ethicscrisis.com

Cheap TV Spots, a Tampa ad agency, announced that it will no longer serve clients whose headquarters or advertising territories are located in the state of South Dakota, or in the cities of Omaha, NE and Black Jack, MO.

The move comes after the passage of legislation in those areas that, the company observes, “cast aside American values.”

Our company policy is, ‘No morals, no ethics - no service.’” said agency spokesman, Jeffrey Hilton.

The banned areas have all recently passed legislation that appear to limit civil liberties or exclude groups based on constitutionally protected factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation and marital status.

The company's press release says:

"Advertising agencies have a bad reputation, deserved or not, for bowing to the will of disingenuous clients. Historically, however, declining to serve such clientele is within the purview of advertising best practices because hateful, sexist and racist messages are not permitted in television advertising. “We simply will not support communities whose leaders seek to weaken the nation with these ignorant and ultimately counterproductive attitudes,” said Hilton."

Posted by BL Ochman at 01:40 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

"Nothing focuses the mind like the knowledge you will be hanged in a fortnight," said Columbia University business law professor John Coffee.

He's talking about the way corporations are rushing to tout their ethics codes on their websites in the face of the Enron convictions. Unfortunately, they seem to be doing it in English only. Clearly, American companies still have a ways to go toward true globalization.

In addition to its Code of Ethics and its corporate governance guidelines, worldwide oil and gas, chemical, petrochemical, and process industries giant Dresser-Rand, has an Ethics Hotline on its site that:

"permits confidential, anonymous submissions of concerns regarding alleged violations of the Company's Code of Conduct, including concerns with respect to questionable accounting or auditing matters."

While Sarbanes-Oxley requires corporate codes of ethics and other compliance materials to be translated into the languages of the countries where a company does business, as well as into the languages of all of its employees, the entire site is in English.

Fluor Corporation's Code of Ethics lists exceptions as "None." Fluor is one of the world's largest, publicly owned engineering, procurement, construction, and maintenance services companies. Fluor's site also is entirely in English.

via The St Louis Post-Dispatch website

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:51 PM | Permalink

High school Spanish teachers amuse their students with the story of a hapless American nun, who addressed a Spanish-speaking audience with the words: "Estoy embarazada…"? In Spanish, this innocent expression means "I am pregnant”, which certainly wasn’t what the speaker wanted to convey.

The countless word pairs in related languages with similar form but different meaning, such as the English/Spanish "embarrassed/embarazada", are called "false cognates". They represent a huge challenge not only to Spanish teachers, but also to businesses that must communicate clearly.

Fabric is not fabrica
If "religion" (English), and "religión" (Spanish) mean more or less the same thing, this doesn’t help deciding whether "fabric" and "fábrica" share their meaning too (they don’t, "fábrica" meaning "factory"). The Spanish "goma" can be compared to the English gum in certain contexts, but it would be incorrect to call "goma" the chewing gum (it is "chicle"), or "gomas" the teeth gums (the correct word is "encías").

Spanish speakers, on the other hand, sometimes are tempted to call car tires "gums", directly translating from their common Spanish “gomas”. For the same reason, "grande" is not "grand"; "genial" (Sp.) is not "genial" (Engl.), and "antiguo" is not "antique."

False cognates are dangerous for multinational companies
These false cognates often represent the result of a divergence in meaning between words originally identical; sometimes, though, they are generated by a distorted loan.

The English "guerrilla", a recent loan from Spanish, has acquired the meaning "rebel fighter, insurgent, revolutionary," even though in its language of origin it denotes a specific warfare practice, or the group practicing it. The Spanish word corresponding to the English guerrilla is "guerrillero".

For a company doing multilanguage translation of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance or marketing materials, false cognates can be dangerous, even actionable. The answer: certified multilanguage translations from a translation service like SRF Global Translations.

Posted by Ardian at 10:24 AM | Permalink

Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics

by Jerome Armstrong, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga

$13.23

Crashing The Gate also is a fascinating exploration of the blogosphere, liberal patriotism and what's wrong with both parties. In my favorite sections they skewer political consultants and shatter the idea that campaign finance reform will fix anything.

