Last week I chaired a ‘Thought Leaders’ event at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) in London where I interviewed Tom Foremski who became the first major journalist to quit mainstream media to make a living from blogging when he left the Financial Times to found Silicon Valley Watcher.

The event did leave me with some optimism that corporate media – that is companies paying real journalists to do real reporting – might be one future for quality journalism. Where I wasn’t so optimistic was where the next generation of quality journalists will come from. The traditional training ground was local newspapers and their decline mean opportunities for that crucial early learning are becoming rare. Some see the plethora of blogs and websites covering every conceivable subject area as being the alternative. I’m not convinced as they don’t have the seasoned old hacks who can teach the tricks of the trade. And I don’t mean fiddling expenses or hacking phones, but the old journalistic craft of knowing how to sniff out the truth in a story. How to check and double check the sources and facts. How to write well (and it’s not being pedantic to say that means good grammar, doesn’t need perfect grammar).

We explored a wide range of topics including content, corporate media, ethics, reputation, SEO, ‘Every Company is a Media Company’ and ‘brand journalism’ (we both hate the term).

As I was chairing the event and interviewing Tom I didn’t take any notes or record the conversation. However, I’ve captured some of the best tweets in Storify. If the embed doesn’t work for you then you can see it on the Storify site here.

The election for the 2014 president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has sparked several fascinating debates on both public relations and the future and relevance of the CIPR. What is without question is that this time, in Dr Jon White and Stephen Waddington, we have two absolutely outstanding candidates for president. I would be delighted with either.

That said this is an election and that means a decision. I am voting for Stephen Waddington.

One criticism that some have levelled at Stephen (or Wadds as he is more commonly known) is that he is too focused on the social media and digital aspects of public relations. I do not believe this to be the case. I spent the first half to date (indeed most of my career) so far doing ‘traditional’ public relations. As has Wadds. What we have in common is an understanding of the deeper social, political and economic impact of the internet and social media, as well as the ability to translate this into successful public relations practice.

His statements on public affairs, corporate communications and internal communications all demonstrate that he is capable of leading the CIPR across the full range of public relations disciplines and practice. What’s more he understands that these old silos and specialism are not the future of the profession.

Stephen Waddington or ‘Wadds’ in his own words:

Even in 2013 you find sceptics who don’t appreciate how the internet and the social web is disrupting traditional media consumption. Experian Hitwise has just published research that shows in 2012 the UK spent 37 billion hours online, but as that is far too big a number to comprehend it has helpfully distilled it into how it would look in a single hour:

Social is the biggest single element taking up 13 minutes of our time. News takes up just three minutes, which is depressingly below the time spent on shopping and alarmingly is the same as ‘adult’!

Since the launch a lot of the initial hype about Twitter’s six second Vine videos has thankfully died down. The latest to use Vine is the White House which has used it for the first time to promote the annual White House Science Fair.

I was a sceptic at launch and remain so, but am reserving final judgment until I’ve had an opportunity to use it properly myself. Which won’t happen until an Android version is available.

The issue that I’ve got is that compared to a tweet six seconds is just too long, I could read lots of tweets in that time. As I use HootSuite and rarely visit the Twitter website I’d never see it as embedded media. Therefore I’d only click on the link if I knew it was worth clicking first. The flip side of it being too long is that six seconds is also too short to do much worthwhile.

After three months there are still a lack of good examples, although there are a lot of examples of people talking about good examples which turn out not to be! If you think you’ve seen good examples that I’ve missed then please let me know in the comments.

Bill Nye @thescienceguy & @levarburton welcome you to the #WHScienceFair! vine.co/v/bP7JIZtYxrK

— The White House (@whitehouse) April 22, 2013

I’d like to say I had amazing insight and realised then how important blogs and the rest of social media and social networks would become. However, the truth is rather more mundane. When I was first elected as a local councillor in May 1999 I was one of very few to set-up a website. However, as I’m not a developer or designer, it was quite hard work to keep it relevant and up to date. And as I was very busy as both a local councillor and running my own PR consultancy it was time I didn’t have. That’s why when I first started reading blogs I thought it looked much, much easier and faster than trying to run a website.

