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.
Journalists Know News and Opinion Are Separate, but Readers Often Can’t Tell the Difference — The New York Times opinion editor James Bennet resigned recently after the paper published this controversial opinion essay by Sen. Tom Cotton that advocated using the military to put down protests. Cotton’s column was published on the opinion pages — not the news pages. But that’s a distinction often lost on the public, whose criticisms of the decision to run the piece were often directed at the paper as a whole, including its news coverage. All of which raises a longstanding question: What’s the difference between the news and opinion side of a news organization? This article from NiemanLab explores that question.
Why Now Is Not the Time to Cut Your Employee Engagement and Company Culture Budgets — When times are tough, often the first budget cuts are the ones that should be the last: training, development and communications. As your institution wrestles with the financial challenges and political strife, it may appear that cutting these functions is an easy, painless decision. They appear to be “fluffy” and nonessential during a business contraction. Forbes explores why this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Success Favors the Prepared: Communicating In Times of Crisis — Crisis communication has expanded well beyond its original definition. While companies need to have a plan in place to respond to internal crises, it’s just as important to have guidelines on how to react to world events. Although there is no way to plan for every potential crisis, it’s a good idea to have the right infrastructure in place to be ready to act. This is a quick guide from Forbes that can help any organization begin to develop messaging and a crisis plan.
Robin Roberts of ‘Good Morning America’ on Delivering a Message Clearly — In a new program for Master Class Roberts provides valuable tips on how to be an authentic communicator. Recently in Inc., Carmine Gallo boiled it down to four communications strategies that can benefit anyone.
Updates to AP Stylebook Regarding Race-related Terms — The Associated Press now capitalizes Black in a racial, ethnic or cultural references, conveying an essential and shared sense of history, identity and community among people who identify as Black. These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American.
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What we’re reading:
TALKING TO STRANGERS by Malcolm Gladwell — What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
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flack
: one who provides publicity
flack
: 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.