That applies to people -- and to cats on the adoption block.

OK, we only have five -- so this isn't a book proposal. They are:

1. "I criticize by creation -- not by finding fault."
2. "No one can speak well, unless he thoroughly understands his subject."
3. "He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason."
4. "It is a true saying that 'One falsehood leads easily to another'."
5. "If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place."

So how come people knew this stuff 2,000 years ago and we still have such trouble with it?

Greg Auman, who covers University of South Florida sports for the St. Pete Times, has had it with USF football coach Jim Leavitt:

What's the point of Leavitt making himself the only outlet for information to the media if he's not a source of any meaningful information? What's the point of limiting player interviews to Tuesday lunches if you then limit the players who are actually showing up on Tuesdays? Leavitt funnelling all media interviews to him has a reverse effect: instead of shielding his players from the press, it says he doesn't trust his assistants and players to know how to say the right things to the media.

I've written a ton here on the blog, but you won't find anything in Wednesday's paper about it. At least initially, I don't think it's proper for me to question the way Leavitt handles the media in the newspaper, simply because I'm a little too involved. You could argue it's just a matter of semantics, but I'm telling a couple hundred people here as opposed to a couple hundred thousand in the paper.

Chris Roush, the UNC journalism instructor who writes Talking Biz News, was a little surprised by a PR solicitation he received from GM:

Dear Advisor,

I'm writing to inform you of General Motors' First College Journalists Event taking place in Las Vegas, NV on September 9-10th. This is the first time we've done this sort of event and it'll be a great learning opportunity for young journalists. The program will focus on car customization culture which is relevant to young adults.

While in Las Vegas the college journalists will have the opportunity to meet with professional journalists and GM executives who'll be in attendance. GM will pay for travel, hotel and meals for students that attend. Travel will be scheduled so students don't miss any school (arrivals and departures will take place during the weekend).

More information on the program is below. Please feel free to forward the information below to students you believe are qualified and would benefit from this opportunity. For questions or more information, please contact me at 805-373-9523 or diedra.wylie@gm.com.

Best,
Diedra Wylie

Listen to that liberal Kyra Phillips drowning out President Bush with all that liberal talk about "compassionate human beings" being "hard to find" and "good vibes" and having to "protect" her brother. I bet her "control freak" sister-in-law is a Republican, too.

Michelle Malkin: Get on it!

(Props to Gawker and the Pseudodictionary.)

From Think Progress:

Today on Fox News, Neil Cavuto devoted much of his show's coverage to the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. To give the real picture of what's going on, Cavuto brought in two "experts" on back-to-back segments -- exercise guru Richard Simmons and boxing promoter Don King.

We were checking out this old-school article on the "Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" and it occurred to us that, in his own way, John Mark Karr was a Harvard Business School case study for attention-seeking perves everywhere.

A successful viral campaign:

1. Gives away valuable products and services.
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others.
3. Scales easily from small to very large.
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors.
5. Utilizes existing communication networks.
6. Takes advantage of others' resources.

In Karr's case, his "valuable service" was providing a confession. The media took care of the rest -- providing effortless transfer, scaling from Thailand to the world, exploiting our basest motivations, utilizing every communication network on the planet, and taking advantage of resources that could have been used to cover real stories that affect our lives.

Congratulations to all of us.

We're confused. First, there was this ad. Now, there's this ad -- continuing the stripper theme.

As readers of Media Orchard know, we're not opposed to attractive women. But from a practical standpoint, do Napster's ads really appeal to all demographics who want to download music online? Probably not.

More to the point, is Napster gaining any traction in building a viable alternative to iTunes? That remains highly questionable..

It's all very troubling. If Napster doesn't make it, where ever will we go to find advertising featuring scantily clad women?

We've written nearly 1,600 posts since starting Media Orchard in March 2005. Only two of them have mentioned the words "nipple slip."

And yet:

Our StatCounter report shows that among the latest 10,000 visitors to our site, 955 arrived via Web search. Of these, the most-used search terms were:

1. media orchard (50 searches)
2. nipple slips (45 searches)

Fortunately for entertainment Web sites everywhere, nipple-slip mania shows no sign of abating anytime soon. We even had A NIPPLE SLIP AT THE EMMYS LAST NIGHT.

We'll just sit here quietly and wait for the server to explode.

