Recently, I attended a PRSA (Public Relations Society of America) professional development program that featured a panel of well-known D.C. area assignment editors. The editors ranged from broadcast news, to radio and even the good old Washington Post.
Initially, I did not expect much from the panel, other than comments like “never call me” or “do [...]

Last month, Environics Communications’ Health Sciences Practice and Business Wire co-hosted a media panel discussion with leading health care reporters at top-tier print and broadcast media outlets. More than 50 PR professionals gathered at the National Association for Broadcasters in Washington, D.C., for our first-ever “Coffee and Conversation: An up close and personal discussion with [...]

Communications is an industry that’s constantly evolving. In the past decade we’ve experienced a sea change in how we talk to each other, how brands interact with customers and how the media communicates with everyone. With all of this change, communications as a profession has also evolved, opening up new strategies, tactics and possibilities we [...]

Can you imagine functioning in your role as a communicator without email? Impossible. We have become fully dependent upon the tool. Sure, we may complain about the number of emails we receive, but at the same time, we can easily rhyme off the advantages of having email in our lives. For example:
Simple communication with a [...]

A few years have passed since I had a go at faddish words that have already worn out their welcome. As we’re communicators, speaking in understandable language is the thing. But using clichés and hackneyed expressions and words may seem like an effective use of language, but, in truth, it grates on the ear. Using [...]

At a recent social media event, I was able to connect with several new colleagues over appetizers. At one point, I looked up from my plate of finger foods to find three out of five people furiously jabbing at their mobile devices between bites. The other two nervously glanced from the table to their briefcases [...]

As communications professionals, we are well aware of Awareness Months / Weeks / Days. This rings especially true if you work in health care. Considerable planning is done around these occasions and ultimately our campaigns depend on being seen during these times. Ironically, communications professionals are constantly fighting for awareness of their awareness. So imagine [...]

Did this title grab your attention? Put a fire in your belly? Does it make you want to scroll down to the comments section (immediately below this post) and vehemently voice your displeasure? You could call me names – maybe even ones that start with the letter ‘s’ – or write comments like: “Lorna, the [...]

Oliver’s Twist
Published by Viking Canada
352 pages
Oliver’s Twist, the recently published autobiography by CTV News chief parliamentary correspondent, Craig Oliver, pans an extraordinary professional and personal life. Raised on the remote northern shores of British Columbia by divorced alcoholic parents, Oliver unexpectedly lands a summer job with the local CBC Prince Rupert Radio and the rest [...]

As communicators, we’re accustomed to writing for different audiences in a variety of voices. We’re taught to write “in plain English” or, put another way, in language that an eighth grader would understand. That’s the reading level of the average American – scary, I know, but that’s fodder for another blog post.
But when it comes [...]