The beauty of the netroots movement is that anyone with something to say can be heard and can have influence. If Democrats read this book, they may learn how to get themselves elected.

Posted by BL Ochman at 05:52 PM | Permalink

SRF Global Translations' translators of Japanese see a certain amount of playfulness, that we in the West seem to have lost, in how the Japanese deal with language, especially foreign language. The website www.engrish.com contains a wealth of funny instances of English called to serve in Japanese advertising, with products that target the locals. "Engrish," says the site, "can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design."

Does calling a brand of moist tissues "My Wet" mean that advertisers and marketing specialists in Japan have chosen to ignore the importance of accurate, and culturally sensitive translation? Of course not.

Japanese Text: Ornamentation, Not Information Sells Better
Anyone who has studied the phenomenon will explain that many Japanese marketeers use English text as an element of design, not to convey information. Apparently, merchandise packaging that displays strange alphabetic pictures on it sells better with the Japanese public.

This is similar to the fascination with Chinese character tattoos among the Americans, as in both cases language evaporates, leaving the curious residue of its script as an extreme form of ornamentation.

The Engrish site is filled with examples of Engrish in categories including packaging, publications, signs, food, and that old bugaboo, instructions. There are t-shirts, books, even boxer shorts with Engrish phrases for sale on the site.

While the Japanese culture has never been very open to foreign influences, the language has shown extreme flexibility, by freely accepting English words, expressions and proper names, especially when these directly apply to the Western culture.

Posted by Ardian at 12:38 PM | Permalink

Ethics Crisis and and SRF Global Translations are featured in Paul Berger's Blogarithms colum (p. 4) in Metro New York, the free paper given out all over the city. It's also the biggest newspaper in the world, Berger says, with 61 daily Metro editions in 88 major cities in 19 countries in 18 languages across Europe, North & South America and Asia.

What's the idea behind Ethics Crisis?

Ethics Crisis was created to promote SRF Global Translations, which specializes in translating ethics compliance and marketing materials for multinational corporations. ...we decided to focus on global buisness ethics issues in the blog, providing news, information and resources about translations and ethics compliance. I also added a weird, fun features allowing anonymous confessions of the worst thing people have evver done in business and letting readers rate and comment on the confessions. Bingo!

Everyone and her dog already has a blog. Make sure you have a good reason to start and sustain a blog. And make it fun. Make your customers smile. Laugh even. ... Hardly any bloggers have any sense of humor.

Posted by BL Ochman at 11:54 AM | Permalink

Wal-Mart, which has suffered many an ethics crisis, announced recently that it's seeking a global director of ethics,. Now they've handed over the search to headhunter Martha Montag Brown & Associates according to Sox First blog.

"The mission of the Global Ethics Office is to promote Wal-Mart's ethical culture globally," the job description says, making it sound like ethics compliance is a PR tool.

The job description doesn't include salary, but says that the idea candidate will be responsible for "ensuring that ethics is embedded into key business processes" and must have:

Posted by BL Ochman at 11:44 AM | Permalink

Paramount Pictures and Former Vice President Al Gore have begun a broad and brilliant partnership with MySpace to promote the climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." Gore said in a statement, "MySpace has a unique ability to mobilize its community around an urgent cause."

In the film's trailer, Gore, who introduces himself: "Hello I'm Al Gore, I used to be the next president of the United States," says "This is not a political issue so much as a moral issue."

Interesting that he used the word moral, which is so closely intertwined with ethics. The definition of ethics, in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, says "The field of ethics, also called moral philosophy, involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior."

Gore, now the dark horse in the 2008 elections, may have sounded like a jerk when he said he invented the Internet, but he certainly is demonstrating a remarkably astute understanding of how to use it for his cause.

The documentary's MySpace blog features the trailer, allows ticket purchases, and invites MySpace's more than 70 million registered members to meet and exchange ideas.

A link to the Climate Crisis website contains a pledge to see An Inconvenient Truth on opening weekend, [this weekend] which has 113.,096 pledges. Among other features, the page offers a "personal environmental impact calculator" for users to assess their personal contribution to global warming. The site also includes related facts and tips for living "green."

