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As I sat on the train scrolling on my phone for Brexit news, a curious landmark update dropped into my timeline. It was 10 years, the tweet told me since I joined Twitter. It made me think and reflect on the journey I’ve taken and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. Many have been …
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As a keen junior newspaper reporter, I was once told the key to writing features was to put the best quote in the intro. So, John Lennon’s ‘Beatles are bigger than Jesus’ should always shout from the first paragraph to reel the reader in. I was reminded of this gem listening to Marc Reeves, editor-in-chief …
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There’s a great line about lies being half way round the world before the truth has got its pants on. It’s actually something that cuts to the very heart of public sector communications. We should be constantly challenging myths and half-truths when they happen before they take root as the Winterval myth has done. A …
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Just lately, more than a few people have been complaining about journalists just recently. It’s not critical stories that truly bother people, it’s not giving a fair crack of the whip. As a former journalist, I get the Press needs to hold the organisation to account. As a former press officer, I also get …
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There’s this amazing clip from late 1970s Blue Peter where the presenters are demonstrating the first commercial mobile phone. John Noakes stays in the studio while Peter Purves heads into the Blue Peter garden and whips out from under his mac an over the shoulder plastic phone. You can tell the smugness in his voice …
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Ladies and gentlemen, in Northern England this week a powerboat was dumped on the street and as a result Doncaster Council won the internet. The speed boat will not be the only thing dumped across the country with the cost likely to top £50 million across the UK. Every council across the country is forced …
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The best day to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today. It’s the same for you and your team. The skills you need to communicate have been changing. A few years back I blogged a list of skills that every team needed. This started as a list of 40 …
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There is nothing that is quite as good as showing you the fractured landscape than video. Time was when there was one home for video and that was on YouTube. You filmed it, posted it to YouTube and then pasted the URL all over the web but no longer. How different optimum video length was …
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Just last week while delivering training something struck me that had been right under my nose. You do not need a picture editor on the internet. The thought had never occurred to me before. A picture editor when I was a journalist was the gatekeeper who decided what image went where. They could pick a …
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A good comms plan helps you to get to where you want to go… without one you are almost certainly going to fail. You can fire a rocket into the sky and you might successfully hit the moon but the chances are you won’t. Back in 1969 when NASA put a man on the moon …