We broke the rules. We’ve asked one of our parents for PR advice.
Introducing Marla’s dad, Michael Clendenin. With 40+ years of expansive communications experience, he's a master storyteller and media whisperer. His longstanding career leading the Con Edison media relations team had him on and off camera, calmly representing the company through pivotal events including 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and COVID-19.
Tune in for a remarkable reflection on his career, internal and external stakeholder communication strategies, and his final pick on his favorite child.
Get in Touch:
Ask Marla for his personal e-mail, or head to his website: https://www.clendeninconnections.com/
That's all for now!
Follow Us:
LinkedIn: 212 Communications
Instagram: @notyourparentspr, @MarlaRose__ @MadsCaldwell
We broke the rules. We’ve asked one of our parents for PR advice.
Introducing Marla’s dad, Michael Clendenin. With 40+ years of expansive communications experience, he's a master storyteller and media whisperer. His longstanding career leading the Con Edison media relations team had him on and off camera, calmly representing the company through pivotal events including 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and COVID-19.
Tune in for a remarkable reflection on his career, internal and external stakeholder communication strategies, and his final pick on his favorite child.
Get in Touch:
Ask Marla for his personal e-mail, or head to his website: https://www.clendeninconnections.com/
That's all for now!
Follow Us:
LinkedIn: 212 Communications
Instagram: @notyourparentspr, @MarlaRose__ @MadsCaldwell
Welcome back to Not your Parents PR. Today we're switching things up a little bit. We are leaning into the theme of our podcast, because today I am bringing on my parent. He is the hardest man in the world to lock down for an interview, whether he is running around the golf course or at a Met's game. So you are all in for a treat today. He has more than 40 years of experience in communications, from journalism to public relations. He has been married for over 30 years to my mother Congratulations on that accomplishment and he is the father of three lovely children. He tells me that his last one was the best one. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce my dad, michael Clinton, and to Not your.
Speaker 1:Parents PR.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is Marla's audience. I think I'm supposed to pretend that I'm not her parent.
Speaker 1:So am I not your parent or I am your parent? I think they can figure it out by the last names.
Speaker 2:All right. So for this period alone, you're the favorite child, so you can be the favorite child.
Speaker 1:No, I was so weird. I think you did tell me that in a previous interview that I am the favorite, so Okay, if you remember it that way, that's fine. Keep it going. I know you can't tell the others, but no, I'm so excited to have my dad on. It occurred to me a few weeks ago. I have been in the PR industry for almost seven years and I realized one of my best mentors growing up was my dad, and I never talk about him on the podcast about.
Speaker 1:PR, but he has been so helpful in guiding this journey for me, so thought he could pass on some of his advice to all of you. So I gave him a list of questions and he has prepared lots of notes. But I'm going to start with an easy question, and that is tell me a bit about what led you to start a career in journalism and public relations, and if you want to touch on how marine biology played into all of this, I would love for you to share. Oh well, then you got to write it.
Speaker 2:Then you need more time and I need to write the book. But maybe, like a lot of us growing up, we didn't know what we wanted to do growing up, but we knew we had an interest in a lot of things. But very happy to be on this show. I love the name of your podcast, by the way, and I'm in love with podcasts. I have a lot of them on my phone. I listen to them and we'll talk more about that later because I think they're a fabulous strategy for public relations professionals.
Speaker 2:But my life kind of was, I guess, starting to get or career thoughts were starting to kick off around high school and the only real interest I had and I started developing an interest in writing late in high school writing to the school paper, your school paper.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, I should mention we are both alumni. Was it the serif?
Speaker 2:It was the serif right. It was St Francis Prep.
Speaker 1:Oh, St Francis Prep.
Speaker 2:Yes, but I my big interest growing up anyway, at least in an academic sense, was marine biology. I had a fascination with whales and dolphins and anything to do with the ocean and I thought I wanted to be a marine biologist. I really wanted to be more of a oh I don't know a writer about marine biology. And back then the big marine hero of our time was Jacques Cousteau and there were documentaries by Jacques Cousteau and he had a great narrator named Rob Serling, who many of your generation know from the Twilight Zone. Rob Serling was the narrator and I just love that stuff and I still do. I still eat up sea stories and I'm reading. I'm just starting one right now called the Wager by David Gann, who wrote the original book for Killers of the Flower of Moon. Anyway, I like marine biology.
Speaker 2:My first school was gonna be was at Southampton College as a marine biology major, but I had started to develop an interest in news and writing and curiosity and probably I should have seen the tea leaves. My father was an editor at the New York Daily News. Your grandpa he was an editor there. The Daily News was in its heyday, tabloid journalism was at its height and they had three million readers a day subscribing to the Daily News, a paper I delivered as a young boy. He would take me into the newsroom and I got to meet a lot of the legendary writers of their time, including Jimmy Breslin and a few other people that your listeners may or may not be familiar with, but they should. It was a fabulous time and a great time to be in New York. I started to write for the school paper. I started to do the same thing at that first college I had. I excelled at the newspaper at that college. I was flunking marine biology. I was at least flunking chemistry, math, anything to do with stuff that required a different kind of brain than the one I was born with. But I did have curiosity and I started to just figure out like I'm really more about news and journalism and writing. So I transferred to Northeastern University in Boston. I took on journalism as my major and I just stuck with that and I earned my bachelor's degree in journalism and my sole focus at the time was just to get into the news business and see what I could do and build a career out of that At the same time.
Speaker 2:I don't wanna cog the interview here, but I also had an appreciation for public relations while I was there and that was because my father had left the Daily News to make a little more money and go work at the New York phone company and he was in charge of their press relations. So it became a thing where I got to know that world as well and he spent most of his time doing what he was doing as a reporter and an editor getting to the bottom of things, figuring about getting information, getting facts and getting it out to the news media on a regular basis. And he still commiserated and hung out with, went to events, with drank, with reporters, just like he was back in the Daily News. To me they were kind of two of the same orbits. You were people gathering information. They all knew a little bit about everything. They weren't necessarily experts and everything, but they seemed to know everybody and then he seemed to know everything and that excited me. I just had a great time and I had an appreciation for both professions. I really did.