Only two UK politicians had blogs before me. The first was former Sheffield Hallam MP Richard Allan and the second was Tom Watson MP. Richard stepped down in 2005 (his successor is current deputy prime minister Nick Clegg MP) and he is now a member of the House of Lords and works as director of policy in Europe for Facebook. Shortly after I started my councillor blog The Guardian did an article about me ‘Blogging for better bins’.

My PR blog was one of the first in the world, although it is a bit harder to track the exact timelines here as some people have changed blogging platforms or domains and archives aren’t always available. I was in the first 10-2o to start a PR blog. Some of the few before me who are still blogging today are Phil Gomes, Tom Murphy and Neville Hobson. Those starting shortly after include Richard Bailey and Philippe Borremans. This highlights one of the benefits of blogging as I’m now friends and have met them all except Phil (who I’ve only met via Google Hangout).

Both my councillor blog and my PR blog were hosted on a now defunct blogging platform called 2osix.co.uk, which was the UK division of a German blog publishing platform. Some of the people at 20six that I came across back then are still active today. PeerIndex founder Azeem Azhar and Sunstone Capital partner Max Niederhofer were both involved, as was freelance  journalist Johanna Payton.

Unfortunately the 20six sites are now unavailable, but you can still see an archive at Wayback Machine. This was my first PR post which explains why I chose 20six rather than the more popular and well-known Blogger:

My second post was hopefully more interesting and was about Alastair Campbell, the BBC and Andrew Gilligan in which I managed to avoid using the word Iraq, but did use the word frisbee.

My first councillor blog post was on Blogger, but I then switched it to 20six as well:

I deliberately let my councillor blog lapse when I was no longer as a councillor as it was always meant to be about local council issues rather than a generic political blog. I do however occasionally update Bruce on the World, which is my political and personal blog for posts that aren’t relevant to my professional PR blog.

My PR blog has had three platforms –first 20six, then Typepad and now a self-hosted WordPress blog.

This post is to say a huge thank you to all my readers and subscribers (so thanks Dad!) for sticking with me over the 10 years and hopefully A PR Guy’s Musings will still be going strong another ten years.

I’ve got a few new corporate communications, PR and social media speaking engagements coming up over the next few months. I’ll also shortly be announcing dates for a series of two day online PR and corporate communications strategy master classes to be held in London in early July, Mumbai (India) in late July and Houston (Texas) in mid August. I’ve also got dates for social media master classes in Brussels in May and June. Contact me if you’re interested in attending any of these master classes and I can tell you how to register.

CIPR Thought Leaders | Can ‘corporate media’ support serious journalism. Can it win a Pulitzer?
Wednesday 8 May 2013, London

I’m speaking alongside Tom Foremski at a Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Thought Leader expert briefing that asks (and tries to answer) provocative questions such as what’s the role of corporate media, will the the rise of corporate media serve society or hinder it, can corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism and can corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Master class on Online PR
22 May 2013, Tbilisi, Georgia

In May I’m a guest of Marketing House Georgia and will deliver a one day Online PR master class in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital. The course is designed for Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors and Heads of:

Corporate Communications, Public Relations, Corporate Affairs, External Communications, Public Affairs, Government Relations, Internal Communications, Stakeholder Relations, Investor and Analyst Relations

I’ll also be delivering a second one day online reputation management course for CEOs and senior government officials.

Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference
19-21 June 2013, London

The Cutting Edge Marketing and PR International Conference is a three day conference and series of master class workshops featuring speakers from the BBC, Microsoft, Amazon, Edelman and Trans-Arabian Creative Communications (TRACCS). I’m delivering a keynote presentation about ‘Global online communications: how to tackle the global vs. local challenge’ on Friday, June 21.

CIPR Annual Social Media Conference
11 July, London

The annual social media conference of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations will be based on the contents of the forthcoming Share This Too book. I’m chairing a Professional Practice Panel on ‘Putting the social into CSR’ and will be joined by two prominent experts on corporates social responsibility who will present short case studies and answer questions.

I spent yesterday at the European Parliament in Brussels running a training session for MEPs and their staff about Wikipedia and best practice. Most of what I said was based on the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines that we produced last year in co-operation with Wikimedia and I had a small hand in helping to create.

