Today Bloomberg reported that Hearst newspapers was preparing to sell off its biggest newspaper yet, the San Francisco Chronicle. The only thing that can save them, they say, is job cuts at the paper.

In today’s tough economic times, papers make more cuts. What this spells for reporters is even less time for investigative journalism. As Jill Abramson, managing editor of the New York Times, recently commented, investigative journalism is expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes dangerous. Individual reporters no longer have the time or budget for reading between the lines of the press releases and statements that they are regularly inundated with, traveling and spending time on the open-ended questions that complete the story.

Busy journalists mean that active communications firms like Massey Media become even more relevant. Reporters need all of the pieces of a story to be provided for them, starting with the message and ending with real-world case studies to prove the point. Expert communicators like us know what a reporter wants to see when they sit down to write their story, and we tailor these pieces to the progressive message that our clients want to convey.

-Lacy MacAuley

It feels as if I have been waiting to exhale for eight years. Two key Obama cabinet appointments breath new life to the environmental and labor sectors: Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, and now Hilda Solis at the Department of Labor (DOL). Both women bring decades of experience and commitment to their new jobs.

Under the Bush administration, we experienced a true undermining of workers’ rights in America. In 2004, Bush rules rolled back overtime pay for millions of workers, and the administration had the audacity to tell employers how to rip off their workers. The list of violations includes neglecting to pay workers fair market wages in the effort to clean up after Katrina, slashing the Wage and Hour division at DOL, ignoring the recent mining accidents, and more.

Solis has a mountain of work ahead of her at DOL, but her background has prepared her and she has a nation of workers demanding action and reform. Check out this great little video from SEIU on Solis: Who is Hilda Solis? and this one from Spotlight on Poverty Congresswoman Solis (D-CA) Selected to Serve as Secretary Of Labor.

Count on our support, Hilda!

Frost/Nixon did not win any of the five Academy Awards it was nominated for, which I personally found disappointing. Not only was it was one of the few films I actually saw in the theater this past year, it was definitely the best film I’ve seen in a long, long time. The story was well put together, illustrating how the news media can serve totally disparate personal agendas, but never without risk to the protagonists. Nixon wanted a softball interview where he could come off looking presidential and rehabilitate some of his image after being impeached; Frost wanted viewership and wasn’t all that interested in the politics; Frost’s aides and researchers wanted Nixon to suffer in the court of public opinion what he’d escaped in the courts of criminal justice; the networks wanted advertising and content control. The film was a fascinating look at how the media shapes the public perception of history. What’s more, it was funny. And Frank Langella deserved an Oscar for his completely brilliant Nixon.

Which takes me to George Friedman’s The Death of Deep Throat and the Crisis of Journalism, a fascinating article on how the public perception of journalism masks the reality of the personal agendas that really shape the news. The public has an image of the intrepid journalist who searches out the story painstakingly and objectively, and there are journalists who do this. More often, though, because of tight deadlines, journalists have to rely on sources who may not be as objective as we’d all like to think. Mark Felt, the man known as “Deep Throat,” was the No. 2 man at the FBI, but given his personal loyalty to the late J. Edgar Hoover’s legacy, Nixon refused to put him in charge. Thus, a personal grudge shaped one of the biggest political fiascos in our nation’s history.

Too often, it is those in power who set the tone in the news. More and more these days, the agenda is set by those with big budgets for advertising and a legion on press operators. The personal, political, or corporate agenda behind these stories is often masked. (And we all know that if a story is in the news the public has reason to believe that the story is unbiased.) Massey Media specializes in telling the other half of the story, the stories with value beyond the advertising dollar or power players. Our clients are all nonprofits whose work and causes are under-reported and undervalued. Massey Media puts the human face on the progressive side of the story, thus adding a true value to the news.

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

Labor Needs a Radical Vision
Thursday 19 February 2009
by David Bacon

With more radicalism and imagination, the obstacles we face can become historical relics as quickly as did those of that earlier era.

Yes, please!

I agree with Bacon about the need for a new social vision. Yet, he ignores some of the elements that have created the current workers’ rights vacuum, such as the last eight years of oppression here at home. It’s hard to call for a creative vision and taking to the streets when our contracts have been cancelled by Republican governors and mass lay-offs have left Americans without good jobs. The time to organize is now and there are real grievances that deserve air time, too.

This past Friday Massey Media opened up its workspace to our local Fox news crew. We work in a unique and fabulous place called Affinity Lab, which is a self-described entrepreneurial dream and action space. It’s a space where web development firms, PR firms, small nonprofits, graphic designers, writers, performers, thinkers, and anyone with an entrepreneurial vibe can come to work and collaborate – a new type of incubator space with a notably higher success rate than other incubators. A green workplace, Affinity Lab is a community unto itself, with a high-tech, progressive, earth-friendly culture all its own.

Thanks to Massey Media, Affinity Lab was featured on the local Fox 5 six o’clock news.

We had had a few conversations with the reporter on Wednesday and Thursday. We expected him to be visiting us on Friday afternoon. Then we got a call from the reporter early on Friday morning to let us know that he was on the way to our workplace. He was interested in our story about Affinity Lab being a place for job creation.

We had had an office happy hour the night before. Rather than looking the part of a news-making, trend-setting venue for people who dream big, at the moment we hung up the phone with the reporter, Affinity Lab was home to a half-dozen bleary-eyed souls tapping lazily on their computers. In thirty minutes’ time, we had alerted the managers of Affinity Lab, tidied the place up, got our “stage faces” ready, scrambled about 15 more Lab members, circulated the press materials, and convened all available Lab members for a pow wow to give a lightning “how to speak to the press” training session. When those big cameras came rolling through the door, we were ready!

The final result speaks for itself. We got a choice press hit that places Affinity Lab as a new and forward-thinking space to grow entrepreneurial successes.

Some of the client-members at Affinity Lab believe operating in shared workspace actually has helped their success by sparking ideas and referrals.

Public relations firm owner Sarah Massey explains, “I started as a one-woman shop in 2005, right at the end of 2005. And, in 2009, we’re now a four person operation.”

welcome to the new Massey Media blog, where we will try to communicate to the larger world about why we try to communicate about progressive issues and social justice. I thought it’d be funny to do a lexicon as we tend to use a lot of jargon even though we are trying to reach new audiences and broaden the base for social change. Today’s word is smile-and-dial.

Smile-and-dial: refers to press pitch calls where we have created a script and a list and you basically have to call that list all day, everyday to cajole a reporter into covering your issue. Many times, the smile-and-dial technique is used to invite reporters to come out to cover a press event vs. trying to get them to do the bigger story. You have to smile when you dial because it changes the tenor of your voice and makes you seem happier and more friendly. Try it.

- Sarah Massey