Speaker 2:And when I came out of Northeastern, I should just say when I was at Northeastern they had a co-op program where you went to school, went to work, went to school, went to work. I didn't even have spring break, it was at the time. It was a five year program. While I was there I had internships for the Gannett Papers, which ran a lot of regional newspapers in Westchester County in New York. There was another local paper up in Boston that I worked for and I even got a PR stint for a federal agency, the Small Business Administration. So I had a resume. When I came out I had news clips with my byline on it. When I came out I had press releases with my name on it. When I came out of college I already had that stuff and that's kind of it.
Speaker 2:My first job after Northeastern I got a job at a local CBS News radio station in Boston where I worked for three years. I worked the news desk, did some writing, did some interviewing, did all the assignments for the editors, for the news reporters that day, made a lot of friends. They are still my friends today. We still get together and play golf at least once or twice a year.
Speaker 2:And I only knew them for a short time back in the 1980s and that was when I was just starting out, but had a great time, learned a lot, learned a heck of a lot about the news business and how it worked and the interesting thing that I learned right away with broadcast and the way the news media worked.
Speaker 2:Then the news desk would start their mornings checking out the local papers just to go see what was in the news that they would then go cover during the day. So a lot of what was in print that morning was kind of repeated on radio and TV the rest of the day and that was kind of my intro. But after I was done with Boston I was looking to come back to New York. I was still dating your mom and we decided I decided to come back to New York where I grew up and we got married, started a family and I took a job at a public relations firm then A public relations firm, by the way, that was started by two very capable, well experienced reporters from my dad's daily news days who knew me as a young kid growing up and took me on and they started showing me their ropes there and that industry as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's how it started. I think I gotta give her a pause and let you get some words in.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was like wait, we have to get to all of the crisis work I have saw you work on as you were, as I was growing up.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the yeah, that's the later on, but go ahead.
Speaker 1:Very quickly. I wanted to just jump back a second or pull out the point you made about when you were just starting to figure out your career and you thought about marine biology, but the one thing that struck me that you said was is that you were interested in C stories and it's like there it is You're interested in storytelling.
Speaker 1:So, I think that's really important for graduates in any industry to say hey, like, is it the topic that I'm passionate about and can make a career out of, or what's the thing behind it that's driving me to have an interest in this. So I think it was smart of you to make the change and you definitely landed in the right spot.
Speaker 2:So I think that I'm glad you approved. Thank you yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know we're a family of communicators. I think you know we have so many writers and teachers and all the things and-.
Speaker 2:You know it's yeah, there's no right or wrong in it. I mean, you've got to know your talents and that's tough. That's those are tough things growing up. You know that's hard for everybody. You don't know what you're good at until you try stuff and you kind of think you're good at something, but your talent might be buried somewhere else. It might be something that you don't immediately see. I didn't think I was a particularly great writer. I was okay. I mean, some people call me a very good writer. I don't know that I'm a very good writer. I haven't written a book and haven't, you know, done more than a few essays and not beds. But I think I'm curious more than anything and I like learning about a lot of different things, and that's where my career is taking me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think it's about being the best writer. I think it's about being the best storyteller at the end of the day too, because, well, I always say every editor needs an editor. So, like I love editing, but I need an editor, like I make mistakes all the time I could use a better word all the time. So it's more about that curiosity. And also, I think another really important quality is if you're observant and you can catch small details and pay attention to the stories that haven't been told yet, because there's so much beauty in the untouched or undiscovered.
Speaker 2:And you have to be open to critiques and criticism. If you're not going to be open to people's haranguing you about either the misuse of words or how something can get better, you're never going to learn. You've got to be able to Look by today's standards. I'm definitely old school. I was in journalism classes with a. You remember the? It wasn't Ferris Bueller, but it was one of the movies he was in where the professor holds up the big F, you know, on his exam. I had that kind of teaching in journalism. If you misspelled a person's name or a word, that's an F. There was no getting around it and they read aloud your story in class and if it was not well done or not well researched, you might crumple it up and throw it at you. I'm not saying that they should be doing that today. I'm just saying just be open to honest, good criticism and critique and don't be afraid of it. It's going to make you better.
Speaker 1:I love that and I think that's one of the things I struggle the most with about writing at times, especially if I'm writing something personal and you know I take like little writing classes on the side because writing is so personal at times and especially if it's your story and especially if you're creative and you want to and you are so proud of an idea you developed but at the same time, if it's not translating with the right audience, if you misspell a word, you're and you're doing your reader to service like you need to learn that lesson to get better. Nothing bothers me more than when I mess up on like a obvious grammar thing and I do think sometimes there is a time and place for that. Like what is it? You know it doesn't need to be positive reinforcement, it just needs to be reinforcement Like you just need to learn the lesson so that you don't make the mistake again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, Marlon, it's just a matter of being. You know you can be confident in your work, you can be certain about what you want, but you also have to recognize, I think, as any good writer, you need to have people's input. Because you may think you you know exactly what you're saying and what you're talking about, what you're writing about, you understand it, but to the person reading it they might not understand it. You know you, maybe you're not coming across straight, Maybe you're not being really clear. You know you got to take that to heart and you can't just assume that people are being lazy or anything else. Let that feedback come at you and learn to accept it. Yeah, yeah definitely.
Speaker 1:Wow, I could talk about this forever. Yeah, it's very Me too, and I'll fast forward.
Speaker 2:a couple of things, too, I left you off at the PR firm that I started with and I learned a few things. It had some great clients and there was, you know, the firefighters union and their big battle then was believe it or not was keeping women from becoming firefighters. That was the big battle back in the 1980s and it was really. Their fight was about the test. The test the physical test was being changed to accommodate women who didn't pass certain measures and I don't want to get into all that here, but I was learning the challenges of PR right from the get-go Because we were on the side of folks who were upset that people nephews and friends and neighbors who were in the line to become firefighters in the next class got bumped Because you know well, there were six women that were going to become firefighters out of 300 spots, you know, and they were upset about that.
Speaker 2:But you know it sounds ridiculous now and it kind of was, but it was a hot topic then and the media was covering it and it was huge and it was a big deal and you know we had to like explain what their position was without making them sound like they were just being mean old gruff guys.
