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.)

INMA's Wilkinson: Culture trumps strategy

Earl Wilkinson, head of the International Newsmedia (formerly Newspaper) Marketing Association, professes surprise at the theme coming out of the INMA World Congresss - that changing newsroom culture trumps strategy.

Or, to put it another way, all the paywalls in the world and all the gimmicks and marketing strategies don't mean scratch if your organization continues to project the kind of thinking about deadlines, story forms, priorities, incentives, etc., that had become standard in newsrooms for about 45 years (I say 45 because, really, it was from the 1960s on that we began having that strange confluence of factors that produced halcyon days for newsrooms until the bottom fell out in this decade).

I like Wilkinson. I've chatted him up at j-prof conventions, and he was the main force behind trying to get AEJMC to produce more research relevant to newsrooms (though whether news managers ever read what was there already and was pretty damning was always open to question).

But forgive me if I suggest that INMA and its members are coming a little late to the party. Research on newsroom sociology and culture has for decades, and certainly in the past decade, pointed out the corrosive effect of existing culture and the tremendous challenges - but also urgency - needed to change it.

Here are Wilkinson's take-aways:

1. Separate the business model from culture in print vs. digital discussions. Or, as he puts it: The emerging consensus from New York was that a digital business model can't replace a print business model. Instead, the digital model must be additive to the print model — if for no other reason than the inclusion of print is part of a publisher's USP vs. media competitors. I suspect he'll get his share of blowback on that - that it still elevates the declining print model to the detriment of digital. But in the context he puts it - that it is a way to differentiate a full-service media organization - it can make some sense.
2. Encourage speed, place small bets, be willing to fail (fast). How long have those watching the evolution of digital been saying this? At least since 2006 and API's "Newspaper Next" project. So far the results have been, shall we say, less than stunning. I'll believe it when I really see a newsroom culture that allows failure. In fact, if there is one defining point for me, it is that. But that raises all sorts of questions. For instance, can there be journalism fail as part of that? If so, to what extent will it be tolerated? It seems to me that's the tough nut. Is it desirable or even possible to have a split organizational personality: Well, yes, you can fail on the "business" side in the name of taking chances. But on the journalism side, nope. It's that fear of failure that makes news organizations still even reluctant to handle corrections with the comprehensiveness and alacrity that digital allows. It still pervades many newsrooms, and, like a poison gas, it seeps through all layers of the organization.
3. Transparency will change your mindset. Let's just say Wilkinson's concern with transparency is not quite the same as others writing in the same space.  His seems to be a marketing perspective. The [Financial Times] paywall allowed for a transparency in viewing its audience and segmenting its readers based on their engagement — in turn, driving its audience and advertising strategy in ways once thought unimaginable. INMA is hearing this repeatedly from publishers who are implementing paywalls. While the user data is overwhelming, there are mind-bending lessons that are emerging from people willing to pay for digital content — distinctly different lessons than from people only willing to view your content if it's free. Let me put it this way: people willing to pay for digital content are not reading what you are producing. Your differentiators online are different from your differentiators in print which are different from your differentiators on the mobile.
4. Relentlessly focus on differentiators. Changing the corporate culture to focus on strategic differentiators and cut away non-differentiators was another recurring conference theme. Actually, as coldly marketing as that sounds, I rather think it's something important journalists need to think about - how is what I am doing different from the others and how does it bring utility to users/readers? It's utility that sells in digital, rarely content alone.

All in all, if this means executives are coming around to the idea that you can't a) dictate culture (or strategy, for that matter) from the top down and b) you can't just bolt new ideas onto existing newsroom cultures, then progress is being made.

Slideshare.net

I get caught up from time to time in a great site, Slideshare.net. If you haven't heard of it, it allows people to share their PowerPoints and similar work (as if we didn't have enough PP pollution, already, huh?)

As you can imagine, there's a fair amount of dreck, but then there are things like David Armano's excellent look at marketing and the online experience -- hint: editors and publishers need to pay attention.

Medill Follies

Oh, they are having so much fun up at the Medill School of Whatever It Is We're Going to Call It.

The latest is the snarking over the process of changing the school's name. The Chicago Trib's Eric Zorn has a good column with some names that are pretty funny -- if they apparently weren't really being considered.

Some of the ones in the comments are even funnier. Hopefully they aren't being considered, but you never know.

Actually, this all is somewhat serious stuff. At the college level, your positioning (i.e. marketing) can affect your money-raising ability. Even internally here, we are beginning to struggle with what to call our "print" sequence, since we do much more than "print."

A commenter notes that DePaul is changing the name of its School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems to the College of Computing and Digital Media. There was a time that original Frankenstein name only a mother could love came about because no one was really sure how to make all the parts work, and everyone needed a share of the fiefdom. But the digital age has pretty much slammed that concept and forced people to work together. Dismaying, however, is that journalism is not part of tis picture.

Culturecloud

Don't be surprised if suddenly you hear a lot about a site called Culturecloud. There's about to be a big faux grassroots push. Check out this ad on a journalism jobs board:

Immediate Freelance work for www.Culturecloud.net:

The pay is $100. Here's the two-part job description:

1) Find 30 interesting Internet sites and post to their message boards
about Culturecloud, creating links in those postings back to Culturecloud
content. Write smart, interesting posts that are relevant to those sites.
The links can be to a specific article or topic page on Culturecloud. The
posts need to be decent so that we are not seen as spamming the other
site. They should also spark readers' interest in checking out
Culturecloud. Naturally, before posting and creating links to
Culturecloud, you will need to spend time on the Culturecloud site to find
relevant content to link to the message board posts.

Keep a list of posts you make.
Keep a list of the email addresses of those message board contributors, so
Culturecloud can use them later in an email campaign conducted by a
marketing agency.

2) Send the attached invitation to join Culturecloud to 200 people you
know, asking them to invite their friends, and send Culturecloud the list
of those e-mail addresses.

The site is interesting. According to its Who We Are, it was started by Michele DiLorenzo -- no other info, but chances are the same person who has a long history in new media with Viacom, Vulcan and Casey-Werner.

Culturecloud is sort of a blogging and photo-posting site juiced up with a a wide set of tag clouds respresenting both subjects being discussed on the site and those discussing them. The clouds are pervasive -- on the home page, on individual posts, etc. The idea is to create a cloud of ideas that will entice people to explore many other links and entries on the site. Of course, the ads will follow.

Nice use of tags and tag clouds. But I'm not sure people would be so eager to discuss the topic off site if they knew their e-mail addresses were being harvested for a marketing campaign.

So be warned.