Corporate announces dozens of management appointments via statements that include quotes attributed to executives such as U.S. newspapers division chief Bob Dickey. Sometimes, the quotes sound, well, familiar.
Here's Dickey on March 31, regarding Judi Terzotis' appointment as publisher of the Fort Collins Coloradoan: "She is a strategic thinker who executes well and has made every organization she has worked for stronger. Judi will navigate the competitive media landscape and provide effective marketing solutions for Fort Collins businesses."
And here he is today, on Janet Hasson's being named publisher of The Journal News at Westchester, N.Y.: "Janet is a strategic thinker who executes well and has made every organization she has worked for better. . . . Janet knows how to navigate a competitive marketplace and will lead the Westchester team in providing quality journalism for readers and dynamic marketing solutions for advertisers."
Earlier: Public relations 101 -- Copy and Paste Edition. Plus: After St. Cloud, quotidian quotations.
And here he is today, on Janet Hasson's being named publisher of The Journal News at Westchester, N.Y.: "Janet is a strategic thinker who executes well and has made every organization she has worked for better. . . . Janet knows how to navigate a competitive marketplace and will lead the Westchester team in providing quality journalism for readers and dynamic marketing solutions for advertisers."
Earlier: Public relations 101 -- Copy and Paste Edition. Plus: After St. Cloud, quotidian quotations.
Picky, picky. It's difficult saying nice things about people you promote, even after you do an exhaustive search for the proper candidate and conduct one-on-one interviews to determine who is the best candidate for the job. Dickey must have been really exhausted and not thinking what he was saying.
ReplyDeleteHey Jim, this says dozens of management appointments were announced there are two names here. Anyone else know who were the other names that were promoted?
ReplyDeleteWhen Dickey finishes up his golf game, he's going to be furious to hear about this. I would give anything to overhear that phone call with Robin.
ReplyDeleteThat's the first press release we've seen out of Robin's shop for 12 days, so there must have been plenty of time for Dickey to provide an original quote they could use. It makes me wonder what they are doing with themselves all day over in the Crystal Palace flack shack. The execs certainly have been quiet.
ReplyDeleteI think even more galling is this quote, which is exactly word for word, except for the last word in the sentence.
ReplyDeleteJanet is a strategic thinker who executes well and has made every organization she has worked for better.
On Judi: She is a strategic thinker who executes well and has made every organization she has worked for stronger.
Hhhhmmmm. What/who are they going to execute well?
ReplyDeleteYou would think that someone who makes six figures could be a bit more creative.
ReplyDeletePence is way too busy monitoring this site and rolling out Gannett's new marketing campaign. So is her staff. Why should she be doing the public relations job she was hired for?
ReplyDelete6/02/2011 4:40 PM
I'm certain Robin did not write the press release. Maybe an underling.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, they could have pushed Dickey for a little more of a personal quote. Come on Bob. These are your Publishers for chrissake.
Congratulations to Hasson and the Westchester team! Hasson is one of the best assets this company has and she is the right person for this post.
ReplyDeleteOne press release in 12 days from that office, and it's screwed up. Come on.
ReplyDeleteMeh. Thank god my staff doesn't compare the words and phrases of their reviews.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but your staff reviews aren't meant for public dissemination. And the reviews are just more useless busywork for overworked managers.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just PR. HR has its problems. Yesterday corporate HR sent out a job vacancy posting for "Senior vice president, corporate marketing."
ReplyDeleteThis morning they sent out a corrected listing. They're just looking for a plain ol' vice president, corporate marketing. Ooopsie.
6:10 This company has somehow lost its edge. I don't know what has happened, but it's just plain sloppiness and documented unethical behavior like recycling quotes. You would never see a major bank or the Chamber of Commerce doing something like this, but Gannett just doesn't seem concerned about its public image. For a company involved in communications, this is even worse. It's to hell with employees, and to hell with the public. We know right, we can definite it anyway we want, and we don't really care what you think.
ReplyDeleteIm sure Pence and her team are very busy. And if she was a man, she wouldnt be getting such grief on this blog.
ReplyDeleteI bet Maryam is going bonkers over this. She's come on board to put together a new face for this company, and a new image that will coordinate advertising campaigns and bring in new revenue. I think she will make a big differene. But now the public relations office shows the real image of GCI is phony press releases and made-up quotes. So how can Maryam possibly complete her task?
ReplyDeleteThat press release gaffe sabotages the entire corporate branding effort, no question. If they are just making up stuff, why should I believe the quarterly press releases they put out on corporate revenues and profits? I wouldn't believe one of those now if it came across the P.R. Wire. Not that I ever believed it before.
ReplyDeleteDoes Robin use boilerplate for the quarterly financial reports? Are those really Gracia's words, or are they Robin Pence's. Remember there are tough new anti-fraud penalties for executives caught lying on financial reports that could land someone in jail for a long time.
ReplyDelete6:10 Isn't that Heather's job? Does that mean she's never going back?
