Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tony award-winning composer/lyricist and Alexander Hamilton aficionado.

Alexander Hamilton was an author of the Federalist papers and first secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He was the leading champion of a central government and was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr.

A little boring, right?  How about this:

“How does the bastard orphan  

Son of a whore and a Scotsman 

Dropped in 

The middle of a forgotten  

Spot in  

The Caribbean

By providence

Impoverished

In squalor,

Grow up to be a hero

And a scholar?”

Aside from his Tony award-winning musical In the Heights, a less well-known demonstration of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s storytelling genius is a rap he composed about Alexander Hamilton.

That’s right, rap. The Hamilton Mixtape, part of which Miranda performed at the White House Evening of Poetry, Music, and the Spoken Word in 2009, engages and entertains like no dry history textbook account could.

We as public relations professionals are essentially storytellers.  We spend much of our time researching our clients and choosing the right words to tell their stories.  Relating the facts isn’t enough.  It’s our job to tell each story well. 

Good PR people don’t distort the facts of any story to make it more provocative or sensational.  Facts reign supreme.  But we must strive to humanize the message – tying it in to something with which the receiver can connect and delivering it in a way that resonates.  Doing so shows a depth of understanding – not only of our clients and their stories, but of the audience for which each message is intended.

Telling a story well lifts the veil that separates the sender from receiver, enhancing the transparency that is so important to an organization’s credibility and, ultimately, its authentic connection to its audience.

A recent article in The Daily News calls the select journalists who attended Tiger Woods’ apology “stooges.” The reporter suggests their agreeing to attend a press briefing during which they’d be allowed to ask zero questions should have earned them “T-shirts reading: ‘2-19-10. I attended Tiger Woods’ Bootlicker’s Ball.’”

The article goes on to say, “There was a time when reporters would not genuflect, not bow down, not adhere to rules set by some celebrity-punk looking to control them. Nor would they listen to some shifty PR flacks or enabling agents, like the ones who look the other way as their married clients morph into womanizing, cheating creeps.”

In the spirit of full disclosure, I know personally one of the three reporters who agreed to attend the “Bootlicker’s Ball.” All journalists are in the business of breaking news. My colleague, who works at Bloomberg News, was the first to write about the apology with this article that scooped his biggest competitors.

Not only was he first with the story, but the piece led to his being interviewed by dozens of other media outlets, including CNN Headline News and Good Morning America. The coverage was great exposure for him and his employer. Plus, he didn’t simply publish Tiger’s statement. He found other people to fill in the gaps for the story he wrote after he attended the event. A stooge? Hardly.

Is the idea that someone in power put restrictions on the media really new? Sure, there are circumstances where reporters won’t acquiesce to the demands of their sources (e.g. they can get the info elsewhere or they know the source needs them more than they need the source). It’s impressive that the Golf Writers Association of America boycotted the event. But, in the era of citizen journalism, Tiger Woods would have found a way to get his story out even if the others had followed suit.

I appreciate the idealistic notion that media should be able to report a story the way they see fit. But I don’t subscribe to the idea that journalists are more easily influenced by people in power today than in the past.   

For many corporations and individuals, common sense dictates the practice of astroturfing (see Wikipedia’s definition if you’re unfamiliar) is something to be avoided, since it’s unethical and chances are it will backfire. It’s also against the law thanks to new FTC guidelines.

So if you’re the world’s largest public corporation by revenue, and stockholders, journalists, bloggers and pretty much everyone under the sun is watching what you’re up to, astroturfing is a disaster waiting to happen – especially if you were caught doing something similar back in 2006.

But that didn’t stop Wal-Mart from setting up a fake community group to drum up support in Chicago, where the company is gunning for a second store within city limits.

When the Chicagoist blog received a series of pro-Wal-Mart comments from unknown screen names in response to various posts, blogger Kevin Robinson decided to investigate. He discovered that, with the help of PR firm Serafin & Associates and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Wal-Mart is behind the phony advocacy group, “Our Community. Our Choice,” which was linked to the blog comments.