Speaker 1:I think that's a really good call out for PR people who are learning the ropes of dealing with the client, who you might not necessarily be on their side, but you have to construct their narrative and do it in a tasteful way. Do you have any advice on how someone who is working with a client, who they are trying to wrap their head around their message and distill the most concise message to the media that doesn't make them come off? Yeah, it sounds like olders.
Speaker 2:And yeah, yeah, it's a challenge, look and, by the way, this goes on all the time, and if you're a good PR person, you're going to advise the client not just on what position they're going to take, but get them to understand what's going on in the bigger picture and how their business goals and their achievements and their, the betterment of their whether it's their union or whether it's their company and its product how it will be better served by thinking about taking a different stand and learning how to do it.
Speaker 2:Now, if it's so obviously, if it's so egregious or something you just can't stomach yourself, you shouldn't take them on. I mean, that's my advice. So you don't have to, you don't have to stay with them, but if you kind of know that their heart's in the right place and that they care about the job, that's the one thing about this. The thing I just cited is these folks, they care about their job. They care about their job a lot, and a lot of their comrades, a lot of their colleagues, died fighting fires and it's because they couldn't get out or they couldn't. You know, they risked their lives to go save people and carry them out of buildings and you know there was a lot of tough stuff there.
Speaker 2:But you know, it was also quite evident that there were women that were coming up and meeting the challenge and just as brave, just as strong and just as capable of saving lives as much as the men were. You know, they just had to, you know, prove themselves and they did, you know. So, you know, at some point you got to say, hey, folks, get out of the way. This is going to help boost your ranks. This is going to help attract more folks to the union. This is going to attract more membership. And so you know, and plus you know, time changes everything and time heals. You know things are in a different place now. They're in a different, much different spot than they used to be. You know, now to this day you will see the fire department celebrating the promotion of a woman lieutenant or a woman captain or chief, and probably in your generation you don't even hardly even notice it or think about it. You know it's not even, it's not even in it. Yeah, okay, yeah, yes, and no, I mean.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm coming from a like a woman, owned, like all ladies firm. So I see, I see how well we work with so many employers who promoting, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion is a top priority for them, and making it known in the media too, that they are making an effort to make their workforce reflective of the populations they serve. And so I'm still seeing, like promoting female leaders, promoting diverse leaders, a top priority and yeah it's a well.
Speaker 1:There's also like the fact of just industry sometimes are not balanced through gender. I would almost R? Upr.
Speaker 2:I see predominantly women, but maybe you can like this is interesting, but most of my bosses from the time I was in college, when I was working, when I was working in college and after, have been women. Yeah, the PR industry has absolutely been dominated by women for a very, very long time, and so I have large, in fact, I think, of all the bosses I've had maybe one or two men. The other five or six were all women supervisors and whatnot. You know, it was, that was my experience and that's what I had in life. But it changes and, yeah, I think diversity and as someone who became a manager of a utility, who ran a press office, I was very cognizant of trying to maintain a diverse workforce.
Speaker 2:I had a small staff but I wanted to make sure it was reflective of the community we served and the community and the really large company in total, and I would find the one you know, the diversity strengthened my product. It did it, absolutely did. It brought in more sides, not just the physical or the ethnic makeup. It was a different ideas, it was a different way of thinking. It was everything, made everything more creative. All the diversity that people promote today is beneficial and it helps to. It's going to help your client grow, your company grow. I can't say enough about it. But that's, it is absolutely a top priority. I'm convinced of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and we I mean for us, like we work. You know we really pride ourselves on working on companies that share that value too, and it's important, yeah, yes to everything you said. But, you mentioned a few times throughout this. I don't want to get us off track, because people still need to know more about your career trajectory after you started out. So tell me a little bit about your time at City Hall and then getting to the one that I saw you working at growing up. Okay, fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fast forward a little bit more. And, by the way, none of this involved the plan. In case anybody's still in school trying to figure out, they got to have a plan for where they're going to be. You know, but forget it, okay.
Speaker 1:I get about it.
Speaker 2:At least that didn't work for me. So, yeah, some of my friends, they had plans, they knew where they were going to be in 10 years and 20 years. I did, I, I, I took the next great opportunity that came along. So for me it was a an opportunity to go work in City Hall. This is like a 19, late, late 1980s, and it was for the New York City Council, for a wonderful guy named Peter Vellone, who is the head, the Speaker of the City Council, the legislative leader.
Speaker 2:And I experienced just being able to work in the press office at City Hall is priceless. I can't even tell you the things I saw, the history I saw get made, the moments that came and went. You know we were on the legislative side, not the mayor's side, but I was there for the last year of David Dinkins, last year of excuse me at Koch, as mayor, david Dinkins, giuliani, and it was a real learning experience. All told, so a lot of history passed by. You know I was in the Nelson Mandela parade when he came to New York City. I saw the Yankees and the Rangers, you know, win the championships and the ceremonies they had at City Hall for that.
Speaker 2:Oh, so much more I could think of, but it was just an amazing experience and the only thing I kicked myself to this day is I didn't bother getting my picture taken with any of it. I was too busy pushing the politicians in front of the camera that I was not, you know. I felt like it would be cheesy and all that and wasn't my role. Yada, yada, yada. I should have done it. I really. There's very little record of the thing, but I had 11 years there and then an opportunity came up to become the media relations director for the Con Edison, which is the utility company serving New York City for electricity and gas and steam, and I started a career there in 2000 and stayed for another 20 years as the chief spokesperson, and you know, sometime in that period it's all a blur to me now I started having children and you were one of them. So that's what happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was 29.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, definitely fell within that. I just I mean I can remember, like from my experience watching, just from my lenses. Also, being young, I don't remember too much of everything, but I remember many nights of you hunched over a computer working on a press release. I remember any time one of my friends at school would say, oh my gosh, I saw your dad on TV, I'd be like, oh, he's probably not coming home for dinner because that means there's an emergency happening. So everyone would get really excited that you were on TV. And then I would be like that means something not good is happening or he's probably going to be like.
Speaker 2:I just want to say for the record that you have told your audience exactly what I wanted you to tell them. We invented work from home. Ok. There was always work from home for us, always. This wasn't a new thing. We always had it. Yes, yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:It was so funny to experience.
