Thank You

Thanksgiving dinner hostess, we love the idea of dining with friends and neighbors for this excellent, friendly, feasting holiday. Understanding family members, we are so glad to not only get to stay put during these bad travel days, but to know that Thanksgiving II, the Redining, Hannukah version, will take place soon. Those people downtown …


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Exhausted, Underpaid, and Ecstatic

I spent the last ten days in Alaska on a press trip. The trip was fully funded by Travel Alaska and managed by Thompson and Co PR. There were four media types (including myself) on the trip and two patient, well organized, and — bonus — fun young women from the PR company. They kept …


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Re[Think] Hawaii & TEDx Honolulu

I’d been invited to travel to Oahu by the Oahu Visitor’s Bureau in exchange for blogging about my adventures there. At the same time, Christine Lu was planning re[Think] Hawaii, a small conference about start-ups, sustainability, and social media and the dates lined up perfectly. Christine generously waived the attendance fee in exchange for… well, …


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Ethics, Schmethics: On Press Trips and Writing a Good Story

Is anyone else tired of the press trip debate? It returned last week — on the tails of increasing paranoia about the new FCC rulings — in a story posted by Gawker about NY Times writer Mike Albo taking a “free, all expenses paid trip to Jamaica.” The NY Times explicitly prohibits their writers from …


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PR Chat: New Media Strategies

It’s my public shame and embarrassment that a few months back, I missed a red-eye flight to Cozumel. I’d been invited on a press trip with a handful of other bloggers. I was packed and ready to go, I just had the date wrong in my head. I’m still taking heat for this — seasoned traveler blows flight! — but the one guy who’s never given me a hard time about it? The guy who invited me, Sean Carroll from New Media Strategies. For that, I’m really thankful, it was, after all, a mistake.

Not only did Sean not give me a hard time, but he helped connect the dots to set us — three bloggers on a road trip to Chicago for TBEX — up with a Routan minivan for our adventure. Talk about a good sport. Sean took time to answer a bunch of questions about PR and bloggers and how that relationship works. I did a series of these as part of our road trip, you’ll find the rest here. If you’re a blogger struggling with the hows and whys of PR relationships, they are an interesting read.

Below the jump — Sean’s answers to my questions.


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Fallen Towers, Broken Hearts

It is easy, with a handful of years behind us, to say that on September 11, 2001, everything changed. It is easy to look back and see ourselves shifted into shadow and grief as though in that one horrible moment, something black crossed in front of the sun. And for some it is true, it …


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