Apparently, the DIA would rather deal with “infrequent complaints about blocked access, than parents complaining about how their child might see pornography. They are trying to create a family-friendly atmosphere, but the censoring of certain web sites seems like they are taking it a bit too far.

The article reports that the airport is blocking Vanity Fair’s website, the hipster site boingboing and others. Airport spokesman Chuck Cannon says officials decided to block access to potentially racy sites when the airport made its wireless Internet service free in November.

I see a huge problem with this situation. The DIA has a good point, but they are going about it in a bad way. They made their Internet service free, probably, so that everyone would have access to it. So they want everyone to have access to it, but they want to police what people can access?

I understand if the DIA wants to stop children from seeing pornography, but they limited access to Vanity Fair’s web site because of partial nudity of models? They should then remove all fashion magazines from the newsstands and the pornography available there too.

Overall, the DIA needs to not be so conservative. If they want to limit access to pornography on the Internet, I could understand that. They should stop there. They should grant access to everything but pornography. If they are so worried about the parents of children, they should remove it from the newsstands in the airport too.

Is it possible for a lingerie company to be too sexy? The top executives at Victoria’s Secret seem to think that they have taken “sexy” too far. Is that possible?

The AP reports that Victoria’s Secret’s chief executive Sharen Turney said, “We’ve so much gotten off our heritage. We’re too sexy, and we use the word sexy a lot and really have forgotten the ultra feminine.”

Victoria’s Secret has really jumped on board and supported their strongest brand, Pink. The Daily Dog reported that the Pink line if loungewear and lingerie was created for “college-age women, and it has tried to chase it’s consumers.” This is how the brand has gotten carried away with being “sexy.”

Victoria’s Secret is aiming to go back to their roots and raise the level of superiority and class of it’s brands. Turney discussed the companies aims to improve the quality of its merchandise and “reinvent the sleepwear business.”

As a male, I feel that Victoria’s Secret has already reinvented the “sleepwear business.” Victoria’s Secret has had a huge impact in the industry. Victoria’s Secret made underwear cool. It made women want to wear sexy and hip underwear. This had begun to expand into the world of men’s underwear.

It is becoming fashionable for men to wear “sexy” underwear. Designers like Ed Hardy and  Burberry are expanding their empires to join Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren in designing high-end men’s underwear.

I understand that Victoria’s Secret wants to scale back and focus on the quality of their product, but they should not quit embracing “sexy” as their motto. They have paved the way and set the standard for fashionable underwear. Without them, Everyone, including men, would be wearing those plain old multi-packs that you find at your local Target.

Thank you Victoria’s Secret. Keep it “sexy.”

The media’s reports of Price Harry’s deployment to Afghanistan, were what prompted the prince’s pre-mature return home.

CNN.com reports that the young Prince was deployed to Afghanistan in December. The major news outlets had all agreed to keep the story secret to ensure the safety of Prince Harry. Last Thursday, a web site broke the news on the internet.

The British Ministry of Defense stated that, “The release of this information has put Prince Harry and those deployed at risk. The decision was primarily based on the world-wide media coverage after the story broke.”

CNN.com reported that as of Friday evening the young Prince was en route back to Great Britain.

“At the end of the day I like to sort of be a normal person, and for once I think this is about as normal as I’m ever going to get,” he said in a recent interview. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m out here as a normal JTAC on the ground and not as Prince Harry.”

The rest of the article talks about how Prince Harry was not treated any differently than any other soldier. CNN.com reports that his duties included calling in air strikes and air support when necessary, guaranteeing the accuracy of bombing on the ground, and guarding against incidents of friendly fire.

The story frames Harry as upholding the family tradition of participating in the Military. His brother, Price William, his uncle, great-grandfather and so on all have fought for Great Britain.

This article was very interesting to read. It was half news and half PR. The article depicted Harry as just another upstanding member of the royal family, when just last year the press surrounding Prince Harry was not exactly positive.

The media portrayed Harry as a party boy. He was seen going out to clubs and getting into mischievous and paparazzi worthy situations. Now the image of Prince Harry in the media has changed because he served in Afghanistan.

He seems more down to earth. This will do nothing but strengthen Britain’s love for the members of the Royal Family. Whether or not this was an intentional PR move, it ended up being great press Prince Harry.

I was in Borders this evening perusing their intense and impressive magazine section. While investigating the numerous Mac-related magazines, I stumbled across a magazine that blew me out of the water: The Independent Guide to Facebook: Your Complete Guide to Social Networking. My mouth dropped.