Speaker 1:But I learned a lot about electricity, and actually I think this ties back into what we were just talking about having to be on the side of a client in a way that is not being portrayed well by the media, because you are a utility company and all people care about when the power goes out is that they want someone to point the finger at, and then there's only so much that's in your control. So it's like your job to communicate that a tree has fallen and their power won't be fixed for quite a bit. So it's so interesting in the ways that you probably had to stay calm, cool and collected under pressure. So I want to take this first into one of my questions about your expertise. So I feel like we're landing on this topic.
Speaker 1:So you started in 2000. We all know what happened in 2001. You have been with Con Edison through 9-11, national Disasters, hurricane Sandy. You ended your career on COVID. I don't know how to sum up this experience concisely, but I do want to know what is the common thread that you've seen on your end of what reporters and journalists need from you during times of crisis. Has there been a common theme? Has it been a little bit different each time?
Speaker 1:Let me know how it went.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's a mouthful. We could probably do three podcasts on all of it.
Speaker 1:Probably You're right.
Speaker 2:The common thread to me is information when you're dealing with the major events and crises, and you're not going to know everything that's going on just not especially with breaking news, because it's constantly evolving, and you know how the media likes to play gotcha. You said the other day that it blah, blah, blah, and then now, today, it's this and that. Well, that's what happens, though. You know what you know when you know it at the time, but a few days later it could be slightly altered, it could be slightly different, that you didn't realize, or that there was a piece of information you didn't have access to, or anything like that. But mostly you need to be transparent, accessible and provide information. Provide the media with content, give them information that they can use in their stories, whether they're written or on the TV or radio, whatever it is, or whatever the media is. Make sure that you're putting out something about what your company is doing about that situation.
Speaker 2:There's a blackout going on, or take 9-11. What we had to do was mostly, I mean, the horror of that awful, awful day and the weeks after. We're mostly focused on the rescue work and the firefighters and other things, but we were focused on trying to restore power to an area of lower Manhattan and the stock exchange was under pressure to get reopened the following week after 9-11. 9-11 was on Tuesday and they needed the stock exchange back open the following week and basically our entire grid was destroyed when the third building came down. So we had to rebuild our grid and so my job was to, and my team's job was to make sure they understood what that involved. We ended up putting it. We went after the facts. We're laying 36 miles of cable along the streets, on the sidewalk that is going to act as basically shunts, which is basically temporary power, and run them from other substations in areas of the city that are on, that are in power, and run these cables. And that's exactly what Cadet did in an unbelievable amount of time four or five days. We laid 36 miles of cable all over lower Manhattan on the sidewalks, temporary covered with boxes. We were going to make it safe so people could walk and stretch. But our engineers, they got it done. It was a gargantuan effort done by 2,000 to 3,000 people working around the clock. I've said this so many times that it's still fresh in my head, but that's what went on. Same thing with Hurricane Sandy and we had the 2003 blackout, where the entire Northeast got blocked out. Nope. For a while, no one was quite sure what was going on.
Speaker 2:But when you have breaking news like that, there's not a lot you can do other than tell them exactly what your response is and how you're dealing with it. If you have a sudden blackout or something goes wrong, that's unexpected, let's put it that way and you're in an organization like a utility company. There are people responding, people who know what to do. They know their jobs. You've got to get in touch with those people who know their jobs and know what they're doing. So that's what you've got to do. You've got to get a hold of those people and just say to them not what happens, what are you doing. And then they start telling you what they're doing. They say, oh OK, I've got some information to go with. They're inspecting all the equipment from this point to that point to find out where the fault might be. But once you put all that together, you can start to formulate a coherent response that says, not that we don't know what happened. You're providing a response that says here's what we're doing. Crews are out inspecting the cables at this street and that street and the other street where we heard the explosion, and we're going block by block to check every piece of equipment. We will be keeping you updated as those details become available. So that's what all those breaking news items are like and that's what the police do in routines. It's what fire departments do in routines.
Speaker 2:When you're in a utility organization like that, you're kind of doing the same thing, and so you're always trying to put out exactly what you're doing when you're doing it and keeping people updated. Promise to reporters that you'll get back to them. Promise. Don't ever say I can't talk to you right now. Just say I'm going to get back to you.
Speaker 2:Make sure that you're keeping your public informed too. Get a statement out, get something out quickly that at least that you can post on your website Nowadays. Post on Twitter. Get it out on any other breaking social channel that you have that you're enrolled in, and make sure your info is getting out there, because the one thing in every crisis, the one thing that has never changed, is that if you don't tell your story, someone else will, and they're probably going to tell it wrong, ok, especially if you're not participating in the conversation. So make sure you're putting your story out there and it's the same as a branding thing about a company, like, if you're in the branding business, if you don't define yourself, someone else will and you don't want that to happen and that's the danger that everybody runs into and that's been true forever.
Speaker 1:I loved all of that and I think there are so many concepts you touched on, for instance, going to the source of who's working on the problem. I think sometimes in my role as a PR person, sometimes we're often talking to the leaders of each company, which is great, but sometimes I wish I could sit in someone's office and see what the people on the ground level are doing. It hits the narrative more on the nose. I feel is like when you can really see what people are doing from a ground level perspective, Because there is only so much the CEO can know on what goes on on the day to day, and it's the many stories that you want to highlight.
Speaker 2:There's two things going on at the same time. You need to talk to those people in the trenches and you need to talk to your client, the CEO or whoever it is. You need to talk to both and I'll tell you why. You've got to remember, you've got to at least get some information from your trenches, because that's where the media is going to get their stuff. That's what's going to be popping up on social media in a heartbeat the moment.
Speaker 2:Something happens people in the street thinking they saw something, and they reported what they think they saw. You know how it is, that's what happens and it's a piece of information and you've got to be, if you haven't been trained in journalism, at least be trained in knowing how to ask questions and be curious, get the information from as many different pockets that you can so you can assemble some kind of semblance of a story and then, when you're talking to your client, the CEO, whatever it is saying, based on the only information I've gathered from you and your team. Here's where I think we, what we can say for now, and say and say safely and and you know, not be caught or any of that, and I think that that's the way you got approach any situation At least like that it's. It's very important you do that.
