spencercritchley.com Archives: Communications
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20 August 2010
Have Democrats Lost The Narrative?
By Zach Friend & Spencer Critchley, at Huffington Post: Time after predictable time, Republicans roll out a new set of bogus talking points. And time after time, Democrats argue the facts — and lose. That’s got to change. Here’s how the script goes: Republican: I’d like to begin by making an outrageous assertion. It’s obviously [...]
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1 August 2010
Obama’s Credit Gap – Why the President’s Victories Go Unnoticed
By Zach Friend & Spencer Critchley, at Huffington Post: We knew this was coming. The media have finally noticed the gap between Barack Obama’s extraordinary achievements — health care reform, financial reform and preventing a depression, to name a very few — and his seeming inability to win credit for them. “Why can’t Obama get [...]
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24 December 2009
Why TV commercials are so loud
With Rep. Anna Eshoo’s bill to turn down TV ads in the news (Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation, or CALM, Act), here again is my explanation of why ads sound so loud when broadcasters claim they hit the same levels as the rest of the programming: People have complained about loud TV commercials for years. The [...]
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31 May 2009
Warmer, Fuzzier – The Refreshed Logo
via nytimes.com A great peek into the thinking that goes into brand identities, and a real indicator of how times have changed: companies used to want to look like authorities, and now they want to look like friends. Posted via web from Spencer’s posterous
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25 May 2009
A List Apart: Articles: In Defense of Eye Candy
via alistapart.com A great post on why attractive design is more useful, by UI consultant Stephen P. Anderson. Emotions are not just the waste heat of cognition, they’re essential to cognition. So attractive products are not just “more fun” to use, they actually work better. Posted via web from Spencer’s posterous
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28 August 2007
More Political Reputation-Management: The Truth-o-Meter
Following my recent post about a color-coded reputation management system* for politicians (indicating their truthfulness by the color used to display their names on web pages), I came across Politifact and its Truth-o-Meter. Politifact is a project of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly that will “analyze the [presidential] candidates’ speeches, TV ads and [...]
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11 May 2007
Digital Journalism Case Study: Live Blogging a Political Convention
The California Democratic Party held its annual convention in San Diego April 27-29, and I was there blogging, along with hundreds of other traditional and web-based reporters. Here are some observations. < – First, a thought about this picture: No matter how much technology finds its way into campaigns and campaign coverage, politics is ultimately [...]
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11 March 2006
Digital Politics
From my O’Reilly blog: I’ve been doing more and more work in politics since the ’04 election (communications consulting and web production). I got involved at first out of a sense of civic obligation–and because my wife told me to “stop ranting and go volunteer”. I expected to dread a lot of what I’d encounter, [...]
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11 March 2006
My Tips From An E-Musician Article On Podcasting
Electronic Musican recently ran a comprehensive article on podcasting, written by David Battino. It includes some tips from me. A lot of what has stuck with me about communication over the years I first learned as a freelance writer-broadcaster for the Canadian Broacasting Corporation: “I think the most important thing is a strong focus-an angle,” [...]
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16 December 2005
10 Journalism Tips For Bloggers, Podcasters & Other E-Publishers
Blogs, podcasts & e-newsletters make it easy for anyone to be a journalist. But just as the debut of desktop publishing led to some very ugly documents, these newer tools are spawning some very sloppy journalism, which does no good for the reputation of participatory media. Here are some tips on how good journalists do [...]