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Yesterday Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police spoke to the Isle of Man Social Media Club . Following the Third Thursday meeting, he and I had a fascinating conversation about how social media is changing the police’s relationship with the media.  What follows is a blog post on the subject that Mark published a few days ago and he’s kindly allowed me to republish it here.
I tweeted about an interesting article in the Guardian last week. The thrust of the argument is that police forces are …

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Throughout my career I’ve been subjected to a good deal of ribbing and teasing, some of it not too good natured, that being in PR means I tell lies for living.  I actually don’t find it too funny but know that people’s understanding of public relations comes from what they see from political spin docters and comedy shows like AbFab and Absolute Power.  Fair enough.
But now we have proof, as if it’s necessary, that public relations professionals are ethical thinkers and demonstrate similar moral development to journalists and …

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Time was, when asked this questions, I’d start to recite deadlines, copy guidelines and descriptions of newsroom teams.  But that was before the Internet changed everything.
Now print journalists are producing video reports and podcasts.  Radio and TV journalists are blogging. And then there are bloggers, who many say are a law unto themselves.
So how does today’s media work?  The only definitive answer is:  All the time.
What are the deadlines?  As soon as the story breaks. Who should we be pitching?  Depending on the story. What do journalists need …

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As it’s a bank holiday I’ve got some extra time to read up.  Here’s my list of what I liked.
1. Dave Fleet asks if your organisation has multiple personalities in this thoughtful post on customer service and social media.  Twitter, blogs or any online interaction can’t plug holes in your customer service provision.  Work on the essentials first, then worry about which communications channels you should use.
2. It’s a long one, but the  Shel Holtz post on the continuing need for professional journalism is well worth the time it takes …

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Here’s some cool stuff  I saw in the PR blogosphere this week.
1. These two ladies have put together an excellent list of UK-based Mommy bloggers.
2. Bernard Lunn analyses journalism 2.0 and offers some insight into how keep quality high and monetise content.
3. Steve Rubel asks if Twitter could replace email as the way to pitch journalists.  I think the answer is yes, in part.  I’ve been doing a bit of it lately, but it’s challenging to fit a complicated tech story into 140 characters. You can use Twitter to whet …

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I certainly enjoyed my trip to Austen’s South By Southwest Interactive festival where thousands of social media and Web 2.0 enthusiasts gathered for five days to share ideas and information.  Oh and have fun. And, we mere mortals get to brush shoulders with some of the industry’s biggest names.
I’ve written a long column on the British Digital Mission that will run in next week’s Isle of Man Examiner, but here I wanted to highlight one of the sessions I attended.
It was a lecture on video journalism given by David Dunkley …

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Are you studying PR, marketing, journalism or media at college or university? Are you looking for a summer job in the Isle of Man for 2009 and want to gain some relevant experience? We’d like to hear from you.

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1. Stephen Davies must have spent a lot of time in compiling this list of UK jounalists on Twitter.
2. Christopher Howse asks if we should abandon the use of the apostrophe.  I vote no!
3. Look who made the UK top 50 PR people by Twitter influence!
4. Chris Brogan has a case study of an individual told to stay out of social media by his boss. Sadly I’ve heard similar stories myself.  Talk about baby and bathwater.
5. Should you or shouldn’t you? Niall Cook posts a list of questions you should …

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There is so much incredibly good content in the PR blogosphere. And, the pool keeps expanding with more people getting into it.  Picking just five to highlight here is getting increasingly difficult. But here goes:
1. Chris Brogan has some excellent tips on technologies and tools that will help us all save time.
2. Here is something you don’t see every day.  This journalist is almost begging for PR pitches.
3. Bashing the PR profession seems to be the latest trend in linkbait.  Guy Kingston is jumping on the bandwagon …

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Title: Managing Editor/Director/Broadcaster
Employer: Pear Publishing
Beat: Worldwide celebrity music, culture and business.
Career highlight: Oh god, I have a few! The first one was when I launched my first celeb mag back in 1997. I was still at university in Swansea. Basically, I was a typical student and I wanted to get into nightclubs/gigs for free and reviewing was the way to go! But also, there were no other cool media outlets in Wales that I could work for, so the answer was to launch my own mag. At the time …