AT&T's massive outage shows how not to do customer service in social media age

AT&T's U-verse service (disclosure, I'm a customer) has had massive outages across the country -- apparently -- for a day or more. The company's response shows how not to do customer service in today's social media world (or one that, just in general, relies on that internet pipe).

I say "apparently" because AT&T has been less than forthcoming in what it's telling people.  You won't find anything on the company's much-touted @ATTCares account on Twitter.

Its @Uverse account is nothing but marketing

What few statements have come from AT&T PR folks have been opaque

The tech support site has a canned statement

And canned chat

The best info is coming from third-party sites like downdetector.com

This probably should be taught as a textbook case study in business and communications schools about how not to handle things in 2016. (I'm also fascinated that it seems few news organizations seem to have picked up on how widespread these problems seem to be.)

CSJ: Are you ready for journalism education without 'journalism'?

My latest Common Sense Journalism column. The importance of this was brought home to me again today when reading a student's description on her blog: xxxxx is a senior at the University of South Carolina studying journalism.

She may be in the journalism school, but she is studying public relations. The increasing conflation of these distinctly different things, especially in our students' minds, is dangerous.

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For years, growing enrollments at journalism and communications schools have meant a steady stream of young, fresh-faced and motivated applicants willing to work for less than they might have made by taking their degrees elsewhere.

There have been dips, usually associated with the overall economy's problems, but enrollment eventually recovered and often grew stronger.

"What is different this time is that the economy is in a weak recovery, but enrollments are dropping," according to the latest study by Lee Becker and his team at the University of Georgia in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator.

Overall enrollment has dropped for the third straight year, and some reduction is probably a good thing, given the industry's sharp shrinkage that has been offset only partially by growth in digital.
But of much concern to Becker and his team is that advertising and public relations enrollments – areas that had largely withstood the storm – have also dropped.

Journalism "is not a growth area in terms of enrollments, and a focus on journalism as practiced in the past is not likely to attract student interest," they write.

That's a fair challenge to both the industry and education: Evolve or die. Unless you've been under a rock, that shouldn't be a surprise.

But then Becker and his team write this: "The data even hint that a focus on journalism as the curricular core of the field, as the common title of the field – journalism and mass communication education – might be dysfunctional from the point of view of attracting students.

Let that sink in for a moment. Schools might do better if they removed "journalism" from the name.

Don't think administrators aren't aware of this as they look at enrollments at a time when they are under increasing pressure to show their students are getting jobs.

Well, you might ask, as long as we can still teach the core components and values of journalism, what does it matter?

As the ad and PR pros among us know, out of sight is out of mind. Just ask those teaching journalism in a "communications" program or as part of an English department. There are exceptions, but I hear the frustrations from those folks at every journalism educators' meeting I attend.

In the same issue is a note from editor Maria B. Marron, "Content Creation Spans All Aspects of J-Programs."

It's a "new era of storytelling," writes Marron, journalism college dean at the University of Nebraska. It's time, she continued, to acknowledge that journalists, PR professionals and other communicators "all share a concern for the First Amendment freedoms and that we have similar ethics – seeking truth, being honest and accurate, and having a mutual desire to serve the public interest."

PR students should be taught to dig and to push their companies to make "ethical and socially just decisions," and journalists should stop using derogatory terms about PR people, she writes.
Then she delivers the coup de grace: "The ideal calls for a j-school education that places all forms of storytelling – brand journalism as well as in-depth reporting – on equal footing. ...

"Given the numbers in advertising, public relations, and strategic communications, in many of our academic programs, and the growth in opportunities related to content creation or storytelling, both curricular and cultural shifts are important."

Permit me to demur.
Despite the shared goal of storytelling, journalism is a fundamentally different enterprise from advertising, strategic communications or public relations. PR's underlying theme is, essentially, "trust us." Journalism's is "if your mother says she loves you, check it out."

This contrast is clear in the lead article of the recent issue of another journal, Mass Communication and Society. It is about "adjudication," the idea journalists should do more reporting to determine the validity of competing positions and fewer he said-she said stories.

Contrary to fears of some journalists that this could promote views of bias, the researchers found that adjudication tended to improve the perceived quality of the journalism. Of course, the adjudication would be needed less if politicians and their PR aides weren't trying to "shape" stories.

Some of the best PR professionals I've worked with have embodied that truth-telling ethic Marron calls for, even at the risk of their careers. And some of the worst journalists I've known have seen it as a mere inconvenience.

I want to turn out journalists who understand they live in a "content creation" world and how to navigate it. And I want budding PR people to develop the moxie to tell their bosses they're being stupid and not looking out for the public interest.

