An oil covered pelican, courtesy examiner.com

Yesterday I saw CNN’s Anderson Cooper ask some family members of the eleven workers who died when the oil rig exploded and collapsed if BP had contacted any of them. I saw one interview with a family member who said two BP representatives came to the funeral, asked if they could hug her, and offered their sympathies. A second interview with another victim’s family said there had been no contact at all from BP. I couldn’t believe it. She said they hadn’t even received a letter.

Here are three things I think BP could do immediately to be more human:

1. Significantly lower prices at all your gas stations across the country. While some boycotts are already being organized, many Americans would see lower gas prices as a help during our still-recovering economy. And do it in a way that doesn’t hurt the gas station owners. Help them be your ambassadors.

2. Reach out to all the families. Be sincere. The lawyers may tell you not to say too much due to the risk of ligitation — but you’re already facing tons of lawsuits. Be humble. Be honest.

3. Get your executives out there on the beaches where tar is washing up. Put hard hats on them and shovels in their hands. Hiring temporary workers to do the work is helpful too, especially since some Americans are cancelling their beach vacations due to fear and uncertainty around the spill. Hiring more workers to keep the beaches really clean could keep some coastal communities from hurting quite so badly.

I could make a much longer list. Take James Cameron up on his offer to help. Could it hurt? Hire all the skimmers in the world and fly them in to scoop up as much oil as you possibly can. It’s human when you make a mess to clean it up. Oh, here’s a really difficult one:

Say you’re sorry. Say it loud and say it often.

Roy Hardee in the WNCT newsroom. Photo credit: WNCT

A good newsman from Eastern North Carolina died this week. As a matter of fact, he died in his wife’s arms. If you have never heard about Roy Hardee, you should visit Stewart Pittman’s nice post, read the Associated Press story or watch the piece WNCT-TV aired.

(Side note: Holy cow, anchor Alan Hoffman still works at WNCT?! He was newish when I worked there in ahem 1987-1988!)

When I met Roy Hardee, I was 21 or barely 22, fresh out of UNC’s School of Journalism, but with three years of broadcast news experience, all in radio. He was in his 50′s and had a gravely voice, a constant harrumphing cough and a piercing stare. WNCT-TV wasn’t a station with bells and whistles, the pay sucked and the equipment was dismal. That’s where I began my career in television news.

Since I was an assignment editor, I saw a lot of Roy Hardee during my shift. Well, I saw a lot of him in his office. His phone glued to his ear, Roy knew how to sniff out news, find a source and call in a news tip like no one’s business. He was so good at calling in tips that the Associated Press named an award after him. The Roy Hardee award was given to the person who had provided the most tips to the AP in the Carolinas. Roy Hardee won it twice.

Roy figures in a story I like to tell about my early career. One day I was riding the desk, sending my crews out on stories across a wide swath of Eastern North Carolina. Crews is a misnomer — our reporters were one-man bands. Roy came out of his office, and stood over the AP wire. In those days, pre-internet, the news stories were actually printed on flimsy paper at certain times of the day. If your printer jammed or ran out of ink, you didn’t have the news. Period.  When you figured that out, you’d have to call up the AP in Raleigh and ask them to refeed the state or national news you’d missed, and it was a Very Big Deal.

But I digress. There’s Roy Hardee, standing over the wire, watching the news come in. When he sees the item he wants, he rips the wire, rips off the story he was looking for and takes it back into his office, a little smile playing around the corner of his mouth. And Roy’s not really a smiler, you know?

During our six o’clock newscast I found that that both of our competitors had a big story that we had somehow missed. And it’s my job as assignment editor not to miss this kind of stuff. I was nervous when I went to Roy’s office to admit that I had missed a story everyone else had. Roy was the kind of boss who wouldn’t lose his temper or harangue you  exactly, but he hated to miss a story and we hated to let him down. He would just look at you, make that little cough and then rumble something about “Try harder”, “Turn up the scanners” or his favorite, “Work the phone.”

