The Importance of Earnest Service

In his column, The Ethicist, Randy Cohen wrote recently in The New York Times, “Your wife should err on the side of caution and not take anything of value from a supplier.” The woman supervised travel for a company and she’d won the grand raffle prize of two roundtrip tickets to Japan at an event sponsored by several airlines. There were some 1,000 guests.

In my first job out of college I worked at Dun & Bradstreet writing credit reports. We were told that if a company we visited manufactured matchbooks not to take a single match, even to light a cigarette. That has been my guideline ever since.

Yet I think that Cohen is being harsh in this instance. He softens at the end of the column, noting to the husband who sent in the query, “At the least, she must disclose her winnings to her supervisors and get their green light before she packs her bags.” I’m comfortable with that.

Some in the media won’t let a PR person buy them so much as a cup of coffee. Others gather enough loot over years to fill a strip mall. Reporters and editors don’t have a lot of time to schmooze over lunch these days, nevertheless, just as business is done by some on a golf course, I can’t imagine how, for the price of a lunch or a coffee, anyone would sell their soul and run photos of horrible looking, poorly made or faulty goods in a new product column or run positive coverage of a lackluster ad campaign or sleazy business.

What about a book or movie reviewer who is sent/given a galley or invited to preview the flick? I don’t recall reading in their reviews that they didn’t pay for the book or seat at the theatre and it doesn’t bother me. What about a beauty editor sent samples that aren’t samples but entire bottles and jars? No problem in my mind. Making up samples would cost a fortune and wouldn’t provide the same experience. Packaging–how the beauty product looks and how the dispenser works–is part of the evaluation.

Full disclosure: I send promo codes to reviewers who ask for them so they can try a client’s smartphone application and have given hundreds of yards of fabric and countless rolls of wallpaper and dinnerware and flooring to be used for newspaper or magazine new product pages or to decorate a home that a magazine photographs.

Obviously, if a company pays any of the reviewers for their assessments, they must disclose this relevant piece of information, whether they write for a blog, web site, an online or print newspaper or magazine. Special sections or advertorials are paid for by the participants and are clearly identified by publishers, usually at the top of the page.

Because attitude and service are more than half of the experience, I think that a restaurant, hotel or travel reviewer should be anonymous and pay for all his/her expenses, no exceptions. 

What about stock brokers? Should they tell you that they’ve been told to push an investment by the boss?

Where do you stand on full disclosure? Do you care?

Every job has guidelines. People often ignore, forget or question them but a few procedures are infallible and dangerous to disregard because of potential consequences.

Employees casually shrug off 1) good manners in communicating with office colleagues 2) a pleasant demeanor when speaking with patients and their family members in a hospital or nursing home or 3) gracious service at a spa or restaurant. You’ve heard the perpetrators claim: “Wasting time on such frills is so yesterday and I’m not paid for that, anyway.” I’m convinced that those sentiments manipulate insecure associates who don’t want to appear old fashioned–the opposite of hip–so they follow.

Nobody gets really hurt when people ignore some guidelines. Ignore others and the outcome can range from costly to horrific. A friend had to inspect every pill each nurse handed her husband while he was in the hospital because a careless one had given him a medication to which he was allergic. The warning about his allergy was clearly noted on his chart, but who looks?

Then there’s Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s downfall. For anyone dealing with the press, there is one guideline for which there are no exceptions: There is no off the record. Translation: Unless you don’t care or want it to leak out, when dealing with the media, keep your mouth shut about proprietary information or your opinion, if it doesn’t match the mission. That means not a word to your cousin, sister-in-law or some freelance writer for a publication that has nothing to do with your business–period. Why? Because the press’s guideline is the opposite: To get you to say something news, gossip or gotcha-worthy.

