inCommunicado - eric eggertson

An L.A. publicist denies making up quotes by Ryan Phillippe and supplying them to a magazine as an exclusive about the breakup of his marriage to Reese Witherspoon.
How to file that item?  Dog Bites Man?  PR Secrets?  Celebrity Myth Revealed?
Celebrity magazines are an art form. They triangulate the star power or level of ridicule […]

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When the large public relations firm Edelman went into a protective silence instead of engaging its critics over a pro-Wal-Mart blog, it reminded me of HAL, the computer in 2001, A Space Odyssey.
HAL was just doing his job.  But we learn in the next movie (or book, for Arthur C. Clarke fans) that HAL’s psychotic […]

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When you scan a headline like this in The Onion, you know it’s either a hilarious exagerration of the truth, or American foreign policy (read: credibility) has sunk to a new low.
If it’s humour, everyone’s getting in on the joke:

Talking Torture and Using Germany as an Illustration - Atlantic Review
Senate Passes Torture Bill and Bush […]

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The fashion/beauty industry bloggers of New York met with publicists yesterday to talk about expectations, roles and schwag.
Pierce Mattie Public Relations hosted the event, probably partly in response to a recent criticism of its blogger relations.
Video of a discussion between Pierce Mattie and blogging network Coutorture Media’s Julie Fredrickson is on the Pierce Mattie site. […]

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Update:  At the request of the Flickr member whose illegitimate use of others’ photos prompted this story, I’ve deleted his name from this post.  (He asked nicely.)
A short blog post by Vancouver web developer and photographer Kris Krug caught my eye back in February. He accused a fellow Flickr user [name deleted] of claiming credit […]

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News Flash!  Pierce Mattie’s blog is now accepting comments.
Faithful Mutually Inclusive PR readers may remember me taking Mr. Mattie to task in April 2005 for having a blog that appeared to accept comments, but that rejected every single comment for having "objectionable content."
Six weeks later, I got a response from Mr. M., criticizing me for […]

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"I was just following orders," isn’t a good enough excuse for bypassing the rules and doling out money to ad firms friendly to the government, a jury ruled last week.
Chuck Guite was found guilty last week of defrauding the Canadian government in the federal government sponsorship scandal. During the trial, Guite tried to portray himself […]

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I’ve never met him, but I hate Sanford Wallace.
In the mid ’90s, I had just talked my spouse into an e-mail account and was helping her figure out how it could help her writing career.
That’s when Sanford Wallace entered our lives, and started peppering her with the same e-mail every day. (Photo from O’Reilly Media […]

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After years of receiving dubious e-mails from various government figures, relatives of royalty, and lawyers with lofty connections in Nigeria, I’ve received a legitimate business offer from a very nice woman in the Netherlands.
It seems Maryann Jacob recently discovered a metal box with $15 million in U.S. currency, and wants my help in stealing it […]

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Technorati CEO David Sifry spoke at Northern Voice today: spam.corporate extortion using network bandwidth and Google Bowling are threats.

Spam – As Cory Doctorow says, all healthy ecosystems have parasites. The good news here is that in the end it all goes back to a web page somewhere, so in a sense it’s accountable. We still […]

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Going through the Technorati listing of posts about the blogging conference I’ll be attending, I came across someone who had the guts to turn their back on the airfare and first night’s hotel stay they had paid for and stay home. Chris Heuer, who had planned on presenting a session tomorrow, cancelled.
Because he’s sick and […]

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