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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Shameless self promotion: I’ll be on CNBC tomorrow

I’ve been invited to answer some questions about the Wal-Mart blogger relations program tomorrow on CNBC’s Squawkbox segment at 6:45 a.m. EST. (In case you’re wondering, that’s 3:45 a.m. PST. Yep, I’m getting up at 1:15 a.m. so I can be at the KPIX studio in Oakland for the interview and still make my 6:30 a.m. flight to Oregon for a client meeting. I expect by tomorrow night, I will be—as Neville would say—thoroughly knackered.)

Should be interesting. I’ve been interviews by a few local TV news outfits when in town for a speaking engagement, and I’ve certainly handled several interviews like this for executives at companies where I worked in communications. But this is the first time I’ve been invited to speak as a professional on a cable news show.

After getting the invite, I did a lot of reading on the issue, both mainstream media and blog. Ultimately, I have to shrug and wonder what the big deal is. Edelman PR, on behalf of Wal-Mart, simply engaged in a blogger relations effort. They never paid anybody, nor did they insist that all items be run. Personally, as a blogger I would have disclosed where my information came from, although I don’t believe there’s any compelling ethical reason for other bloggers to do so. Had I handled the account, I might have suggested to the bloggers I contacted that disclosure would be a good idea, but again, I don’t think this is a requirement. After all, how many press releases go out with a disclaimer urging news outlets to disclose the source of the news they report? God only knows how many trade publications published press releases I wrote without changing a word but never referenced the fact that their source was a press release!

But controversy sells newspapers and some people at newspapers like the New York Times—which turned this non-story into an issue—may still perceive bloggers as a threat.

Anyway, I’ll be sorting out my thinking between now and 3:45 a.m. tomorrow—which, of course, assumes I’ll be able to think at all at 3:45 a.m.!

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03/07/06 | 7 Comments | Shameless self promotion: I’ll be on CNBC tomorrow

Comments

  • 1."After all, how many press releases go out with a disclaimer urging news outlets to disclose the source of the news they report?"

    And, how many TV stations pull bits straight out from VNR's? Shel, you're right about the non-issue here. Good luck, we'll be rooting for you.

    Edward O'Meara | March 2006 | Atlanta, GA

  • 2.Agreed, it's really not that big of an issue, but give em hell shel!

    Mike Manuel | March 2006 | Palo Alto

  • 3.To me, however, it seemed that the Edelman folks were upfront and honest about their client. No Karen Ryan here! This is good. In fact, it was those citizen journalists who erred by not divulging their sources. Amateurs!

    http://haloscan.com/tb/flatironnyc/114177784170858 | March 2006

  • 4.Congratulations, Shel! I won't be up that early to see you live but I will Tivo it and watch it tomorrow morning. You're going to do great - Matt

    Matt Podboy | March 2006 | Palo Alto, CA

  • 5.Shel,
    Nice work! You did a great job of making it a non-issue and I was actually impressed with the guy with whom you were speaking for not making it a witch hunt. He asked some questions, you told the story. I thought it went well. I do like how you mentioned a) Richard's blog post and b) how anti Wal-Mart bloggers are probably getting content from someone, too.
    Pretty good for 3:34 am!

    Luke | March 2006

  • 6.Does seem like making a mountain out of a mole hill. Of course making an issue of it gets the NY times airplay too.

    Steven A. Harold | March 2006 | London, UK

  • 7.I agree Edelman did nothing nefarious here; however, the agency become the story, and I don't think that is such a good thing. It didn't help WalMart at all as it made them look like they were trying to get people to take their side.

    In the end, the bloggers that delivered the message were discredited and any key messages that got out there were drowned out. This campaign just gave the WalMart critics more to complain about, and it also brought new critics out of the woodwork, including an employee that started a LiveJournal site today.

    I am glad you didn't publicly flog Edelman since there was nothing illegal or wrong about the campaign, but as a PR community, I think we need to learn from this incident.

    Kami Huyse | March 2006

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