Tools and Tips

• Marginalia, the anti-library, and other ways to master the lost art of reading via 99U
• The habits of highly effective writers via Chronicle of Higher Education
• Get discovered with a knockout portfolio via Skillshare

Industry Insights

• Media consumption becomes liquid across platforms — brands better learn how to surf via AdWeek
• Jeb Bush unveiled his 2016 logo…and the Internet shouted unkind things about it via AdWeek
• The use of hashtags in your crisis communication via Melissa Agnes
• Six ways to deal with negative social media comments via Salesforce
• Sam Ford on building a participatory marketing and public relations industry alongside Wikipedia via BrightHaus
• The art of giving it away via Scott Guthrie

Et cetera of interest

• What Star Trek Taught Me About Leadership via Idealist Careers
• Pursue metrics that matter via Cal Newport
• How the first horse race poll changed American political history via The Conversation
• 9 TED Talks guaranteed to give you wanderlust
• Activist Intellectuals (Part 4 of the roundtable on Black women’s intellectual history) via AAIHS

I tend to be “a day late and a dollar short” with many things in my life. Someone passed along this gem of a blog post via a tweet, and I added it to my favorites, promising that I would get to it eventually.

Eventually was yesterday, and now I am kicking myself. This honeycomb graphic is a visual snapshot of how the collaborative economy is organized. Jeremiah Owyang defined the collaborative economy as one that “enables people to efficiently get what they need from each other.” Each cluster outlines the companies within that sector and what services they offer. This is a clean, simple way to explore the technologies and services that many PR practitioners use and take advantage of.

Tips and Tools 

A PR pro’s guide for Reddit via 6 A.M.

A PR pro’s guide to getting started with video via prTini

60 Twitter tools for PR and marketing pros via PR Daily

This is your brain on emojis. Here’s how to use them in marketing via Buffer

How to write like an I.D.I.O.T. via Spin Sucks (Intrigue, do, intend, operate, and train.)

Land Rover creates an interactive Instagram adventure via Fast Company

Think pieces about creativity, social media and public relations

What can a burger teach us about creativity? via GrubStreet

Journal article: Online authenticity, popularity, and the “Real Me” in a microblogging environment via Joon Soo Lim‘s Academia.edu

“Would I lie for you?” Ethics and morals in public relations via Chartered Institute of Public Relations

Crowdforcing: When what I “share” is yours via Uncomputing

Guess who doesn’t fit in at work via New York Times (about cultural fit in the workplace)

When done carefully, selecting new workers this way can make organizations more productive and profitable. But cultural fit has morphed into a far more nebulous and potentially dangerous concept. It has shifted from systematic analysis of who will thrive in a given workplace to snap judgments by managers about who they’d rather hang out with. In the process, fit has become a catchall used to justify hiring people who are similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.

Et cetra of interest

Black women’s lives don’t matter in academia either (or why I quit academic spaces that don’t value Black women’s life and labor) via The Feminist Wire

The whiteness of public radio via BuzzFeed

Disciplining black bodies: Racial stereotypes of cleanliness and sexuality via Notches Blog

A short documentary on Times New Roman

Morrison Senior Living, a member of Compass Group, currently has an exciting opportunity for an Advertising/MarComm Intern to work out of our Atlanta Support Center. The Communications Intern would report to our Communications Manager.

This is a paid position and would require 15-20 hours/week. 

Candidates should meet the following criteria:

• Familiarity with SharePoint 2013
• Vast knowledge of social media
• Vast knowledge of PowerPoint
• Knowledge of Adobe, Photoshop and other design programs
• Knowledge of Constant Contact and MailChimp
• Familiarity with marketing and communication collateral, such as
press releases and product cut sheets

Qualifications:

• • Student can be an undergraduate junior and senior or a graduate student.
• Enrolled in Bachelors in PR/Communications, advertising or marketing

Interested candidates may submit resumes to dorimendel@iammorrison.com. Learn about Morrison Senior Living by visiting:www.morrisonseniorliving.com.