The campaign will culminate in a 10-city MySpace theater buyout on June 16, with free tickets going to select members of "An Inconvenient Truth"'s MySpace community. MySpace is also contributing a significant amount of ad space to raise climate change awareness.

In addition, MediaPost reports, MySpace's music channel is featuring an artist-on-artist interview between the former vice president and a to-be-announced rock star who is also happens to be part of the MySpace community. The MySpace movies channel will spotlight an interview with the film's director, Davis Guggenheim.

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:25 PM | Permalink

We've added the Ethics Crisis Poll to our blog. Please use it to express your your opinions on various ethics and compliance questions. You'll find it along the right side of the blog. Tell us what you think.
Thanks,
Sloan Friedman

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:13 PM | Permalink

Typepad blog software from Six Apart now offers a Widget Gallery including this "Blog Tattoo"" that generates a "Kanji" (Japanese/Chinese character) at random.

What's a widget?
Technically, it's a snippet of HTML and/or JavaScript that you can manage like any other sidebar content module on your blog. Six Apart has partnered with dozens of companies to bring you great new features such as job searching, polls, ways to share video, game playing, weather tracking, and photo sharing.

From a marketing point of view, it's an extraordinary opportunity for companies to gain high visibility on popular blogs by providing value-added content. It's the wave of the future for corporate marketing.

A screencast demonstrates how to install Widgets on Typepad.

What a really extraordinary feature! It would be nice to see one that could do multilanguage translations.

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:15 PM | Permalink

PR News is taking a survey on corporate social responisibility for an upcoming report. Its focus: "How are you communicating your Corporate Responsibility activities and initiatives? "

PR News' Ethics problem: to answer the survey, you have to give your name, address and phone number. They do not promise to send you a copy of the survey results. They do not list a privacy policy. So then, it would appear that the information is taken so you can be hounded with subscription and spronsorship requests. That does not seem ethical.

Not to single out only PR News, because many companies use this ploy. In the age of transparency, it would seem a given that people would be given a choice of whether and how they wish to be contacted. Does Sarbanes-Oxley address privacy issues?

PR News says

"Results from the survey below will be a step towards a better industry understanding of corporate strategies for communicating Corporate Responsibility programs and initiatives."

Posted by BL Ochman at 01:01 PM | Permalink

I work in IT for a company with hundreds of retail locations. I was walking through one of our stores the other day and I saw a man stuffing a tie into his pocket. I kept going without reporting him as a shoplifter. Would you have called security?

Posted by BL Ochman at 05:22 PM | Permalink

Virginia Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau found it was a mistake not to translate their entire website according to a MarketingSherpa case study. (Free access until about June 3, then paid.)

"Fact is, international visitors have different information needs than Americans do. For example, they may want to know about how the exchange rate benefits them or what U.S. gasoline costs are."

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:39 PM | Permalink

In January 2005, Tom Braman of GovTech News blog pointed out that, for its website, Seattle was paying "a California company, Systran, about $6,000 a year for use of [machine] translation software that takes the English version and currently allows people to view it in Russian, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and Italian."

Nonetheless, on the official state website for Seattle Secretary of State Sam Reed, his name was "Swampy Weed Reed" in a bungled Chinese translation. The line "Reed proposes statewide mandates to restore public trust" was translated into Chinese as "Swampy weed suggests whole state order recover open trust." The same line in Korean: "A plant reed proposes national mandate to recover public property trust."

Ethics Breach?
More than a year later, the site still carries a "translation disclaimer" written in legalese jargon meaning that the state can't vouch for the accuracy of Web translations.

Translation Disclaimer Translations of the Secretary of State web site are made through an automated/computerized process powered by Systran. Neither the State of Washington nor any agency, officer, or employee of the State of Washington warrants the accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of any information translated by this system and shall not be liable for any losses caused by such reliance on the accuracy, reliability, or timeliness of such information. While every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the translation, portions may be incorrect. Any person or entity who relies on information obtained from the system does so at his or her own risk.

If you would like to report a translation error or inaccuracy, please contact us.

Seattle Voting Rights Coalition (mandated by Section 203) member Debbie Hsu says "having no translation is better than having very bad translation."

