Trevor Cook

The passing of Studs Terkel

2009-11-21T07:17:14+11:00

Originally posted 1 November 2008

I am a very big fan of Studs Terkel I devoured many of his books when I was young. Not only was he a fantastic oral historian with a real empathy with everyday Americans and a tremendous ability to bring them alive on paper but Terkel was also a great expert on the blues of Chicago, in particular, the incomparable Mahalia Jackson and Big Bill Broonzy. For me Terkel represented the best in American life. The NY Times has a great obit:

Studs Terkel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose searching interviews with ordinary Americans helped establish oral history as a serious genre, and who for decades was the voluble host of a popular radio show in Chicago, died Friday at his home there. He was 96.

Read the rest …

I like this quote from the obit: “In 1985 a reviewer for The Financial Times of London characterized his books as “completely free of sociological claptrap, armchair revisionism and academic moralizing.” That’s it, he treated them as people, he relished his time with them, they weren’t just subjects for study.

But there’s also some sadness, an incorrigible, unwavering lefty, Terkel was very much looking forward to seeing Obama win next Tuesday. He told theHuffington Post:

Studs Terkel has been a conscience for America, for decades before Barack Obama was born. In fact he’s eleven years older than Obama’s grandma! He was at the freedom marches in the North and South and he always interviewed people about race- in fact he“wrote the book” on it. Studs did his part to make this a more just nation. Now, the way things are going, it looks like the 96-year-old man, rooting for the 47-year-old, may witness another big step in American history.
“I’m very excited by the idea of a black guy in the White House, that’s very exciting,” Studs said as we said goodbye. “I just wish he was more progressive!”

Good on ya, Studs, a life well-lived.

Update. Here is the audio of an interview Studs did in 2005 with Democracy Now.

Book review: Who really won the 2007 election?

2009-11-21T07:06:07+11:00

Originally posted 7 January 2009

Christine Jackman, “Inside Kevin 07″, Melbourne University Press, 2008.

Kathie Muir, “Worth Fighting For: Inside the your rights at work campaign”, UNSW Press, 2008.

There were two campaigns against the Howard Government in the run-up to the last election: the ALP campaign and the ACTU campaign.

These books complement each other insomuch as they provide ‘insider’ accounts of these interlocking but in many ways separate and differing campaigns. Much of the content of each book is based on interviews with participants and both books suffer a bit from being captured by the people their authors interviewed.

Muir, a former union official now an academic, is unabashedly a fan of the union movement and of the Your Rights at Work campaign. In the preface she describes her approach as ’standpoint research’ or ‘engaged journalism’ but nevertheless independent and critical. Although her book is easy to read (’accessible’ in publisher jargon) and a valuable source for anyone interested in contemporary political campaigning, it falls well short of its claim to be a critical assessment.

Muir pretty much always goes with the inflated claims for the campaign made by her union informants from senior ACTU level all they way to grassroots activists. In addition, Muir’s chapter on the Government’s campaign is noticeably weak, reflecting perhaps a lack of access to the other side of politics.

Christine Jackman, a News Limited journalist, provides a much racier account. She brings a novelistic flavour to the exercise which unfortunately rarely rises above the “It was a dark and stormy night” variety. There are descriptions of one ALP official ‘pacing the grimy streets of inner-city Sydney at dawn’ and so on.

In some ways, these books provide very different world views. Muir’s account is full of touching accounts of the ennobling effects on ordinary people of their participation (often after life-long political passivity) in a great and historic campaign. In Muir’s universe, there is a lot of emphasis on ordinary people having conversations about the issues. Happily, the campaign has helped to re-invigorate the union movement and to empower a new generation of activists.

From the union leadership, John Robertson, then Unions NSW, now part of the Rees Government, is quoted in both books talking about re-inventing politics, re-engaging people and so on (see Jackman, p. 129). Robertson was apparently attracted to Rudd’s similar desire to re-invent politics. Much of this re-invention seems little more than a reversion to older (pre-Accord) styles of union activity. Muir quoted officials being amazed at how happy their members are to talk to them (well d’oh).

Jackman’s world, however, is populated with battle-hardened campaigners who believe that winning is (just about) everything. Her ‘characters’ often talk like they are in a ‘Cliff Hardy’ novel: “Oh f*ck. Oh f*ck” (p2). Another character (p194) is from the Left: “the side of the party most protective of its ideological purity – but being pure of heart and out of power had lost its appeal by 2007″. Many of Jackman’s ‘insights’ are similarly tired and lame e.g. on p.105 she tells us “But in politics, perception and mood are at least as powerful as reality”. There you go.