Wal-Mart and its associates have every right to plea the corporation’s case to the people of Chicago. And the citizens do, too, if they’re legitimate. But establishing a fake community group that professes to stand for residents and their interests is undoubtedly devious and a tactic no PR firm or brand should use.

I am not alone. The end of a year compels many people to reflect on the passage of time and consider or even predict what will happen in the coming 12 months. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: 2009 presented a number of challenges for our industry as it did elsewhere.

Not only did we face the worst economic crisis in recent history, but journalism — the very profession upon which so much of what we do depends — continued its downward spiral. According to a story earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times, the presses stopped at nearly 150 newspapers this year alone. But, as the cliché goes, challenges are opportunities in disguise. We believe the field of public relations is well positioned in this new era of anyone-can-influence, authentic, two-way, direct-to-customer communication. Those principles have guided those in our profession since its inception.

To that end, we have lots of ideas about what’s coming in 2010. Our three top PR predictions for 2010:

1) Testing, testing: Media executives will stop talking about the downside of making most Web content free and analyzing the few paid subscription models that work (WSJ.com, ConsumerReports.org, et al.), and start testing new business models to see if and how much they can charge. Consumers will begin to face the reality that they either have to pay for content or consume the advertising that supports it. Publishers and advertisers will get smarter about how to reach consumers in a way the target audience won’t immediately reject. When real solutions are explored and not just discussed, we can get to the task of preserving quality journalism.

2) Taming the social media beast: The Wild, Wild West will become less wild as social media sites, professional organizations and corporations create rules and ethical guidelines. Facebook has already developed new, relatively restrictive rules about fan page promotions. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) plans to publish a new Guide to Social Media Disclosurein early 2010. It reflects new regulations created by the Federal Trade Commission that require any online influencer to reveal if they received sponsorship money or free products from companies about which they write. (Disclosure: We’re card-carrying members of WOMMA.) Expect several more social media blunders (ala Domino’s and Motrin) as all this gets sorted out.

3) Keeping it real: American consumers will continue to live a more grounded existence as a result of the recession. This coupled with the green movement creates the perfect storm for consumer change. Reusing is not only good for the bottom line; it’s better for the environment. Handmade gifts, home-cooked meals and swap meets will remain popular. And brands will work hard to stay relevant in this context while also attempting to preserve their margins. At the beginning of the decade, the casual dining concept took off because people wanted the convenience of eating out without the guilt of fast food. Just this week, Kraft announced it’s introducing a line of restaurant-inspired foods because people now want to create the dining-out experience at home. Stay tuned for more product introductions and marketing campaigns like Kraft’s.

We’d love to hear your predictions. Best wishes for a joyous, prosperous 2010!

What are you doing? A simple question that has started a micro-blogging revolution: Twitter.

At first, I was hesitant to join Twitter. I’d already stopped checking my neon-colored, disaster of a MySpace profile in favor of my clean, crisp Facebook page and wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to yet another social networking site. But after reading Clive Thompson’s “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” article in The New York Times, I was compelled to dive into the Twitter pool. Thompson wrote that Twitter’s design makes updates “skimmable, like newspaper headlines, maybe you’ll read them all, maybe you’ll skip some.” I figured I could manage.

Six months later, I’ve come to embrace Twitter. Though I do not tweet every day, I like knowing I have the option to when I have something worth sharing with my 250+ followers. I don’t understand how some of the people I follow are able to tweet 20 or more times a day, but I do enjoy perusing their posts and learning new things in the process.

As a public relations professional, here are my top five reasons for utilizing Twitter:

5. Enhancing relationships. Maybe it’s your colleague based in another office, or a former client, but connecting with people you rarely see in person via Twitter is a good way to keep your relationship intact. Tweets fill the gaps between in-person meetings.

4. Instant research. Google is great, but when I want insight from influencers, I turn to Twitter. Pose a question about any topic and you’re sure to get intuitive replies from a wide range of people. Plus, it’s a great conversation starter.