Some guidelines seem obvious and yet need to be spelled out: When planning a fieldtrip for children, spec out where you are going and every detail about the outing. Last week a 12 year old drowned at a beach that had no lifeguard. Two teachers from a NYC school and an intern watching 24 children by the ocean did not take the place of a lifeguard and a hidden rip current didn’t help. I’m dumbfounded that before finalizing the trip nobody called the town hall or local authorities to confirm that there was a lifeguard on duty or looked up the beach’s summer schedule on line.

Public school children aren’t the only victims. I knew a family who lost a child during an overnight at an expensive summer camp. The counselor pitched camp near a ravine and the child woke up in the middle of the night, became disoriented and fell into the canyon.

I admire the adults who take children on class trips especially in the NYC subway. I’ve seen teachers herd hoards of kids into a subway car and out at the right stop. It’s important to show the children points of interest where they live, but guidelines are essential in these instances.

What other guidelines are meant to be followed, no exception?

“Joe is not a communist.”

I first heard about ad hominem as a college freshman and that was the example. At the time, being a communist was as bad as being a terrorist is today. We now speak about identity theft, which we didn’t then, but with the flick of innuendo, a reputation can be stolen even faster and more easily than an identity.

I’ve been told countless times what a softie I am, how I try to squeeze out some good reason or rationale for someone’s bad moves. And so many times I am wrong-the person I try to protect or excuse turns out to be guilty in spades.

So this post isn’t as much about innocence or guilt as it is about perception and approach and inference-and how it can destroy someone.

I’ve been bothered by the way New York Governor Patterson has been treated by the press. I have the impression that people are out to get him and will pick and scratch and search for anything they can to ruin his reputation and credibility.

Take his accepting free tickets to a baseball game. I mean really. There is a law or rule that says you can’t do that and I suppose you will find a politician somewhere who doesn’t accept so much as a stick of gum from a soul. But ruin a man’s chance of finishing his term with honor and accomplishing something in a state that sorely needs governance over a couple of tickets? Hmmmm. We’ve had leaders in our state who haven’t paid taxes on $millions and voters shrugged.

As for Patterson’s interference in a case of alleged abuse by an aide of his girlfriend, turns out the Governor spoke with her. He should not have. He broke the law. The New York Daily News reported that the girlfriend testified that their conversation didn’t influence her missing the court date resulting in the charges against her boyfriend, the Governor’s aide, being dismissed. Have you ever tried to diffuse an explosive situation between two people to help out a friend, family member or colleague?

The Governor’s communications director resigned yesterday and the implication in the news was that she was yet another rat leaving a sinking ship. When Patterson was interviewed on WOR-Radio this morning [March 18], he told John Gambling that because they are both under investigation in the same case, they are forbidden to speak with one another, which makes it impossible for her to do her job. He noted that they are personal friends.

Do details like this matter? The press and public have already decided. All these darts have been used to prove that he is unfit to govern without specifically saying so. Are they the hors d’oeuvres to something more, or is this like the preview of the scandalous story about the Governor that we heard would appear in The New York Times days before it did and when it ran, it was more about Patterson’s aide’s behavior than about him.

What he’s done shows a lack of judgment inappropriate in a leader. Putting it in perspective, we’ve been involved in wars because of deliberate misinformation and life goes on, the perpetrators of misinformation have finished off their terms.

Comparing Patterson’s “sins” with those of politicians involved with drugs and worse, and who come back like face wrinkles a few months after injections of botox, is a head scratcher.

Is he being indicted for inadvertently leaping to the top of a leadership heap without paying his political dues and then not doing what his party orders him to do?

Am I being naïve or too easy on the Governor? Do you know of instances where colleagues, friends or public figures have been painted with negative ink or gossip that takes years, if ever, to wear off?

Straws have broken this very tough and loyal camel’s back four times, leaving me no choice but to resign and move on, twice from clients and twice from jobs.

Or maybe the straws didn’t break; they directed needed light on impossible situations.

