ryan l.

A lot of brackets just busted. This is just too incredible to not record it … No. 11 George Mason, yes, George Mason University, defeated No. 1 UConn this afternoon, 86-84 in overtime, to advance to the Final Four. For UConn, devastating, for George Mason, it's as if they just won the lottery.

What a great story. From at-large bid to get into the tournament to one of the final four. It was such a great thing to see that I found myself rooting for the GMU Patriots to beat the team that I picked to win it all in my bracket. Of course my bracket didn't need George Mason to win to bust it, I was out a long time ago.

Congrats to GMU and to the Colonial Athletic Association.

Every year when tournament time comes, we hear the familiar "March Madness" catch phrase. Today, March Madness was taken to a new level.

Not even going to try and link to all that has been said, claimed, yelled, screamed, or prophesized about how to engage bloggers, but will only say that, yes, transparency is an indisputable must, but also that it’s not just about transparency …

I don’t mean to dehumanize members of the MSM, the structure is just too formal, but when engaging with bloggers it’s about reminding yourself that, at the end of the day, you’re simply dealing with a normal person - so make a connection. Stating the obvious but, bloggers are just people. People with no real motives, responisibilities, or cares (generally speaking) - except about the topics they write about. This holds true, of course, for the traditional media, but there’s more hierarchy and that changes the interaction quite significantly.

Transparency + personality + dropping the PR speak = good blogosphere outreach - or so it would seem.

But what do I know.

After a pointer from Shel Holz to Pageflakes, it’s now, too, my new home page. Essentially, it’s a portal that enables you to customize your main page, and create others, with really whatever you want … news, RSS feeds, weather, and even Gmail if you’ve got it all into one location. The feed reader/reading is a bit cumbersome, but I’ve only been playing with it for about 10 minutes and despite that, I still like what I see. The level of customization is more extensive than what I’ve described here, so check out Shel’s post about it - he says it better than I could anyway.

This is great. Anyone paying attention to the news over the last week probably caught the news that Isaac Hayes, the voice of “Chef” on South Park, quit the show saying he could no longer tolerate the show’s religious “intolerance and bigotry.” Hayes, of course, is a Scientologist — the religion of choice for quite a few celebrities, including crazyman Tom Cruise.

For the show, Hayes’ departure was just the begining of the Scientology situation. A soon to be aired episode mocking Cruise was quickly pulled from the show schedule this week - a move by Comedy Central that an Internet report claimed was covert warfare by Cruise that led to its departure. Rumor has it that Cruise was threatening to not promote this Summer’s “Mission Impossible 3” if the episode aired.

So, was this Cruise manipulating a media conglomerate? Hell, at this point I can’t put it out of the the question, especially with the fact in mind that Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, as is Paramount, which is putting out the film.

For Cruise and Hayes both, this could prove to be publicity neither of them needed or wanted, nor did the leaders of the Scientology religion I’d imagine. Especially with the creators of South Park defending their show like they have with statement like, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith in Scientology…He has no problem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians,” about Hayes. And the best part, issuing a press release that declared:

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun!

Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies… You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!”

Classic.

And, judging by this quick search of Google news, this is getting much bigger really quickly. From the blogosphere to the MSM, they all seem to be talking about Cruise throwing his “weight” around. That’s a lot of power for such a little guy to possess. Someone needs some counsel - Rogers & Cowan, where are you?

This may not be very PR related, unless we analyze it from a national reputation point of view, but what is this country coming to? All political ideology aside, has the entertainment industry run out of ideas to the point where this is necessary? Reality TV in general, despite being highly addictive depending on the show (honestly), is wearing out its welcome. This is just … I don’t know. I’m at a loss.

It’s funny how the fear, uncertainty, and doubt - skepticism, essentially - that is ingrained in most decision-makers within enterprises instantly relegates PR counsel to the bottom of the priority stack. As it relates to emerging communication mediums, PR people are chartered with providing the advice, facts, logic, you name it, that our clients need in order to enter the blogosphere or start experimenting with other forms of social media. But, counsel only goes so far when the FUD is as thick as mud. Often, it seems, it’s not only FUD, but a mixture of that and an overly hierarchal organizational structure that prevents experimentation.