On the Eurostar home I discovered that the training I delivered might already be out of date as yet another PR and Wikipedia ‘scandal’ had erupted this time about BP’s Wikipedia page. However, this time it appears that the ‘guilty’ parties probably aren’t BP’s PR team who appear to have followed all the best practice, but the online ‘chattering classes’ and some Wikipedians who’ve taken offence at PRs at a ‘big, bad’ corporate following Wikipedia’s own guidance.

Basically the story is that Arturo Silva, a member of BP’s corporate communications team in Houston, created the Arturo at BP Wikipedia user account and used it to interact with the Wikipedia community in order to improve the BP Wikipedia page.

His user profile is fairly comprehensive, explains what the account is for and makes it clear he will only contribute to BP’s Talk page:

“Welcome to my user page. I have established this account to help improve BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia standards and guidelines. In the interest of full transparency, I chose “Arturo at BP” as my username so that my affiliation with BP is abundantly clear to all parties I may interact with on Wikipedia. Per WP:ORGNAME, I believe that this username is appropriate, and I should point out that I will be the only person to use this account.

Out of respect for guidelines on conflict of interest and the importance of a neutral point of view, and in recognition of the ongoing debate regarding companies’ involvement on Wikipedia, I will only be editing Talk pages and will not make any edits to encyclopedia articles. My primary goal in being active on Wikipedia through this account is to improve the overall quality of BP-related articles in line with Wikipedia guidelines.

Any delays in responding to inquiries are due to my other roles and responsibilities at BP which take up a significant amount of my time, so I appreciate your patience with me. I do look forward to working with other editors, and welcome any questions you may have on my Talk page.”

Most of this is inline with Wikipedia’s own guidelines and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Wikipedia Best Practice Guide that was created last year by the CIPR’s Social Media Panel in conjunction with ‘Wikipedians’ and Wikimedia.

I’d have recommended that the user profile stated absolutely that he worked for BP’s corporate communications team and there is question mark over if the company name should have been included in the user name, but apart from that it is all pretty good.

Arturo Silva then used his ‘userspace’ on this account to draft improvements to the BP page which he then pointed to on the BP talk page. He wrote everything from a neutral point of view and importantly always provided credible third party references for everything he wrote. This is precisely what is recommended in the CIPR guidelines and the idea is that this information is then checked by independent ‘Wikipedians’ and eventually incorporated into the actual Wikipedia user page by those independent third party editors.

Where it appears to have gone wrong is that despite Wikipedia’s commitment to a ‘neutral point of view’ the reality is somewhat different. The CIPR guidelines state that the definition of a neutral point of view is:

“All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopaedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias. Fundamentally, where there is a contentious issue associated with a topic, Wikipedia content should be a good reference for the debate. In a few words, neutrality means this: report the debate, don’t take part in it.”

The problem is that people don’t agree what “representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias” actually means. However, for some Wikipedians, and some member of the social media chattering classes, big business is always suspect and they would prefer for it not to be included as a ‘significant view’. It’s fine for an environmental activist to actually edit the page (as long as they don’t actually work for Greenpeace), but not for a ‘big, bad’ company to follow Wikipedia’s own guidelines.

On reflection I think my training yesterday is still valid as I caveated the CIPR’s Wikipedia Best Practice guidelines with the advise that it was always best to err on the side of caution. There are some brilliant, sensible people who devote hours of valuable time to editing and improving Wikipedia. But, as in any community, there is also a minority (who are always the most vocal) who aren’t reasonable and want their personal micro-view of the world to be inflicted on everyone.

It’s that minority you need to be careful of and reflect in your dealings with Wikipedia which is why I advised “Just because you’re allowed to do something, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea”.

Entries have just opened for the UK Social Media Awards 2013 which are now in their fourth year having previously been known as the Some Comms Awards. I’ve been a judge since the start and am pleased to say that I’m judging again this year alongside some great people including: PRCA chair Sally Costerton; Frank PR chair Graham Goodkind; Paul Fabretti, head of social media for O2 Telefonica and Stephen Waddington, European director of digital and social media for Ketchum.

The UK Social Media Awards are particularly special for me for as well as the usual ‘Best Use of’… Twitter, Facebook, social media in a crisis, community engagement etc type awards there is a very important one.

