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I recently came across Jezebel, a blog which, as the raunchy name suggests, is aimed at women and focuses on celebrity, sex and fashion, ‘without airbrushing’. 

My first thought was – hmm, another feminist website. Turns out it’s much more than that. Churned out by Gawker Media since 2007, it’s clocking up on average nearly 1 million visits per day and has an impressive following on social networking sites and other blogs. Yesterday I noticed a twitter conversation about an intern position at the site, which went something like this, “Dear Jezebel, I will sell you my soul for an internship.” 

Why all the hype? I decided to monitor the blog to find out and have to say I’ve been very impressed. Most blogs aimed specifically at women have never appealed to me as they seem to focus on recipes or similar, not particularly exciting subjects. Jezebel, on the other hand, with a fiercely direct and analytical attitude, takes on not only women’s mags, but also newspapers (Daily Fail, as they call it, being one of the most favourite whipping boys) and offers tens of witty articles every day on pretty much every subject a modern woman might be interested in. How about: Daily Mail Finds Rare Childless Woman Who Is Not Miserable? 

The blog positions itself as the rebel, sick of the lies perpetuated by the women’s media, from airbrushing and shallow predictable celebrity interviews, to must-have products that journalist’s themselves don’t believe in.  

For this reason, from a PR perspective, however, Jezebel is almost an impossible win – they simply won’t read PR pitches and seem to have a grudge against the PR industry as such. Having said that, if you come up with a spectacular idea, perfect for the audience, I think you can chance it. Also, their FAQ section offers a very interesting insight into how a professional blog is run. 

A more general realisation though is that in today’s world where citizen journalism is on the rise, getting your news story printed is not the end of the story. Increasingly, it is then taken apart and analysed by ever more powerful and media savvy groups and blogs all over the world.  

All in all, Jezebel is a much-needed breath of fresh air in the tired space of women’s websites and magazines, which at the moment still follow the same traditional format – Wednesday’s launch of the Stylist is a prime example.  

“Black goes with everything and you probably don’t need any more assistance going broke!” shout Jezebel’s editors in unison. And the reason Jezebel is on the rise with an army of active commentators, whilst many women’s magazines are dying out – passion and edginess!   

It isn’t often that we opt for introspection on this blog but we think that being shortlisted for a hotly contested award is cause enough to briefly break the habit.   PR Media Blog has been shortlisted in the ‘Best Use of Social Media’ category in the 2009 CIPR Pride Awards.  It is up against some very tough opposition but we are all proud to have made the final cut. Congatulations to all the contributors listed on the right.

Staniforth, the PR agency behind PRMB picked up three awards in last year’s event and is shortlisted for five this year with campaigns for Smokefree NorthWest, Chill Factor^e and two for Kellogg’s completing the line up.  The results are announced at a ceremony at the Hilton Hotel in Manchester on 16 November.

Personal Branding on the Social Web

Why, I wondered does Neville Hobson hold his hand in front of his face in the picture on his blog…and on Twitter…and on…hang on a minute.

Is this a subtle form of personal branding?  Social networks; Facebook, Linked-In and microblogs like Twitter are growing fast and individuals are, if not clamouring for our attention, at least aware that there is a lot of noise out there.  If we are going to build an individual online presence it makes sense to follow some of the tradional rules of branding.  Consistency is one, which means using the same image across a range of networks.  Using a strong, stand out and easy to remember image is another.  Pr 2.0 gurus Todd Defren  and Brian Solis  both do this - Todd has a cartoon style image on his Twitter feed and Brian uses an arresting image with his specs in the foreground on his blog.  

Chris Brogan has just published an ebook on personal online branding so it’s a hot topic.  It’s an interesting read and looks at personal branding from a broad prespective.  What particularly fascinates me is the way in which people apply the iconographic rules that have histrically been used by brands totheir own images of themselves.  

This world has created some rules of its own.  Take a look at the picture above of some of the people I follow on Twitter.  These images are tiny, smaller than thumbnails, so making something work at this scale becomes part of the art.  Colin Byrne  CEO of Weber Shandwick and Deirdre Breakenridge author of the book PR 2.0 both use strong purple colours in their backgrounds to make them stand out.  Aleks Krotoski , presenter of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast uses a close up of her fire red locks as her Twitter image (fifth row, left of middle).

I have no proof that any of these individuals have done anything other than post the first image they came across but whether by luck or good judgement they all stand out.  I have to confess I have toyed with the technique myself.  There is a deliberate use of colour in my profile pic and it seemed to me that if social networks use small images an extreme close up might be a good idea.  Charles Arthur Technology Editor of The Guardian didn’t agree.  He thinks I’m trying to hide a dodgy moustache. 

The Travelogue (in addition to being the title of albums by both Joni Mitchell and The Human League) is one of the great traditions in writing. From ancient sagas, through to Kerouac’s pseudo fictional ‘On the Road’ and Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman’s ‘Long Way Round’ (and Down), travel stories have always been a part of our culture. They capture the imagination and take us as virtual passengers on epic journeys.  The Travelogue is journalism in its true sense, it is a journal or diary of events; one that educates and informs.

It seems to me that a blog provides us with the perfect platform for travel writing.  Not only are we privy to the grand tour but the immediacy of the blog means that we can follow the trip as it happens.

I have two colleagues writing Travelblogs as we speak; one in Russia and the other in New York.  You can follow Liz Dewhurst’s adventures on Madison Avenue here at PR Media Blog.  Michael Cooper and his mate Scott are telling Slavic tales at Mike and Scott’s Russian Blogski.  These are two modern takes on a great writing institution.  No pressure then guys.

Reading about sex in the tabloids is, well, unavoidable. But in the Guardian, it makes me feel slightly soiled. Still, the story about the “outing” of a Brit blogger, ChinaBounder, in China is instructive about the blogosphere generally.

ChinaBounder’s, ahem, enthusiastic online entries about his liaisons with Chinese women caused a storm with an influential Chinese blogger, whose denunciation of the bounder caused a flurry of visits to the offending blog. Now the guy’s got a book deal!

If you are an empassioned expert in your field and are willing to share your passion with the world, you are likely to spark debate, attract an increasing audience and plain get noticed.  Hopefully, unlike ChineseBounder, you won’t have to leave the country.

As candidate for the biggest job in the world (that’s President of the United States, by the way), which commentators would keep you awake at night? The big journalist guns of the New York Times or Washington Post, perhaps? Or might it be a 61-year-old Pennsyvanian housewife and part-time (wait for it…) BLOGGER? Keeping journalists out of a recent Barack Obama campaign event in Pennsylvania clearly lulled the presidential contender into - well - saying what he really thought.  Unfortunately for him, the 37 cataclysmic words of his speech which included references to small town people being “bitter” and somewhat attached to “guns” and “religion” were reported on an influential liberal blog by Mayhill Fowler - an Obama supporter!

Within a day, the post had 100,000 hits and the Clinton PR machine was in full swing to capitalise on Obama’s comments.

Despite having zillions to spend on the best comms strategists in the business, Obama has learned the hard way about the new reality: in the world of citizen journalism, everything is fair game