New Media Musings From Dana Perino
By K. Daniel Glover | June 4, 2009
Dana Perino, the last press secretary to President Bush and now the chief issues counselor for the PR firm Burson-Marteller, shared her thoughts about the evolving media market in an interview with Beet.tv. She talked about everything from how blogs are shaping the debate over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to what companies can do online to protect their brands.
The full interview is below, and here are some sound bites:
- "What's really interesting to me on the Supreme Court nomination is to watch the blogs. They have journalists that are going through [Sotomayor's record], looking at all the different opinions that she rendered as a judge over her career. ... And sometimes the traditional media just doesn't have enough time to do it. They are trying to do more with less, and so they're looking at the blogs as well. So it almost becomes a symbiotic relationship."
- "A lot of new media is trying to fill the void where traditional media is falling short. And that's a good thing"
- "It's important that people be able to broaden out, read a lot of different things" other than information from their own political perspective.
- "A crisis that you might have dealt with over a couple of weeks now happens within a couple of hours, and so you have to have a team in place to be able to help you immediately."
- Companies "need to have some sort of [video] freelancers on speed dial" to react to online viral videos (like the infamous Domino's pizza clip) that could undermine their brands.
K. Daniel Glover is a project manager for Accuracy In Media. He has worked as an editor, writer and new media specialist in the Washington area since 1991, spending most of that time at National Journal and Congressional Quarterly.
1 Comment | Post a Comment
June 5 at 3:32 pm | #1 | Link
See, it’s clearly no longer about objectivity, dissemination of accurate and thorough information, or being fair and balanced.
Even a presidential press secretary admits it’s all about “creating a brand” and “protecting that brand” - and she’s now working for a professional “public relations” firm rather than some supposedly “fair and balanced” media outlet - thereby obviating even the pretense of objectivity in the dissemination of information.
Marketing and public relations rule!