The Mark Hanson Award honours my former colleague and good friend who we tragically lost in 2011. It recognises the “brightest and most promising social media communicator under 30 years old”. This award is free to enter and you can self-nominate. So if you’re under 30 and doing great things then please don’t be bashful and put your name forward. If you know someone who is eligible please make sure they enter as too many folk are typically British and too reserved to put their names forward.

The awards are sponsored by PR Moment and supported by both the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA).

This viral video digital public affairs campaign from the Campaign for Equal Marriage was the winner of last year’s Best Viral Campaign and the overall Grand Prix prize.

On Wednesday May 8 I’m looking forward to speaking at a special event with Tom Foremski looking at ‘Can corporate media support serious journalism?’

The session is at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) head office and sponsored by content sharing technology provider PressPage which has posted a social media news release:

Can ‘corporate social media’ support serious journalism?

As everyone now has access to an online printing press that can potentially reach tens of millions of people, corporate media -the next step up from brand journalism- is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

PressPage, the leading provider of content sharing technology, and the CIPR are co-hosting a session on May 8 in which Tom Foremski and Stuart Bruce will explore the role and possibilities of corporate media.

As traditional media outlets shrink, corporations are stepping up their own media creation efforts. Some are starting to produce serious journalism.

During this Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) hosted session, Tom Foremski and Stuart Bruce will explore four important questions that are facing so many communications departments today:

• What’s the role of corporate media?
• Will the rise of corporate media serve society, or hinder it?
• Could corporate media become the new funding model for serious journalism?
• Could corporate media win a Pulitzer?

Interested in joining this CIPR event? Register here.

“Back in 2008, Tom’s initial ideas about the digital press release was a main inspiration for the PressPage founders. It is really exciting to see how his research and ideas are evolving towards corporate media,” said Bart Verhulst, Co-founder and CEO of PressPage.

“Stuart Bruce is the éminence grise of online newsroom technology. Having Tom’s ideas on corporate media translated into practical implementation is an exciting idea,” said Roel Cozijnsen, PressPage’s General Manager UK

About Tom Foremski

Tom Foremski is the founder and Editor of the popular and top-ranked news site Silicon Valley Watcher, reporting on the business and culture of innovation.

In May 2004, Tom became the first journalist to leave a major newspaper, the Financial Times, to make a living as a full-time journalist blogger. Tom has been reporting on Silicon Valley and the U.S. tech industry since 1984. His current focus is on the convergence of media and technology—the fuel for a new era for Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley has become Media Valley, and this is affecting businesses worldwide

Foremski is also the originator of the ‘Every Company is Media Company‘ concept and actively researches the role and possibilities of ‘corporate media’.

About Stuart Bruce

Stuart Bruce MCIPR is an international trainer and consultant specialising in digital corporate communications, online PR, digital public affairs and social media for private sector and government clients in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. He is a part-time lecturer to post-graduate and under-graduate students at Leeds Metropolitan University and one of the authors of Share This: The Social Media Handbook for PR Professionals.

He is a CIPR national council member and a founder member of its social media panel. He is regularly listed in PRWeek’s Power Book of the UK’s top 1% of most influential PR people and is also a frequent speaker at international PR and communications conferences. Stuart was one of the world’s first PR bloggers and has been writing stuartbruce.biz for almost 10 years.

About PressPage

PressPage offers a social media release and newsroom platform to PR agencies that can be easily branded and seamlessly integrated into the websites of an agency’s clients. The platform gives PR agencies the opportunity to create, manage and track rich multi-media (press) messages with direct integration to and from social media platforms.

PressPage partners with PR agencies, providing them with the technology to make the most of the content they develop for the brands they work with. The secure technology, enables agencies to deliver a newsroom for their clients without needing access to other parts of the website. As well as integrating with social media platforms PressPage’s technology also enables agencies to share content with clients for approval before it is published and to make changes in real time. The agency is able manage multiple client sites through a single portal while limiting access rights to those who need them. It also has the ability to collect data from users and deliver measurement.

PressPage has partnered with leading PR agencies worldwide who have integrated it into their offer for small clients through to multinationals. PressPage is also a preferred supplier of the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) and a partner of IPRA (International Public Relations Association)