1.
Why did you write American Spin? American
Spin explores what lies beneath news gathering, news reporting, and
brings to the forefront the economic realities that shape the news you hear,
see, or read every day. As a seasoned P.R. professional, it is my mission to
educate people about how Spin is made. American Spin is meant to empower
people so they can effectively communicate their own stories to the world.
2.
So what does the American public need to know
about how promoters really sell U.S. products, companies, politicians, and
issues? The primary tool used in P.R. is
spin. Spin is the best way to take complex information and distill it into a
platform that can be quickly communicated to the audience. Although spin makes
it possible to convey complex information quickly, more importantly, it also
increases the likelihood that your audience will understand your information.
If we didn’t utilize spin as a great communications tool, we would not be able
to tell stories that are timely, compelling, and memorable. And most important
of all, good spin will get an audience to take some sort of action: buy, sell,
vote, give up using plastic bags, support gay marriage, or get the green light
for a new corporate project. Without spin we wouldn’t be able to get people to
take action.
3.
You say we are living in a Content Bubble. What
do you mean by that? On
all fronts in every sector, there are multitudes of media voices all shouting
at the same time. There is a bottleneck of
media clogged with a backlog of unviewed email, books, articles, posts, tweets,
mentions, texts, photos, and videos. While news is
transmitted rapidly, it is disseminated though what appear to be many
discordant and competing outlets. One person might get his news from TV and
another from Twitter or the radio or The New York Times or a regional
daily newspaper. There is no single trusted news authority. Pew Internet
shows 84 percent of Facebook news feed stories aren’t viewed, 71 percent of
tweets get ignored, and 88 percent of emails go unopened. As a result of the
Content Bubble, the transmission of information, even if it is important and
merits our attention, can be ignored. Everyone is overwhelmed by the Content
Bubble. People cannot keep up.
4.
What is wrong with the media today? There is also a
power struggle taking place among media heavyweights who are jockeying to
control the media. Media “moguls” like Rupert Murdoch (and his heir apparent
Lachlan Murdoch) , Mort Zuckerman, the Dolan family, and Jeff Bezos are intent
on dominating media the same way the big industrialists dominated the railroads
at the beginning of the last century. Who will live and who will die? Only time
will tell. Top-tier media outlets like NBC’s The Today Show and The
New York Times are feeling the stranglehold and keep struggling for new
ways to reinvent themselves to increase eyeballs and advertising revenue. There
is so much competition no one can get market share. The Press is vying for
market share by posting the most sensational, attention-grabbing
headlines—often Yellow Journalism. If you are not sure what yellow journalism
is, pop online to cnn.com and scan the first five stories, and you will see
headlines that are sensational, slightly hysterical, and a distorted
presentation of the facts. Many media outlets are just looking at the numbers—revenue
and traffic—and not necessarily at the quality of journalism.
5.
How do we know your book isn't just more spin? American
Spin is good spin because
it’s the truth.
6.
What are the secrets to understanding the
spinmeisters' messaging? Do
reverse engineering on every news story to see who paid to get it placed. Positive spin or
negative spin? It’s always a matter of positioning—the facts that were told and
the facts that were left out. Most news stories seem as though they’re balanced
and tell all sides of a story, but if you examine any news story, you will see
there is always a definite slant. In everything you read, everything you hear,
and everything you see, ask yourself: Who is the source? What is the source
trying to accomplish? Is the source looking for a come up? Or is the
source trying to bring someone down? We are inundated with so much clutter that
our attention span flickers and we scan news accepting the basic facts as the
truth. Always keep in mind, the press doesn’t necessarily lie, but it is never
required to tell the whole truth.
7.
Is the nature of PR corrupt or is its
practitioners that are unethical it is it the people and companies seeking
publicity that are really the dirty, evil liars that are causing problems for
society? At
the heart of good spin, you will always find the truth. And the best
manipulative device is often the truth. So there isn’t anything inherently
wrong with spin; it is neither right nor wrong, good or bad, moral or immoral. Everyone is obliged to conduct effective P.R. Becoming
savvy about P.R. and utilizing P.R. tools has become critical due to our
dependence on technology and the speed in which information is communicated.
P.R. is now much more than media relations or community-building. In the new
world order, P.R. has become an art form that strategically creates spin in
order to get your message to your desired target audience.
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Brian Feinblum’s views,
opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his
employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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