Both books confirm some significant changes in the union movement’s role in politics, and this is the real value of these books for me anyway. The union movement:

has to be a political power in it’s own right and can not rely on the ALP to secure its agendas
is more of an interest group than a class-based movement albeit the largest and richest in Australia, this reflects the way ordinary people think about unions as much as anything else and a growing move towards individualism and away from collectivism
recognises that campaigning solely on workplace issues doesn’t work, these issues have to be linked to people’s family and community concerns
campaigning on behalf of ‘vulnerable’ workers is much more effective than talking about wages and conditions for the better-paid

So who won the election?

Both books put a strong case for believing that Work Choices was the issue, along with a general mood for change, that brought about Howard’s downfall. And no-one seriously doubts that the union campaign did a lot to make Work Choices a potent issue.

But did it as one activist in Muir’s book says ‘hand ALP victory on a plate’? If it did, of course, then Jackman’s cast of brilliant campaigners were really doing nothing more than playing an unbeatable hand.

Jackman’s insiders make it clear that they had to distance the ALP from the unions. People believe in rights at work and not union power. Mark Arbib, now a Senator says (p137):

“We did a lot of things that unions were hostile to and still very much resent. But it was part of trying to find a way through, to find a balance. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt to say, “here is Betsy the old sacred cow now let’s go slit her throat”.’

It is pretty clear that the ALP strategists saw the union campaign as generating a ‘protest vote’ at best (p128), one that may or may not deliver victory. They believed that the opportunity was there but that the party couldn’t win without a leadership change (p.53). With Rudd as the new, fresh leader (notably without union links) the campaigners had their chance to finally beat Howard. A lot of the campaign was about convincing voters that they could trust Rudd.

Tim Gartrell, then ALP National Secretary, was in charge of the ALP campaign. He gets a lot of coverage in Jackman’s book. In Muir’s book he gets just one mention, right at the end (p.206) where Muir points out that the ALP, including Gartrell, did not give the unions and their campaign any credit for Rudd’s victory. Despite this Muir says the union activists know that “It was the unionists wot won it”.

Celebrating Darwin online

2009-11-21T07:03:57+11:00

Originally posted 9 January

Next month will mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, the man who had perhaps the greatest idea of all time.

This week, Melvyn Bragg is doing a four part special series(”Darwin: The Genius of Evolution”) of his excellent BBC Radio 4 program “In our Time” on Darwin which you can download and listen to on your pod.

Even more stunning are the video podcasts of the 10 lecture course Stanford University (”Darwin’s legacy”) presented at the end of last year (September through December), featuring some of the world’s foremost experts on Darwin (including the remarkable Daniel Dennett). Be aware though these are high quality productions and will chew up nearly five gigs if you download them in one hit. They are also available on youtube.

Back in the physical world, the National Museum in Canberra has an excellent exhibition which is based on an exhibition organised by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org) in collaboration with the Museum of Science, Boston; The Field Museum, Chicago; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and the Natural History Museum, London.

There’s even a blog for Darwin event in the offing: “February 12th-15th, 2009 participating bloggers around the world will be celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth (February 12th, 1809) with aBLOG SWARM, in which posts will be aggregated on BLOG FOR DARWIN to be kept as a resource for educators, students, and others. CLICK HERE to learn how you can participate!”

Go for it, Darwin and evolution are endlessly fascinating stuff.

Loving those blues podcasts

2009-11-21T07:01:19+11:00

Originally posted 12 January

I got hooked on the blues back in the late sixties when I discovered my white heroes (eg Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Johhny Winter) had some very cool black heroes (e.g. Robert Johnson,Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker). In fact, I think John Lee Hooker might just be the coolest guy ever. One brief story. When as an old man, and recently ‘re-discovered’ and enjoying chart success, a reporter asked him, eagerly, whether he ever felt the urge to go back home to Missisippi. Hooker repled with a simple “No”, without feeling any need for explanation or qualification. Like many blues musicians of a past era he took up music to escape the prison of sharecropping and cotton-farming. Nothing there to get sentimental about.

My mate and I haunted record shops, buying anything we could by these amazing blues musicians. But, of course, there is a lot more to blues then a handful of ‘re-discovered’ musicians and Australian radio then, as now, didn’t give us fanatics much chance to indulge our musical tastes.