Here's the hack. While we support occasional pandering, we disapprove of cheating. We hope YouTube fixes this (if they haven't already done so) before the Dr. Myras of the world get any bright ideas.

First, the liberal media Photoshopped Condoleezza Rice to make her look demonic. Then, they Photoshopped pictures of Lebanon to make it look like civilians were actually suffering over there.

And now, the coup de gras: They've messed with Tiger Woods' cap.

This is outrageous, and there is certainly some liberal media member with some kind of liberal motivation behind it. We'll leave you to figure that part out; it's your specialty.

Ouch.

We've seen this one popping up all over the Web recently, but apparently it's several years old. In fact, it's been ranked among the top virals of all time. The reporter just had the wind knocked out of her and is fine.

From the NY Times:

Forbes' Web prowess is a reason Elevation Partners, a private equity firm that has U2's Bono as a managing director, agreed on Aug. 4 to buy a minority stake in Forbes' publishing business. But a closer look at the numbers raises questions about Forbes.com's success. For its claim of a worldwide audience of nearly 15.3 million, it has been citing February data from comScore Media Metrix, one of the two leading providers of third-party Web traffic data.

But comScore has since revised the figure downward to less than 13.2 million as part of a broader revamping of its worldwide data for many sites. There is also the question of where those visitors were going. According to comScore, 45 percent of Forbes.com's February traffic went to ForbesAutos.com, heavy on car reviews and photos. About three-quarters of the ForbesAutos.com traffic came from outside the United States.

Since February, comScore said, Forbes.com's traffic has tumbled. In July, Forbes Web sites drew 7.3 million unique visitors worldwide, almost a million of whom went to ForbesAutos ... Asked why, as recently as last week, Forbes.com continued to cite comScore's discarded figure of 15.3 million on its Web site, [Forbes.com's James] Spanfeller said that the company only learned of comScore's new, lower number when informed of it by a reporter...

What about comScore's July figure of 7.3 million, which is less than half what Forbes.com has been using? Spanfeller said comScore's latest figures clashed with the company's internally generated data, which still showed about 15 million visitors a month, with ForbesAutos.com accounting for 2 million of those. Still, Spanfeller, who is also chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade association for online media, conceded that the proliferation of Web traffic statistics could be confusing and agreed that the industry needed to deal with that issue.

No, it's not Snakes on a Plane.

From Canadian Press:

The September fight card for controversial German movie director and itinerant boxer Uwe Boll is full. The director of the recently released vampire flick BloodRayne ... claims to be frustrated with critics trashing his films ... So, in June, he challenged them to a fight which will be filmed and incorporated into an upcoming Boll film...

Fifteen people applied for the punchup. The five now on the fight card with Boll are:

- Chris Alexander of Toronto, Ont., a journalist with Rue Morgue radio and magazine.

- Richard Kyanka of Lee's Summit, Mo., webmaster of www.somethingawful.com.

- Jeff Sneider of Los Angeles, Calif., a journalist with Ain't It Cool News.

- Nelson Chance Mintner, a web site critic from Fredrick, Md.

- Carlos Palencia Jimenez-Arguello from Madrid, Spain, webmaster of www.cinecutre.com.

Mintner is only 17, Boll said, but the teen is also a boxer and Boll expects him to be the greatest challenge.

Alexander, 31, said he might be the least challenging. "I saw this as probably the most perverse and outlandish PR stunt in the history of film. Uwe Boll is in line with Ed Wood as far as being one of the most inept filmmakers ever," Alexander said. "If I can get at least three hits in -- one for each lousy video game horror movie that Uwe Boll has made -- then I'll be happy."

Scott M. Libin offers eight tips for preparing for a conversation with the boss. The short version:

1. Time it right.
2. Do your homework.
3. Be specific.
4. Try to imagine the issue from your boss's perspective.
5. Be open-minded.
6. Speak for yourself, not for others.
7. Don't bury the lead.
8. Ask for the order.

Read the full article here.

Posters in Poland are not the disposable wall art they are the U.S.; there, artists have elevated poster-making to art.

Compare Polish posters of American movies to their U.S. counterparts, for example. Histories of Poland's great tradition in poster art can be found here and here.

Now Warsaw has forced one of Poland's great poster artists, New York-based Rafal Olbinski, to alter his depiction of a mermaid on a poster advertising the 2006 Miss World contest. Olbinski, obviously informed by his previous work, had created a mermaid with an exposed breast. The city of Warsaw's symbol is a bare-breasted mermaid holding a sword and shield.

