The Good: The new lifestyle magazine called Bob - any publication named after me has to be brilliant.

The Bad: iSoft, the troubled software company, has more disastrous news. Its commercial director has been sacked over alleged financial irregularities. Steve Graham is the centre of a FSA inquiry into whether the company misled the stock market about its finances.

iSoft had used a gagging order to prevent The Guardian reporting the financial irregularities at the company in 2004. When The Guardian was allowed to write openly it revealed the goings on with gusto. I have never seen a provincial IT company on the front of national.

Be confrontational with the media and it will bite you back as any search of iSoft on the Guardian Unlimited will reveal.

The Ugly: Iran. Yes Iran is playing power politics as the issue of their nuclear program comes under the spotlight. Perhaps they hoped to take the propaganda initiative, but it has back fired spectacularly. Using forced apologies, changing stories (about where the boat was found) simply confirms the fears and lack of judgement many associate with the Iranian rulers.

The new North West media portal How Do is now online and first impressions are good.

The site is easy to navigate, has a simple and uncluttered design and information is easy to access: no login (to view news and comment section) and no subscription.

The news page is already brimming with stories from a range of sources. It is a good sign and points to the portal becoming a well used resource.

The success of How Do will be based on the users: how much content they supply, how often they read it and how often they advertise on it.

Downside? Well, I think many media professionals want to see what is going on in the industry, but I think to be healthy it also needs to attract readers from outside the industry.

It’s early days and the portents for this portal are upbeat.

Interested to hear others impressions: was it what you hoped for?; what affect will it have on the NW media industry?

If there is any doubt that managing a reputation online is important, then those reservations will be quickly overcome if a new survey by Viadeo is anything to go by.

It found that a fifth of all companies surveyed searched the Internet in the selection process to learn more about the candidate. Of those that used the Internet to do some background checks a further quarter rejected the candidate based on “dubious personal information.”

One company found that an applicant was on a police wanted list. Most rejections, though, were owing to indiscreet blogs talking about past employers and personal “revelations”. One recruiter was turned off by a particular personal profile that cited that celebrity magazines were the only reading material of the candidate.

Surely many businesses are replicating such investigations as they assess potential suppliers and surely digital communications is becoming more essential to offline success.

It should all concentrate PR minds.

I was having my usual pub chat, over the phone, with Stephen Wright, editor of Business 550.

Stephen was decrying the lack of intelligence and communication skills of our players.

Alan Hansen and Garth Crooks are good communicators but they are retired and in Stephen’s eyes they do not count - they are the cream.

So are there any current footballers who can communicate without cliches or with originality, me and the boys would be over the moon to hear about them.

I can think of intelligent managers such Iain Dowie - a masters in engineering, Steve Coppell has an economics degree and Arsene Wenger is a polyglot. Martin Jol, Jose Murinho and Rafael Benitez strike me as intelligent.

But footballers? I am struggling, any ideas who has ability to communicate with clarity and can generate interesting opinions? Any names so I can prove Stephen wrong?

Word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing and one that is beyond control of the marketing corporations, right? Wrong!

Well, Marketing Week has reported that 43% of Fortune 500 US companies are using agents to act as their word of mouth. Agents are not paid but receive product samples. Then, the theory goes, they will advocate the product to their friends and family. If you cannot trust a family member or friend, who can you trust?

The US craze will supposedly overwhelm us soon.

But what if the product is rubbish, do you still give positive reviews?

All agents must say they are part of the campaign to keep its integrity. Surely, it is not word of mouth then, just advertising by other channels. Word of mouth works because it is prompted by a service or product being exemplary or because you wish to help others, not only yourself.

Read with gaped mouth here for more information.

McDonalds is on the PR offensive.

The UK arm is launching a PR campaign to get the Oxford English Dictionary to change its meaning of a Mc Job.

Maybe they should talk to the Institut Francais; has their opposition to English words entering the French language worked? - no.

The OED simply reflects the evolution of the language, it does not make decisions on the definition without referring to the common usage. It does not instruct people how to use a term.

McDonalds wants to re-brand McJob as a McProspect stating that lower levels of staff have real opportunities. It will only work if employees and the public genuinely believe that a counter job at McDonalds has real prospects and that seems unlikely.

This latest PR fad follows quickly on McDonalds announcing that they are employee led, with all employees as brand ambassadors and blogs being encouraged.

It just doesn’t ring true. McDonalds offers a particular service and product that has made it highly successful - is that really going to change to be more socially acceptable or will a few PR campaigns and nice words suffice?

