "near catastrophic ideological rift."

3.  "America's #1 Psychic" Sylvia Brown predicts that trained psychologists will start offering hypnotic past-life regression, which will be common practice by 2011. (She doesn't predict what the insurance co-pay will be, however.)

4.  Business Week thinks Chrysler will merge into General Motors. They also think Americans will start buying a lot of boxed wine.

5.  Wired.com's senior editor says we'll see hundreds of new on-line magazine start-ups as entrepreneurs take advantage of low competitive barriers and journalists willing to work cheap.

6.  Technology industry guru Mark Anderson predicts China will be rocked by huge and deadly riots, causing its GDP to plummet as the West recognizes the country as a "polluted place, rife with economic turmoil and starving people."

7.  Personal finance columnist Jeffery Strain says the credit crisis will cause many beloved small, locally owned businesses to disappear forever. (This will also include many small advertising and PR businesses.)

8.  Industry analyst Yankee Group is confident that free microblogging service Twitter is the new Facebook. (Except for the minor fact that it generates zero revenue and limits messages to 140 characters. Hype on, Internet phenom.).

9.  WSJ columnist Evan Newmark predicts Wall Street will cut jobs, people and bonuses by another 25 percent -- forcing many Masters of the Universe to seek their fortunes in consulting. Or government jobs.

10.  A former Mafia boss says top-level tennis matches will be a prime target for gambling corruption.

Send any other predictions worth noting to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Go get 'um, my friends.
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Scatterbox is Twittering

Drop me a note or follow me at http://twitter.com/StevenSilvers.
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Scatterbox blog makes the list

The AdAge Power 150* ranks Scatterbox by Steven Silvers as one of the top 30 PR-focus blogs in the U.S., and one of the top 50 worldwide.

All I can say is thanks. With 188 million blogs out there, I'm honored by the interest and time you've given my little corner of the Internet.

Keep those comments and links coming to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

And keep an eye out for my new blogzine, ReputationAssets.com, launching in early 2009.

Happy New Year.

Steve
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* Thanks to Matthew Watson of From PR to Eternity blog for slicing and dicing.

TV still top big-news source for most Americans

A study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press confirms an important caveat of the Internet age: Television is still by far the main source for national and international news. At least for people over 30.

For everyone and everything else, the Internet is the source of all things new and important.

Only 35 percent of Americans now rely on printed newspapers for most of their news. And that number is heading south much faster than most newspaper companies can migrate readers to their online versions.
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Help save the Rocky Mountain News

Denver's Rocky Mountain News is using the same Internet credited with killing it to try to stay alive.

In what may be the first web site created to save a daily newspaper, IWantMyRocky.com features individual employees making their cases for the paper's survival.  Readers and fans can also chime in, and are given links to reach corporate officials and local politicians.

The group started by journalists at the Rocky also has a related Facebook page.

Published since 1859, the Rocky is owned by E. W. Scripps Company and has won four Pulitzer Prizes in the last eight years.  Scripps put the newspaper up for sale in December as an assumed prelude to shutting it down, which would leave the Denver Post as the city's only major daily.
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• New York Times:  In Denver, a web site seeks to help save a newspaper