Where to Engage?

The fourth W in the Rules of Engagement

Where will you engage? There are several angles here, each with its own strength or weakness. Consistency is important again in whichever approach is taken. There is a certain power in doing the work directly on the offender B&B. While it does inject you into their area and bring a certain credibility to them by your appearance, it has two important benefits. First, it places your correction of fact or message right next to their original misperception. Second, it provides clear evidence that you are watching, and listening to what is said. Remember, the two-way communication is a hallmark of Web 2.0. Making the response through your own on-line vehicles helps drive traffic back to the official web site, and can be considered an important factor in a Fan First philosophy. Links to the response can always be posted on the original board or blog. Statements to the traditional media can be used. There remains tremendous power in the press release in print or on the 10 o’clock, and in some ways turns the traditional media against the new media. Before pursuing a divide and conquer strategy, understand there is a considerable risk involved.

Laugh 'Cause Crying's Not an Option

This one from the sign collection actually was given to me by a colleague. He snapped it at the press conference of another school.

And for those who have never made this kind of mistake, you shall cast out the first typo.

Lord knows, I've done as bad and worse.

An Open Letter to Mr. Cheers

Once upon a time, I was you. Hard charging, up in the gate agent's face. Working the phone; working the angles -- by God I wasn't going to be left behind.

Let me share something with you -- the flight to Tampa was full. Full even before the weather put things behind. Full before your agent told you they put you on the flight an hour ago.

Good work, you got the gate agent's name. And you've mocked her sufficiently and her ethnicity to whomever you're browbeating on the phone.

At the end of this day, you'll be right with the rest of the chumps who didn't take the time to try and fight their way on the the last flight to Tampa: stuck in Atlanta.

Oh, there's one difference -- the rest of us have seats tomorrow. Don't know about you. Probably because we took care of business earlier, or didn't scream and yell.

The college student who shifted nervously, pitifully back and forth, worrying quietly if she'd get on the plane to catch up with the voice on the other end of her almost out of battery phone -- guess what, she got on the plane. And, Mr. Cheers, because she was so obviously upset yet maintaining a level of dignity, I'd have given her my seat. In fact, several folks would have. You? Good luck with the concierge level as we'd each stride onto that last middle seat.

So when Delta gets that report about the gate agent at A17, remember there was another side to that story.

And seriously, dude, Cheers was done before you were born. Chill.

When They Zig, Unfortunately I Zag

From in the air to ATL

Today’s long trip to Tampa is another lesson in adaptation. The whole thing starts with an afternoon flight to allow me to complete volunteer work on Field Day. Seemed simple enough. Event ends at 1 p.m.; flight at 4:15 p.m. – no significant committee since the bids have really made our choice for the upcoming CoSIDA Convention.

Arrive at XNA and at the check-in kiosk – do you want to travel on an earlier flight? Hmm. It’s through Cincinnati, leaves an hour earlier but only gets to Tampa 35 minutes earlier. Don’t know, it seems counter-intuitive to reach west central Florida via the Ohio Valley rather than Atlanta. Oh, and it will cost you another $50.

OK, goes against my travel sense. Why rack up another $50 particularly with a new sheriff in town. I’m good; plus I can watch most of Stacy Lewis in the US Open at what goes for a bar at XNA.

I zig. Unbeknownst to me, the world just zagged. This is the way everything has gone the past three or four months.

Who knew a massive line of thunderstorms from Birmingham to Atlanta would force my flight to be delayed five hours. Miss any kind of connection. Miss the last event of the day at the convention. Miss the chance at a decent night’s sleep to make up for the weekend.

As a side note, the farce of loading the plane twice was relieved by the work of the gate agents for Delta at XNA. I’d seen the radar picture on my phone, but the agent was insistent that I come around to look at his station to look at the browser to prove it wasn’t because the flight was half empty and Jet A is through the roof. The other passengers in line were leaping to that conclusion. He sensed it, countered it and won some respect for his crisis management.

Come to think of it, he employed his own aggressive disclosure. Here’s the radar, here’s when we’ll give you the next updates (a schedule he kept during the whole five hour delay), here’s the scoop on your next flight you can’t make, here’s the best I can do for you. A grim smile and a “good luck” on boarding, but the kind that gave away a to-those-about-to-sleep-in-the-airport-we-salute-you attitude.