ReplyDeleteGracia was the chief financial officer when Congress made it a felony for corporate executives to lie about their finances, so I don't think she would be foolish in anyway allowing Robin to put words in her mouth. The Sarbanes Oxley Act made it up to 20 years in prison for lying on these key reports, so I hope Robin hasn't been winging it. Look at Section 302 in particular:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.soxlaw.com/s302.htm
7:31 here...Sorry, make it read for corporate executives to lie about corporate finances xxx instead of their finances.
ReplyDeleteThe Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have been trying to get that Sarbanes Oxley law repealed because they see it could put execs behind bars for years just for making mistakes in their public statements.
ReplyDeleteWow.
ReplyDeleteMaryam can't do her job with this sort of chaos in Corporate. She's putting together a plan that has to stick for several years or a decade until the next technological change comes along. I think Robin knows this and is deliberately sabotaging Maryam because she's jealous and thinks her stunningly bad branding campaign was good enough.
ReplyDeletep.s. and remember the consultants hired to look at Robin's operation. Boy if that is true, do they ever have exhibit 1 now.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteSarbanes Oxley passed because of the collapse of Enron, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is still going after corporate insiders to recover money a decade later. They are using corporate press releases to show these execs misled investors about what the company was doing.
ReplyDeleteWow. People can be so mean on this blog. Is this really a healthy way to spend your time? Sad state of humanity.
ReplyDeleteBob Dickey is a strategic stinker who is an executioner and has made every organization he has worked with a smoldering pile of rubble.
ReplyDeleteI thought we were a communications co. When you cant even get a flack release properly done, what does this say about the rest of gannett? Robyn, do your job, for heaven sake.
ReplyDelete9:19 That's the problem. No one is doing their job properly. They are poaching on the territories of others, lying, cheating, deceiving and just plain making things up. And this is a newspaper?
ReplyDeleteMaybe Dickey can tee up something besides a form letter next time. Im sure to Hasson, it would have been a nice gesture. Could they make it up to her with a president's ring?
ReplyDeleteIt is a free-for-all, with everyone meddling in what others are supposed to do, then refusing to take responsibility when it goes wrong. No wonder we are hearing nothing about the layoffs they are putting together. They just can't figure out how to do it because the company's internal structure is carved into warring fiefdoms and is in a mess.
ReplyDelete9:32 is correct. And it underscores how top heavy this organization is. We have a fully staffed pr dept. Dickey and Kate Marymount as his No. 2 and this is what the company projects on a simple press release. At USA Today, we have a half dozen senior editors stumbling over themselves looking for busy work. The verticals are top heavy with do nothings. And nothing works.
ReplyDelete8:40 Wasn't us who lied on a throw-away press release. Was it?
ReplyDeleteIf Tom Squitieri is paraded through the newsroom and kicked out the door for lifting quotes, then how can Pence keep her job now?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/05/AR2005050501876.html
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete10:28 What journalism 101 course told you that. Lifting quotes either from a press release or another paper is a no-no. On a press release, you have to call and talk to the flack and ask to talk to the official about his quote, or get some assurance from the flack that he/she indeed said it. Otherwise it is just not journalism.
ReplyDeleteBoy talk about making a whole lot of noise about NOTHING. No one cares but you whiney, petulant 7 year olds. What a silly string of comments. Someone is going to jail? Please.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I make it a practice not to believe flacks under any circumstance. I think they are all an unethical and unprincipled lot, as Pence clearly showed today.
ReplyDelete10:47: Involvement in someone else's crime can and has been called a conspiracy. The feds hanged Mary Surratt for running a boarding house where the Lincoln conspirators put together the assassination plot.
ReplyDeleteLook, what pence/dickey did was sheer stupidity and incompetence that made gannett look dumb. But its not plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteReally, people? Is this what you're concerned about?
ReplyDeleteI believe those postings of a month ago about Maryam hiring consultants to report on Robin. As a newcomer, Maryam must have been puzzled about what Robin did and what her role really was in this company. It probably wasn't important. but Maryam wasn't certain. Now Maryam has her answer.
ReplyDelete7:56 They may not have been hired, but just some of Maryam's contacts helping her out. She seems to have a lot of friends.
ReplyDeleteThis is not plagiarism, and it doesn't begin to touch on Sarbanes-Oxley Act issues. Corporate publicists do this stuff all the time, and newspapers and broadcasters are complicit when they regurgitate these quotes in news stories.
ReplyDeleteIt would be far better, using this case as an example, to call Dickey and say (as any good journalist would), "What do you think about Hasson?" He might reply, "She's a terrific manager who loves journalism." And that would be the quote.
Alternatively, this Hasson statement could simply have omitted the quotation marks around the text attributed to Dickey.
Either way, the statement would have appeared less manufactured, and so more credible.
Yes, the SOX argument was much too creative. My bad.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I think I missed something. Since when are reporters not allowed to use quotes contained in press releases? Isn't that why they're there, to help both the source and the reporter?
ReplyDeleteI'll agree that on principle, an interview is always the best way of getting information. but if a person's not available, or if they speak in bland single syllables during the interview, I fail to see what's wrong with using the quote from a press release - especially when it's boilerplate, Captain Obvious-type material.
Perhaps bigshot national reporters who can get their calls returned at the drop of a hat can sniff and sneer at the practice. But where I'm from, in Small Newspaper World, it's a perfectly appropriate and ethical way to do things.
