FIR Book Review: Deadly Spin by Wendell Potter

Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, by Wendell Potter.

FIR book editor Bob LeDrew reviews “Deadly Spin” by former CIGNA PR executive Wednell Potter. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Potter “exposes the PR pros’ propaganda tricks—fake grass-roots organizations, bogus scientific studies—and recounts his shame-faced repentance. But he also trenchantly critiques the failure of America’s for-profit health-insurance system: the underhanded methods insurers use to “dump the sick”; the skyrocketing premiums and deductibles that put health care beyond the reach… Read More »

iPad apps won’t replace the narrative art form known as a “book”

A tweet directed me to a TechCrunch guest post titled, “Dear Authors, Your Next Book Should be an App, not an iBook.”

While the post’s author, 21-year-old startup exec Cody Brown, doesn’t exactly make the case that books are dead, he does suggest that authors eyeing the iPad as a platform for their books are “missing the point:”

What do you think would have happened if George Orwell had the iPad? Do you think he would have written for print then copy and pasted his story into the iBookstore? If this didn???t work out well, do you think he would have complained that there aren???t any serious-readers anymore? No. He would have looked…

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Let’s whine like it’s 1999

There has been a flurry of activity in the PR corners of a variety of social channels today. These messages have been filled with angst and vile and anger. There has been finger-pointing, name-calling and threats.

What could motivate such an outpouring of emotion? A particularly egregious case of astroturfing? The revelation that a PR agency is behind a front organization for an unethical organization seeking to do evil? An outrageous use of a social channel by a particularly arrogant PR practitioner?

It was none of these things. It was—and I can’t believe I’m writing these words—a reply-all fiasco on an email listserv.

The original… Read More »

“Trust Agents” and the complexities of trust

The ability of organizations to develop relationships of “spontaneous sociability,” the ability to form trusting relationships with diverse strangers, predicts when an organization will compete effectively.

If you think the quote above is a conclusion of the Edelman Trust Barometer or a quote from any of the flood of recent social media-focused books, guess again. It was a key finding of a study concluded in 2000 by the IABC Research Foundation titled “Measuring Organizational Trust” (link opens a PDF).

You would think, reading all the conversation about trust in the social space, that bloggers and others active in social media… Read More »

Kindles, paperbacks, and beaches

A few shows back, the Twit crew—Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, and some other guests—praised the Amazon Kindle ebook while simultaneously predicting ebooks would never take off. The gist of their thinking: We never see any Kindles anywhere.

On the other side of the equation is Steve Rubel, who believes we are but six short years away from seeing the death of most tangible media and the serious decline of any that haven’t perished. This would, of course, include books.

The reality is somewhere in between.

It’s absurd to believe that Borders and Barnes & Noble stores will all be shuttered by 2014 and that Amazon’s book business will have… Read More »

Resources and thanks for my new book, “Tactical Transparency”

A week or so ago, I received my author’s copies of “Tactical Transparency,” the new book I’ve co-written with John C. Havens, and even though it’s my sixth book, I felt that same old thrill the day it went on sale. I’m also very hopeful about the book’s prospects. I must have heard President-Elect Barack Obama utter the word “transparency” about 10 times during his “60 Minutes” interview this past Sunday, and a Google search shows the word has appeared about 567,000 times in the last month alone.

There’s nothing quite like good timing.

Now that the book is available, I want to let you know about a special offer that makes the… Read More »

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