I wonder what the editorial staff of the Dallas Morning News will do–will reporters stay at their jobs because there are so few jobs left in the industry, or will they walk? I’m getting ahead of myself, if you didn’t read Richard Pérez-Peña’s article, “Some Dallas Editors Will Report to Ad Sales,”  in Friday’s New York Times.

I first heard about this situation from Carolyn Gatto on Thursday night. Carol’s always ahead of the curve. The co-founder and publisher of WeJustGotBack.com, an award-winning family travel resource, wrote the November 9 post “Service of Magazine Subscriptions” for this blog.

She sent me the link to the post in the Dallas News Blog, Dallas Observer, “At The Dallas News, a New ‘Bold Strategy’: Section Editors Reporting to Sales Managers,”  by Robert Wilonsky.

Carol, who for some 25 years edited consumer magazines, summarized the situation: “The reporting structure has changed so that editors will be reporting to glorified sales managers. The latter will, no doubt, dictate what the former can and–more importantly–cannot write.”

She continued, “I have nothing against advertorials [material that simulates editorial and is paid for by an advertiser], as long as they’re properly labeled as such, but that Dallas newspaper is going to be nothing but advertorials. I’m shuddering at the thought. Times may be tough in the newspaper industry, but don’t they still have an obligation to be honest with readers? Or am I a Pollyanna?”

As a former magazine editor and longtime PR person who holds the media in high regard, this turn of events breaks my heart. It makes a mockery of what publicists do for a living when they take a client’s product or concept and point out its newsworthiness or give relevance and validity to a new and/or mature product with the objective of catching a reporter’s or editor’s attention to inspire editorial coverage and the third party endorsement it implies.

Why does this desperate measure remind me of what happened to retail when bean counters were put in charge of talented merchandisers?  By tamping down creativity–God forbid anyone should spend a cent more than required–traffic and sales suffered,  sounding the death Nell for department stores.

What good are restaurant, movie, theatre or travel reviews in which criticism is forbidden for fear of offending an advertiser? What if a reporter in the real estate section wants to write about a crooked mortgage scam, but the bank in question is an advertiser–does the public remain in the dark? If newspapers are having trouble attracting readers now, just you wait!

I have always honored the separation between advertising and editorial. If a publisher has suggested a quid pro quo, offering my client editorial space in return for advertising support, OK, but I would never suggest it.  

What do you think of newspaper reporters whose bosses are in sales, not in editorial? Does collaboration between editorial and advertising bother you?

Daily we read about and observe smart cost-cutting measures by people and businesses to help ride out the worst economic downturn in recent memory.

Some survival tactics like The New York Times selling one of its jewels–classic music radio station WQXR–are necessary. And the survival part is nerve-wracking. If cutting below the quick can happen to the newspaper of record, is anyone immune? What’s next? Scary.

I get the QXR move, but wonder what to think about the Times not paying to subscribe to other papers and magazines for its Metro desk-telling the staff to buy its own subscriptions. The memo, that appeared in The New York Observer,  offers the option to read the competition on line through the paper’s research department. Is wasting staff time a false economy?

Shopping in the back of your closet, creative gift-giving ideas and learning to cook and eating wonderful, imaginative meals at home all make sense.

In this context, closing down Gourmet Magazine doesn’t jibe, except the savings to Conde Nast are obvious. I read in the New York Post on Friday, October 9, that the editor-in-chief was paid $1 million a year and will get $5 million in severance–a chunk of change in any economy. I have talented, dedicated, brilliant editor friends who’d be happy to work for half that amount–perhaps less! I wonder if the staff was given the option of accepting lower salaries to save the magazine, but who can compete with $5 million?

For brands staying in business some cost cuts backfire. A favorite radio station is selling hour blocks of time, formerly devoted to creative programming, to alternative medicine or real estate sponsors who conduct humdrum, self-serving advertorials. In the short run, they generate income for the station as the sponsors pay for the time. My bet is that most of the audience turns the dial to another station or off. I do. I also worry about the talent: Will they be able to make ends meet on salaries based on shortened schedules?

