The Publicity Hound’s Blog  

If you blog, the worst of your worries shouldn’t be how many times to post, or what to write about, or whether to use Wordpress or Typepad.

Your Number One concern—the question bloggers never think to ask—should be: “What if somebody sues me tomorrow for copyright infringement, defamation or invasion of privacy—what does that mean?”

Here’s what it means. It could cost you your house, your car and your future income stream.

Take it from me. Being named in a defamation suit that asks for a quarter million dollars in damages turns your world upside down, then drops the bottom out of your stomach.

That’s what happened last October. A reporter from People magazine had called, asking me to comment on a story they were writing about a lawsuit that had been filed by the former headmistress of Oprah Winfrey’s school for girls in South Africa. The plaintiff named me in the suit, along with Oprah and Huffington Post.

Nomvuyo Mzamane, the former headmistress of the Leadership Academy for Girls, cited comments to the media that Oprah made in October and November of 2007 after a dorm matron at the school was charged with assaulting and abusing students.

Mzamane named the Huffington Post and me for a blog item I wrote in November for this blog and for Huffington saying Mzamane was charged in connection with the scandal. She was not charged. I had erred. And the first I had learned about the lawsuit was when People called asking me to comment.

I responded quickly, and People used the entire statement:

“I’ve learned that in my November 7, 2007, blog post, ‘Oprah Scandal: A Lesson in Crisis Management,” and in a column I wrote for Huffington Post on November 19, 2007, I inadvertently erred by saying that the former head mistress of Oprah Winfrey’s Dream Academy was charged with a crime. I deeply regret that error and apologize to former head mistress Nomvuyo Mzamane.

“Journalists, including those on blogs, make mistakes, and if Ms. Mzamane had contacted me about that directly, I would have corrected it online — with an apology — immediately. I have not, in fact, been contacted by her or served with a lawsuit. I’m a firm believer in full compliance with the law, with the Public Relations Society of America’s Code of Ethics and with the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, and know that I was in compliance with all three in this case.”

I also wrote a correction for my blog. That weekend, I started contacting business associates who might be able to tell me where I could turn for help defending the suit.

I tracked down an old college friend who had worked as a libel attorney in Philadelphia, where the suit was filed. She gave me two good leads:

—She told me about a segment she had heard the day before on NPR’s “On the Media” show. It was called The Calculated Risk of Blogging. It featured Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association discussing all the ways bloggers can get into trouble—from threats and cease and desist letters all the way up to federal lawsuits. The Media Law Resource Center, which tracks these cases, reports that there’s been over $16 million in judgments against bloggers. I went to the group’s website and emailed Cox, asking if he could help.

—My friend also referred me to an excellent libel attorney in Philadelphia, where the suit was filed. It would cost me about $10,000 up front for the attorney’s firm to take the case. The attorney recommended I go back to the Media Bloggers Association for help.

How to join the MBA

You can join the Media Bloggers Association for only $25. Even if you stay out of trouble, the membership fee is well worth the interactive, online crash course in libel and defamation, regardless of the topic of your blog.

The course was created by the well-respected Poynter Institute, and it ends with a multiple-choice quiz that you’ll have to pass before you can join. The course will take about an hour to complete and it’s actually fun.

After I passed the test and joined MBA, Cox referred me to Ronald Coleman, an attorney with Goetz Fitzpatrick LLP, whose office is in New York, for a free telephone consultation. Coleman took the case, worked on it many hours, and kept me apprised every step along the way.

Two months later, under a settlement agreement, the Huffington Post agreed to post an apology, in exchange for the dismissal of the claims by Mzamane. She dismissed the claim against me, too, because I already had posted a correction as soon as I learned I had been sued. Neither I nor Huffington were required to pay any money.

I paid nothing for legal counsel, but would have paid my attorney’s fee if the case had gone to trial.

“Had the case gotten to trial and had you lost, you would have paid the judgment,” Cox said. “So bloggers need to consider that to defend a defamation case, it might cost $50,000 or more, even more if appealed. And the blogger might lose and have to pay the plaintiff.”

The MBA does still offer access to its legal network “but we cannot promise the sort of support you got where Ron put in quite a few hours,” Cox said. It now offers members a discount on liability insurance through a separate insurance company.

What bloggers can learn

If you blog, you might consider yourself a writer first. Or a humanitarian. Or a passionate advocate for a favorite cause or issue.

