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?