Couple of years ago, that all changed with the arrival of podcasting. Now I can listen to all the contemporary and traditional blues and roots anyone could want.

What’s more amazing, one of the best and longest-lived of these blues podcasters is a guy in Melbourne who goes by the name ofSalty Dog (pictured left). The first episode for the this year, Salty started podcasting in 2005, is an offering of the best in Australian blues and roots in 2008 and includes tracks by the likes of John Butler, Ash Grunwald, Kasey Chambers, Jeff Lang and The Audreys, 25 tracks in all, 120 minutes. The 2 hour podcast is also broadcast on FM radio in Port Douglas and on Kansas City Online Radio.

Another great Australian blues podcast is produced by the South Australian Blues and Roots organisation.

I think Salty and SARB are doing a great job for the local roots and blues scene, that’s if my buying habits over the past few years are anything to go by!

Another ‘must listen’ favourite podcast is The Roadhouse, (by an American computer guy who loves blues). There are now 204 Roadhouse weekly podcasts, that’s a lot of great music.

Then there is Raven’n'blues produced by a long-time British blues guy. And then there isAustin Riffs, Murphy’s Saloon, and Bandana Blues.

From scratching around for blues to listen to, we’ve now got so much it is hard to get through it all.

Change doesn't always mean happiness

2009-11-21T06:57:13+11:00

One of my favourite authors is John McGahern. In his Memoir, McGahern writes (p80):

I take the belief that the best of life is life lived quietly, where change is imperceptible, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything.

You could hardly imagine a viewpoint more at odds with the ethos of our time. We live in a world (especially the virtual world) where people crave change, celebrate the new and try to cram as many experiences into each day as possible.

What McGahern is pointing out though, I think, is that happiness comes with the depth of the experience not the breadth of experiences and their newness.

In McGahern’s masterpiece, “That they may face the rising sun”, one of the main characters, Jamesie, has never left the part of Ireland he was born in, except to visit his son in Dublin on one occasion. McGahern emphasises Jamesie’s view that despite his lack of travel he ‘knows’ the whole world and his enthusiasm for that world: ‘it is spring again and everything is interesting’. McGahern seems to me to be arguing that just how ‘interesting’ depends on you and, paradoxically in this modern era, the depth of your familiarity with things and not their ‘newness’.

Of course, for most of us there is some balance needed here. None of us want to live out our lives in a single village, But we should never mistake the titillation of newness with genuine happiness.

Rudd and social capitalism

2009-11-21T06:55:04+11:00

Originally posted 1 February

Labour, and social democratic, politicians have spent the past few decades, since the bankruptcy of socialism as a workable ideology, searching for new ways to distinguish themselves intellectually from their conservative opponents while essentially cleaving to the same ideology which appeals to business and middle class constituents.

Rudd’s ’social capitalism’ to be outlined in an essay in the Monthly this Wednesday and leaked to major newspapers for the weekend editions is the latest version of this effort. The first 1500 words of this 8,000 word piece are on the Monthly’s website. The Canberra Gallery has been briefed to see the essay, and the idea of social capitalism, as a ‘clever’ move to position the Liberals on the ‘wrong side of history’; well we’ll see.

During the last election campaign, Rudd was keen to identify himself as an ‘economic conservative’. This meant, if anything, that he was very much in the Hawke, Keating, Howard, Costello camp, except when it came to such ‘extreme’ forms of neo-liberalism such as those contained in Work Choices. Perhaps to balance his opposition to Howard’s IR agenda, Rudd embraced the deregulation thrust being advocated by business groups. Rudd told business delegates at the ALP National Conference in 2007 that he would do a Nixon on China’ and deliver far more deregulation than Howard would ever sign up to. As far as we know, this promise to radically reduce the regulatory burden on business is still Rudd Government policy.

Of course, the world has changed in the last few months. Now Rudd, in his much heralded, and forthcoming, Monthly magazine article, has gone a lot further in his rejection of neoliberalism than ever before: “neo-liberalism – that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time.”

There are two immediate problems. One is that neo-liberalism is also the broad economic approach that inspired the economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating governments which until recently were lauded by the ALP as the source of Australia’s recent, and longest, boom. These historic economic reforms included currency deregulation, decentralisation of wage bargaining, protection reductions leading to free trade, deregulation of the banking sector, privatisation, competition policy and more. Rudd has shown no indication that he will reverse any of these reforms, and with the exception of Work Choices, there is no indication that he will reverse any of Howard’s major changes either e..g. GST, Telstra privatisation, privatisation of employment services.

