photo credit: steakpinball

I just returned from a day trip to northern Nevada to teach media relations to judges at the National Judicial College.  The participants are judges from various states taking college-level courses on ethics, courtroom procedures, and in my case, transparency and accountability. I joined up with Judge Steve Smith of Bryan, Texas, to talk about the current state of media and how the judiciary fits into the picture.

There was the common theme that media distorts court proceedings. No folks, Judge Judy does not represent the typical court proceeding. Nothing happens in 23 minutes and rarely does the judge shout at the defendant. But there was the other theme; the death of traditional media.

Court TV is no more; now it’s truTV. Court reporters representing newspapers and television are now general assignments. There are no more cynical, crusty columnists roaming the halls of the courthouse (unless you’re in Las Vegas and run into Jeff German).  Media just doesn’t seem to care about how the courts work anymore. Send them a good murder story and they’ll cover it like paratroopers; drop zone ahead and then we’re out.  Too bad really.  Courtrooms are full of drama, tears, regret and angst.  We need more journalists roaming the halls.

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The FTC says there is no more pay for play blogging. Which means I’ll never be selected to blog about PR Fresh and Clean, or some other product. This did make me wonder about revising an old tactic: the satellite media tour. Imagine, if you will, an online live press event where bloggers are allowed to ask questions about a service or product.  Sort of like how all of those movie reviewers across the country seem to track down a young starlet on the same day.  Could this usher in the age of the true citizen journalist?  If you are an independent  journalist, and not a hack paid to generate positive opinions about cameras or diapers, would we then see better blogs and better writing in the journalist style featuring criticism, observation and comparison? Just a thought.

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I was on a conference call this afternoon about social media and why to use it. This is for an upcoming session I’m participating in for the National Association of Bar Executives Oct. 20-23 in Las Vegas.  I mentioned that we should talk about our strategy for implementing social media in our organizations and then showcase how we’re using the tools. My thought was met with a comment about how for one presenter creating a blog and joining Twitter was an act of survival. The obvious strategy she said was, “We needed to get out there.”

You have a solid strategy for using social media if you find you can use the tools to meet an objective of getting the word out to a specific audience. Now, if she had said that her organization had started a blog because everyone was doing it, then I might have wondered about the strategy. Finding a need, making an objective, and then finding tools to meet it: sounds like a solid plan.