Job Opening: LCSC Media Director

Position: Media Director

Supervisor: Eric Mann, Executive Director

Location: Los Angeles

The Labor/Community Strategy Center is hiring its first director of media relations. While it has had a strong in-house media tactical plan and substantial media victories, the organizing work has far outstripped the organization’s capacity to “get the word out” consistently and most effectively to the largest and most influential audiences-especially the national Black and Latino communities and international social movements.

The Strategy Center is a multiracial “think tank/act tank” for regional, national and international movement building, founded in 1989 and based in the 10 million-person world city of Los Angeles.

Our campaigns, projects, and publications are rooted in Black and Latino working class communities and address ‘the totality of urban life” with a view of the whole human being and community in a revolutionary relationship to society. Our primary focus is civil rights, environmental justice, public health, global warming, and the criminal legal system. We build consciousness, leadership, and organization among those who face discrimination and societal attack-Black and Latino high school students, bus riders, security guards, college students, women, immigrants, workers, LGBT people, youth, all of whom comprise our membership.

• The Center is known for building “big picture campaigns” that make the link between the wars abroad and the war at home. We are also known as an organization that “fights to win” – we come out of the traditions of those who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, organized in Mississippi, worked to end the war in Vietnam, fought for OSHA, the EPA, the Equal Rights Amendment, and nuclear arms treaties. In the past 25 years, some of the Center’s highest-profile victories include:The Campaign to Keep GM Van Nuys Open that forced General Motors to keep its Van Nuys assembly plant open for a full decade after it planned to close it, saving the jobs of 5,000 auto workers.

• The Billions for Buses Campaign in which the Bus Riders Union, and Labor/Community Strategy Center, fought a landmark civil rights case in a powerful collaboration with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, grassroots organizing, a “no seat no fare” campaign, and federal court orders that won 2,500 new compressed natural gas buses, dramatic reductions in fares, 1 million hours of new service and yes, $2.7 billion for 500,0000 LA County Black, Latino, elderly, disabled bus riders.

• The Community Rights Campaign, fighting the School to Prison Pipeline and the Mass Incarceration of Black and Latino communities has reversed L.A.’s “daytime curfew law” and stopped the Los Angeles School Police Department and LAPD from issuing 40,000 “truancy tickets” for low-income students and is challenging the entire “stop and frisk” policy in the schools, on the streets, and on the buses and trains of L.A.
  The Position

The Director will head up a comprehensive and multi-faceted media strategy and press campaigns to help secure victories, highlight accomplishments, build the organization, it’s political ideas, greater public recognition of its unique contributions, and strengthen the movement. Media work will include: social media strategy, placement and campaigns, media relations, publications promotions and increasing visibility of the organization’s director, and his books, publications, videos and weekly radio show “Voices from the Front Lines” as well as the visibility of other key Strategy Center leaders.

Ideal candidates must be passionate for racial and social justice, proactive and organized creative thinkers and skilled multitaskers who know how to utilize a range of communications tools to advance campaigns and build a movement.

Primary Responsibilities

• Work with executive director and leadership team to execute communications plans, including a breakout and coordinated social media campaign, media relations, new media and membership communications.

• Work to make the Strategy Center a major force in social media with great name and message recognition-on the ever expanding platforms-Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and many others with a great emphasis on a Black and Latino youth and multi-generational audience-and key opinion makers who increasingly quote the Strategy Center as a source of frontlines theory and practice. Build an even stronger and more responsive email list with breakthroughs in measurable outcomes in terms of written responses, calls, attendance at rallies, letters to elected officials, visits to the office-ability to use email as a mobilizing tactic. Coordinate content for Strategy Center website.

• Build on the director’s national media connections to further position him as a spokesperson for social justice issues on a wide variety of platforms. Build the profiles of 3 other key Strategy Center spokespeople.

• Work with the director to syndicate Voices from the Frontlines-Your National Movement Building Show now broadcasting on Pacifica KPFK Los Angeles  www.voicesfromthefrontlines.com

• Build the Center’s Frontline Press-an independent publishing house. Frontlines Press has published Eric Mann’s L.A.’s Lethal Air, Dispatches from Durban, Katrina’s Legacy, and Camino Para Progresistas (the Spanish Language edition of Playbook for Progressives: the 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer published by Beacon Press). It will be doing a major new edition of Katrina’s Legacy on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, exploring joint publishing ventures with commercial and online publishers, and publishing new authors such as the poems of recently deceased revolutionary Salvadorean Maria Guardado.

