The Luminaria Media Blog

One of my friends and trusted PR confidantes, Cyndi Hughes, is currently director for the Writer’s League of Texas. Last month, I did a Book PR class there, talking to authors with book projects in various stages of completion, looking toward how they’d get word of their books out there. We’re talking about another class geared specifically toward what authors can do for themselves.

It’s a great topic. I encourage my clients to jump into social media to connect with new people and to strengthen ties with people who already know them. One of the tools I point them toward is Technorati — it’s a powerful resource for finding blogs around certain topics. Just yesterday, I was looking for Texas Travel blogs for a project I’m doing for the City of New Braunfels, and tracked down two excellent travel blogs now interested in letting their readers about Christmas in New Braunfels (which includes Schlitterbahn’s complete Winter Wonderlandification courtesy of more than one million lights, an ice skating rink, and a snow machine).

Blogs aren’t the mysterious entities they once were, but it’s still helpful to have a resource like Technorati available to figure out who’s covering what. And it’s a very easy, intuitive, and powerful tool to show clients who want to improve their social media (and overall PR) IQ.

This is a day that makes me proud to have Progress Coffee as a client — it’s Progress’s 4th Birthday today, and to celebrate, they’re giving everything away.

Specifically, they’re giving free food and drink to all customers — they just ask that patrons consider giving a donation to Capital Area Food Bank and/or Bread For the World. It’s all part of owner Joshua Bingaman’s philosophy about building community and giving to others. It’s why I sought him out as a client, and it’s why I like having meetings there. (Progress being in our building doesn’t hurt either.)

Here’s this morning’s Fox 7 coverage, if you’re interested in seeing more of one of my favorite haunts in town (covered by one of my favorite news teams in town).

A group calling themselves the Yes Men pulled off an elaborate prank yesterday, passing out over 1 million free copies of a very authentic-looking New York Times — only it was dated July 4, 2009, and its lead headline was “Iraq War Ends.” The BBC article noted the operation took six months of planning and many volunteers to pull it off. In a nod to the Times’ motto, the fake paper declared it contained “all the news we hope to print.”

One of those stories they hoped to print — on a website version that also faithfully recreated the real thing — was “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” In too-broad brushstrokes, it speaks of well-financed PR giants hyping Philip Morris and selling Americans on going to war. I’m all for good satire, but bristled at this depiction of public relations.

The fake article includes a quote that’s particularly galling — “P.R. companies have been doing whatever it takes to maximize their profit.” That’s certainly news to me. Step inside my office and let me tell you a little about the PR I do.

I’m in the third year of running my firm. I help people who I know are deserving, hard-working people — authors, entrepreneurs, non-profit directors, and educators — get their message out to an audience ready to hear them via a media working on deadlines to deliver news. I talk to the media, but I also help my clients articulate their visions and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. By focusing on how they present themselves, they get a clearer sense of why they do what they do.

I have great days where I connect clients to reporters, resulting in stories that convey what I’d hope they’d convey. I have frustrating days where all my calls go to voicemail, where I lose a round of edits to a computer glitch, where I’m not as productive as I’d hoped to be. I had one banner day this summer where I stepped off the plane at JFK and my cell phone decided to die on the spot. (Just weeks before, I’d installed Skype. God bless Skype. Skype saved me until I could make it to a Sprint store and sit through a needlessly-elaborate reprogramming ritual, but that’s another story.) But I have never had a day where I have rubbed my hands together in Mr. Burnsian glee, plotting to maximize profits and dupe an unsuspecting nation.

Certainly, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, there are plenty of things to be cynical about. But PR firms like mine — where I make my living on a love of all things media, my natural inclination to write, and sheer perseverance — are not one of those things to be cynical about. Especially not for people who tout themselves as the Yes Men.

You might have missed it among all the exciting election news of the campaign’s last few weeks — the Christian Science Monitor has decided to stop its print edition in April, becoming the first major newspaper in the U.S. to convert from print and online editions to online only. They’re even advertising a “treeless” subscription option to get readers used to the idea.

I still love the feel of a newspaper, and one of my favorite things to do on Sunday is to work through a Statesman or a New York Times section-by-section. But the reality is that I’m much more prone to read an article online these days than in the print edition. When a client does appear in a print edition, I’m thinking about some quality time with my scanner, whereas an online appearance by a client typically comes to me via Google Alert. The Monitor’s more a trendsetter than an anomaly, here, I’d think — it feels like we’re moving away from paper. Not immediately, of course, but it’s coming.

I’m quoted in an article on post-election letdown, which I think might be my next column over at The November 3rd Club, where I recently wrote about YouTube and how it’s changing politics and pretty much everything else.

The quote’s just a snapshot of what was a really great conversation with reporter Lisa Eckelbecker. My comparison of campaign staffers to reality show characters didn’t make the cut, sadly, but she did leave in one important facet — I really DO love John King and his magic map.

Confession time: This is my favorite day of the year. I love the passion of a political campaign, I love the creation and evolution of storylines that campaigns bring, and I love watching numbers roll in during primetime.

One of my clients, Pennsylvania Voice, is a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to voter registration and voter protection efforts. Here’s something to marvel about in the age of blog: real-time accounts of what’s happening with the Pennsylvania vote. It’s a reminder that democracy can be messy, and can require hard-working volunteers to keep it all above board, but a Presidential election is a quadrennial event only rivaled by the World Cup Final for sheer excitement and hope shared by so many.

If you haven’t become a part of it yet, why are you reading this? Get out and vote!