3. Meeting new people. I have no rules for following people on Twitter – I’m open to following just about anyone (get rich quick schemers not included). Through Twitter, I’ve met a feisty journalist based in South Africa, a stay-at-home mom who blogs about environmentalism and a gentleman from Atlanta with a strong interest in fractals and mental disorders.

2. Monitoring the conversation. It’s important to know what’s being said about your clients and their competition. Twitter’s search tool allows for real time monitoring of posts, and as such, complements a traditional media monitoring service.

1. @skydiver. Peter Shankman’s urgent HARO queries help connect journalists and sources in record time.

Follow me on Twitter: @jleckstrom

Reese Cleghorn, dean of the University of Maryland School of Journalism from 1981 - 2000.

I’m a stickler – a term made popular by Lynne Truss in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves,” her paean to the values of grammatical correctness. For some, my adherence to the rules of the proverbial road borders on ridiculous, but for me, it is close to godliness. An out-of-place comma or a possessive when plural is intended (as in “five star’s to watch”) is enough to send me over the edge.

Although I may have been blessed at birth (or cursed, depending on your perspective) with the ability to see a preposition dangling from a mile away, I also credit the dean of my journalism school for my sometimes manic devotion to linguistic accuracy. Reese Cleghorn started as dean of the University of Maryland’s journalism department in 1981, my freshman year there. He established strict standards and quickly transformed the school from being barely a footnote to one of the best – if not the best – journalism schools in the country. Cleghorn passed away earlier this week.

Of course, Cleghorn instilled in UM journalism students so much more than a passion for language. He also taught us the fundamentals that should guide every true journalist: integrity, ethics and objectivity. He made sure professors gave us history lessons along with tutorials on how to write a solid lead. To Cleghorn, journalism was a profession on par with the law. A Baltimore Sun article from 2001 quoted him as saying, “Since we are all journalists, I get to preach the gospel, go to the freshmen and tell them we are the only profession mentioned in the Constitution, that we have a unique responsibility and our democratic government depends on it.”

Preach he did, and as one of his faithful disciples, I happily absorbed his philosophy. 

I still proudly carry the wisdom of Cleghorn’s journalistic training with me in my work as a public relations professional. While the public relations concentration is no longer part of UM’s journalism school, I recommend anyone interested in a PR career to pursue a degree in journalism there.  The skills learned and the insights gained are invaluable in all areas of the communications field. 

To this day, I apply the timeless lessons he and his faculty taught on writing well and telling a good story. Cleghorn’s definition of an effective journalist, as described in the May 2000 issue of the monthly American Journalism Review (of which he was president), remains true today:

“No doubt we’ll still be experimenting with how to make news more comprehensible, more memorable, more flexible for multiple uses. But more important will be sharpening up for our main mission, as storytellers. Not as mere information conduits; anybody can do that. But as people who can find the stories, understand them and tell them compellingly.”

The legacy of Reese Cleghorn, stickler extraordinaire, lives on in thousands of students who, like me, are better storytellers for having learned from him.

During the dot-com boom, the practice of public relations rose to a new level of importance among those in the C-suite. Creating broad awareness of a business model could lead to an IPO, which could lead to fame and fortune. While the “idea now, revenue later” time period lasted a few short years, the role of public relations was permanently elevated as was the press release itself. I remember sitting around conference room tables with executives from companies of all shapes and sizes talking about how to position upcoming announcements in order to maximize their impact. When strategizing in the early stages, clients were typically more aggressive about what they wanted to say. But, when they saw their thoughts represented in an actual release, it almost always served as a wake-up call. It occurred to me during that time that disseminating a press release is a lot like mailing wedding invitations. Once you drop them into the mailbox, you are telling the world you’re getting married. Once your release hits a wire, you’ve told the world that the company has done a deal, received funding, been acquired, etc. The new reality a press release heralds can be daunting. Simply put, a company needs to be absolutely certain it can live up to the release.