The second problem is that if Rudd will not reverse any of the major reforms of neo-liberalism’s golden era in Australian politics what then does social capitalism really mean?

It is hard to see Rudd and Swan doing much more to regulate Australian business generally and the finance sector in particular. For a start, further regulation on business will only risk weakening a recovery in investment. And what is the case for it when our banking sector seems to have been a better performer than in other countries. There maybe a good case for better consumer protection in finance but that’s about it.

Similarly, there is probably room to improve our health and welfare systems but again these are also among the most comprehensive and generous in the world (high minimum wage rates, universal healthcare, compulsory superannuation), with some notable gaps like paid maternity leave and childcare.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the meat on the bones of Rudd’s newly minted ideology turns out to be.

A great many things keep happening

2009-11-21T06:52:06+11:00

In the 6th century, St. Gregory of Tours begins his History of the Franks,

A great many things keep happening, some of them good, some of them bad. The inhabitants of the different countries keep quarrelling fiercely with each other and kings go on loosing their temper in the most furious way. Our churches are attacked by the heretics and then protected by the Catholics; the faith of Christ burns bright in many men, but it remains lukewarm in others; no sooner are church buildings endowed by the faithful that they are stripped again by those who have no faith. However, no writer has come to the fore who has been sufficiently skilled in setting things down in an orderly fashion to be able to describe these events in prose or in verse.

Wonderful.

Unionisation might be a key to restoring economic growth

2009-11-21T06:46:01+11:00

Originally posted 11 March 2009

Here is a key excerpt from testimony given yesterday to a US Senate inquiry by Dr. Paula B. Voos, Professor, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University and Research Associate, Economic Policy Institute

Increased union organization would tend to shift the income distribution in favor of the middle class, enhancing the purchasing power of this key group of the nation’s consumers and allowing them to once again afford to buy automobiles, homes with 30-year fixed rate mortgages, and all the other goods and services important to American life. Unionization of low wage service workers similarly would increase purchasing power and help revive the economy. Putting more dollars into the pockets of working families stimulates the American economy – both in the short term and in the long run – because they spend such a high proportion of those dollars here.
It is no accident that the prosperity and consumer boom of the 1950s – a period of unprecedented middle-class expansion, broad business growth, increased home ownership, rising consumer spending, and the shared expectation that a college education was within the reach of everyone and that the lives of our children would be better than our own – followed the greatest sustained expansion of unionization in American history.
The notion that greater unionization is harmful to an economic recovery is misguided. Unions, as institutions, and the members that form them are economically rational and do not pursue demands that force firms out of business. There are several studies that show that firms that become unionized (see the review of studies in DiNardo and Lee 2004) are no more likely to fail than are firms that remain nonunion. If anything, unions are more important in a recession.
As was stated in a statement signed by 40 prominent economists and released on February 25th, “The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.”
Economic recovery and future economic stability depend on a middle class once again having sufficient purchasing power to sustain the economy; we must not rebuild another bubble economy. Greater unionization can contribute to that goal because wages and benefits for ordinary workers will rise and income inequality in the economy as a whole will be reduced. In short, unions help foster the broad middle class that is essential to our nation’s economic strength.

Read this testimony in PDF format

GLobal PR Blog Week – 5 years on

2009-11-21T06:32:05+11:00

Originally published 18 July 2009

Oh no. Another how time flies anecdote. Not only do I remember clearly the day Armstrong (Neil not Lance) walked on the moon (we got the afternoon off school – yippee), but I have also been reminded that five years since I conceived and co-organised this modestly titled event, Global PR Blog Week 1.0. At the time, there was just two dozen or so PR bloggers in the world now there are thousands of them, the old enemy (media, including crikey) has become one of the driving forces in the uptake of blogging, and much of the social media action seems to have moved to places like twitter, facebook and youtube.

Social media has become far more important in the past five years. Is it still as exciting – probably not. A road less traveled loses some of its appeal when the 4WD (SUV) crowd start their a/c’d, DVD’ed, leather upholstered pilgrimages.

Anyway, I would have missed this great anniversary had it not been for John Cass who interviewed me on his blog to mark the occasion this week. So thanks John. The interview is reposted below.