Speaker 2:Yep yeah, but you know it's it's a. It's a. It's an interesting game. It's it's an interesting life and career and you got to just do the best you can and and always give your client the best advice you can.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I think it was. It really benefited you that you had that Journalism background and today we're seeing so many journalists switch to PR.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think Curiosity is a core tenant of that I. You have touched on so many of the questions that I pulled together, which is amazing. I Would like to know from your perspective on how the media landscape has shifted and what platforms do you think are the most meaningful and valuable to get out your message? Still traditional print TV, or are we shifting to social, or is it a little bit of both?
Speaker 2:It's a. Well, you answered your own question. It's a little and a lot of both it's, I think, I think you, you can't ignore any of it. Has it shifted, boy I'll. I think I could really write a book on this. My own pet peeves things like that, but I won't. I'll just sum it up this way Everybody should go back and find the movie called network.
Speaker 2:It was made in the 1970s a fabulous movie Fade Done Away and Bill Holden weren't it and it is a study in how Journalism, or TV broadcast journalism especially, started to evolve and change from what it was. You know, I don't have to Preach here today and I'm not going to, but you know, let's face it, there are media silos now that people are watching and they're all in their own orbit and unfortunately, people are getting their own version of facts. And to me there are only two things is there's facts in them, it's lies, or this facts, and or there's just plain misinformation. And you got both of it out there and people don't know the difference. And they don't know the difference between news and opinion anymore either. But if you do watch that movie, you'll see the precursor to what started to evolve into where network executives decided that news divisions did not, were not, we should not be allowed to just not make money. They had to make money. They had to be profitable. To be profitable, they needed to do things to enhance their ratings and that meant having more conflict and as much conflict as possible that people would watch and be entertained by, even if that conflict wasn't really if you dug deep not that big at all, you know it really wasn't a conflict, but they made it look like a conflict.
Speaker 2:The other things that started to happen were the, the Removal of the, the fairness doctrine from the FCC. There was a lot of other stuff that started to go on in America. That's that changed, started to change journalism, the advent of cable news, and you started to see more and more commentary, and then commentary Diluted. What was really news? Well, what was unbiased, fair reporting news? Not that commentary isn't a part of news. It is, but it is Defined and people knew the difference. You know, way back when people knew that, you know they might have had their favorite broadcaster if it was, you know, walter Cronkite or or David Brinkley, they might have a favorite broadcaster, but they what? They were getting the same information. Okay, now it's not that anymore. They're getting different, totally different versions of the truth, if you will. So you've got to navigate your way through all that and you.
Speaker 2:The landscape has also changed for public relations professionals, in that you don't have the same media audience or the same media outlets that you used to have. You know, let me explain it to you this way there's been a gradual deterioration of local news. A lot of it is now national or even international, but it's national. My favorite outlet, the New York Times, doesn't really cover New York that much anymore. There used to be a whole metro section. It doesn't exist. You know, it's the Washington Post. They did the same thing. Great papers, great institutions, very important for American democracy, but they you know it's. It's like the landscapes change. So your outlets and getting Local press or have changed a lot. You have online publications. You have a lot of everything's online Doesn't get quite the pickup it used to.
Speaker 2:Generally, if you had a great story back in my early days, you could have gotten an exclusive in the paper and all the other media would come chasing it. Well, there's not as much chasing anymore, unless it's something that they just can't ignore. There was a lot of hobnobbing there when you did news, it was slower than it is today. You know you could take over, go with lunch with a reporter back then and drop some good news tip. They'd hold it for the next morning, you know. And then once it splashed across the front page of the tabloid that morning, all the other TV news media would have a field day with it, which meant you've got two or three days of play for your clients story. You know, you've got a like. A lot of that doesn't really happen that way, especially with online. We now, the moment, news just is constantly breaking. There are no more deadlines anymore, it's just a constant news cycle. It's it's never ending.
Speaker 2:Social media, of course, changed a lot of things. It added to your, your, your, your, your let's say your your sources of where you can get News out there. And I like, I like social media when it first came out because you could talk directly to your customers, to your audience. You know, part of PR is understanding your customers, understanding your stakeholders, knowing who they are and where they hang out. You need to know where they hang out. Whether you hang out on this platform or that platform, what do they read? You know that's still true today, but it's just so much more Diffuse, diffuse, not diverse, but diffused, it's just the thing. And whether or not somebody else picks it up or not, you don't know, you used to be able to.
Speaker 2:If you had a great story to sell, you could call a press conference and there'd be so much media, tv crews and and outlets. You know news stations who had bureaus. They had a city hall bureau, they had a or an energy beat, they had a this that was less of that. There's fewer people in the business so they don't have the staffs to come cover press conferences anymore. So you just go out there and put out your announcement and get your client interviewed any which way you can. Op-eds have become kind of the new PR op-eds are. You know, if you go to most news websites now, they put their opinion sections pretty high up, front and center, because I want to draw in whatever audience to try to capture. So you really got to take your time to understand when is your client going to be best served? Where are their customers, where are their stakeholders, where are the ones that that matter to them and go there and make sure that the information is getting to them.
Speaker 2:So back to your original question. Yes, you do print. Yes, you do radio. I'm a, by the way. I'm a big fan of radio. I love radio because radio repeats all day long. If you have a news station in your service area, it's going to repeat. And don't underestimate the value of a Friday radio story, because it can often repeat all weekend long. So you're you know to me podcast or like the new radio interview. You know they. They can grab people and capture them and hold an audience like no others. So Take advantage of them.
Speaker 2:But there is a certain angle to the fact that print believe and I won't it's online, it's not print anymore. There's gonna be. I don't think there's gonna be any newspaper print ins Within five years. I'm not sure we're gonna see a news, a printed newspaper anymore. But the online print publications Straight list you know, straight down the middle publications Will still draw off and drive what the broadcast media will cover. Okay, so when it breaks in the print or online, it will be picked up by the broadcast media if it's a interesting enough story.
