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The Flack™ for Friday, January 13, 2022

By The Flack

The Sports Scandal Almost Nobody Is Talking About; Is Channel 5 the Future of News?; What Happened When the Olive-Oil Startup Apologized; From Elon Musk to Drake, Celebrity Nightstand Photos Are Causing a Stir; Wordle Editor Tracy Bennett Reveals What Words Get the Most Complaints; ‘Woke Mind Virus’? ‘Corporate Wokeness’? Why Red America Has Declared War on Corporate America

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The Flack™ for Friday, December 30, 2022

By The Flack

Crisis Management Lessons From Southwest Airlines’ Meltdown; Barnes & Noble Store Expansion Leads Big-Box Real-Estate Revival in 2023; The Sneaky Economics of Ticketmaster; How Frighteningly Strong Meth Has Supercharged Homelessness; ‘Can I Go Back to My Regular Job?’ Sports Anchor Goes Viral For Blizzard Coverage

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The Flack™ for Friday, December 2, 2022

By The Flack

“I’ve Had a Bad Month.” Sam Bankman-Fried Is Challenged on the Collapse of FTX; Taylor Swift And Ticketmaster Are Providing Crisis Response Lessons For Business Leaders; Can’t Hear What Actors Are Saying on TV? It’s Not You, Probably; The Shadow Over the World Cup; ‘It’s Been Awkward.’ Pickleball Is Pitting Neighbor Against Neighbor in Noise-Conscious Communities

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The Flack™ for Friday, November 18, 2022

By The Flack

Qatar Bans Beer Sales at World Cup Stadiums; The Ethical Case for Watching This Possibly Unethical World Cup; Changes Are Coming to Wordle; How Liquid Death Became Gen Z’s La Croix; From $32 Billion to Criminal Investigations: How Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Vanished Overnight; The Evolution of Elon Musk: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

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The Flack™ for Friday, November 4, 2022

By The Flack

Kanye West: No American Icon Has Ever Self-destructed So Spectacularly; Welcome to Geriatric Social Media; TikTok Creators Are Reinventing the Scathing Restaurant Review; Elon Musk Is Awkwardly Haggling with Stephen King Over the Price of a Blue Check Mark; Deepfakes’ of Celebrities Have Begun Appearing in Ads, With or Without Their Permission

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The Flack™ for Friday, October 21, 2022

By The Flack

‘Disinformation Weekly’: How Midterm Newspapers are Failing the Electorate; Florida Fire Marshal Calls on Elon Musk and Others for Answers About Vehicles Catching Fire; Inside Noah Shachtman’s Raucous Reinvention of Rolling Stone; The 5,000-Year History of Writer’s Block;Simple Writing Pays Off (literally); The Evolution of Late Night

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The Flack™ for Friday, October 7, 2022

By The Flack

The Washington Post Has a Bezos Problem; Mystery Solved: ‘Dateline’ Finds Path From TV to Podcast Stardom; No Tune, No Words, No Dancing: Why White Noise is the Music Industry’s Newest Hit; Is This 2017 Heineken Ad the Key to Saving Democracy?; Fast Company Shuts Website After Hack Sends ‘obscene’ Apple News Notifications

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The Flack™ for Friday, September 23, 2022

By The Flack

The Flack highlights changes and trends in the news, examples of communications practices, and content we at BYRNE PR thought you might find useful.

We hope you enjoy, and we always welcome your feedback.

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The Rise and Rise of Partisan Local Newsrooms – Since 2004, more than 2,000 local newspapers have vanished in the United States, creating a news vacuum that is being filled to some degree by “pink slime” journalism and partisan newsrooms. Columbia Journalism Review takes a deep look at the issue and whether truly objective journalism is even possible any more.

How Do Japanese Show They Care? By Sending a Telegram. – “What hath God wrought?” That was the first telegram ever sent by Samual Morse in 1844. In the United States telegrams peaked in the 1920s and ‘30s primarily because they were less expensive than long-distance calls. Use of telegrams began plummeting in the 1960s, and Western Union sent its last telegram in 2016. But the medium is far from dead. In Japan and a few other countries telegrams are alive and used regularly to congratulate and pass along condolences. The New York Times digs into the forgotten medium.

The Late-Night Circuit: Why Do Politicians Do It? – Political candidates appearing on late-night talk shows is nothing new. John F. Kennedy was the first major political candidate to appear on a late-night show when he was a guest on Tonight Starring Jack Paar in 1960. Since then Bill Clinton famously played sax on Arsenio in 1992, and today candidates are regular guests on the late-night circuit. But this begs the question: why do they do it? JSTOR Daily reviews the very simple answer.

iPhone Now Makes Up the Majority of U.S. Smartphones – In its 15 years of existence, the iPhone has become a global phenomenon. Despite the rising cost and strange phenomenon of batteries suddenly not lasting as long when new versions are released, the iPhone continues to grow in popularity. Today it makes up more than 50% of the U.S. smartphone market. Visual Capitalist looks at why.

Casa Magazines Is the Last of Its Kind – There is still a magazine shop. It’s in New York’s West Village on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twelfth Street. And it’s magical.

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Feed Your Head:

iPhone Users Can Now Edit and Unsend Text Messages (but only to other iPhone users)

The 40-Year Evolution of the Emoji

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flack

noun

: one who provides publicity

flack

verb

: to act as a press agent or promoter for something

The word flack was first used as a noun meaning “publicity agent” during the late 1930s. According to one rumor, the word was coined in tribute to a well-known movie publicist of the time, Gene Flack.