With over 2,000 journalists in 300 locations worldwide, the Associated Press is picked up by over 1,000 U.S. daily newspapers and thousands of television and radio broadcasts.   I attended a recent Inside the Media event by the Public Relations Society of New York to learn how AP gathers the news and how to secure coverage by three Associated Press journalists .

Panelists:

Amanda Y. Barrett,  New York City News editor at AP

John Simons, technology and media editor at AP

Beth Harpaz, travel editor at AP.

Since John Simons manages reporters covering technology trends, gadgets, and technology companies, he recommends you understand the issues of the day before pitching him. For example, if there was a breaking news story about a company that had been hacked and you knew of a business that recently had been hacked after spending lots of money and putting in a new secure system, John would look forward to hearing from you. If you or your client cannot tell him something on the record, don’t say it. There have been situations where a media outlet makes a deal that in order to get an interview with a top CEO or celebrity, the PR/Communications department is allowed to review the interview/article before it goes to print/on air but that is not the policy of Associated Press. John receives over five hundred emails daily so you will get his attention if the body of the email is the length of a tweet (one hundred forty characters).

You can email John Simons: jsimons@ap.org

As the Associated Press travel editor Beth Harpaz covers lifestyle and entertainment and turns to Twitter and Facebook to see what trends people are talking about. For lead time it is best to get your story idea to Beth one month prior to the event and if your story idea is late she will save it and do next year if your story is interesting and worth covering. Are you, or do you know someone that may be an expert on certain holiday trends? Beth spoke on how there have been gingerbread displays in hotels lobbies and now she sees a trend of gingerbread houses ten feet tall in hotels so if you can get an expert on that trend that helps me do my job better. As with John, if you email Beth she suggests that if your pitch was a tweet what would it be?

You can email Beth Harpaz: bharpaz@ap.org

At AP Amanda Barrett is responsible for all the New York City news editors covering police, courts, federal, and City Hall. Since AP is not a local news station Amanda advises you provide information that points to a trend as AP is a global news organization and if you understand and read our copy you will have an idea of the type of news stories AP covers. Amanda appreciates it when public relations people understand the mission of the Associated Press. One recent bad PR experience Amanda shared was when she had been dealing with Hurricane Sandy storm coverage and received a phone call from a woman boasting that she had the greatest story, but then launched into a political pitch even after Amanda told this person that it was not a good time to talk but the woman kept on with her pitch. If you are unable to secure coverage with Amanda you still have another option, The AP Daybook.  To get into the AP daybook e-mail APNYC@AP.org and in the subject put date in the event, do not send attachments.

You can email Amanda Barrett abarrett@ap.org.

You can follow Amanda on Twitter: AmandaB1201.

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Left to right: Jenny Dervin from JetBlue, Michael Clendenin from Con Edison, Gary Kibel from Davis & Gilbert.

Does your company or organization have a crisis communications plan? Unfortunately few companies are prepared for a crisis when all it takes is one negative tweet or Facebook post creating havoc to your company’s reputation. At the October 23 Public Relations Society New York Chapter panel attendees learned how Con Edison and JetBlue Airways not only prepare for a social media crisis but also leverage social media to diffuse and deflect potential crisis situations.

Panelists:

- Michael S. Clendenin, Director of Media Relations, Con Edison

- Jenny Dervin, Vice President, Corporate Communications, JetBlue Airways

- Gary Kibel, Partner, Davis & Gilbert

Michael S. Clendenin stated that for Con Edison social media is another tool to reach customers and shareholders informing them of events and updates.With social media we can stop and clear up rumors quickly rather than in the past where you may have had a reporter reporting the story and your communications rep had to follow up to make sure the story was clear and accurate, said Clendenin. He adds, with more communication channels we now have a rapid response system in place. All social media monitoring is done twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week using Radian6 for the communications team to gauge online chatter. After Hurricane Irene hit in August 2011 twelve videos were made showing all the effort Con Edison was doing to recover and get customers back up with power.

Michael also shared stats and trends from May 2012 that included:

- May 4 had 198 mentions due to manhole cover theft

- May 29 had 214 mentions due to Staten Island outage

Michael also advised that when you are dealing with customers and complaints you will find that you may be unable to
respond to everything but get your customer operations people in contact offline with the individual making the complaints to resolve as quickly as possible.

You can visit the two Con Ed Facebook pages: Power of Green and ConEd.

Jenny Dervin repeated some of the same stories that I covered at a November 2011 IABC panel such as the February 2007 ice storm at JFK Airport in New York that caused JetBlue massive delays but gave birth to the first social media response where CEO David Neeleman had intended to deliver a video message to JetBlue employees but also recorded an apology for JetBlue customers. Jenny spoke on how the JetBlue social media policy for employees is less than six hundred words and social media is about listening and serving as an early warning system. JetBlue communications group has a thirty minute deadline to get a first statement out to the public on any major Jet Blue issue. A real time recovery team monitors Twitter and Facebook for any JetBlue mentions to report.

If a JetBlue customer tweets that he/she has arrived early at a JetBlue gate and there is no JetBlue employees there or if a passenger is running late, a supervisor will be notified and then go to get that person and place him/her ahead in line so they will be able to make the flight. How do you deal with a blogger that has a lot of readers/followers and may try to use that influence against your company? Dervin sees this happen from time to time when a mom and child may be given separate seats and the mom turns out to be an influential mommy blogger that threatens to go on Twitter to destroy your company. JetBlue policy is that if a person tries to leverage  and gets something bigger they will actually get less, so please do not take advantage of it!