Some others have also blogged to mark the occasion, including AgWired, Bastien Beauchamp,Tom Murphy, and Colin McKay.

So here’s the interview:

John: What was the significance of the Global PR Blog Week for you?
Trevor: It was fun and it helped demonstrate how people could come together online and create a body of mostly good quality material on line. Most of all I think it helped to counter some of the “PR is dead” stuff that was popular around that time, which originates from a false (IMO) view that PR is only about spin when PR done well is mostly about good communications. People (eg Naked Conversations) sometimes like to think that if only PR got out of the way then communications in our society would automatically improve. That’s a bit like Reagan’s “government is the problem not the solution” statement. It’s simplistic and wrong-headed. The real challenge is to make PR better, and social media will help, is helping, to do that.
John: As one of the organizers of the conference what did it take to organize the conference, what do you recall about the event from your perspective?
Trevor: I basically came up with the initial concept and contacted a bunch of people to participate. This was easy because there was only about two dozen PR bloggers in the world at that stage (now there seem to be countless thousands), and most responded to my email within hours and were keen to participate. Most of the real hard work was done by Constantin Basturea who is now at Converseon in NYC. He did all the website stuff, which I can’t do. Constantin deserves most of the credit for making it happen. Today, with twitter and facebook etc PR blogweek would have been far more interactive – the technical challenges were greater back then. Constantin’s work meant we were able to do the whole thing without cost to the user – a bit like the Bloggercon idea – and that made it far more accessible.
John: What were the lasting effects of the Global PR Blog Week?
Trevor: The NewPR wiki that Constantin set up after PR blogweek partly as a way of storing the material was a very valuable resource for a lot of people. Anecdotally, I think a lot of people were encouraged to start blogging or to get more committed by the examples they saw in PR blogweek
John: How did the Global PR Blog week influence you and the industry?
Trevor: I think it helped to point to, or confirm, that PR could embrace social media and get real benefits from it. But it was a conference, and there have been many others. It was of its time when PR blogging was embryonic to say the least. I made contact with some great people like Constantin, Steve Rubel, Neville Hobson, and more and that was great fun and taught me a lot about PR in other parts of the world.
John: Reviewing the post(s) you wrote for the Global PR Blog week what has changed? What has not changed, since you wrote the post?
Trevor: Social media has grown rapidly much as we anticipated back then, but the rise of twitter, youtube and facebook have all been a surprise to me. Many of these services are far more accessible to users than blogs. Blogging tends to be a bit high end. Blogs that survive and do well over a period of years need to produce great content consistently and regularly and that’s hard work. I find it difficult to blog and do everything else I want to do in life, as do many others – social media provides an easier way to stay in contact.
The media has adopted social media to a large extent and is promoting it heavily. Can that save big media – well some of it, but there is still going to be an almighty rationalisation especially in regard to newspapers. Nevertheless, I find the continuing “blogging versus journalism ” debate so tedious. Bloggers are not journalists, and only a few want to be. Just as boring is the “social media can do everything” line that passionate advocates sometimes push. No-one believes it in the real world. Your client is interested in how social media fits in and adds value to the existing comms strategy. Few clients listen to the ’social media can revolutionise everything’ hokey. I was more naive back then, a few years of trying to sell the social media idea to clients has toughened me up on this point. I stopped doing media interviews a while ago because the journalists always wanted you to either say something alarmist about social media (identity theft etc) or they wanted a cookie cutter evangelist to say something simplistic and naive.
In my view, we’ll be there when we lose the media / PR construct and just communicate. Media would add value principally by selecting and packaging great stuff for a mass audience. PR would be the people in your organisation that facilitate but don’t actually do the communicating. The roles of journalist and blogger would be in the background, and the real business of communicating would be in the foreground. We’re still a long way off.
John: Give an update on what you’ve been doing in the last five years, and what you are doing now?
Trevor: In the last couple of years I’ve changed direction a bit and while I still do some PR work, I’m back at university researching a Phd on Australian politics and teaching, most recently in a course on Australian Foreign and Defence Policy. I still blog a little bit and I’ve written a lot of articles for Australian online media sites. I’m on twitter and I enjoy Facebook because a lot of my real world family and friends use it.
John: Thanks Trevor for coming up with the original ideas, helping to organize the conference and a great interview.