But first and foremost, you are a content publisher. The second your finger hits the “publish” button, you’re as vulnerable to a lawsuit as a major newspaper. Unlike a newspaper, however, which often has an entire team of attorneys to represent it, the blogger usually ends up alone.

I’m not an attorney and this isn’t legal advice, just a few other things you need to know:

• If you make a mistake, correct the record as soon as possible and apologize.
• Even if you know that what you’ve written is 100 percent accurate, a jury can still find you guilty.
• Anyone can file a lawsuit. Even if you win, it could take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend, and you could lose your personal possessions like your house and your car.
• Conducting your research online before you blog, and then saving time by cutting and pasting content you’ve found elsewhere into your own blog, website or article—without rewriting it—can invite a lawsuit for copyright infringement. (I hosted a teleseminar several years ago with intellectual property attorney Patricia Eyres on the topic of “Legal Issues You Must Know about Writing Articles for Fee or for Free.”)
• Understand what can get you into trouble and what can’t. Make sure you know what you can say about a public person and what you can’t say about the guy who lives next door.

During my 22 years of training as a newspaper editor and reporter, I learned how to always check facts, strive for accuracy, be fair, and tell both sides of the story. Yet all the training in the world can’t prevent mistakes, or a lawsuit.

If it happened to me, it can happen to you. Know your options and be prepared.

Posted In: Blogs, Celebrity tie-ins, Crisis Communications
posted On: 4/28/2009: 3:33 pm: By Joan
Comments: 19 Comments

In the old days, when a company was planning layoffs, it delivered the bad news to employees, and then—if it was smart—issued a press release to let the world know how many people had been laid off and why.

These days, companies concerned about crisis management and joining the “bad news” conversation online will also post the announcement on their corporate blogs. An article in yesterday’s New York Times explained why companies must break the news first, before one of their employees or a competitor does. 

Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company — even though some employees had not yet been told they were losing their jobs.

Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, had already published the news, and it was being picked up by traditional media reporters, Mr. Musk said. “We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.”

The article also mentions Twitter. In my Special Report #52: How to Use Twitter for Business, I mention that companies that don’t want to miss a beat, like Comcast and Dell, use that site to monitor their brand online and sometimes even announce bad news. Check out the cool tip from Brian Carter on how to search for your company’s name—or for anybody else you want to follow—now that Twitter apparently has disabled its search funciton. Simply use Search.Twitter.com.

By the way, have you created Google Alerts for your company’s name and URL so you know when somebody is discussing you online? I want Google to deliver my alerts via email once a day. But if you tell Google you want the information “as soon as it happens,” you can respond within minutes after someone has written about you.

What other ways does your company communicate bad news online, or respond who others who are talking about you?

Posted In: Blogs, Crisis Communications, Press Releases/News Releases, Social networking, Twitter
posted On: 11/6/2008: 9:25 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments

When the news of GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, broke over the weekend, Barack Obama was quick to issue an order to his campaign workers to “back off.” 

Family members of candidates aren’t fair game, he warned.

“We don’t go after people’s families, we don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant…And if I ever thought that it was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired.”

But what about the rest of us?

Should anti-abortion or abortion-rights advocates piggyback onto this news event to further their cause or issue?

What about opponents or proponents of condoms in schools? What about churches? Abortion clinics? Adoption agencies? Roe v. Wade backers and opponents? Parents groups?

Is the pregnancy fair game?  

It most certainly is, just as the pride—or not—that Michelle Obama felt for her country was a legitimate issue after she commented publicly about it.  As for Sarah Palin, she thrust her family into the spotlight, warts and all, when she accepted the nomination. (This photo of Bristol was taken Friday during her mother’s acceptance speech in Dayton, Ohio.) 

What about you? Do you work for a company or agency that will be piggybacking onto the issue of the pregnancy for publicity? Or have you decided to let it rest? What are you telling your spokesperson?

If you’re an author, speaker or expert whose topic ties into this news, will you be writing press releases or blogging about your opinions? Will you be offering yourself as a source to the media and bloggers? Why or why not?

Posted In: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Crisis Communications, Nonprofits, PR Consultants/Publicists, Pitching the Media, Press Releases/News Releases, Publicity on the Internet
posted On: 9/2/2008: 9:27 am: By Joan
Comments: 30 Comments

Response to the two teleseminars I’m hosting today and tomorrow on “How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Anything–Ethically & Powerfully” has been overwhelming.