Speaker 2:Spr professionals. By the way, once you have that out in the online or print publication, you should be sending those out to the radio desks and the TV desks and everybody else and any other desk people that you know and you know and spend some time getting to know them because you want them to, to see, to see the story. You know it's a fast, faster world than it was when I was, you know, first learning it. So Always a lot going on, exciting, always a new platform that you got to check out. You know, and, as PR professionals, advise your client on what channels they should be on and maybe those that they should make sure you understand what each channel, what purpose it serves. For many of the clients that we work with, linkedin is very good. You know there's a great conversations going on on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:It's not just about finding a job, it's. It's often about issues. So you know I'm a big issues person. That's just. That's just me. I mean, I like talking about issues because issues lead to storytelling which you would start to talk about and I love to talk about more because I think people forget. Storytelling is, to me, the fundamental human experience. It's the one thing that makes you Connect. You were asking me before about con ed. When people are pissed off all the time and they hate us and this is a net, if you can at least show your empathy and Let them know that you care. It can buy you a little bit of time, and it can buy you Certainly a matter of understanding why you work the problem totally, and Thank you for answering all that first of all.
Speaker 1:secondly, I wanted to Go back to your point about the, about the, the power of local news, and I would love if you are open to sharing the story you recently got placed and how you developed the storyline for that, because I think it demonstrates a lot of the principles we talked about and how we can all think creatively about our clients.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so well. Thanks, that was a great lead. And thank you, Mala, I appreciate that no problem. I. Since I retired from Canada a few years ago, I work a few days a week at a public relations firm, butler Associates a little plug right behind my head, and they have a wide variety of clients in labor and in a little bit of energy and all kinds of different finance.
Speaker 2:But they have a client which is a construction company based in New York called Forte Construction. At late in the day they had this, they just let me know that some of their employees were going to a shelter in New York City presenting a check. You know, one of those big blow up checks. People see a check presentation.
Speaker 1:That always makes me think of the office episode where Michael Scott did the rabies fun run and he wanted like the big check yeah.
Speaker 2:Everybody is loved with the big check. I'm not one of them, by the way, but you know what it is.
Speaker 1:And I think it just ties very quickly into the point about the importance of visuals and people. Immediately when you see a big check, you're like that good company is giving money to someone who needs it.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's obvious. It's an obvious thing. We can talk more about visuals, if you want. I love visuals.
Speaker 2:The visuals are very important but you know it was late in the day. Like I said, it was late in the day. I didn't know a lot. One of my hidden talents from my journalism career while I was in school is I did take some photo journalism courses and I was a bit of a hobbyist with a camera before that. Even so, I kind of know how to frame a picture and take candid and things like that. So I said I'll do it.
Speaker 2:It was on my way home. It was in Jamaica, new York. You know it's kind of a rough area of Queens but not far from where you grew up. And we, you know they needed a photo. That was it. I mean, that was the assignment. They need a photo and you know go. So I said I would do it and as I went out there I just tried to do a little bit of research for what it's about. And it was a company donation to a Girl Scout troop that serves young women in city shelters all over New York City. So this could be a little more interesting than I thought. So I got there when I went in because of my city experience and other things I knew city shelters don't allow TV cameras and things like that. And these are, you know, homeless young women who are there. They're in transitional housing. They're underage, you know, they're under 16. So I don't know if I'm gonna be allowed to even take photos of them, but they are the story you know. But once I got there, the Girl Scout troop leaders were fantastic. There was maybe a gathering of about 20 young girls who were there for their regular, you know, weekly meeting, doing their pledges and everything. And there were parents who had given permission for certain young girls to be photographed and that was fine. You know, had I had more time and everything else, we could have possibly staged something with a TV station or something and gotten a little better. But you have to work with what you got right.
Speaker 2:As I was standing there, I just was trying to be conversational and curious with the director from the construction firm. I said so this is a donation from your company officer. She says no, this is company employees who anonymously submit their ideas for a charity to give once a year. And we give $10,000 once a year to a charity of their choice and it's selected and it's submitted anonymously. Nobody at the company knows who has submitted it until you know, we decide on who the winner will be. So it's not the president's son or anything like that, it's just. And I said, oh great. I said, can you get me the form that the person filled out to get the nominations? He said sure, we'll send it to you. I said, okay, well, they did a little thing. She's a check presentation. I took the picture. I got everybody's name. I made sure I spelled them right. Come, make sure you spell them correctly. Yes, and I went home and I got the form and I read the fellows form and I found out that the employee's wife who was there was a volunteer for this Girl Scout Troop and that's how he wrote it up to say you know, my wife does this. And so when I went home I just I gave it some thought and I wrote up a press release a little bit different. I was again sent there to just write photo left to right names. You know, construction company donates 10 grand. But instead I sat down, read the nomination form and I wrote a lead and it won't take me long to read this. It goes like this One Forte Construction Corp held its annual staff picked charity competition in which employees anonymously submit their nominations for a $10,000 company donation.
Speaker 2:Project manager Carlos Lopez knew just what to do. His wife, miriam Rayward, is a volunteer with the Girl Scouts of Greater New York Troop 6000, which works with young girls living in city shelters across all five boroughs. In his submission, lopez wrote every girl deserves to have the opportunity to reach her full potential, regardless of her background. Troop 6000 helps girls to develop the skills and confidence they need to succeed in school and in life. Troop 6000 is a safe and supportive space for girls to learn and grow, a place where they can feel safe and love. And it goes on. Tells you a little bit of more. Few more quotes from the Girl Scouts and some other people and a little background about the company and what it does.
Speaker 2:You know they do a lot of work with the MTA, but I think my point for reading all that is you know you're first of all. Even at Con Edison I learned this real quick. Your company employees are often your best story. You know they are your best spokespeople. They are your best everything. So try to use that as much as you can.
Speaker 2:I decided to tell a story, so the first quote wasn't from the company president, it wasn't from the CEO. It was from the person who wrote it from his heart, about what he felt about this, about this charity that his wife was involved in. So from there I was able to, you know, put together this thing and what I decided to do was send it out to all the Queens Weeklies. There are they do still exist, the weeklies, thank God. God bless them, and we've already gotten placements in two or three of them who were generally, they told me, moved by the story. They just, you know, they have room for photos with you know left to right snapshots, but, and a couple of construction trades, because you know, that's something that you know kind of helps to balance the more you know engineering-ish stories they tend to run. This is something that makes them feel good.