Contrast that with the 13-hour odyssey last year heading to San Diego for convention. I’ll skip the airline name, but that was nothing but a rude rumor-fest as the whole family was left to fend for itself. Nobody likes to be treated that way. That’s one of the points for Wednesday’s presentation – Fan First Philosophy, who’d you rather have explaining your bad news to the fans – you or the media?

Riding through the chop now over B’ham I know I’ll be lucky to find a room, if not sleep on a bench in the airport tonight. But I am on the way, and that was more than it seemed like it would be earlier. Another grinder day in which sheer determination is required.

At this point, fatalism takes over, a sense of God’s will. Either this trip will work out, or it won’t. The presentation will go off, or it won’t.. Even Field Day turns out that way with some of the worst operating conditions in my eight years of events. We came up four contacts short of equaling last year’s total, but the sheer effort it required – long, painful work to get those 256 contacts – made it seem like we’d scored 500. Still, the score will be down.

Sisyphus will now pick up the rock, and start to work it back up the hill. Wish him luck.

Who Engages?

The third W in the Rules of Engagement

Who will engage? Here a department should have very specific rules, and enforce them without a lot of flexibility. If only the head SID, or only the sport contact are cleared to engage, they are the only ones. If student workers in the office are not allowed to post, remove them when they are discovered violating the policy. This will be a tough discussion with administrators who do not value the existing impact of the internet on shaping public opinion or worse, those who “don’t care” what the media says. The counter argument will be “you are giving credibility” to the B&B. Refer back to the chart on public trust; the bloggers already have it.

More Flooding Bad News

If the 1-5 inch warning sign was tough, how'd you like to have this on your residential street. Found while on the way to the original Taco Cabana location in San Antonio Texas.

And yes, that's measured in feet.

What to Engage?

The second W in the Rules of Engagement

What will you engage? This is an area of great variation. Some advise challenging everything. Others consider acknowledging something exists on the internet as giving credence to all rumors. My rule of thumb is when factual errors exist that are significant it is the responsibility of the public information officer to step in and correct those errors. The added benefit is when factual errors are embedded in opinions that are driving misperceptions about the situation. This will undercut the opinion without directly attacking it, and it reinforces the authority of the spokesman.

When to Engage

First of the five W's from the Rules of Engagement of On-Line Media

When will you engage? Here there is a reasonably clear rule of thumb: as soon as humanly possible. There may be legal obstacles to overcome, but consider that lawyers often do not consider the public relations impact of their advice. Rapid response means that a monitoring system is in place. If you wait until the problem has reached the point the media or an admistrator is bringing it to the media relations office, the high likelihood is the Golden Hour is missed and the public opinion is already formed.

And It's Not Just Because He's the Boss

Today, Arkansas announced a new men's track coach. It was not the current assistant that a group of Razorback athletes started an on-line petition to support. Nor was it the person that board posters were pushing, using the student-athlete petition as underpinning support.

Jeff Long got asked earlier in the week by one of the local papers about the athlete's on-line effort. He stepped right up, and answered. Today, the other local paper took its turn.

"My decision out there was to hire the best coach for those student-athletes," Long said. "Was I concerned they started a Web site? No, I wasn't concerned as long as they represented their thoughts and feelings in an appropriate way. And they did."

Long's been consistent on this, and the key thought is right there -- as long as they represented their thoughts and feelings in an appropriate way. That's a welcome, forward approach to the brave new Web 2.0 world we live in.

Whole stories from today's hiring in the Morning News and the earlier story about the petition from the Northwest Arkansas Times.

The Rules of Engagement, Part Deux

More thoughts -- these from the conclusion of next week's CoSIDA presentation:

The key is engagement, not enforcement. There is a certain amount of policing of basic copyright. It is established that rights holders can claim the performance as their intellectual property, including the statistical representation. Here is where the real-time internet policies simultaneously get it and miss it. While for some it is about access and credentials, for the vast majority it is not. The greatest enemy? Maybe Steve Jobs and the iPhone – a dedicated transaction blogger only needs to see what is happening. A ticket and a 3G data plan takes care of that; or in the case of one prominent on-line media and the 2008 NCAA Indoor Track Meet, a free video stream and a couch. Commentary is the coin of the relm, and the B&B crowd want to express their opinion about events. The real power of the boards and blogs: amplification. Who’s message do you want to reinforce?