But the reality is they operate in different philosophical worlds.

I fear journalists may have become so used to the surplus of bright, young talent that they are inured to what is happening. But the table is being set in some places to remove "journalism" from journalism education. If you sit back and do nothing, don't be surprised when you find it missing.

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 Past issues of Common Sense Journalism can be found at http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/csj/index.html

The nonstatement statment - Lexington County Sheriff's edition

With the indictment this week of longtime Lexington County (S.C.) Sheriff Jim Metts and then the upheaval in the department with the arrival of Acting Sheriff Lewis McCarthy (and his tossing out several top deputies), you'd imagine the media would like to chat with him and the public might like to hear a bit more about his philosophy, temperament, etc.

Hold that thought.

In our latest example of the nonstatement statement, I offer this that was sent out by the department this morning:

Ladies and gentlemen of the media:

I am deeply humbled and overwhelmed by the support and welcome I have received from the fine staff at the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.  Their professionalism is beyond reproach.  Each and every one of them understand that we all have a job to do during this time, and completing our mission is priority one.

As you can imagine, a number of very important decisions need to be made, and a number of difficult tasks need to be completed in order to ensure that the excellent service that has become the hallmark of the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department goes uninterrupted.  At this time, my staff and I will need to focus on the most important mission we have which is providing a level of unparalleled law enforcement services that the citizens of Lexington County deserve.  I will be granting interviews with the media at a later time when our department has successfully weathered the winds of change.  Thank you all for your continued support and confidence in the fine men and women of the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.

Sincerely,

Sheriff A. Lewis McCarty

Nice to see the new sheriff's getting off to a good start.

More J-reality bites and the reality of PR and journos

Folks have been having fun with Xtranormal, producing all sorts of videos about the new realities in journalism. (See earlier post.)

A few samples. Let's start with Freelancing 1.



And Freelancing 2:



Another bit on the relationship between journos and PR:

PR spin extraordinare

I love this one from the PR annals, one that might be called "Well we're knee-deep in elephant dung, but I swear to you we don't own an elephant."

Tuomey Healthcare System is in the small city of Sumter, a little less than an hour's drive east of Columbia. It was sued, first by a whistle-blower and then by the federal government, alleging Medicare fraud and that it had an improper financial relationship with some of its doctors.

The verdict came in yesterday. Here's what the hosptial system put on its Web site.

Tuomey Wins

March 30, 2010

In a case where the Federal Government sought close to $300 million in damages, the jury unanimously decided that Tuomey Healthcare System did not submit any false claims and awarded the government nothing. Relator Dr. Michael Drakeford will also receive no financial award.

Although the jury did find that Tuomey violated the Stark Law, there were no false claims. Therefore, there was no Medicare fraud. The government has until April 15 to respond to Tuomey’s motion to dismiss the government’s remaining claims.

“Tuomey is extremely pleased with the jury’s decision,” said Tuomey President & CEO Jay Cox. “It was always our intention to provide the best healthcare services to the Sumter community. ”

Wow, read that and you'd think Tuomey got off with a slap on the wrist.

Except .... according to newspaper reports that little matter of the Stark Law violations could cost the hospital $45 million. That's an awful lot of elephant dung - the same kind of dung that PR spin like this produces. Tuomey didn't win; it got a split decision - and it's still going to cost.

How not to do PR - Sanford-Palin style

We've already seen the shambles that has been S.C. Gov Mark Sanford's revelations ad nauseam about his Argentinian affair.

And then there was the rambling news conference by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin saying she would step down because she's a lame duck -- a news conference that kept the pundits atwitter all Independence Day weekend.

Now, Palin's lawyer is out with a letter threatening legal action against anyone who writes about the allegation that Palin is under federal investigation in connection with her involvement, whatever it might have or might not have been, in construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex while she was mayor.

As Politico notes: Still, the decision to issue a public statement reciting all the facts in the case now all but ensures that there will be mainstream media accounts of the situation.

Who exactly is advising these folks? Have the Republicans opened a whole new PR agency, Bumble, Fumble and Stumble LLC? First rule of "crisis" management -- and this is a form of crisis -- don't give anyone an opening to keep talking about the stuff you don't want them to keep talking about.

Instead, with this letter, Palin's lawyer now invites everyone to comment on it and, in the process, spotlight the supposedly defamatory information.

The late Molly Ivins famously said about newspapers that it wasn't their dying that angered here, "it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off."

Ivins was no friend of the GOP, but one could imagine her trotting out that line to characterize the Republicans were she still alive.