Speaker 2:The one other thing I was gonna add to this is that when you get stories like this for your clients, make sure that you share it with your employees. Please do this. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a good story, even in my career of ConEd and City, where we would get great stories and they were not shared with employees. I mean, you just, it's your employees when they see the company and you being talked about nicely in the media. It makes them feel good about going to work. It makes them feel good about you know what they do for a living, and it's important for your morale and for people who want to come and work for you. That's why you do that.
Speaker 2:So make sure don't let the good stories just go by the wayside without being seen. And even if the world doesn't pick up the story, even if you know the average person of life doesn't know what had happened let your employees know about it. Put it on LinkedIn, put it out there on Twitter you know the other ones or whatever you happen to be on but put it out there. But mostly get it to your employees. Public relations is not just about reaching the media. It's about reaching the people who work for you. It's about reaching the people, your customers and who you serve, and you know that goes a long way and public relations is multifaceted that way, so you need to pursue it.
Speaker 1:Wow, you just speak in sound bites, don't you?
Speaker 2:I don't know it's so good.
Speaker 1:No, this is all so good, and really quickly. I just wanted to jump back to well, you took the words out of my mouth. We must be related. But what I admired about the lead of that article, well, one of my favorite writing mantras is your job is to get your reader to read the next sentence.
Speaker 1:So like it's just and it can be done in the most simple language. Like you said, you knew just what to do. It's like it's nothing fancy, but it like sparks the curiosity. It just, it keeps the reader hooked. And the second thing and you did point this out but I just want to say it again is you don't have to make up a story or put words in your client's mouth like use their words.
Speaker 1:We had a client the other day who in this phenomenal interview he had this great sound bite and I'm like I'm putting that in his social media posts. Why, why would I sit there and try to make up something fancy and new and reinvent the wheel? It's there's no point to that. So I think you hit on so many good things and thank you for sharing that. We will Definitely link it in our show notes because I think that'll be a great story for people to see.
Speaker 1:It reminded me of one of my first tasks at my job, where we worked with Coca-Cola and particularly their community Engagement arm, and we would often go into we. I remember one time we went to a church in DC that was in a low-income neighborhood and we were donating I believe it was like backpacks to children and school supplies. But you know what are you supposed to do and you can't photograph the children receiving the backpacks and all the things. So we had to get a little bit creative and just photograph the backpacks and the supplies and maybe some of the volunteers on site, or yeah, I think that there's creative ways to get around that and still show a visual, because obviously you also want to respect people's privacy At the same time?
Speaker 2:absolutely you don't have to. We all have to work with constraints. But there's a way to you know, work it out.
Speaker 1:I mean yes, and Creativity breeds can. No. Sorry, let me say that again constraints breed creativity. That's also one of my favorite things. I didn't make that up, so I saw that somewhere. But I do find sometimes where I do believe on my most creative, when I have a little bit of like pressure or Like creative barriers in a in a way. So I think I thrive in that structure and also, a deadline never hurts this. Absolutely that's always helpful. Can you quickly share a little bit about your Camera tips, because you are always on?
Speaker 1:camera, I think that's really important, and especially for things like this today, with being podcast interviews, where Visuals are still used and you're still on camera. So you have any quick tips? The master of Okay so.
Speaker 2:So, whatever, wherever I can dig it up and then this goes for an interview too, for anything the real, real, quick and easy ones is, first of all, just remember to smile, even when you're talking about something said, at least look like you're engaged and you know. You know the silly things I could tell you about, but it doesn't really matter. I mean, try to make sure that your smile that can exude confidence and that you know what you're know what you're saying and that you're believable. You know, for me was trial and error. I wasn't always that great on camera, but as time went on, you know I got more comfortable with it. From me, my own personal tip is Make sure that you're comfortable with the information you're providing. Make sure that you are confident in what information you've been given. That, even if it, even if you do, we do get told wrong things from time to time you there's always a way to go back and correct it. But you've got to make sure that you've done enough digging so that you've got a good command of the facts and the information. It's very rare in my experience that any reporter just assigned to cover something for the first time, first day, and you've been on this job for 10 years or 15 years and you've been with this client for 10 years of 15 years. There's no way the report is going to know more than you do. They're just trying to get a coherence piece of information and a sound bite and something to fill their story out. So Make sure that you've asked all the questions of your client that you that you feel you should, to make yourself comfortable in what you're, what you're being asked you know. So do a little bit of digging.
Speaker 2:Don't go into an interview just with message points. Everybody focuses on the message points and look, I am a big believer in a message point, the sound bite. They're very important because you do want people to get the right message from you but at the same time, they are not going to get you through a tough interview. You've got to have a good command of the information that You're being asked about and know what other people are saying about you. Going in, make sure that you know what's being said. Don't try not to get caught by surprise about you know anything that's out there, because there's nothing worse than a than a silly got you question. Other than that, like I said, smile, look confident, be empathetic. Try to at least get across the fact that you're Providing a decent information. You know the interesting thing too.
Speaker 2:People used to say to me which made me pause once in a while I would focus so much on what I wanted to say, or my messaging, or you know the bullet point or whatever it might be, and you know you could drive yourself crazy trying to rehearse it. Make sure you get the words out right and it's exactly the sound bite that you. You thought you would craft it, but at the end of the day, most of the feedback I get from people was hey, mike, so you're in TV, you look great. It's not a great. I said really what I say I don't know, but you look great, so I don't know what. I Don't know what exactly People are hearing when they hear you, but if you look comfortable and you look confident, you know you're gonna come off that way and and and people will at least have a Faith that they're, that you're being straight, and that's the most important thing to do on TV. It's to look like you're being, to make sure you're being. First, be straight and you know. Secondly, look like you're being straight.
Speaker 1:Definitely I. So I usually I'll speak to Loyola students, my alma mater, about once a semester and I always give the same presentation and I have the same bullets. Stories are different every time, but I'm pretty sure I come off pretty well because I know it's like that Knowledge bank. I know what I'm talking about, so I'm like oh, this is this feels easy and relaxed to me. I did create a new slide for them within the past year about presenting, and I go off of the three S's, one of which you Mentioned, and I say smile, scan the room, slow down. I mean, I'm guilty of talking too fast at times, so I think that's important.
Speaker 2:That's in our family, don't worry about it. We all have that.