Surely blogging and other social media initiatives are not one size fits all, but sometimes preconceived notions about what it all means, and is capable of, are too strong to motivate change. I think this aspect of PR counsel is one of the more challenging, and one that we certainly are less confronted with as more and more companies catch on to the power of the medium, but one that we continue to face from companies that are entirely traditional in their belief in communication and PR and how it should work.

Self, don’t ever become a coffee snob. You know the kind, the non-fat, no foam, extra whip, extra hot, decaf cafe latte. Drives me insane. At the airport now and all I wanted was a straight, regular coffee. It took ten minutes just to get that, then I had to stand in line just to put cream and sugar in my cup behind a lady putting a little … taking a sip (’no, that’s not right’) … putting a little more cream and sugar … taking a sip (’no, that’s not it’). AHH.

On top of that, I had to pay to use the internet. You would think that SFO could get some sort of deal with a service provider–in this case T-Mobile–and wire the whole damn place and provide it for free. As if the hundreds of dollars to travel and the strip search you have to go through to in wasn’t enough.

Next stop, Philly, PA.

As I mentioned previously, I was able to catch only a small portion of the New Communications Forum in Palo Alto this week because, well, client service had to come first. Most of us know how that goes.

One panel session I was able to take in was Dan Gillmor’s presentation on the “Impact of Citizen Media” which was great. He discussed, among other things, how citizen media and technology is shifting the landscape of journalism and how we get our news.

One area of new media technology he discussed was on the topic of mash-ups and how they’re changing the way news is reported and commented on. He used one example of a mash-up of Google Maps being used to report on crime in a given area. Due to my poor note taking, I missed the name of the individual who is essentially pioneering this activity, but he highlighted how it is being utilized as an input for location or route and how the technology maps out specific locations along that route where crimes have taken place, better enabling users to determine if an area is safe. Another example he cited was the mashing of audio and video as commentary, in this case a political statement.

Very interesting stuff, and certainly these are examples of what the media at-large should consider incorporating into their everyday reporting, but few are. It was clear from the presentation that things are changing, however.

According to Gillmor, the biggest threat to big media isn’t blogs or bloggers, it’s eBay and Craigslist. Obviously, these two organizations are the new classified ads and are free, and it makes sense that as the popularity and overall use of both eBay and Craislist continue to grow, the ad revenue earned by traditional newspaper classifieds will continue to fall. As if dropping circulation numbers weren’t enough, papers can no longer count on their classified section either.

When he was discussing the mash-up examples he also cited the fact that in today’s technological climate, the younger generation is increasingly learning and using new media technologies like blogging and podcasting, and mash-ups, to communicate. This, IMO, can only bode well for big media’s future. But, if looked at on the flip side, maybe big media will be all right, but will the “older generation” pick-up what technology is putting down quickly enough to fend off the next wave of journalists … and hell, maybe citizen journalist? I don’t know. Eventually, all of these new tools that we use will become mainstream, blogging won’t disappear but simply become part of the bigger landscape. The question is how quickly will those trying to catch on or catch up get there?

I’ll close this way too long post with an anecdote from Gillmor that I think about sums up the future: “The daily ME will increasingly become augmented by the daily WE.” All that’s left now is for more people to join the conversation.

Found a little time to head over to the New Communications Forum here in Palo Alto to take in a couple of panel sessions. Overall, there was some very interesting content presented and discussions taking place. I plan to be more specific later, but I must say initially that it was very exciting for me to be there. It’s funny how many of us spend so much time reading the writings of other bloggers, PR and otherwise, and “know” them via that channel only to see them in the flesh. It’s was a strange experience, but a good one. At one point, I found myself in a room with a few heavy hitters from the blog world - Shel Israel, Shel Holz and Neville Hobson podcasting live and Voce’s own Media Guerilla, Mike Manuel. I felt out of place yet somewhat at home. Maybe I’m just weird.