By Carl Carter, APR I’m going to be totally up front here: The mainstream media don’t write fake news. They don’t make up stories. They don’t do stories based on a single phone interview – at least, not about anything that matters. When I say mainstream, I mean the Washington Post and The New York […]
Business reporters are disappearing. Here’s what that means to you.
By Carl Carter, APR When you’re seeking publicity for an upcoming business event, there’s one thing you should know: You’re probably going to be communicating with a reporter who knows little about business. She may not know the difference between revenues and income, let alone any specialized jargon. That’s because of a change that happened […]
Business reporters are disappearing. Here’s what that means to you.
By Carl Carter, APR, AMM When you’re seeking publicity for an upcoming auction, there’s one thing you should know: You’re probably going to be communicating with a reporter who knows little about business and nothing about auctions. She may not know the difference between revenues and income, let alone any of the jargon we use […]
Time to break your Facebook News habit. Here’s how.
You need to quit getting your news on Facebook. Right now. I mean it. There you are, madly clicking stories shared by your friends, who probably tend to think like you. On top of that, Facebook tends to note what kind of stuff you like and show you more of the same, so even if […]
Why smoke is more dangerous than fire: Public opinion is the harshest court of all
By Carl Carter, APR Forget the headlines about meetings with Russians for a moment. Let’s set aside the question of whether any of the stuff about conflicts of interest have any merit. Instead, I’m going to argue that in terms of its danger to a politician, a corporation or any other institution, looking guilty is […]
BirminghamWatch steps into the breach: Veteran journalists provide in-depth local coverage for the city
By Carl Carter, APR When I arrived at The Birmingham News with a newly minted journalism degree in the mid ‘70s, one of the first people I got to know was Carol Nunnelley, then covering City Hall. We and dozens of others worked hard on a newspaper that went through four editions a day. There […]
You want publicity? If you don’t know these things, you’re screwed.
By Carl Carter, APR You’ve seen the numbers on the decline in the number of working journalists in our nation’s newspapers. I’ve been writing about them for a decade. Now, I’m going to tell you some of the stuff behind the numbers. I’m a public relations professional and a media relations specialist. (No, those aren’t […]
Want to be better informed? Choose your news media carefully. Here’s how.
By Carl Carter, APR “Hotels in Birmingham were jammed to capacity.” It was a simple, natural part of the coverage of one of the biggest stories we covered in my decade as a reporter for The Birmingham News: Bear Bryant had died. We stopped the presses, called in the distribution trucks, and put every warm […]
No, the mainstream media aren’t lying. And you need them more than you think.
By Carl Carter, APR For years, I have lived and preached that the one non-negotiable principle for those of us engaged on communications must be to tell the truth. Because once you begin telling lies, people will find out and quit believing you. We have a lot of terms for this. The old stodgy one […]
Tainted Truffles: Why I’m boycotting news links from Facebook
By Carl Carter, APR Just because I love you, I’m giving you chocolates. A box of 100 truffles, to be precise. And I’ll give you more if you like them. There’s only one catch. In every box, I’ll inject one truffle with a drug that will either make you vomit, give you a fever, or […]