I sold the last of the 100 seats on Tuesday morning. (You can still sign up to receive the MP3 audio and electronic transcripts, however.)

Anybody who has a LinkedIn profile must know how to squeeze every last drop of networking out of every single connection.  Or, like many people on LinkedIn have sadly discovered, that long list of names you’ve collected is…well…nothing more than a long list of names.

Many of the 100 people who were on today’s call own a business or work for PR firms.  For them, LinkedIn is a no-brainer.

Social networking is a much harder sell, however, in large companies, based on some of these comments I’ve heard:

“Our boss wants total control over our image.”

(Tell the boss there is no such thing as total control over your image.  Just ask Dell computers, Wal-Mart or any other company that’s been skewered by bloggers and in online discussion groups.)

“We’d rather spend our efforts getting stories in The New York Times and USA Today.”

(Guess where many of those reporters search for sources?  On social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, and at blogs.)

“We’ve decided that Web 2.0 isn’t where we want to spend our time.”

(Too bad.  Your clients, vendors, shareholders, competitors and hundreds of potential customers spend lots of time using social media and Web 2.0 to connect with their key audiences, often with great results.)

Popular blogger and internal communications expert Steve Crescenzo says that two years ago, everybody was talking about Web 2.0 and social media.  Today, the smart companies have stopped talking about it and they’re DOING it.

“I talk to hundreds of communicators every year in my seminars and consulting work, and go into dozens of companies.  And I can tell you this: The time for big talk and theories about social media is over. The time to actually use these tools to dramatically improve how you communicate is now.”

Steve is conference organizer for The Social Media Summit Sept. 10-12 in Chicago, sponsored by Ragan Communications.  I attended Ragan’s “unconference” on social media last year in Chicago and it was fabulous–sort of an unstructured, free-flowing day in which so many tips and ideas were bouncing around that I couldn’t type my notes fast enough.

This year’s Social Media Summit will include example after example of how companies are using podcasts, message boards, social networking sites, video, widgets and other Web 2.0 applications to get closer to their key audiences.  You’ll even get a peek at Web 3.0.

The conference includes one track for internal communications and a separate track for external and marketing communications.

I’ll be there and I hope you’ll be, too.

I worked out a special arrangement with Ragan.  Publicity Hounds save $100 on the price of registration, plus an additional $100 if you register by Friday using this link.

See you in Chicago!

Posted In: Blogs, Business Promotion, Crisis Communications, PR Consultants/Publicists, Publicity on the Internet, Social media marketing, Social networking, Video
posted On: 7/16/2008: 9:34 pm: By Joan
Comments: 1 Comment

When seven people in the Chicago area died in 1982 after ingesting Tylenol capsules which had been laced with potassium cyanide poison, Johnson & Johnson moved quickly to manage the crisis.

The company embedded journalists in meetings with top management so they could hear first-hand all the issues and problems the company faced. That move, and others, were brilliant. Johnson & Johnson remains as perhaps the greatest example of how a company should manage a crisis.

The tactic of embedding reporters can be just as effective if your company is experiencing a crisis on a smaller scale, too. An article in the June issue of PR Tactics, written by Ron McGee, a professor journalism at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, recommends that PR professionals include embedding reporters in their crisis communications plans. 

“An electric company PR practitioner who asks a reporter to follow the daily activities of a techician, for example, is likely ot be met with a yawn…That electrical company technician who was so boring suddenly becomes much more interesting to a reporter when the lights don’t work for several days.” 

Ron’s tips include:

• Identify certain workers who have the knowledge and personality to represent your organization.
• Perform practice drills. The employees you’ve identified should spend time showing mock reporters what they’d do. Offer feedback.
• Sell the idea of transparency to management before a crisis.

The media will scrutinize your organization during a crisis anyway. Embedding reporters will help them cover your story from the inside where they have a close-up view of what’s happening, and access to your experts who can help them understand it.

In an interview I conducted with crisis manager Jonathan Bernstein on How to Keep the Media Wolves at Bay, Jonathan said companies that are open and honest and show they have nothing to hide have a huge advantage over those that do stupid things like say “no comment.” 

Posted In: Crisis Communications
posted On: 6/5/2008: 10:58 am: By Joan
Comments: No Comments