Turns out, they got it from the AP wire. From a tip Roy had called in, and then ripped off the wire for his file. Forgetting to tell me. Roy apologized about that.

He also taught me a lot about getting the story and getting it right, building on the mentoring I’d received from another Eastern NC legendary newsman, Glenn Hargett who was the news director at a little radio station in my home town. Later in my television career, a different news director told me the problem with me was that I was a “big J journalist” — someone for whom Journalism came with a capital letter. Yep, I was a big J journalist, thanks to Glenn Hargett, Roy Hardee and other seasoned news professionals.

And according to Roy, I was a “fine-lookin’ blonde” who was smart enough and talented enough to be on the news. That was one tip he didn’t forget to tell me.

Now you may be asking yourself — what does this have to do with social media? Well, I first learned of Roy Hardee’s death on Facebook. Stewart Pittman shared his memories on his blog.  A Google search brought me more links. As I follow the comments, I’ve been finding old colleagues who are posting on blogs or news websites, all sharing their favorite memories of Roy Hardee. The lives he touched are spread out, but we’re all reconnecting through a medium and a memory.

They say nearly 60% report doing it at least once a month. That’s 134 million people!

I found the report on Mashable, so if you’d like to read more, click here.

Photo credit: Oscar.com

More than 41.3 million people tuned in to the Academy Awards Sunday night, despite advance media coverage calling the Oscar race predictable (and laying all the gold statuettes at the big blue feet of Avatar).  That’s the biggest audience since 2005. (Million Dollar Baby was the big winner that night.)

So the Oscar audience was up. Know what else?

• The Golden Globe Awards were up 14% from the previous year.
• The People’s Choice Awards were up 15%.
• The Grammy Awards were up 35.8% over last year.

It’s not just awards shows. The 2010 Super Bowl garnered 106 million viewers — becoming the most-watched event in TV history. While this article quotes media experts saying the bad economy keeps more people at home and the productions have gotten better, I don’t think that has changed viewership.

While television executives have blamed the internet for fragmenting audiences, I think the internet plus laptops plus smartphones is bringing them together. Hello! Social media.  We’re connecting via portable technology.

A few years ago we put our big clunky computer desktops in a spare bedroom or a home office — a room that usually didn’t have a television. But now we’re surfing and tweeting and facebooking on our laptops or BlackBerries or iPhones in our living rooms, dens or bedrooms and it’s like being at an Oscar party, a Grammy party or a Super Bowl party.

You want to hear what your snarky friend is saying about SJP’s hair or gown, or praise Jeff Bridges’ heartfelt, yet groovy, man speech. You might have tweeted “Imma let you finish” when that redhaired woman pulled a Kanye during  the Music by Prudence documentary producer’s speech. (Turns out she produced it too.) And you might even admit that you both laughed and got a little misty during Sandra Bullock’s acceptance speech.

I did. I tweeted during many of these shows and talked about the rest of them on Facebook.  I’ve watched these shows in years past –sometimes they were on in the background while I put together an 11pm newscast that followed. (What do you MEAN the show is running over?!!!)  Other times, before kids, I had seen several nominated movies and wondered why I hadn’t seen the others — so I tuned in to see what video I should rent in the future.  (Side note: as a mom with two daughters, I can accurately predict the animated feature winner every year, having seen the entire category and then some. The one year I got it wrong: Happy Feet.)

So I suggest this pop culture crowdsourcing is driving up awards show ratings. In an age when we feel comfortable talking about every little opinion on Twitter or Facebook, check in to be the mayor of our local Starbucks on Foursquare or write blog posts like this one, being a part of the conversation in real time is almost as good as being at a party or the event itself.

Do you find yourself watching an awards show, or even your favorite series logged in to your favorite social media site to chat about the program? Do you think it’s just the bad economy keeping people glued to their TVs? Or have the productions become better? (Seriously? I mean, there was an homage to horror movies during the Academy Awards this year people!)

