✅ Monday briefing: Leaving the door open and the ladder down
A week in management, media and public relations
I had a career highlight last week, meeting with Prof Dr James Grunig, along with Dr Jon White, two of the original members of the team that developed one of the fundamental theories of public relations and management.
Jim was incredibly generous with his time. The interview was scheduled for an hour. We talked for almost two, during which he shared his views of modern management and contemporary public relations issues including AI, ESG, disinformation, polarisation and education.
I need to sit and reflect on the conversation for a while. We covered so much ground. The transcript covers 25 pages and almost 15,000 words. Jim raised as many questions as he answered.
Thank you, Jon. I'm incredibly grateful for your mentorship over the past 10+ years and the introduction to Jim. And thank you, Jim, for being so generous with your time. I appreciate you both leaving the door open and the ladder down.
Have an excellent week.
Media
➡️ RIGHT WING SHIFT: Press Gazette’s analysis of publishers on YouTube for October highlights the growth of right-wing channels GB News and Piers Morgan Uncensored. BBC News (15.1m subscribers), Sky News (7.0m subscribers), The Telegraph (5.0m subscribers), and The Sun (4.5m subscribers) are among the top UK publishers on the platform. Source: Press Gazette.
🔎 SEARCH VISIBILITY DROPS: Google's October algorithm update in October had a bigger impact on news publishers' search visibility than previous updates this year, with half of 70 major newsbrands tracked seeing declines - including 24 with double-digit drops. Source: Press Gazette.
Artificial intelligence
🤝 INCLUSIVE AI MODEL: Latimer, named after African-American inventor Lewis Latimer, is a new platform aiming to make generative AI more inclusive. The large language model (LLM) has been built to reflect the experience, culture, and history of Black and brown people more accurately. Source: People of Color in Tech.
💰 PUBLISHERS SEEK PAYMENT: News publishers are talking with ChatGPT maker OpenAI about getting paid for access to articles to train its AI models. Since August, at least 535 news organisations, including the New York Times, Reuters and The Washington Post, have blocked their websites. Source: Washington Post.
⛔ AI RISKS DISCUSSED: Experts at Chatham House discussed key AI risks including bias, misuse, and existential threats, emphasising the need for ethical guidelines and smart regulation to ensure AI benefits humanity. The event came ahead of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Source: Michael White.
⚠️ AI USE UNCONTROLLED: UK government officials are using AI tools in uncontrolled and potentially discriminatory ways to help make decisions on welfare, immigration, and criminal justice, according to an investigation by The Guardian. The story highlights the reputational implications of the use of AI technologies. Source: The Guardian.
Social media
📈 THREADS USAGE GROWS: Three months after launch, Threads has reached 100 million monthly active users. That’s still less than a quarter of X / Twitter users. Mark Zuckerberg said that his goal was to reach a billion users. Source: Meta.
📊 LINKEDIN ENGAGEMENT RECORD: LinkedIn has reported record levels of engagement among its 985 million members although there is scepticism about the data as it does not appear to have been impacted by the platform’s exit from China. Collaborative articles and user newsletters are driving growth. Source: Social Media Today.
Tools
🌐 GOOGLE CONTEXT TOOLS: Google has announced three new search features to provide more context on images and sources, including expanding "About this image" globally to show an image's history and metadata, adding image search to Fact Check Explorer to investigate images faster, and using AI to generate descriptions of lesser-known sources. Source: Google.
📄 CHATGPT PDF: OpenAI is adding PDF to ChatGPT as a prompt input. The feature has been part of Anthropic's Claude 2 since its launch. It’s useful for uploading management and research papers for reductive applications and eliminates the need for third-party applications that parse large documents. Source: Ethan Mollick.
Industry
👤 NEW PRCA CEO: The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) has appointed James Hewes as its new chief executive. Hewes, currently president and CEO of FIPP, will take up the PRCA role in January 2024 with a mandate to strengthen the PRCA’s value proposition for members, in the UK and in our key markets around the world. Source PRCA.
🔁 GENERIC AGENCY WEBSITES: Journalist request service Dot Star Media scrapped metadata from more than 1,000 agency websites and concluded that agencies do little to differential themselves online. It identified frequent use of generic terms, including public relations, agency, marketing, communications, digital and media. Source: Dot Start Media.
🗞 CAPTAIN TOM PR CUT OUT: Public relations practitioner Daisy Souster claims she was "cut out" by Captain Tom Moore's family after helping launch his famous charity fundraising appeal. The family later told her she had no right to discuss her involvement or enter the work for PRWeek awards. Source: BBC.
🏅 HERO AWARD FOR ASIF: Asif Choudry has been awarded the prestigious Chartered Marketing Institute Marketing Pioneer Award for his work founding the #commsHERO community. #commsHERO will shortly celebrate its 10th anniversary and recognises unsung marketing and public relations heroes. Source: Stephen Waddington.
Thank you to the following members of the House of Marketing & PR community of practice for sharing and debating stories covered in the newsletter over the last week: Stuart Bruce, Andrew Bruce Smith, David Edmundson-Bird, Catherine Frankpitt, Dan Griffiths, Alan Morrison, Claire Quansah, Sarah Waddington CBE, Deborah Wroe and Michael White.