Bigshot national reporters don't get their phone calls returned, anymore than small newspaper reporters. Yes, you have to rely on a press release quote from time to time, but I always feel a let down having to do that and look for ways around it. You want to keep stories genuine and alive. Readers do notice things that stand out.
ReplyDeleteP.S. And when I use the press release quote, I always attribute it to a statement released by the company.
ReplyDeleteAs a PR person, in the digital and social world today, what I observe is these press releases just get picked up verbatim and reprinted a million times. Especially with job promotion stories.
ReplyDelete10:20 There's a cautionary note here for PR people, and that is your stuff maybe boilerplate, but it is read. I was surprised how fast the duplicative quote was picked up yesterday. I don't think Robin thought this through, but believed it was just a routine press release and no one would notice what her shop is doing. Big mistake.
ReplyDeleteCompetence is not All Within Reach at Garnett p.r.
ReplyDelete10:20 We've been having this debate and we haven't resolved it. The Internet provides an astonishingly bottomless pit of news items, and I think the future of journalism lies in combing through as much as you can and picking out the most newsworthy. Traditional newsrooms knew how to do this, and they brought on professionals who knew how to do it. But panicking in the face of technology and renaming newsrooms as operating centers and changing the name of newspapers to multi-media platforms is certainly not the way for us to go. Otherwise, we are just become part of the background noise.
ReplyDelete12:14 journalists ....real journalists...are valued cornerstones of our democracy. i pray the J-schools will adjust their curriculums to face this new problem of the internet and too much non-news acting like news.
ReplyDeletei pray that J-schools and the newer graduates will once again claim some standards for reporting the news.
This press release mistake will live on forever on the www. It may be a common mistake in PR depts. but it is embarrassing for a news company (yes a news company) to have allowed this to happen.
What's the difference between an operating center and an information center?
ReplyDeleteBTW, it's still a newsroom to me.
Wow, have standards changed since my college days!
ReplyDeleteIt was beat into our heads that a competent journalist would NEVER waste space citing a press release under any circumstances; they were used as leads for story ideas -- but nothing could be lifted direct from a flak writer, including quotes that likely would be manipulative at best and totally bogus at worst.
And now? Now there's a thread of "Yes, You Can" and "No, You Can't."
Why? Here's a thought:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-arum-college-20110602,0,1981136.story
3:32 You are kidding, right? Take a look at the papers today and you will see press releases being run unedited. Yes, press releases used to be used only as tip sheets, but today they run in papers. Some flacks don't even return calls from reporters they don't like covering their businesses (witness Robin, who I don't think has talked to Jim in months). Ask them, and they say they don't need you anymore because they have direct and unlimited access to the public.
ReplyDeleteJust google Janet Hasson today and you will see the press release reprinted in a number of places . Here is yahoo finance. Exact reprint of the Press Release....it's common practice. The WSJ did a short story and ignored the Gannett press release quotes but most sources went with the full press release.
ReplyDeletehttp://finance.yahoo.com/news/Janet-Hasson-named-bw-371812897.html?x=0&.v=1
4:03, no, I'm not kidding and, yes, you make a really good point. I appreciate it! I enjoy it when folks discuss viewpoints, rather than that all-too-common flame gibberish. So thank you!
ReplyDeleteHowever, in my view, the public needs a media no matter what the flaks think the public needs, regardless of how "unlimited" their access to it is.
I've seen plenty of outlets now that run a PR release word for word, but just because it's a widespread practice now doesn't make it any less depressing to see.
The public needs a cadre of professional journalists, not some rah-rah "yes" dude at some company whose first priority is to dress things up and whose last interest is to inform with as little bias as possible.
My posit is that we've wound up where we are (press releases replacing reporting) thanks to comparatively lax standards in what was once higher education.
5:55 You and I are singing from the same hymn book. I hate to see the newspapers in this state. It is not healthy either for informing the public, or for the future of the newspaper. Corporate is killing off these newspapers with this approach, and they are not looking at the long-term. Readers aren't stupid. By definition, newspaper readers are a sophisticated lot, and I think we need to give them the respect of giving them news and not recycled press releases. But I am crying into the wind about this. The economic pressures on the industry have brought us to this position. Corporate chases after the flavor of the month. Everyone on Wall Street is talking about Groupon, so we have to launch our own digital product Deal Chicken, no matter how disruptive this digital only deal is to our existing business. When Twitter came along, we all had to jump on that bandwagon even though no one -- including Twitter -- has yet figured out how to make big bucks from it. We are now destroying the traditional structures of newspapers to jump into the digital age, when everyone acknowledges the economics of it doesn't work yet and digital revenues cannot finance newspaper newsroooms. We are looking to a new age when TV anywhere will be delivered on mobile phones, yet all I see people doing with their Ipads and Ipods is play games. Go to a Starbucks and look over the shoulders of people with Ipads.
ReplyDeleteSince Corporate seems determined to turn us into shoppers like the litter dropped in my driveway each week, let me ask a question: how many stories you read in a shopper do you remember? Now how many stories that you read in a newspaper you bought?
ReplyDelete