I have never used as many italics on my blog as in this article.

The good: cute Knut the polar bear, media star.

The cub was abandoned by its mother and some animal activists said it should be left to die.

He has pulled the situation around. Three and a half months later he has made it on to every paper of any note, has his own podcast, is sponsored by Germany’s environment minister, has a documentary being commissioned about him and has been photographed by Annie Leibovitz to promote environmental issues.

And he has done it with little ego or effort.

The bad: NPower

It might not be enough to destroy a beauty spot, but using the law to muzzle any reasonable press activity about the episode was surely too much. Still those NPower security guards, many ex-forces, needed protection from the protesters, which included a retired scientist, local vicar and a Guardian photographer.

See entry from the 21st March for further information.

The ugly: Naomi Campbell, super tyrant.

The model has not been shy of causing controversy and being unable to control her temper.

The latest episode, involved attacking her maid with a mobile.

She served a community service order in New York, quite unremarkable until she left the place where she was doing her sentence in a full length sequin dress before being whisked off into a Rolls. So much for humility and learning something.

It is the 200th anniversary of the abolition, by Parliament, of the trafficking of slaves. The complete abolition took a little longer in the British Empire - 1834.

Naturally, there is a lot of media coverage about slavery and its impact. And one interesting article I came across on the BBC website focuses on the role of the Quakers in the abolitionist movement.

What is extraordinary, from a communications perspective, is how they pioneered PR and marketing techniques to achieve their aims.

The Quakers used a variety of methods to great effect that by all accounts were quite radical and original at the time:

• Mass petitions
• Lobbying of MPs
• Posters and pamphlets
• Case studies - one a diagram of the cramming of slaves on the ship The Brooke illustrated effectively the conditions slaves had to endure and, by all accounts, changed minds
• Logos (as pictured above) and tag lines
• The use of their meeting houses as a network to spread the word through talks and organise themselves

And they were passionate about their cause!

I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Michael Taylor, editor of the NW Business Insider and Tony McDonough, deputy business editor of the Liverpool Daily Post. Lisa Miles of NW Business Insider also joined Michael to lend her support to the event and fielded a couple of questions.

It was an open session on some insider tips to supply better and more effective PR for journalists, with particular reference to their publications.

Tony kicked off with a clarification of a journalists’ role. It is not about “promoting business,” in this case Liverpool’s, it is about reporting the triumphs and the disasters of business in his city.

A very good question, put forward by one of the audience, was “does size matter?”

Michael claimed it did not. In fact, the story was what mattered. If the story is strong, he would choose it against a big company and a poor story.

Michael stated he wanted new faces for his magazine. And he wanted stories that other business could relate to. So seeing the same old big companies went against his aims, unless they had something to say.

Mike Perls, managing director of MC2, asked what the pet hates of both journalists are.

Michael said it was PRs not understanding the magazine. He is particularly irked by London PRs trying to sell in stories that are not based in the region.

For Tony it was the lack of clarity of a story. He urged PRs to get the story expressed clearly in the headline and opening of the e-mail, not the attachment. He said he spends 5 seconds on each e-mail with a release and so he had to make a decision whether to read further or delete within that short time frame.

A couple of more tips of note were:

Tony - stressing the importance of images to sell stories; papers are never too overwhelmed by a lot of brilliant images for the next issue.

Michael - building relationships. He wanted companies to meet him “half way.” In good and bad times there should be a dialogue, not when it just suits the company.

Michael said, “he always tries to be fair with companies,” emphasising relationship building is essential.

I asked about digital media and its affect on their industry. Michael welcomed the democratisation of the media resulting from digital media journalists and bloggers. Both believed that newspapers will survive because people prefer brands and they trust their paper based media. Tony pointed out that the brand experience is about opening the paper on the train, that is part of the enjoyment.

Many thanks to MC2 for organising the event, which was conducted with a high level of professionalism from their offices - the site of the Boardwalk - and to the speakers for giving up their time.

It is true that PR and digital media are converging and the lines are already blurred.

We always talk about about it from an agency or client point of view; how does it work from a journalists / news providers point of view?

Well, journalism.co.uk gives an illustrative article.

It gives an overview of MEN Media in Manchester and their strategy of converging the many channels they have to deliver content. MEN Media has the Manchester Evening News, its online portal Manchesteronline, Channel M, 23 newspapers and a radio station.

I was aware of some of the links, but I do not think I appreciated how it works fully - this article gives a really helpful insight.