May 22, 2017
Good times for PR at PRSA Counselors Academy. No-slide presentations! Better tools for Facebook Groups. Wordpress joins Hacker One and offers a bounty on bugs. Quartz has an Obsession with propaganda. Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley are together for another episode of the Inside PR podcast. Good times for PR at Counselors Academy Martin returned this week from Counselors Academy and he reports that attendance was up substantially. Martin estimated that about one third of the attendees being first timers. We talk about the conference and the subject matter that stood out for Martin. And among the best news for Gini and Joe: Next year's Counselors Academy will be held in Toronto. Better Tools for Facebook Group Administrators Facebook has provided group administrators with the ability to set up a brief questionnaire that prospective new members must answer when requesting membership in the group. It's not a big thing. But it will help administrators to understand who is joining the group and what has drawn them to it. Thank you Facebook. Wordpress steps up its efforts to keep our Websites secure Over 28% of the top Websites are powered by Wordpress. So, it's great to see that Wordpress continues to take security seriously. So props to Wordpress for joining HackerOne and for introducing a bug bounty program. Quartz Obsesses on PRopaganda Quartz has started a new collection of articles on a topic that should be of interest to PR practitioners: Propaganda. No, we're not suggesting that we see ourselves as propagandists. But it would be naïve to suggest that the birth of the PR industry and propaganda weren't closely intertwined. And in these times, its ever more important for us to pay attention to the ethics of communications. And when you've bookmarked the Quartz obsession, you may want to check out Tim Wu's treatment of Ed Bernays and the birth of PR in The Attention Merchants. And for a lean-back experience that should spark further thought, find and watch The Century of the Self, a four part documentary first shown on BBC in 2002.