When I was a kid playing Sunday league junior football, our team had a madcap coach who genuinely believed he was Shankly, Ferguson and Clough all rolled into one. He’d work us to the point of exhaustion during Saturday morning training sessions, whilst gleefully recounting the three famous occasions on which he allegedly turned out […]
One of the beauties of Twitter is finding and connecting with people with whom you’re often in the same boat. Slumped on the sofa at 5.30am of a Saturday, with all hope of a lie-in after a hard week’s graft cruelly dashed, it’s always comforting to scan through the 140-character missives of fellow bleary-eyed parents […]
Ah, the humble press release. From nine years as a journo receiving them to another seven as a comms officer writing them, I’ve rarely been far from those carefully-crafted, re-crafted, re-re-crafted and tortuously-approved bits of purple prose. In my newspaper days, I’ll admit, they could occasionally be a god-send when a space needed filling at […]
Kids – don’t ya just love ‘em? Granted, there’s the sleepless nights, the obliteration of your social life, the exchanging of your beloved coupe for a people carrier, the crippling expense that comes with clothes, shoes, toys, school dinners… … but every now and then you’re reminded that being a parent is actually the greatest […]
Amid warnings of financial meltdown, deep civil unrest and essential services going by the wayside, 2013 should be an interesting year for local government, to say the least. For those of us whose role it is to communicate during these turbulent times of change, the challenges will be many and varied. From my point of […]
In an age where we’re all demanding, creating, sharing and consuming content at such a frenetic rate, are relations with the so-called traditional media as important as they were back in the day? Well, yes, if an excellent ‘meet the media’ breakfast event organised by CIPR North-East is anything to go by. A thought-provoking session, […]
The big Christmas lights switch-on – late-November staple diet stuff for council comms and events teams across the land. In previous festive seasons, we pretty much could’ve done it in our sleep. Press release – check; posters and leaflets – check; special guests – check… And don’t get me wrong, we did all of the […]
