Oh What A Vicious Wikipedia Web ...

Wikipedia is in the news again. The bad press this time is inspired by Jimmy Wales, who was caught editing his own Wikipedia bio by Wired magazine. Apparently Mr. Wales did not like what others were saying about him, though he did not claim that they weren't true.

When I was a kid, my mom used to say, "Oh what a vicious web we weave, when first we start to deceive." I don't know where she got it, other than her mom used to say it to her.

I think Wikipedia had better hire a professional communications consultant right away.

Earthquake: Blogger Beats All The News Sources

Sitting in my office this morning, I felt a little jiggle, and wondered if we had just experienced an earthquake. However, our office is on a hill above a creek, and in California, in the back of your mind is the thought that each subsequent rain could result in your building or home sliding right down a slope (you've probably seen such footage on CNN).

So I wanted to know: was it an earthquake, or should we evacuate the building? A check with the usual suspects - San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, CNN, - revealed nothing. So I turned to Technorati, using their new View In Mini service. Sure enough, beating the official AP story at 10:47a.m. PST , tankgirlh posted a quick note on the earthquake at 10:26, with a link to the official USGS Preliminary Earthquake Report press release. The earthquake occured at 10:21.

You and your company may still be debating how much energy to put into monitoring blogs, but really: there is no time to waste, you've got to do it now.

Despite Tragedy, Southwest Airlines Still In The Flow

On Thursday night, a Southwest Airlines airplane skidded from a runway and killed a six-year-old boy in one of two vehicles crushed in the accident. This is the first fatal accident for Southwest Airlines, yet their crisis communications team performed so well that experts were soon lauding how well they were doing.

What is brilliant about what we're seeing is that the caring Southwest is showing is a natural extension of their branding as the "people's airline." Southwest Airlines, in the midst of cutting a small person's life short, is in the Flow.

Toxins Floating from China to Russia

You may have read about the explosion at a China National Petroleum Corporation on November 13 in Jilin Province,China. A story in the China Daily Press compared the sound to an atomic bomb and then minimized the explosion by comparing it to such. The government said, "We express our sincere condolences to the families of the dead and the injured."

Five people were killed and 10,000 immediately evacuated. But the release of some 100 tons of benzene compounds into the Songhua River by the explosion was not immediately mentioned.

The water supply for some 12 million people was ruined, and the 50-mile slick is now floating down the Songhua River toward Russia.

Now some 20 days later, the Chinese Goverment is still reeling, and coming under increasing attack from its Chinese citizenry and international bodies. The goverment has fired the Environment Chief, and more are expected.

What a mess: If the Chinese government had acted quickly to contain the slick, even if the attempts had failed, the positive press from their efforts would have helped mitigate any failures. If only the Chinese government had learned something from watching the disasterously slow response of the U.S.G. to Hurricane Katrina.

When will governments realize that fast action with sincere intent can go a long way toward making its citizens willing to give them time to make things right?

Wikipedia: Wrong This Time ...

Hmmm .... not good: in the midst of Wikipedia's push into new terrain, the amazing, collaborative, online people-powered encyclopedia is running into a few problems with its facts. The latest is a wrong - and hurtful- biography of John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist.

I suspect that none of this is new -- that is, Wikipedia has probably had problems with its facts since its birth. What I think has changed is that all eyes are now on Wikipedia, what with the ton of press it's gotten lately. Though this too will pass, no doubt, I wonder what Wikipedia's response will be to Mr. Seigenthaler.

The FDA: Still At-Risk

David Graham, FDA's Associate Director for science and medicine in the Office of Drug Safety, has just told a Senate Finance Committee Hearing that "the United States of America is worse off when it comes to drug safety than it was a year ago," refering to his testimony against Vioxx, pulled from the shelves in September 2004. While a USA Today article shows that the FDA still has not put in place adequate protection for Americans, FDA refuses or is unable to explain why it cannot put in place the same type of checks and balances upon which the United States itself is built.

FDA appears to be setting itself up for further bad press down the road. A statement released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the U.S. Committee on Finance, highlights the many potholes FDA faces. Will one of them swallow the Agency whole?

Wikipedia: Right, Wrong, Right, Wrong ...??

Wikipedia, the Free encyclopedia, is one of the shining examples of Internet collaboration: anyone can add or subtract to Wikipedia at will. And through this, Wikipedia has created a nice resource -- a good starting point, but not a necessarily reliable resource -- for reading some 800,000 articles.

Unfortunately (though not surprisingly), an informal study by The Guardian entitled, Can You Trust Wikipedia? found that several Wikipedia entries were incorrect: "The founder of the online encyclopedia written and edited by its users has admitted some of its entries are 'a horrific embarrassment'." (Oct. 24, 2005).

Despite this problem, I've just read that Mr. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is considering distributing Wikipedia on CD or DVD to the developing world, to folks who do not have access to the internet, either at all or sporadically (either because they can't afford it, or it's not available).

According to CNN, "Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world," founder Jimmy Wales said.

Does it make sense that Mr. Wales should want to distribute information that is false? The motive is outstanding, but the method ... questionable.

How will anyone know whether an entry is wrong or right? Is this a public relations disaster in the making, for an effort that otherwise has been such a positive force for good? How will the school kids in Abidjan or Kupang or Porto Velho feel if they find out the information given freely was known to be wrong?

The California Pacific Medical Center Strike

Sutter Hospital is based in San Francisco, CA, and all of the healthcare workers have been on strike since around Sept. 11. It seems that most of the healthcare workers are organized as SEIU United Healthcare Workers-West. This sort of press is never a good thing, and this is no exception: SEIU-UHCW is suing the California Pacific Medical Center and its corporate parent, Sutter Health, for using alleged “scab” workers from the company, Modern Industrial Services. Jesse Jackson walked the strike line on Oct. 5.

What I found interesting about this is SEIU-UHCW has a blog. Could this be a first? According to Annalee Newitz, it is the first blog written from a picket line. The blog is called sutterstrikers.blog.com.

Do you know of another blog like this? If your company faced a striker blog, would you counter it? If so, how?

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