If I can encourage one thing, it is a frank discussion with the administration about the rules of engagement. Define them now before the opinion crisis begins. Consistency in using whatever policy is created is important. This has a legal component as well as a public relations component. There aren’t a pair of stone tablets with 10 rules to lead the athletic department. The solutions created when I was with the Arkansas women’s athletic department are not the ones that fit your athletic department. In building the system that works at your institution, consider the old five W’s as the guideline.

Well, There's Some Media Parking

I'll leave the school nameless, but the signage that greets media.

Not sure if its a statement or not.

Starting the Conversation

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, and will bring it up again at the panel. Every institution will have a different approach. Some will be direct. Some will use WOMMA-style groups. Some will continue to not engage. But even the decision to not allow your staff to officially post information or return "media" requests from citizen media is a set of rules of engagement.

In drafting your own rules, here are some parameters to consider:

Monitoring -- yes or no. For heaven's sake, I hope we've reached the point now where this really isn't a question anymore. The media reads it. The fans read it. Why on God's great internet would you want to be ignorant? This runs back to the old school thought that if we just don't acknowledge it, we won't give it any credibility. That didn't work with talk radio. It really isn't working with B&B. Perhaps the larger question is will you publicly admit your read and monitor the B&B. Better say yes -- any of those boards that require registration have your IP address (see posting for more).

Posting -- yes or no. If yes, will you post "in the open" under your own names. I have an opinion here -- my screen name is Bill_Smith. The reason? The smart B&B crowd already know your subnet. If they're FOI fiends, they probably have your IP table anyway. The likelihood of you being revealed as SuperHogDude is extremely high. When they do, it will shred the credibility you may have built up.

When and what to post. My personal policy was to only engage to answer a direct question (is there a press conference today? what time is the game tonight? did we sign anyone today?) or to correct an obvious factual error (no, the current coach's record against school X is not worse than the previous coach). I never, ever, tried to sway opinions. If I can correct factual errors that are underpinning poor opinions, that will achieve the goal. More important, it's they're opinion and fans are entitled to have them.

Credentialing. This is the next great hurdle. Tread with care. SuperHogDude is the correspondent for HogDudes.com, but he just might be a lawyer (or have lawyer friends as board members). Consider that the metrics are changing. Consider that you may want to have a blogger box or blogger board (as in group).

Consistency. The most important part of how you engage (or not engage) the B&B. Whatever you decide, stick with it and enforce it evenly.

Plain Language Signage

The door sign for room 1021 at Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum.

Also known as the main basketball court.

Simple. Straight forward.

How Can You Keep Up?

More small chunks of thought going into the CoSIDA presentation:

Community is the essence of Web 2.0, and the same applies to monitoring. Building your athletic department’s community starts with trust. While there are legal limits even in a public institution, the more information that is shared the better educated both the monitors and the fans will be toward the athletic department. The insider group is a prime example. Not only can they share and support the message of the department, they can watch and listen for problems, particularly with the fan base. Tap into the sport staff. At most schools, the coaching staff is charged with monitoring the social networking activity of student-athletes. There is no need to duplicate that function within the media relations office as long as there is trust that the coaching staff will alert the SIDs. Here’s a hint for the coach: there’s no such thing as you caught that Facebook post in time. Poor Andy Robinson at University of Buffalo found that out the hard way. Same can be said right at home when Patrick Beverly made a wall post that he was thinking about leaving Arkansas.

The key is distributed monitoring. No single person can keep up with every sport at your school, but as a part of the individual sport contact’s duties they can monitor what’s happening within that sport. This is more than checking the local boards that follow the institution. Encourage them to know where the national and regional boards are about their sport. Frankly, the less visible the sport the more important these communities are to the participants. Everyone wants media coverage, and absent traditional brick-and-mortar sportswriters the vacuum will be filled by pro-ams.

The End for Old Media

Continuing on the early previews of the presentation for CoSIDA:

The current business model of traditional journalism is gone. The iceburg was struck two years ago, and only now are people beginning to understand the ship is sinking. Newspapers are slashing editorial positions with literally hundreds from some of the brand names of the business: New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times. In the past month alone, the local news operations of one of the fastest growing segments – Spanish language television – were shut down by one of the largest Univision conglomerates. Layoffs and non-renewals of experienced, high-salaried television talent is a weekly event. In June, U.S. News and World Report announced they were going to a biweekly format, with daily reports on the website. Closer to home, the very next day, Sporting News announced they were going to the biweekly format and a Digital Daily.