Is it ethical for the state to continue to pay for a translation service that is clearly not able to provide certified, nuanced translations that even come close to the meaning of the content it translates?

Hat tip to Alice Marshall

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:37 PM | Permalink

Steve Rubel, Peter Hirshberg at Technorati and Richard Edelman have announced (only in English as far as I can tell) that Technorati and Edelman have teamed up

"to offer Technorati's analytic tools in Chinese, French, German, Italian and Korean, starting with French in July and continuing into early 2007. That means not only will the user interface be translated into those languages, but the analytic tools themselves will be able to cluster blogs by language."

Available Primitive Machine Translations Not Suitable for Business Use
What is not clear is how the translations will be done. The announcements sound as if machine translations will be used, augmented with local translations by humans. Given the extremely primitive state of currently available machine translation software, that's a massive, and very expensive, undertaking. If it is what is intended, it would need to involve hundreds, if not thousands of local translators if the all-important nuance and localization of language are to be addressed.

Right now, machine translations are in a sorry state, generally not suitable for business use. And an incorrectly translated blog post could become a PR landmine in no time flat. SRF Global Translations' Ethics Crisis provides multiple examples of the foibles of Google and BabelFish machine translations.

Edelman and Technorati are to be congratulated for taking steps toward globalization and recognizing that the world, indeed, is flat. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Related

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:39 PM | Permalink

Ethics Crisis blog readers are invited to anonymously confess the most unethical thing they've ever done in business, and to comment on and rate the confessions of others on a scale of one to 10 from "always acceptable" to "never acceptable." Many hundreds of people have rated the confessions, and we want to be sure that all of our readers are familiar with how to make a comment on any Ethics Crisis post.

Rest assured that, because of the way the process is set up, we actually don't know, and therefore could not reveal, the identity of those who confess to ethics digressions. However, a name and a valid email address is required for comments.

To comment on a blog post or confession, simply click on the word "comment" under the post. You'll be asked to type your name and a valid email address into a comment form. Your email address will not be made public and will not show on the blog. All comments are subject to approval, so there may be a slight time lapse before your comment appears.

Posted by BL Ochman at 11:27 AM | Permalink

At any conference these days, you're likely to meet participants from Japan, China, India, and several other countries.

Expand your global marketing opportunities by having your conference presentations translated in advance so you can provide your Power Point and notes in the languages of the conference participants.

If you're a presenter, ask the conference organizers to tell you the countries of origin of registrants and then submit your Power Point and handouts in those languages.

Posted by BL Ochman at 05:18 PM | Permalink

Rumor has it that Edelman and Technorati will formally announce on Monday the details of "a system that will work across seven languages -- PR agencies willl be able to watch seven languages, real time, for your clients," according to Richard Edelman.

By that I believe he means you'll be able to see translations of blog posts in seven languages. The question is, will they be machine or certified translations by literate humans? Machine translations are pretty laughable at this point.

Edelman told Dave Weinberger about it during an interview at Syndicate earlier this week.

Related Posts:
- SRF Global Translations Demonstrates the Difference Between Machine and Human Translations

- Incorrectly Translated Blog Posts Can Be PR Landmines

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:40 PM | Permalink

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:01 PM | Permalink

No doubt about it. ethical issues in business are serious. But Ethics Crisis blog will mix the heavy and the light in discussing corporate ethics issues, for as Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director at St James Ethics Centre notes:

"Although the consequences of unethical conduct can be deadly serious, I suspect that the first step to creating an ethical organisation is to approach the task with a "light tough" [sic]. For a start, we need to learn not to take ourselves so seriously. We are, in many respects, delightfully ridiculous creatures. What often saves us from crossing the line and becoming dangerously ridiculous is our latent capacity to laugh at ourselves; to find humour in our worst moments of folly."

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:00 PM | Permalink

Is it unethical to sell t-shirts about an unethical act? You can buy this Ethical Schmethical t-shirt at CafePress. And you can read about the incident that inspired it, "Not Yet in Business School, and Already Flunking Ethics."

Posted by BL Ochman at 05:05 PM | Permalink

I got a $35 million contract from a company because a VP showed me another vendor's bid and gave me the opportunity to improve on it so I would get the business.