A business that thinks it can get away with using inexpensive, insufficiently trained foreign labor in its customer service department or a maze of numbers to punch on the phone with a range of options, none of which fit your reason for calling, is making a mistake. You may be stuck with that brand for now, but you will never again buy it nor will your friends who will tire of your drawn-out horror story and never forget the brand’s name.

Have you come across business cutbacks that you predict will flop in the long run or intelligent ones that you admire?

A clever headline is memorable and if it doesn’t lead you into a story, it will make you smile or think twice. What fun it would be to write headlines for a living!

The New York Post is the winner in this list of my favorites and those of friends/followers of this blog.

Editor and writer Jim Roper’s choice is “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” which, I learned, is the title of a book of headlines by New York Post staff. Other juicy ones in the book:

           Lady is a Trump

           Axis of Weasel

           Holy Shiite

Recently this paper reported on yet another NJ political scandal that also involved some rabbis. The headline: “Kosher Nostra.” “Tiger Tamed,” a front pager, announced Y E Yang’s winning the PGA in August in an upset over Tiger Woods. And “Ex-con-stitutional” was how the paper drew you into news of a research center run by ex convicts.

PR colleague Sharon Clancy Lienau shared “Ears Pierced While You Wait.” [This reminded me not of a headline, but of a greasy spoon on the upper west side of Manhattan called "Eat and Run."]

Beautyblitz.com founder and editor, Polly Blitzer, wrote an article for Family Circle which she called, “Take 2 and call me in the morgue.” She covered the TV ads that claim to cure you of an ailment and simultaneously warn you of astronomical potential side effects.

Bambe Levine, Bambe Levine public relations remembers “Ford to City Drop Dead.” The New York Daily News  ran it in 1974 when the President refused to bail out the city.  

If you know some poignant or memorable headlines, please share!

Matt Mecs’ comment to Jeremiah, who wrote “Service of Mature Music,” [July 16] was so insightful and worthwhile that it needed the platform of a post.

Responding to Matt’s comment, Jeremiah wrote: “I’d be a fascinated reader were you to write a post about ‘The Service of Radio Advertising.’” Subsequently he asked Matt to tell him more about the validity of the 18 to 54 demographic.

Matt has superlative credentials to address the topic and generously shared his views with us. He is vice president and director of sales for Local Focus Radio, New York and adjunct professor in media for the MBA program at Metropolitan College of New York.

Matt writes:

Jeremiah, you asked why A18-54? It has been that way for decades now, and does not take into account people living longer. Nor does it factor that baby boomers are the most affluent for their generation in history. Like the railroad and record industries, radio has stumbled badly keeping up with the times.

Like TV and print, radio has lost share in terms of ad dollars. There is that famous Wannamaker quote that “I know half of my ad budget is being wasted, I just do not know which half.”

In this hyper-niched, Return on Investment, quantifiable era of information, that no longer cuts it.

Internet will continue to take an ever-growing share of ad revenue. For example, if you log onto Rachel Ray’s website, not only will marketers know which site you came from, and which site you went to afterwards, but they will also know if you print out a recipe, what zip code you live in, your probable income, and so forth.

For an advertiser’s point of view, compare this to spending millions advertising on a TV show. With Tivo and DVR your commercials have no guarantee of being seen. Or radio stations running 10 commercials in a row - like anyone in their right mind would listen to that?

I met an owner of one cell phone company who will pay you .2 cents if you have an ad playing on your cell phone. So, if I call you, instead of hearing the ringing, I might hear a 5 second ad for the NY Philharmonic. The cell phone company gets .5 cents per call, so makes a huge profit % wise, and the client (Philharmonic) knows that their ad is actually being heard at a minimal cost.

This is tremendously tacky and sure to annoy your friends but it is these interesting new business models that might in 10 years time from now appear to be normal.

