Scoble’s Link Blog

http://radio.weblogs.com/0143327/2005/02/03.html#a31  |  Comments

Now that I’ ve published a few e-mail threads in the raw between me andvarious public relations officers for the companies I’m covering, somevaluable feedback to the experiment is beginning to arrive that has merethinking the idea of automatic transparency (in other words, for thesake of great transaprency, post threads now, ask questionslater). In his blog,Andy Lark, who recently vacated his post as vice president of global communications and marketing for Sun Microsystems appears toapprove of the idea and carries it forward as an example of the sort oftransparency that public relations professionals should practice. Can you imagine the potential of that — a transparency thread thatconnects the transparency of journalists to the transparency of thepublic relations community? But, in his Media Guerilla blog, Voce Communications’ Mike Manuel has a slightly different take saying:

Case in point, every PR practitioner I know of has (at one point oranother) had to intercede on a line of questioning in an interview. Perhaps the journalist is looking for dirt or prying for informationthat shouldn’t be shared or is just leading the interview down a weirdpath. How odd would it be to have that interruption recorded and thenlater distributed with the story?

Can you say A W K W A R D?

Manuel wasn’t alone in expressing some reservations about the ideaof full-blown transparency. Via e-mail, I was notified by one ofmy sources of how the grapevine within the hi-tech PR community wasbuzzing with rumors — all true of course — that I was publishing thefull text of some my e-mail correspondences with public relationspersonnel, including their original pitch to me. For example, my exchanges with the folks at Good Technology and RIM for a blog entry I was writing and then my correspondences with representatives for VMWare and IBM regarding some potential coverage of those companies.

An e-mailfrom that source (whose asked not to be identified) does a much betterjob than I can in describing the thoughts that might go through theminds of a PR professionals when dealing with journalists who arepracticing automatic transparency. Of even more interestwas the fact that the source subequently sent me a pitch regarding acontroversial issue and when I said I did not agree, the source’s firstresponse was “Please tell me you’re not going to publish this on thattransparency channel thing.”

Many journalists might be reading this and saying screw the PRpeople. Everything they send you is on the record unlessotherwise noted and is fair game. And, if you know me and my noholds barred style, you probably could see me doing just that (screwingthe PR people). But brushing off the PR community in the name oftransparency would not be a very strategic move for anyjournalist — especially those who understand how the blogosphereis increasing the competition for eyeball-minutes (sort of likeman-hours).

Looking back over my career as a journalist, some of the work that Iconsider to be my best stuff could not have been accomplished withoutthe assistance of my contacts in the public relations community. These contacts are often the decision makers who can make or break ajournalist’s access to key executives and interviewees. Ina landscape where there’s intensified competition among a growingsupply of content providers for eyeball-minutes, the highest qualitycontent with the best access to sources will rise to the top and getthe most attention. The PR community and the relationships that ajournalist cultivates with its members are some of the most importantassets that a journalist has at their disposal — assets that not everycontent provider has. In other words, they’re assets that someonewho makes there living being a journalist like me must think twiceabout before taking those relationships for granted and riskingalienation.

Now, I’m not for one minute suggesting that a journalist shouldn’tkeep themselves as a respectful arms distance from the people theycover. This isn’t about getting cozy and forgettingtransparency. It’s about journalists figuring out how to bestdeliver transparency without being disrespectful to the people thatgive them their competitive advantage (as journalists). Theaforementioned e-mail with my source turned into a thread out of whichgrew some very concrete facts, ideas, and recommendations. I amtaking these on as action items and am looking for feedback from allcorners.

1. Publish an explanation of why I’m practicing transparency.
2. Publish a transparency policy that explains how it works. Thatpolicy should include but not be limited to the following explanationof my practices (feel free to comment)

• Emails like the ones I published will not be automaticallypublished without the permission of the sender and without giving thesender a chance to review the policy. In the interests oftransparency (and protecting the policies of certain PR outfits), Ishould be flexible in my requirements as to what must bepublished. For example, some PR agencies would prefer thatcertain information like the names and specific contact information fortheir staffers be redacted.
• I honor all Off the record statements and Non-DisclosureAgreements (NDAs) but a clear indication should be made in anycorrespondence when statements being made are not to be repeated,off-the-record or not for attribution, or being conveyed under theauspices of an NDA.
• Dispute resolution: Supply my contact information in theevent that information published in the transparencychannel is innaccurate (bad cut n paste, wrongly attributed, etc.) andis need of correction.
• Initial inquiries made by me (as opposed to pitches made bypublic relations) are fair game for publication as I am theauthor. The policies listed above apply to the replies.

3. A reminder in all correspondences that transparency is in “effect” and where — online — to get the details.

This is obviously just a start but, per Jay Rosen’s suggestion, Iwanted to get my thoughts down when I had the chance. I worrythat I already may have forgotten some of my ideas.

Already, my exchanges with various PR folks has molded mybehavior. In preparing my coverage for a new version of Skype,I’ve been exchanging e-mails with Skype’s public relations officerKelly Larabee that discuss a bug that I encountered. Afterseveral e-mails flew back and forth and she acknowledged the bug, Iasked if I could publish the entire e-mail thread(with contact info redeacted) and she wrote back “that would begreat, no problem at all.” So, here already was a casewhere a thread contained some sensitive information and instead ofdisrespectfully just publishing the thread, I checked with thesource. By doing so, I sent Larabee a message that not onlyindicates respect for her and her job, but that set her expectationsinstead of blindly suprising her. My expectation now is that shewill continue to be open and honest with me knowing that when she is,she’s not running the risk of having everything she says become public.

One final aspect of this is what I call the “the system spec.” Inan e-mail to me, Andy Lark wrote “for transparency to emerge — we needa new system — and that system first needs a spec and aplaybook.” I couldn’t agree more. As you can see, from thejournalist’s side of the equation, I’m attempting to develop theplaybook and am looking for feedback. This needs to be a collaborativeprocess. But a playbook alone won’t do the trick. Fortransparency to work, a journalist cannot be expect to go through thehoops that I have so far gone through in order to offer the minimaldegree of transparency that I have so far offered. Here are someexamples of the heavy lifting that I’ve had to do in order to offersome very basic instances of transparency:

• I’ve had to cut and paste e-mails in a way that formatting isvery screwy and I have to and fix it. Also, redacting senstiviedata is cumbersome and could use automation. When I receive anemail, I should be able to forward it to a system and tag it with, atthe very least, the sender’s name and a title for the editorial projectthat the story is associated with. The system should respond viae-mail with a URL for editing the entry which I can click on an reviewbefore publishing into the transparency channel. The system couldfor example provide me with a way to look for specific text to redactand then do a search and replace on that that text (instead of mehaving to do it by hand)
• The system should include a database of contacts and a ticklerthat helps the journalist to understand whether or not a source hasbeen notified of the journalist’s transparency policy and how thatsource has responded. For example, the source may provide blanketapproval to publish all notes or may say “Ask First.” Amore advanced feature could include a way to provide redactable textstrings. For example, a boolean (true/false) field that goes witha source’s e-mail address to that indicates whether the source is okwith having their e-mail address published or not. Let’s say theanswer is no. The “Redact Email Address” field would be set totrue, and the next time I forward an e-mail into the system from thatsender, the system automatically redacts all occurences of the e-mailaddress from the text (but still gives me the opportunity to reviewit).

These are just some quick thoughts that I jammed out. When I get aroundto it, I will break these out into a separate category calledTransparency System Spec and each spec item will get its ownentry. As always more to come, and please comment.

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