I learned a valuable lesson several years ago when a colleague of mine issued a release that was not as transparent as it should have been. A client, whose stock was trading at less than $2 a share, asked him to write and distribute a release stating that an article featuring their technology was coming out in Barron’s the next day. I can’t imagine any circumstance where we’d recommend issuing a news release about an imminent article, but this situation was particularly problematic because the “article” was actually a paid advertorial. My colleague questioned the ethics of the release, but the client insisted on distribution prior to market close, which gave him less than an hour to move. Not surprisingly, the release generated significant interest in the company, doubling its stock price in a matter of minutes. Of course, such a dramatic rise in value was a red flag to the SEC and led to a full-blown investigation that exposed the client and our firm to negative publicity.

As public relations professionals, we are in the business of building our clients up and making sure their target audiences hear their stories. But it is also our responsibility to ensure the information disseminated on their behalf is accurate and not misleading in any way, particularly if the company is publicly traded. After all, no one enjoys calling off a wedding.

Bob Lutz, vice chairman of global product development at GM

This year’s PRSA conference is being held in the Detroit Marriott, which is connected to General Motors’ global headquarters.  We’re right on the river and I can literally see Canada from my hotel room window.  GM is also the premier sponsor of the conference and the place is swarming with their communications staff members, of which I learned there are 500 around the world.  This morning, Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman of global product development, addressed the attendees.  First of all, this guy is a terrific presenter and an unrelenting believer in the power of PR.  And he practices what he preaches.  Bob writes a blog for GM called the FastLane.  When asked how to drive traffic to a corporate blog,  he said he didn’t have a formula for that, but instead spoke to the importance of executives doing their own writing.  He said, “No one wants to read pre-chewed, pre-digested information with a heaping side of corporate arrogance.” 

In fact, he spoke a lot about the importance of writing in our field.  He said, “The state of writing is deplorable.  Nothing gets under my skin more than poor writing.”  He talked about how it infuriates him when he sees the phrase, “sneak peak.”  He joked, “You mean a stealth mountain?”  Ah, a man after my own grammarian heart.  I could tell he had at least 37 more examples, but held back.  Rats. 

He also accused corporate executives of using too many superlatives in their media materials.  This is a conversation we often have with our clients.  It’s important to resist the temptation to call a product or service best-in-class, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, etc.  Bob said, “Those types of words trigger antibodies in journalists who resent being told how or what to write.”  His recommendation, if you must use superlatives, was to do so using phrases like, ”It was our intention to create a best-in-class car.”  I’ve always felt it was inappropriate to use words in a release that no self-respecting journalist would ever use in an article.  But I like Bob’s compromise.

Or the “Prissa” conference as the new mayor of Detroit called it earlier today.  I thought for a moment that’s how people referred to the organization these days; it has been a while since I attended the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) annual conference.  This year, Rose Communications is a sponsor of the event.

Today’s keynote speaker was Craig Newmark of the wildly popular Craigslist.  What a humble guy.  A self-described engineering geek, Craig talked a lot about “continuous engagement” with his online community and how his success is the result of “doing what feels right.”  Upon realizing his managerial deficiencies, Craig shifted into a customer service role.  He literally reads and responds to hundreds of emails from site users each day while someone else runs his eponymous company.  That translates into about 50,000 responses per year.  Yes, I’d call that continuous engagement.  When the time for Q&A rolled around, someone apologized in advance and then asked the question surely on many people’s minds, “How do you respond to the newspaper industry’s claim that you’ve dramatically hurt their business?”  He said the decline of classified advertising revenue was only one of the many financial challenges faced by daily and weekly newspapers in our country.  After this attempt at minimizing his company’s impact, he said he felt the role of newspapers should be to expose the truths that would prevent us from making bad foreign policy decisions (as opposed to serving as a marketplace for used cars, jobs and lost pets, I assume).  He said there should be more fact checking.  Amen, Craig!  But who’s going to pay for it?  Most outlets charge less to a subscriber than it costs to print the paper.  In fact, Craig mentioned www.factcheck.org as a great, non-partisan source of truthful information about the current presidential election.  Yet another sign that the role of the daily newspaper is fading deeper into uncertainty.