• Expand upon and strengthen the organization’s relationships with key national publications including Counterpunch, Colorlines, Black Commentator, and the Nation.

• Identify “newsworthy” components of organization’s work and develop media materials and messages. Initiate contact with and respond to inquiries from print, radio, and television journalists; pitch story ideas and provide information to generate positive media coverage; look for opportunities to insert the director and other key spokespeople into breaking news stories.

• Expand upon the Center’s relationships with labor, political, immigration reporters and other key media, including African American and Latino press outlets. Review and place op-eds and written materials in newspapers and blogs.

• Write news advisories, news releases, background pieces, fact sheets and other press materials for campaigns and initiatives; write, edit and produce clear, engaging, compelling publications.

• Coordinate closely with the executive director to enhance Strategy Center fundraising efforts.

 Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have:

• Three to five years of experience in media relations in labor, politics or advocacy organizations with strong social media skills

• Experience in strategic media planning in a multi-faceted organization.

• Experience in the creation of successful social media strategies and campaigns.

• Demonstrated fluency in communicating in all formats and mediums; able to create strong press releases, message documents and communication materials.

• Experience generating media coverage for policy issues and a track record of packaging ideas and pitching and placing stories in local and national media outlets, including online venues.

• Excellent writing, speaking and analytic skills.

• Enthusiastic support for the Strategy Center agenda and a strong commitment to our mission and vision; demonstrated commitment to racial, social and economic justice, and if possible, work with labor, low-wage and Black and Latino communities.

• Strong work ethic and interpersonal skills, flexibility, creativity, curiosity, and a good team player.

• Able to work with a strong director and take great initiative within clear political guidelines.

Strong salary and benefits package and the chance to grow with the organization.

Application Instructions:

Please email resume and cover letter to: Crystal@thestrategycenter.org

1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East is the largest, fastest-growing, most progressive healthcare union in the country, and we are looking for a Press Secretary to work out of our New York City office.

The members of 1199SEIU are driven by a mission to achieve quality healthcare and good jobs for all. If you want to work in a fast-paced, action-oriented environment, using the latest communications strategies to win social justice for working families, this job is for you.

Responsibilities

• Developing and executing both the New York region and national press strategies for the organization.
• Asserting the union’s role as a leading national voice for quality healthcare and good jobs.
• Developing short and long term press outreach plans.
• Working with communications staff in our other regions to optimize and coordinate our press strategies.
• Working with leaders and organizers to fulfill their press outreach needs around campaigns and union-wide mobilizations.
• Developing messaging and talking points on specific issues and for the organization as a whole.
• Training leaders, members and staff to be effective media spokespeople.
• Developing, maintaining and expanding the union’s media database.
• Writing and distributing press releases, op-eds and letters to the editor and making pitch calls.
• Forming strong working relationships with key reporters and editors.
• Ensuring the union and our issues have a strategic, consistent and powerful presence in the media.
• Beyond press relations, taking responsibility for coordinating whole communications campaigns, including planning and budgeting, writing literature and ads, etc.

Requirements

• Excellent ability to work closely with a team, accommodate requests from team members, and assimilate input from multiple sources.
• Excellent inter-personal skills, a positive, enthusiastic attitude and a commitment to contribute to a positive work environment.
• An ability and commitment to modeling pro-active leadership behavior and skills.
• The ability, experience, energy and enthusiasm to take responsibility for whole communications campaigns and pro-actively see each component through to a successful conclusion.
• Deep commitment to the labor movement and progressive causes.
• Excellent visual, written and verbal communications skills.
• BA or higher.
• At least 5 years experience working in communications and press relations for progressive political campaigns, non-profit organizations or unions.
• Proficiency in Word and Excel and ability to learn media database technology required.
• Experience with social media tools and campaigns.
• Must thrive in an environment with tight deadlines, changing priorities, high-pressure and irregular hours.

1199SEIU is an affirmative action employer- women, people of color and LGBT candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Compensation: 1199 offers competitive salaries as well as excellent benefits.
Send cover letter, work samples and resume to: jobs@1199seiu.org