Tell me what you think is driving up ratings. I’d love to chat with you about it. Until Grey’s Anatomy comes on and then I’m talking about Bailey’s big date.

Searching Twitter for the hashtag #HAPPO on February 19th will connect you with the movement designed to help PR pros find jobs and help companies find talented PR pros.

The brainchild of Arik Hanson (@arikhanson) and Valerie Simon (@valeriesimon),  you can read more about #HAPPO here.  If you can help out, please retweet information, tell your friends or promote the day any way you think best.

‘If you work really, really hard, and you’re kind… Amazing things will happen to you.’ — Conan O’Brien

With grace and dignity, Conan O’Brien left The Tonight Show after just 7 months on the air. Short enough and memorable enough to be re-tweeted, the quote at the top of the post became a trending topic on Twitter. Between speeches like this and his remarkable public statement about not accepting a later time slot, O’Brien won the hearts of many who probably wished they had watched his show more and given him the kind of ratings that could have kept him on the air. Regardless, despite being handed a bitter pill by executives at NBC, Conan either is genuinely that nice or that smart or has really good PR folks giving him advice that he actually follows.

Now, NBC on the other hand, apparently could have used more PR advice or more willingness to listen to any good advice that was given. Facing revolt from affiliates who were losing money hand over fist during their late local newscasts deprived of a good lead-in from the experimental Jay Leno show at 10:00PM, involved in a merger with Comcast, and watching The Tonight Show lose to Late Night with David Letterman, NBC had a crisis on its hands.  Wrap all this up with the new media landscape — advertising rates plummeting, profit margins dwindling and the internet further fracturing the viewership that cable cracked in the 80s — and you can see why NBC panicked. But panic never makes for a clear head or the best method to handle a tricky situation.

What happened to Conan O’Brien has been happening to local newscasters for years, and precipitously so in the last few years as media conglomerates own more and more stations. I have known some fine anchors and reporters who worked hard, did a good job and were loved by audiences. But they may have had too much longevity, too high a salary or were taken for granted by a hastily-convened focus group whose answers apparently represented the feelings of everyone in the market. Some of these fine broadcasters are still working in the biz, while others have left for greener pastures and more sane hours.

Regardless, onward come the Olympics — a few weeks of amazing accomplishments, highly-packaged athlete backstories, plus all the glitter and sequins the ice skaters and ice dancers can fit on a few yards of spandex. (Confession: I love ice skating. It’s probably a side effect of growing up in the iceless South.) I cry at least once during the Olympics. I’m just sentimental that way. But what I don’t know is if America’s heartstrings will be played so adeptly that we will forget the underdog we rooted for in Conan O’Brien, the soundbites from NBC execs who called names during the fracas or how we remembered that this wasn’t the first time Jay Leno found himself in a fight over The Tonight Show.

Does time really heal all wounds? Will watching the Olympics take over late night make you less likely to hold a grudge? Or are you just tired of the whole thing and OVER IT already?

The best way to follow a chat in Twitter is to use a client like Tweetgrid, HootSuite, Tweetdeck or Tweetchat. I’ve found it easiest to follow a chat if I do a search for the hashtag the chat is using, the moderator’s twitter stream, @ replies to my name for starters. I have consistently had the most luck with Tweetgrid, and I recently learned it was developed in my home state of North Carolina — so I’m recommending it to you. One more cool thing about Tweetgrid: you enter the hashtag of your chat and Tweetgrid adds it to all your tweets so you don’t have to re-enter it and the character counter includes it so you don’t go over 140 characters. Here’s a peek at one setup I use a lot.

Using Tweetgrid for #journchat

Now that you’ve seen how I keep up with a chat, here are some tips for participating without annoying regular chatters:

1. Check the moderator’s Twitter stream for preliminary information about how to join in.
Sometimes this is in the steam, sometimes there’s a link to a place where you can read some basic rules about how this chat likes its members to participate.