Meanwhile, the unemployed are not going away. They are going on-line. The fired lead meteorologists in Minneapolis and Charlotte created local webcasts to compete with their former employers. They join the Multi-Medias that were already there, making the most of their brand by selling it on the internet while keeping primary jobs in the traditional media and talk radio. This complicates the job of the media relations director. How? More traditionally trained journalists interested in upholding standards on the internet is a bad thing?

This comes back to the legitimacy question. Since the beginning of Audit Bureau and Nielson, the importance of a media outlet was easily defined by common metrics: circulation and viewership. Both were functions of capital. Increasing either measure required lots of money. For decades, press credentials were dolled out based on this pyramid of importance: national dailies, statewide dailies, circulation over 10,000, and so on. What is the measure of internet legitimacy? Click through, page views, unique visitors, persistence on page – each has its place but none are universal. As a result, the blogger or board owner that builds up substantial numbers not only presents a threat to the institution’s reputation, they can make a serious legal case that they have similar audience standing as the traditional media sitting in the press box. Consider that the last time our hometown newspaper reported circulation to the ABC it stood at roughly 15,000; this year the leading message board had over 20,000 members.

OK, Choose One

The latest in the Road Sign series: A confused set of warning signs in the downtown Lexington, Ky., area.

More on the AP War

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com was pretty clear in today's Washington Times:

"Back off, AP. Because we won't."

The blogosphere was set on fire by AP's plan to require pull quotes to be paid for by on-line media. In the Washington Times story, there are some more details on how the one-time alliance between new and old media has broken down.

But as always, the best stuff is the mudslinging. Michelle Malkin looked as the schedule of payment and estimated AP owes her just over $130,000 -- yes, that's six-figures. DailyKos labeled AP idiots. Back to Malkin: AP's "heavy-handed attempt to bully bloggers is schadenfreude-licious."

Oops. I guess I owe somebody about $10.75.

If back in the day, we once counseled coaches and ADs to avoid pissing battles with people who buy ink by the barrel, perhaps the traditional media should take the Dan Rather warning and not jerk around the mass that is the new media. There's a heck of a lot more of them than you.

Maybe I should recast that metaphor -- the AP just rolled into the Little Bighorn Valley.

One Line Says It All

Finding ideas that reinforce your own is great. Sometimes I worry that this becomes one of the dangers of the internet -- if your physically immediate community doesn't agree with you, you can always find someone out there that does. Thus, the strength of the Web 2.0 SNW world -- the very Second Life aspect -- which leads to a weakening and fracturing of local communities.

That dark thought said, here's a perfect, one-line summation of the communication change. I discovered it while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, WeatherBrains. It's a podcast for weather geeks, but the guys that run it are very cutting edge when it comes to new media. A recent guest is the living embodiment of the problems with traditional media's financial model. He was let go as the staff weather guy in a major cutback due to falling revenue. As the highest paid, first to go.

Sounds pretty bad, yes? Not for him. He gets it, and was discussing that the future for weather in the media was directed content and on-line presentation. He's moving on, and had this very prescient comment:

Find ways to turn a speech into a conversation

V-8 moment. This is the essence of Web 2.0. It dovetails nicely with my posts (there's that reinforcement thing), but expresses the point better.

Some Local Press on the SNW

One of our local newspapers, the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas, ran a sports enterprise series this past weekend on social networking websites and college athletics. There are some very good stories for others to note. Ryan Malashock came up with one that was new to me that I found very important. University of Buffalo basketball player Andy Robinson made a one-hour mistake on his Facebook, frustrated over not getting an assignment done. Read the impact here.

You also get to see the impact of small Facebook changes, like the firestorm set off by one of our own basketball players making a post on his wall. The last part covers how new athletic director Jeff Long and men's basketball coach John Pelphrey are well in tune with the impact.

Some Signs are Just Unfortunate

I got nothing.

Actually, in fairness to Vandy, this is part of the sleep disorder center co-located in the Marriott near the athletic facilities.

This is reminiscent of one of the greatest directional signs of all time. It no longer exists, and the facility is now closed. At Florida, the original university-run hotel had a basement level that connected out to the parking deck. It was little more than a long, windowless narrow hall terminating in an elevator. Very Steven King.

Directly across from the elevator, where you could not miss it every time you got out, was a sign:

"FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT"

Parse that for a minute. It's late. It's dark. Maybe it's even stormy outside. Now, you've got to walk down this service hallway. The lights occasionally flicker. You're hoping that they're not working on Jason or Freddie.