Speaker 1:I have that same problem or or mom, when she's talking loudly and she goes I'm not yelling, I'm Italian, I I also think this relates a little bit as, as you know, dabbling in the stand-up comedy world and I was thinking about how I memorized my jokes and I was like getting so paranoid that I wasn't going to get it right. And then I realized I'm just telling stories and they're about me. So if I don't, like I have all the information and that helped me where I was like Just thinking about it in terms of it's the information. You know, it doesn't necessarily matter how you deliver it, as long as it gets out pretty much in the same, like the same package that you want. So I think that's all great advice and you should just come off authentic, because that's a great way to look at it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I remember you know I took your sister to see Jerry Seinfeld yeah, great show. We were on the floor, we were laughing, we were historical. We come out of there. I'm like what do you say? That was so funny? Well, first of all, seinfeld.
Speaker 1:Nothing, you know nothing is nothing right but you know, but you walk down.
Speaker 2:You went, wait a second. I don't think I can repeat one thing. He said that was funny, but it came off funny, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean he's a great, he's great at pausing and he's great at the delivery and I mean I, well, I do think the best, I mean the best comedy is like when you're just talking about life, because life is ridiculous. I mean everyone's got a crazy story that's happened to them, it's just just tell it like that's, that's it so absolutely Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And they, you know it's. You know your life is full of comedy. I mean, you may not know it at the time, but it is. And uh, like you said, storytelling is the heart of pr and storytelling is the heart of journalism. It's it's, it's the heart of everything that people come in touch with. It's, it's their connection to eat. It's our connection to one another. If a story strikes you, um, that means you know it's, it's important, okay, and and that's it. But go. You know, like I said, go beyond the um, go beyond the. You know, uh, what was it going to say? That? You know the, the being the announcer of things in pr. You know everybody's an announcer of that. Today, we're announcing that. They're things. You know that Find the story.
Speaker 2:Yeah find the, find the story.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's a great note to wrap on, unless there's anything else you didn't hit on Before we get into our lightning round.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh no, we're going to lightning round. Okay, no, I think I'm. I have lots of stories. Okay, well, you can always come back for a part two, as well I have.
Speaker 1:I have a feeling I'll tap you for future episodes. Okay, so I'm just gonna go through a few, a few questions in the lightning round and some I've given you, some I haven't given you.
Speaker 2:So Okay, I yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, we're jumping in. Okay, what is the most overused word in a press release?
Speaker 2:announced.
Speaker 1:Yes, mine is exciting, but great Favorite.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll just add one more to most of us in a quote in a press release proud, proud.
Speaker 1:I times today.
Speaker 2:I get my, I get my lighter out whenever I see that.
Speaker 1:What would you, what would you put in place of that?
Speaker 2:proud? Yeah, nothing, I just you know, find the story. But the quote you just talked about a little while ago about the guy spoke eloquently, without any prish nonsense, that's the quote you want. Yeah that's a good reminder.
Speaker 1:That's. That's like when you tell me um Going on punctuation. Like you can sound excited without an exclamation point.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that was one of my earliest english teachers. Uh, he wasn't journalism, he was english. He said if you have to use an exclamation point, you're not using the right words.
Speaker 1:Hmm, that is, that hits home. That hits home. I can't wait to give you your happy birthday card. Happy birthday period, um, okay. Favorite publication to read. Uh, new york times okay, best funny article you've read recently.
Speaker 2:A satellite the weight of a large male rhino is crashing to earth. Now I know that's not exactly funny, but it sounded funny and hey.
Speaker 1:We all got, we're gonna go out somewhat.
Speaker 2:It came from something called the european space agency, which cbs news used. Another good pr tip try to come up with a factoid that's colorful and visual and you know something that goes uh, I'm not sure if it quite drives the point home, but it it's made me stop.
Speaker 1:Yep, um, okay. What is a dream brand you've always wanted to work for, always wanted to work for.
Speaker 2:Dream brand. I've always wanted to work for titleist.
Speaker 1:Okay, why, what would your role be?
Speaker 2:It's the biggest name in golf. It's just it. It'll get me in a lot of good places too. Okay, it'll get me invited places.
Speaker 1:Okay, sounds good, like you need more invitations. You always have a packed social calendar Um make friends, not enemies, sorry. If you had to go in front of a room right now and give a presentation on a topic For a full hour, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh, whales. I could name every kind of whale there is. I can tell you with whether they're toothed or baylene or I still have a finger from marine biology. I have not let go of that. I just I'm one of my. My goals is to travel the oceans a little bit and go on whale watching expeditions.
Speaker 1:That's we get up close, that's amazing. I really thought you were gonna say Bruce Springsteen like I, just no, okay well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been a lot of presentations on Bruce Springsteen. We don't. You know, I can't. I can't anymore. You're so right.
Speaker 1:You're so right. If you could have one talent that you don't currently have, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh well, now you got it back to Bruce. Okay, good, play guitar.
Speaker 1:Okay, you know you could learn how to do that.
Speaker 2:Not me, no, no, not these fingers, no, no, no okay, all right Good play guitar.
Speaker 1:Okay, last question favorite child.
Speaker 2:Oh, coming's down to three.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Can say marla rose clinton and yay, all right.
Speaker 1:I think that's a good place to end, all right.
Speaker 2:No, because. I, we are you're the host, send us away.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I'll send us away, and usually I close out with An ad from one of our fake sponsors, so I'm gonna make this up on the spot. This episode was brought to you by Keyboard covered. It is a special wipe that is kind of like a Roomba and it's powered by your phone and you could have an automatic wipe, dust your keyboard at any point that you would like. For more information, you can Head to the imaginary website for 25 off. I will definitely link the code in the show notes. All right, all right, well thank you so much for being with us, dad.
Speaker 2:That was fun. I hope I'm ready to know. I hope you get a couple more listeners, All right?
Speaker 1:where can folk wait? Hold on.
Speaker 2:Where do you find you?
Speaker 1:Message you.
Speaker 2:Me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what does it want to hire you?
Speaker 2:You can't leave me alone. You can contact me at michael at clondenin connectionscom.
Speaker 1:Thank you all for listening. This was so fun. Everyone have a good rest of your week.
Speaker 2:Bye, bye, bye.