2.  Retweet the moderator’s questions to give everyone participating a chance to see them.
Depending on the speed of the Twitter client other folks are using, they may be answering questions 1 and 2 while your moderator is on 3 or 4. Retweeting the question helps pass along the information.

3. Use Q1, Q2, Q3 etc., when you are answering the question.
Example: Q2 No, the press release isn’t dead, but needs to be rethought.

4. Watch your character count.
If your answers are less than 140 characters, they are easy for fellow chat participants to retweet  without changing or with adding a quick comment. Aim to leave 10-15 characters free if you can.

5. When you see a good answer, go ahead and retweet it. Even if you don’t agree with it.
You can mention that you agree, disagree, or spit out your Diet Coke when you read it. Retweeting a comment is a great way to further the dialogue and keep the conversation going.

6. We don’t have to all agree, but we do need to respect other opinions.
There can be some good dialogue going on, but remember it’s a conversation and not an argument.

7. Follow people you find interesting or retweet.
It’s a great way to find new tweeps with a provocative point of view. And if you happen to be pithy and find a lot of new followers after a chat because of your comments, you can follow back, thank them or just engage in a conversation with the new folks you meet.

There are chats ranging from interest in journalism/PR to small businesses, to blogging to personal finances. Meryl K. Evans (@merylkevans) started a list on her blog that has since become a Google spreadsheet updated by many folks. Find a chat you might be interested and mark your calendar. Remember, the comments fly by quickly, and you might need a little practice before you keep up. If you  need more time, you can always perform a search using the hashtag after the event to read the comments at your leisure.

For those of you who are old pros at Twitter chats, what advice would you add?

As I clicked through the list, checking people out, I found that some people I thought I’d been following had dropped off my Twitter profile. There were some hiccups months ago with people being added and deleted accidentally all over Twitter.
So this list not only allowed me to find some new PR colleagues to follow, but to re-follow people I thought I’d been following in the first place. You follow?

Is there anyone you’d add to the list?

Twitter's new home page is designed to help newbies figure out the microblogging service.

You’ve probably heard someone say they don’t “get” Twitter. I hear that a lot, especially since I’m pretty active on Twitter and I tell all my colleagues and people I meet about it. I understand the confusion. It can be a lot like attending a huge party, solo, where you don’t know a soul. Everyone’s talking, they’re in a conversation. You could feel overwhelmed. Shy. Not sure which conversation to join, or even if there is a conversation out there that addresses your passion.

So use that party analogy to get your feet wet. You wouldn’t bust into the party and start shouting at the top of your lungs about your company, your product, your newscast, your blog or your children’s accomplishments, right? You’d probably walk around the room, smile on your face, looking for an opportunity to talk about something that interests you, meet some new people, maybe by starting with your neighbor at the bar or buffet line.

So here are some ideas for getting your conversation started on Twitter:

1. Listen. Use the Twitter search tools (there’s a search box right on the home page) to find conversations regarding topics you’re passionate about. You can search with a keyword to start with, like books, public relations, marketing, or health care. You can also search for Twitter users to follow by using sites like Twellow (a yellow pages-type listing), Twitter Grader or by checking out the people your Twitter friends are following. There are even sites that lists journalists who use Twitter, which is handy for my public relations colleagues.

2. Talk transparently. Be human and honest about what you are doing and who you represent. You don’t get all dressed up in a costume to go to the grocery store — you’re yourself there. Be yourself on Twitter.

3. Remember that Twitter is not a broadcast channel for your company, your blog posts or your personal branding efforts. You should be passing along good information that everyone can use. For every one Tweet about your branding/your company/your blog, you should be passing along 4-5 other Tweets about interesting information, responding to other people’s Tweets and otherwise genuinely conversing. I’ve seen some recommend a 10:1 ratio,  others say 80/20% or even 30/30/30.

As they say in Pirates of the Caribbean about the Pirate Code … “They’re more of a guideline, really”. So jump in the Twitter pool. The water’s fine. We’re starting a game of Marco Polo in a few minutes and you’re invited.