For instance, Google has sold ads in people’s private emails for approximately eight years now, so if you write to a friend in a “private” email about going to the Delaware Water Gap, you might see an ad for Delaware car insurance on the side of the page in your email. This raised a huge fuss as an invasion of privacy when it was introduced as a business model because computers were “reading” your email, but now it is just business as normal.

My mother is 74, and cannot imagine life without her New York Times in print (not on computer), listening to WQXR, and drives me to insanity with her inability to use her cell phone, or email. As she is retired, she is fairly careful with her money, and has her definite brand loyalties. You can see from a business point of view that she is a nightmare for advertisers to target, and they mainly do so through print, such as AARP The Magazine, with pharmaceuticals being the largest spenders.

Pharma has a tough time advertising on radio because they have to have at least a 10 second disclaimer (which might be sped up to sound as gibberish) and is particularly tough with the move to 30 second radio spots as opposed to 60.

In fact, radio stations are now selling 3-5 second ads (maybe a quick “come to Burger King,”) because they know that people have much shorter attention spans these days.

I got my MBA last year in marketing and am looking to get into internet marketing, but coming from a radio background, and in my mid 30s, I am seen as a bit of a dinosaur as well. This sounds melodramatic, but I go to networking events where cocky 20-somethings have exciting business plans, money from venture capitalists, and speak a jargon that I can only vaguely follow. When I say I sell radio time, I just get a patronizing look.

Radio will always have a place in small-town rural America, particularly with certain loyal formats that take pride in having a place in the community. Examples are country music (the most popular format by number of stations), African American and particularly Hispanic stations. Joe’s car dealer does not care about ratings, just about customers coming through the door. Unfortunately, classical stations are dying around the country, because while the listeners have money, there are just not enough of them, and there is no way of proving to advertisers that their message will be heard.

For big cities, where expenses are magnified, we will see more and more obscure and different ways of “breaking thru the clutter.” My old office building (before the radio company I worked for went bankrupt) at a prestigious mid-town Manhattan Park Avenue address sold a wall mural to Timberland shoes that was about 20 ft. by 20 ft. It was up, generating income for the building and exposure for Timberland, for a couple of months.

These are just a few random thoughts about demographics and the radio business!

If you have questions for Matt, fire away! How would you reach his Mom if you had something to sell?

Guest writer Jeremiah, a retired business executive and classical music devotee, wrote about this subject in May when he was bracing himself for a blow–the silencing of a longtime radio friend and access to the music he loves. The second shoe fell early this week, so Jeremiah asked to follow up on his initial post.

Some of you may recall my May 8th post in which I bemoaned the rumored soon-to-happen passing of the oldest classical radio station in the country, WQXR, from the music scene here in New York. This is now old news.

The New York Times announced on Tuesday that it had, in essence in a brilliant and creative feat of financial engineering, sold the chronically money losing radio station for a net of $45,000,000. The deal: It is selling its 96.3 FM broadcast license to a Latino broadcasting company in exchange for $33,500,000 and a license to broadcast at 105.9 FM. In turn, it will sell the call letters WQXR and the 105.9 FM license for $11,500,000.to the public radio station, WNYC, which has agreed to operate WQXR at the new frequency as a listener supported public music station. It is a great deal for the Times! They are getting rid of a chronic looser for a bundle of cash, and get great publicity for “saving” classical music to boot!

I shall probably go on listening to the new WQXR, but I may just listen to my own CDs instead.

However, I am troubled and puzzled. Given what the demographics of the New York City area are, the old WQXR audience must have included many of the wealthiest and brightest people in the country. Why were they not enough of a target market for advertisers to keep the old station going at a profit? Is radio advertising more effective when targeted to disadvantaged people or those who have been deprived of sophisticated educations and may be less affluent?

I also dislike knowing that now my listing to classical music will be paid for, at least in part, by taxpayers. The new WQXR, no doubt, will be a tax-exempt entity and will receive government subsidies. All music is entertainment. The government should not be in the entertainment business. Further, as a matter of principle, the government should not favor one form of music over another.

