Since a number of folks have asked me my opinion on this today, here it is.
For background, Style Weekly reporter Chris Dovi, who has history of being a champion of the disabled was fired, by his employer for in an email calling a blind motivational speaker “a blind fucker.” A Norfolk-based PR firm was pitching Dovi on an upcoming Richmond event featuring the speaker. Dovi, who felt the PR firm was being over zealous in the pitching, wrote an email that he thought he was sending to his editor expressing frustration with being hounded by the PR firm. He included the unfortunate language about the client in the email. He then mistakenly sent the email to the PR firm instead of his editor.
I have long-standing relationships with both organizations. We work with Chris and folks with Style on stories all the time. I have also known Audrey Knoth, a long-time PR pro at the firm…Goldman and Associates, for more than 25 years having worked with her in radio.
While I have not been able to talk to Chris as of yet I have seen his quotes and the story on Channel 6 last night were he blames the PR firm for his losing his job. That is understandable.
I did speak with Audrey this morning. She spoke passionately about her client William Weeks and his life-long struggle with his handicap. She and the firm’s leadership were extremely disappointed with the way their client, “a man with a disability, was characterized” especially by a journalist. Knowing Audrey for as long as I have and the passion that she and her firm bring to their profession, it is not surprising that they decided to defend their client in such a public way.
She also defended her associate who pitched Weeks to Dovi, saying “he was as aggressive as Jon Newman would have been” in his pitch to get someone at Style to come to the event. She said at no time did Dovi tell her associate to stop pitching but he did say ultimately it would be up to his editor.
She also said it was never Goldman’s intention to get Dovi fired, only to point out the bad way in which their client was characterized.
As with most situations like these, this is a bit of one person’s story versus another’s.
I can tell you I personally and we as an agency have had our professional disagreements with Style and their editors on more than one occasion. In most cases, we have agreed to disagree. They take their role as the alternative voice very seriously and on more than one occasion I have felt that they view my role as a PR person as a hinderance to them getting a story or that I as a PR person was somehow being disingenuous in order to leverage something positive for my client. It is their right to feel that way. It is my right to disagree with them.
That being said, here are some of my (and others who I have talked to about this today) thoughts on this matter:
- While I somewhat understand Goldman’s move to make this public, it is not something we would have done. Our policy as a firm is to stay out of the news especially as it relates to a client. We also obviously have some long-standing relationships at Style and our first step would have been to pick up the phone and address it directly. We would have also asked ourselves the question “what do we have to gain by making this public?” While we respect our client, one could argue that there might have been other ways to address the slur.
- From his quotes, I know Chris blames the PR person (he uses a word to describe PR folks that frankly pisses me off so I won’t use it here) for his firing. I can understand that. They went public, the company had to act, he got fired. But in my mind for someone who has been a champion of disabled he should not have described the blind speaker the way he did. If he was aggravated at the PR guy, he should have called the PR guy a fucker. He likely would still be employed.
- If a journalist has no intention of doing a story, then tell the PR guy “no.” It saves a great deal of time and mutual frustration. On the PR side, sometimes “no” is really “no.” Respect that and move on.
- Never send angry emails to anyone. When you do that two things happen. You use unfortunate language, and you mistakenly send them to the wrong people.
There is no total right and wrong here, no absolute good and bad. For some reason there are people out there who think the PR community is quietly celebrating some sort of victory, that we are doing a dance around Chris’ scalp.
We are not.
Many of us are former journalists ourselves. We have also been on the receiving end of aggressive pitch calls. Now that we are PR people we think that experience makes us better at what we do.
Chris is a very talented journalist who made a mistake. He used the wrong language and sent it to the wrong person. He needs to take some personal responsibility for that and not just blame the PR guy.
Goldman while they are passionate about this has to ask itself if it accomplished what it wanted to by going public.
For our part, we are saddened that this may ratchet up the tension in the always interesting relationship between journalists and PR folks. In these days of budget cuts and job losses both industries need each other more than ever.
William Hamby
/ February 19, 2010I’m sorry Jon, the media relations guy in this case, in my opinion based on what I have read, had a tin ear. At some point in the pitch process the good ones have a sense of whether there is interest in a story or not. Dovi misfired no doubt. But to leverage his ineptitude with the SEND button does not forgive a lame and less than classy act on Goldman’s part. It should have never gotten to that point. I come down on Dovi’s side. Bill
jonnewman12
/ February 19, 2010Bill,
No apologies needed. I think there’s enough blame to go around to everyone on this one.
Jon
Mighty Casey
/ February 19, 2010A great case study of “sender beware”, with a big side order of “pitcher beware”.I have to say that I agree with Bill’s comment that the Goldman rep was pretty tone-deaf not to have grasped that the pitch wasn’t going anywhere. Sad that one of the best reporter/writers in Richmond is now out of work as a result of SWS (Sending While Stressed). Maybe the dust will settle down the road, and Chris will be back. I’ll keep my fingers crossed…and encourage him to make an effort to get his fingers more closely connected to his self-awareness.
B. Thompson
/ February 19, 2010I cant be sure in this case, but the reason some journalists dont say “no” right off the bat is because there may be open space to be filled where a story can go in at last minute. However, this case illustrates that there should be a policy though of saying: NO, dont call us … send us an email or FAX. Thanks–goodbye and stop pestering us every five minutes while we try to work, etc.”
As I see it: A big problem between journalists and PR is that when journalists want to use them, they are obliged to respond, but the reverse is not true. PR people dont get to decide the story, journalists do. And that causes some PR people to have a complex and to hate journalists. Maybe even target them and try to get them fired. Journalists usually only dislike PR people when they are too pushy or overly aggressive like this guy.
Nonetheless, what Dovi said was not bigoted. It may have been crude to some ears, but it was not the kind of offense that should have resulted in his being fired. This really called for sensitivity training. People aren’t stupid, nobody would have held this against Style for long. Instead they have a huge problem now. They lost their star and a lot of readers, and clearly people think of them as spineless. Not the best rep for a journalism op.
But it all started with the PR people making noise about a private communique to drum up and CREATE a news story for their client. I find them cynical and wish them nothing but the worst. All these people did was hurt a community and the needs of many more disabled people besides their one client.
jonnewman12
/ February 19, 2010B.
Some interesting points here to say the lest and I can’t say I agree with all of them. One thing for all to keep in mind here is likely the decision to fire Dovi did not come from Style leadership but from above them at the corporate level. I wouldn’t think of Style’s leadership as spineless as they likely had little choice in the matter.
It is also a little shortsighted to have a blanket “just send an email or fax” policy. The best relationships between journalists and PR folks are just that, relationships. From personal experience I can tell you it’s pretty hard to try to establish those relations by fax.
Not PR people pester journalists every five minutes. Just the bad ones do. It is up to us PR pros to try to teach them or weed them out.
I agree that there was likely an interim step for Landmark to take but in this day and age corporations are pretty sensitive to these things even though most of us here that kind of language every day.
Jon