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Word order in a sentence can often be very confusing for English into Chinese and Chinese into English machine translation. In Chinese, word order is often the only way of expressing grammatical meaning, according to KaiYu, SRF Global Translations' expert in Asian languages.

Simple translation software that proceeds on a word-by-word basis will render the sentence "We are going to eat in the morning," as "We go eat morning." More sophisticated software will attempt to reconstruct the context, often with random, if not pathetic results.

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:38 PM | Permalink

Blogosphere conversation about business ethics issues is definitely growing. Andrea Weckerle's New Millennium PR has a post that summarizes recent ethics discussions.

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:37 PM | Permalink

Our company paid a substantial "consulting fee" to an official in another country. We were told by many people that we'd never get a contract that could be worth millions to us without an official's influence.

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:26 PM | Permalink

In a statement about globalizing a corporate code of ethics, The Ethics Resource Center, the oldest non-profit in the United States devoted to organizational ethics notes:

"... a pure/literal translation of the [corporate] code [of ethics] may not be sufficient. Translating the code back to the original language might reveal inconsistencies.

Tone and connotation are fundamental to this technical and sensitive document.

Related Ethics Crisis Blog Posts:
- Incorrectly Translated Blog Posts Can Be PR Landmines

- SRF Global Translations Demonstrates the Difference Between Machine and Human Translations

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:00 PM | Permalink

As the Internet shrinks the world, viral campaigns are going global, and multilingual. Muji, the Japanese company that provides "good quality, low-price natural and simple design proposes rational lifestyles for today's world," is sponsoring the global Design Award

"calling for entries from all over the world of designs that shake up and stir people. The results will be announced at the Milan Salone. Our first theme is "SUMI", We're asking you to focus your design, not on the major pieces that are central to a room, rather to observe the extremes of the space, the unexplored areas of consciousness. We invite anyone in the world to propose a new Muji product!

Posted by BL Ochman at 02:00 PM | Permalink

Lots of people seem disappointed that Skype's live translation service isn't a more Star Wars type solution.

Instead, of an earbud to translate Klingon to English, Skype's voice service is relying on a third-party company staffed with live translators, who, as Arstechnica points out, for $2.99 a minute, "will listen patiently as you try to tell your Korean girlfriend what you think of her new blog post and then translate what you said using traditional tools such as the human brain."

"... development of machine translation is clearly not quite dead yet, and as algorithms improve and processing power becomes greater and more affordable, it's only a matter of time (though admittedly maybe a long time) before we have access to instant translation between any two languages known to man or Klingon in a little earbud. I want mine to look like a fish."

Related Ethics Crisis blog entries:
- SRF Global Translations: Machine Translation of Chinese Lacks Crucial Contextual Understanding
- CAT vs Machine Translations: Cardiologist vs Proctologist
- SRF Global Translations Demonstrates the Difference Between Machine and Human Translations

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:54 PM | Permalink

"Being ethical is more fundamental than just telling the truth." says Australian publicist Trevor Cook in a podcast interview with Blog Forward about ethics in public relations.

"Don't just repeat what a client tells you to the media," Cook says. "Ask questions and make sure that what you are putting out is truthful. There is a broader social responsibility involved in PR than just putting forward the client's case like a lawyer."

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:34 PM | Permalink

Most Chicago area high school students queried in a business survey revealed they have a dim view of the need for high ethical standards.

"I'm fighting the battle of getting my students to not think so much about immediate gratification" and to think instead about how their actions and views can impact the rest of their lives, he said.

Posted by BL Ochman at 12:03 PM | Permalink

On his MySpace Blog "Everything I Own is Broken", Gerry Alexander addresses the ethics (or lack thereof) of doing business in a foreign country where bribes are expected for accomplishing everyday tasks like getting a driver's license.

He writes:

"...If you were to personally pay the bribe, you have taken an unethical action.

If you go to your manager and he authorises then makes the payment, you have acted ethically.

This is wrong, foolish and completely unethical in either case as far as I can understand the concept of moral responsibility."

A similar issue is addressed in one of the anonymous confessions on Ethics Crisis, "We paid for new business in another country." Of the 296 readers who've rated this confession so far, the majority found the practice acceptable.