And lastly, I shall miss hearing my news on the same radio station I listen to for music. Public radio news must inevitably be canted to a bias of whoever is in control of the government in Washington. Can it be trusted to be impartial?

Does anybody agree with me?

I have an unsubstantiated theory: Adults who blame others for what they’ve done were severely punished as children for owning up to a broken dish or stained carpet or the dog’s missing eyelashes or other bad move. So they’re programmed not to admit to any wrongdoing.

Or their parents have told them, and the world, that nothing is ever their fault.  “He’s really great at X, but not when it’s raining or on a Tuesday.”  “She’s usually very friendly, but not when surrounded by the likes of these children.” “What did that nasty teacher do to you?” Sound familiar?

I admit to making excuses for others so as to divert blame for inappropriate outbursts: “is there a full moon?” or “did he forget to take his meds?” or “she must have had a bad day at work.”

We see the game of hot potato played out in some corporate cultures where it appears to be deadly to admit to making a mistake. Hot potato is a version of musical chairs. When the music stops, if you’re holding the potato-or left standing–you are out of the game.

The publisher of The Washington Post recently blamed the marketing director for distributing materials about a controversial initiative involving sponsored evenings at her home. The underwriters would pay to meet the editorial staff that covered their industries. She said that the information, as written, was misleading and that she hadn’t approved it, nor had the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. [Did the editor even know about this plan? Editors at such prestigious papers don't believe in selling access.]  I find it hard to believe that a marketing director would send out anything about such a potentially explosive/sensitive program without getting approvals, though mistakes happen. Guess the buck doesn’t stop at the head of that place.

Blame happens at all levels and industries. A good friend was recently reprimanded by a handyman for breaking a screen door when his attempts to fix it failed.  My BlackBerry went on the fritz last weekend. It would send but didn’t receive e-mails. After an hour+ at the telephone supplier’s store, I was told the fault was with my computer. It wasn’t. By Monday, without a mandatory [they said] visit by my [brilliant] IT person, the miracle gadget was back to snuff.

What’s your take on blame? Does it serve a good purpose sometimes? Have you been unfairly blamed, or noticed instances of blame run rampant?

There are instances when silence is fitting. I’ve been sworn to secrecy by several who were planning to leave a company–well before they’d given notice–and I’ve also been asked for privileged information. In all cases, I’ve remained mum.

On the escape of reporter David Rohde over the weekend, I first heard that Bill Keller, executive editor, The New York Times, had encouraged news organizations to honor a news blackout about Rohde’s capture by the Taliban last November, to help save his life.

I was impressed it had been honored. News organizations’ restraint, based on Keller’s request, the Rohde family’s pleas and recommendations by kidnapping experts, was commendable. But Bob Steele, ethics instructor at the Poynter Institute, brings up the issue of a double standard.

In “Rohde: media face tough choices in kidnap cases,” on the Christian Science Monitor’s Global News blog,  Dan Murphy quotes Steele. [Joe Strupp, Editor & Publisher, also interviewed Steele on this topic.]  

Steele told Murphy: “The trick is to make journalistic and ethical decisions in a fashion that is not unduly influenced by, say, pressure from terrorists, the self-interest we have in protecting one of our own, or the potential connections we have with government agencies.”

Murphy continues his quote of Steele, “As to a possible double standard, ‘I think that is a weak spot in the underbelly of the decision making in these cases. We show a preference for one of our own in journalism generally by holding back a story or elements of a story compared to how we might cover the kidnapped oil field worker or diplomat or tourist. In those cases, we might not bring as serious a deliberative process to how we’re going to cover it.’”

What are your thoughts about the press zipping their lips and turning off their computers in this case? Should they do this in all instances–not just for fellow news colleagues? Have you been in a position where you kept silent and were glad of it?