Olbinski has now covered the offending boob with a white scarf, as seen in the version of the poster here. No word on the offended boobs in the Warsaw government.

From People.co.uk:

BRITAIN'S youngest mayoress Anna Belsey is stripping for a naughty lads' mag - in a bid to put her town on the map. The 19-year-old beauty revealed: "It is just a bit of harmless fun - I am supposed to be Britain's sexiest mayoress.

"It won't be too saucy because it is my family's name I have to uphold as well as the town's but it will be a fantastic experience."

Anna became mayoress of sleepy Sussex resort Eastbourne after dad Colin was appointed mayor and named her as his civic companion. Now she will appear in Nuts magazine wearing a sexy bikini.

Colin added: "As long as the article and the pictures are done tastefully I have no problem."

Media Orchard thanks the fellow bloggers who have favorited our little blog on Technorati:

Mike Sansone

Now, we only need 12 more Media Orchard fans to favorite us to land in the Technorati Top 100. (Currently, Steve is the only PR blogger on that list.)

How can you help, you ask? Click below:



Thanks to everyone who reads Media Orchard -- and especially those who leave comments regularly. You make it fun for us.

Clients bearing down on us ... no time to sleep and little to breathe. Help!

From the Pravda article "America's corporate-controlled media: garbage disguised as news"--

During the course of writing this article, I reached for my handy thesaurus to find appropriate synonyms to describe the profession of "cable television news journalist."

There were three: 1) Pseudo-journalist, a.k.a. professional liar; 2) Bottom feeding scum sucker who regurgitates garbage; 3) A coward often known to hawk unjust and illegal wars from the safety of television studios while avoiding military service...

How did [U.S.] corporate-controlled media arrive at this dismal state? Ironically by shattering one of the myths of the capitalist system: Competition will always produce a superior product.

The corporate-controlled media have proven that competition often lowers competitors to their lowest common denominator. Therefore a news network losing ratings and profits because it covers only relevant stories and issues will invariably lower its journalistic standards if it witnesses a pseudo-news network gaining ratings and profits by disseminating lies and covering salacious and superficial tripe.

Sadly it is unlikely corporate-controlled media will ever again elevate their journalistic standards, given the "junk-food" culture of America. While many in the developing world are malnourished because of lack of food, America is a nation where people can be gluttonous, and still remain malnourished because of the quality of the food they are consuming.

This analogy also applies to the philosophies of corporate-controlled media: They provide the sensation of being "full" (i.e. informed) while their consumers starve for lack of substance.

From Atlanta's Creative Loafing:

It's hard to miss "The Orkin Man" on television. The congenial pest exterminator reminds folks that they can rely on Orkin to rid their homes of termites.

Some Georgia consumers trusted Orkin, only to be so disappointed they have gone to court. They won a major victory Aug. 18 when Cobb County Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Schuster ruled Orkin customers can join in a class-action suit to force the company to honor its contracts. Schuster ... concluded that "60 percent of [Georgia] customers' termite jobs were incomplete"...

The public relations strategy at Orkin is denial. Spokeswoman [Martha] Craft says: "The media coverage of a handful of disappointed Orkin customers ignores the quiet satisfaction of more than half a million others. Claims are extremely rare among Orkin's more than 500,000 termite customers."

That's true. Equally true: Only a handful knows of the litigation that has beset the company -- or about claims that homes were left unprotected due to Orkin's business practices.

The solution is obvious: Inform the customers that the company might not have fully protected their homes. Re-inspect every home. Fix those with termite damage. Tell the public: "We were wrong. We'll make amends." Spend $100 million, if that's what it takes. In the end, honesty and integrity will reap many times that sum.

Our local D Magazine estimates it will lose 30 percent of its typical newsstand sales by going with


...this September cover instead of















...this one, which represents its usual fare.













We think they're right, partly because serious-minded journalism doesn't sell as well, and partly because that kind of journalism isn't -- currently at least -- associated with D as much as it is with other publications. You can't have attractive, smiling models on your cover eight or nine months a year and then throw in a picture of dirt and expect it to (1) retain your established readership or (2) attract a new one.

But then, you guys knew that. So kudos for trying something different. And if it makes you feel any better, we look forward to reading the story.