Posted by BL Ochman at 06:28 PM | Permalink

To help a young woman with whom I'd had a fling, I wrote her a letter of recommendation that said she'd held a certain position, when actually she was a secretary. The letter did help her to move up in her career. I hadn't seen her in years when a recruiter called me and asked me about the woman's performance in the job I'd said she had. Not wanting to be part of a conspiracy any longer, I said I couldn't remember the woman.

Posted by BL Ochman at 05:59 PM | Permalink

Machine translation limits and failures are especially evident between languages that do not share much cultural background, according to KaiYu, SRF Global Translations' expert in Asian languages. For example, when translating between English and Chinese, context understanding becomes more important than word semantics.

For example, there is no word for "Hello" in Chinese. The translator can choose to transliterate it as the sound "Hello", using Chinese characters to indicate the sound, but such a choice requires the reader to know in advance what "Hello" means in English. With Chinese audiences other than young generations, "Hello" is thus often translated as "How are you?", which works as "Hello" in most contexts.

Posted by BL Ochman at 03:00 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (1)

Over 800 Codes of Ethics in a wide variety of fields are included in the library of the Illinois Institute of Technology's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions website.

SRF Global Translations specializes in the multi-language translation of corporate codes of ethics and other Sarbanes_Oxley (SOX) compliance materials for multinational companies.

Posted by BL Ochman at 07:09 AM | Permalink

Good business ethics can change the world, says Wayne Hurlbert at Blog Business World.

"Practicing strong business ethics is the ultimate win win for everyone."

Posted by BL Ochman at 07:06 AM | Permalink

Our specialties at SRF Global Translations include:

• Multilanguage ad and marketing materials. (We don't do parts manuals)

Compliance materials:


from the multilanguage translation of corporate codes of ethics to multilanguage translation and printing of corporate brochures and corporate marketing materials.



• Multilanguage packaging translations, where exact, localized, natural language translations are crucial.


• Typesetting in non-alphabetic scripts.


• Unified multilanguage project management.


• Short run digital printing and personalized multilanguage printing.


• Medical and insurance documentation.


• Multilanguage educational materials.


• Multilanguage translation of surveys and marketing data.


• Layout adaptation for matching English with multilanguage scripts.


• Maintaining global graphic identity of multilanguage marketing campaigns.


• Multilanguage high resolution, printer ready, output and graphics files.


• A full range of digital as well as offset printing services


• Finishing


• Large format


• Display graphics printing that can be mounted to any surface


• plus a full range of prepress services

Posted by BL Ochman at 01:42 PM | Permalink

Ethics Crisis Blog: Are we getting more or less ethical?

"None of the above," said Chris MacDonald, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at Saint Mary's University (Halifax, Canada) and publisher of The Business Ethics Blog.

"People have been talking about the decline of ethical values for 2500 years. In the time of Plato and Aristotle there were speeches given about the decline in ethics.

These were almost never backed up by fact. It is certainly true that reporting on corporate malfeasance is on the rise and sensitivity to wider range of issues is on the rise. But I have never seen any evidence that things are getting worse in terms of ethics.

People today are less likely to get away with padding expense account, fraud, forgery. A hundred years ago was no culture of accountability.

"Ethical issues are now front page news," he said, "and it's a lot easier for me to explain what I do for a living now than 10 years ago."

MacDonald:

"They are certainly part of the overall diffusion of information. Monday morning one of the news headlines was about Pfizer accused of conducting unapproved trials on children in Nigeria. I had blogged it almost a full day before it filtered down to other news sources.

At least some people now get their news,opinions, and analysis through blogs. Bloggers don't always contact two separate reliable sources like the NY Times, and that is part of the difference.

In some cases blogs cut out the journalist between the expert and the audience. It used to be that my only contact with media was once in a blue moon when a reporter would call me. They come in with their own spin on the story and I would try to enrich and provide perspective.

At this point I comment on the blog about stories I think are worth commenting on and offer it more or less unmediated. Reporters and producers have to cut the 10 or 15-minute interview to a 10-second sound bite. Bloggers don't."

Posted by BL Ochman at 04:50 PM | Permalink