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Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon – Play Yourself via LinkedIn
By: Loren Wassell
11/20/2009 - About 15 years ago, three Pennsylvania college students dreamed up the parlor game that came to be known as "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." Theoretically, you can reach almost everyone in movies within six steps of Kevin. For example, early film legend Charles Chaplin has…
Communications Can Change History, Whether or Not You Want To
By: Loren Wassell
11/10/2009 - The next time someone suggests that communications doesn't require careful preparation, you might want to show them where the Berlin Wall used to be. The wall came down on Nov. 9, 1989, and paved the way for reunification of East and West Germany less than…
The Odds Are Better Than We Think
By: Loren Wassell
05/21/2009 - If anyone knows how much our lives are threatened by chemical exposure it ought to be the members of the Society of Toxicology, the professional organization of scientists who study harmful effects of chemicals and other impacts on people and the environment. A new survey…
Wisdom is Where You Find It
By: Loren Wassell
05/20/2009 - If you need advice on management, why not turn to the boss? The Boss, Bruce Springsteen. As Springsteen's latest tour rolled into Washington, D.C., the hometown paper did a Q&A interview with Nils Lofgren, who grew up in the Washington area and has been playing with…
Unthinkable News for Newspapers
By: Loren Wassell
04/16/2009 - To all that has been written on the Internet's impact on traditional newspapers, a leading expert on the ‘net's effects managed to add significant new thinking a few weeks ago with an essay called "Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable." Newspapers saw the threat from the…
“The Best Damn Job in the Whole Damn World”
By: Loren Wassell
04/08/2009 - The Chicago Sun-Times recently joined the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader in bankruptcy. I’m grateful to the Reader’s “News Bytes” blogger, Michael Miner, for highlighting a post by the Sun-Times’ prize-winning movie critic, Roger Ebert. In “The Best Damn Job in the Whole Damn…
Who'll Be Left to Write the Media's Obituary?
By: Loren Wassell
03/25/2009 - The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism has just published its sixth annual Report on American Journalism -- The State of the News Media. It chronicles and quantifies the decline in mainstream media we've been watching accelerate: Some of the numbers are chilling. Newspaper ad…
Have You Planned for a Crisis Lately?
By: Loren Wassell
03/03/2009 - Once upon a time, a client asked for help writing a crisis communications plan. We were a little surprised, because we thought this particular client already had a good plan. With simple checklists for preparation and action, the plan documented well-established practices that had served…
What Were You Thinking?
By: Loren Wassell
01/28/2009 - If you're concerned about reputation management, it's a nightmare. One of your employees seems to have been soliciting phony, favorable reviews on the Internet. Not surprisingly, he's been caught and outed. Your credibility is on the line. That appears to be what happened to Belkin,…
Setting Things Right
By: Loren Wassell
08/06/2008 - When things go wrong, you have an issue to manage. But, prompt positive action can turn the situation around -- or, at least, nip it in the bud. Circuit City just demonstrated this. Mad Magazine published a parody Circuit City ad, poking fun at things…
