Tracking PR and Communications Marketing in Social Media

The public relations shift into social media marketing is important. I wrote about this in my Huffington Post Media blog. Richard Edelman calls this brave new world "communications marketing" as a way to distinguish the work from traditional marketing communications. As one of 80 media professors and administrators at the #2014 Academic Summit, I am influenced by the ongoing development of social media and digital technologies.

My new book, Social Media Communication (2015), focuses on the evolution of social media across journalism, public relations, advertising and marketing. Beyond the need to understand social media data, we must be concerned about law, ethics and media literacy. As we move to the second decade of social media and the third decade of online life, I expect increasing maturity in the discussion about best practices.

Rabbi Myer S. Kripke talked about Warren Buffett

Myer S. Kripke, Omaha rabbi and philanthropist, talks about investing with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Rabbi Kripke died in 2014 at age 100. This interview with UNO Professor Jeremy Lipschultz and friend Jenni Schlossman in 2011 at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home focused on Kripke's family friendship with the Buffett family.

Online Communities and Social Media Literacy

Read my new entry in The Huffington Post reporting Howard Rheingold's view on the need for balance between production and consumption of culture. Click here for more...

Social Media Communication (2015)

The Huffington Post, ChicagoNow & YouTube

Thank you for visiting my site.  You can read my most recent commentary in the The Huffington Post and ChicagoNow. It's been a busy year.  Watch our documentary about Warren Buffett! Anchorman Mort Crim is narrator for this unique look at the Wizard of Wall Street.

Rewind 1978: Vague standards, technology and broadcast indecency

The United States Supreme Court oral arguments on fleeting expletives -- namely "fuck" and "shit" -- on the broadcast airwaves represent an ongoing legal challenge since the 1970s. Back then, the justices split 5-4 on the side of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its rules designed to protect children. Congress pressured the FCC, and it responded. By the 1990s, amid Howard Stern and shock radio, courts upheld the channeling of profanity to late-night hours, presumably giving parents a fighting chance to insulate their small kids from the offensive language. However, it was never clear that carving a "safe harbor" of overnight hours protected the First Amendment rights of adults to see and hear unregulated free speech. Enter the Internet. By the late 1990s, the Supreme Court protected Internet indecency, thus leaving over-the-air broadcasting, as some called it, "second-class citizens." By the time of the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, a rear-end shower shot on a crime drama, and the live awards show and sports broadcast fleeting expletives, it was becoming clear that our Internet kids probably did not need protecting that might have been possible in the 1970s limited broadcast world. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York twice concluded that Fox Television had it right. The FCC essentially turned heels on its original policy that allowed for live broadcast fleeting expletives. Two of the three judges seemed to go further in recognizing that the Supreme Court had it wrong back in 1978. As I wrote in my 2008 book, Broadcast and Internet Indecency: Defining Free Speech, "Broadcast and Internet indecency are fringe speech at the edge of social tolerance, and this is why we can understand free expression values through the social conflicts that routinely emerged." So, the oral arguments are the latest social and legal artifact allowing us to see social values amid a changing technological landscape.