Green jobs and a red scheme

2009-11-21T06:30:06+11:00

Originally posted 31 July

In an earlier “greatest economic crisis since the great depression”, 1975, I found myself happily and productively unemployed (I have never read so many novels so quickly ever again, sigh) in Hobart after a season of apple-picking in Huonville, a few pleasant weeks hitch-hiking around this delightful isle and a truly inspirational week walking through the Crade Mountain-Lake St Clair wilderness (including staying on for a few extra days at a lake-edge hut called Narcissus, I kid you not).

Then, the Whitlam Government came up with something called the Regional Employment Development (RED) scheme. News of this clever piece of policy innovation came to me from a very stern chap at the Hobart C.E.S. (then government owned but since sold off to well-meaning socialists like Therese Rein) who, having spotted me as a malingering mainland hippy, told me that it had been decided (by whom and for what reasons were never made clear) that I was to be sent to the Hobart Botantical Gardens for a six week stint. He cautioned me that if I refused this offer, or failed to show up or otherwise breached my employment contract, my benefits would be declined for a certain, and probably lengthy, period.

The Hobart Gardens was actually a pretty good outcome, some of my friends were sent to weed highways and collect firewood. It all had a slight echo of the convict heritage, stronger here than anywhere else in Australia.

But it was clear immediately on my arrival that the Gardens, attractively located near a modest house later used by Richard Butler for an unfortunately brief period, had not planned for this sudden influx of untrained and largely useless employees. I was assigned to a ‘gang’ which included two members of a local bikie group and a draft dodger from the USA (who said he was saving some money prior to telling the Aussie officials he was here illegally and getting deported to Hawaii, well that was the plan).

Although, and unlike the current NSW Premier, I have never envisaged horticulture as a career option, it was extremely pleasant heading off from my student accomodation (therein lies another tale) on my sparkling new peugeot ten-speed bike (bought with the proceeds of my apple-picking) to the Gardens each morning.

We were first assigned to some general weeding duties but then the fun started. The head guy decided we should build a trench along a path where at some future time, depending on the availability of RED scheme funds, a decorative feature wall would be built. There was a problem here because the RED scheme seemed to pay for labour only not the actual bricks and stones and so on but he held hopes that this would change.

For days we toiled away. Then the head guy turned up and decided the trench needed to be deeper and narrower. This shocked the bikers, one the son of a current inmate of Risdon prison, who loudly declaimed that this was a scandalous waste of their time and taxpayers’ money. The head guy returned fire by telling them that landscaping was an ‘art’ not a science and that he was an artist whereas we, by implication, were composed of far coarser material. This only inflamed the bikers’ working-class sensibilities even further.

By this time several of us long-haired hippies were convulsed with laughter and the head guy turned on us and accused us of having “LSD flashbacks”, something I think he had read about in a magazine somewhere. Our mirth was not diminished by these suggestions and he headed off no doubt to do some more conceptualising about the shape and size of his beloved wall. The bikers’ instinct was to resign in protest, but we spent an hour reminding them of the possible implications for their benefits and managed to get them to stay on.

These pleasant memories flooded back when I heard Kevin Rudd announce his green jobs initiative yesterday. Of course, it will be much more sensibly run now. After all, the CES has been privatised and is now run by very sensible chaps.

Links for 2008-10-12 [del.icio.us]

2008-10-13T00:00:00-07:00

Looking in all the wrong places

Links for 2008-08-13 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-14T00:00:00-07:00

I think I forgot why I started blogging in the first place. Did you? « PR Interactive

Links for 2008-08-06 [del.icio.us]

2008-08-07T00:00:00-07:00

How to Track 500 Business Blogs in 10 Minutes a Day
Engagement vs. Popularity Metrics in Blogs
What's your strategy?
Is the social, mobile web too small to care about?

Links for 2008-07-19 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-20T00:00:00-07:00

How to use PR People to Build Traffic for your Blog
CEPU: Telstra EBA Negotiations Progress Update
Yesterday, Telstra decided it didn't want to talk to the unions anymore about an enterprise agreement affecting up to 32,000 employees.A day later - after saying they would no longer talk - Telstra's HR managers launched a website called "Now We're Talkin

Links for 2008-07-12 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-13T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2008-07-07 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-08T00:00:00-07:00

The Aussie who's changing the world of whistleblowers

Links for 2008-06-30 [del.icio.us]

2008-07-01T00:00:00-07:00

Microsoft's Canberra PR jaunt