You can follow Jenny Dervin on Twitter @SkyWriter012

Providing a legal perspective on all this was Gary Kibel from Davis & Gilbert. Gary stated that organizations have three
different perspectives when dealing with social media: the company employees, the company itself, and what the public says about the company. The first step is to make sure your company has a written social media policy for employees before you have a rogue employee posting or writing about something that may portray your company in a negative light.

Gary also provided Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines for endorsements and testimonials in advertising which are:

- All information must be honest and not deceptive

- Bloggers must disclose payments or free products

- Celebrities must disclose any payments

The disclosure would be as follows, “Company X gave me this” or “I work for Company X”.

You can follow Gary Kibel on Twitter @GaryKibel_law.

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Wendy will finally be getting a makeover.

Back in May I wrote about Larry from Quaker Oats getting a makeover and now according to a Wall Street Journal article Wendy’s will be updating the logo for the first time in nearly 30 years. According to the article it is revealed that:

- The “Old Fashioned Hamburgers” slogan will be removed

- -There will be only “Wendy’s” in a handwritten font below Wendy

- Wendy will now be popping out of the circle

According to Wendy’s Restaurant Chief Marketing Officer Craig Bahner, “We didn’t want here to be contained. She is much more approachable.”

James Altucher and Jerry Colonna gave a “tell all” discussion about their experiences in entrepreneurship, failure, and personal discovery the other evening and provided a remarkable discussion.

Sit back and watch as we learn:

- How Jerry became a life coach and his past as a venture capitalist in 1999 and through the dot com boom/bust

- How Jerry dealt with the ups and downs of his career

- Jerry finds salvation in James’ blog

- James one piece of advice to entrepreneurs as well as time management tips

- Jerry’s time management tips and dealing with email anxiety

- James first day as a full time entrepreneur and his many (both successful and failing) business ideas

- Solving problems within your business by communicating with coworkers, partners and customers

- James on the entrepreneur mindset and having to deal with the letter from the IRS

James Altucher’s blog can be found here and you can follow James on Twitter @jaltucher

Jerry Colonna’s blog can be found here and you can follow Jerry on Twitter @jerrycolonna

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Final Part

You may also be interested in these posts:

Allison Fine and Beth Kanter The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change

Gary Vaynerchuk and The Thank You Economy

Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble Discuss Business and Social Media

Ray Jordan on Johnson & Johnson’s Social Media Strategy

The NBA’s Social Media Game

JetBlue’s Social Media Strategy with Jenny Dervin

David Meerman Scott, Author of Real-Time Marketing and PR

John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine

(Left to right)  Tommy Crudup from Rachel Ray, Rebecca Jarvis from CBS This Morning Saturday, Heleigh Raff from Piers Morgan Tonight, and Vanessa Weber from ABC News.

Rachel Ray, CBS This Morning Saturday, Piers Morgan Tonight, and ABC News. You have a book, movie, or guest that would be perfect for each of those shows. How do you go about getting them on? To find out I attended the New York Chapter of the Public Relations Society “Meet the Media” panel that featured:

• Tommy Crudup, Senior Talent Executive, Rachael Ray
• Rebecca Jarvis, Co-Host, CBS This Morning: Saturday
• Haleigh Raff, Senior Editorial Producer, Piers Morgan Tonight
• Vanessa Weber, Consumer/Investigative Producer, ABC News

With 2.5 million viewers every day Rachel Ray provides a huge audience and Tommy Crudup is the man to pitch. Tommy prefers to receive pitches through email but please do not send two page emails with a followup call ten minutes after you hit send. Include any links you may have for previous television appearances even if it may only be local clips. A great way to be a resource to Tommy is to send him a client list to keep on file and refer to when needed.  Tommy Crudup can be reached via email: tcrudup@kingworld.com, and follow him on Twitter @TommyTomTom22.

Even though CBS This Morning Saturday may be heavy on politics and politicians it is business people and entrepeneurs (someone with an interesting personality and story) that interests Rebecca Jarvis most with the ability to  talk about trends. Rebecca prefers to receive pitches via Twitter as well as email but remember that Rebecca also has to pitch to the CBS This Morning Saturday producers as well to get the story covered. To help her (since she covers business) be sure to  provide the size and total dollar amount of the market, the players, and a story line that would make viewers get excited about the story. Rebecca suggests to think how your person best fits into the story.   Rebecca Jarvis can be reached via email: jarvisr@cbsnews.com and you can follow her on Twitter @RebeccaJarvis.

Haleigh Raff  books celebrities on Piers Morgan Tonight as well as newsmakers and authors. Haleigh advised it is best to know the show you are pitching (the type of guests that are on and the types of segments) it will make her job easier. What would be a bad pitch? A long pitch that ends with…”this would be great for Rachel Ray.” Haleigh also suggested to be clear and upfront if your potential guest is a paid spokesperson and how many mentions would be allowed/needed for the segment. She also felt it is best to build relationships by reaching out to someone by taking them out or meeting for coffee, or visiting their office to make a connection with the person. Be persistant but not annoying. You can email Haleigh Raff at haleigh.raff@cnn.com and follow her on Twitter: @Haleighraff.

As a producer for ABC News Vanessa Weber prefers to receive pitches via email and due to her demanding schedule has no time to return phone calls. When pitching or thinking of a guest/topic that may be ideal for ABC News Vanessa advises to think in the mindset of: Why would this make compelling television? As with Tommy Vanessa would like to see images/clips or links to clips so she has an idea how your person appears on television. Other tips include: Do your homework – are there similar stories? What human interest stories work?  Help me do my job better and faster. You can email Vanessa:  vanessa.weber@abc.com.

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