I remember my freshman year at the University of Oregon. Facebook.com was just a social site that was mainly used as a reference for new people you were meeting on campus. It was cool because it was just for college kids. Since the site has opened up to the general public, it has had a great impact on the world of social media.

This new magazine, The Independent Guide to Facebook, is proof that Facebook.com is becoming more influential. The magazines cover boasts that it is “148 pages of Facebook Now-How!” The cover spotlights how to get your Facebook started, step-by-step help, easy-to-use tutorials and includes smart security tips. I guess my question is, Is Facebook.com that hard to operate and manage?

Social media are ever-growing and ever changing. Every time I log into my Facebook account, I see that something has changed or is in a different place on the site. If you are not on your Facebook often, you might want to log-in. I bet things are different. I guess this is where a magazine, like The Independent Guide to Facebook, would come in handy. I guess the next step is an edition of The Idiot’s Guide to Facebook to be released. Look out world, you know it is on its way.

The Daily Dog issued an article today that discussed the “death” of the DVD. The article stated that DVD sales fell 3.2 percent last year, the first in annual drop in the history of DVD sales.

The article said that Industry experts are expecting similar declines in 2008 and 2009. This is not a big surprise that these sales are declining with the revolutionary technology that has been introduced in 2007.

DVD distributors, like 20^th Century FOX are now including digital files of the movie or TV show’s logo on all DVD products so that those logos can appear on iPods and iTunes libraries.

Apple has introduced movie rentals and movie downloads, straight to your computer from iTunes. So, not only can you rent movies on your couch, you don’t have to return them. When you download a movie, you never have to worry about the DVD getting scratched. Your computer holds a digital file of the film. To compliment the new features of iTunes, Apple introduced the Apple TV.

Apple TV is essentially a hard drive that converts the contents of your iTunes folder and projects it onto your HD TV. This allows users to watch their movies the have rented or bought, on their TV. I own one and honestly, it is an incredible invention. I love it.

DVDs were just the beginning of the digital revolution. The article also stated that industry experts are saying that it is just a matter of time until DVD technology is obsolete. “Today, digital files on discs; tomorrow mass downloading straight from the internet.”

This is the case at Chrysler.

At Chrysler, the public relations department now reports to the Human Resources department. Chrysler has lowered the value of PR in its organization. If I was a practitioner at Chrysler, I would be upset.

The fact is that practitioners everywhere are upset. The PRSA website has posted an excerpt from the “Ask the Professor column”, that appears in the March issue of PR Tactics. The article talks about the opinions that surrounding this disturbing trend in the corporate sector.

It definitely is an interesting trend. The column suggests that the trend stems from companies trying to streamline and make operations more efficient and organized. This is just an awful to hear about.

HR is concerned with one group of people and their behavior. These are the employees of the company. PR is concerned with influencing the behavior of multiple publics, outside of and organization and the internally. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? If anyone should be in charge, it should be the PR professionals.

The column suggests that “the key, then, is for PR practitioners to assert themselves as strategic managers, to sell their function as a senior-level responsibility and, of course, display the abilities to back it all up because, in the end, the caliber of the people determines whether they get a seat at the decision-making table.”

As a student studying public relations, this makes me wonder where the industry is heading in the future. The PR profession appears to be continually growing and changing. Let us all hope that this “trend” has reached its peak and is now on the decline or PR as we know it, might soon cease to exist.

I have always struggled with certain forms of punctuation, however, I now find myself becoming obsessive about it. Hyphens have been a particularly tricky concept for me to grasp. I used to find myself hyphenating everything because I was really confused. Now, due to the University of Oregon writing and grammar courses, I feel like I am able to wade through the mania of punctuation. I was looking around on the Internet today and came across, my new secret obsession Grammar Girl.                            

 Grammar Girl provides “quick and dirty tips to better writing.” It is a fun site. I discovered today that the site had a new entry about hyphens. So, I had to listen to it. Since hyphens have always been a problem for me I found it particularly interesting. The podcast broke the complex rules down to a few simpler rules.                            

 Basically, a hyphen can typically be used before a noun because hyphens ten to help modify nouns. So, a good quick rule of thumb is that they go before nouns. There are exceptions to this rule, but the podcast by Grammar Girl goes more in depth. It was a great podcast. It was really informative and really helped clarify a form of punctuation that has always baffled me. 

 I wrote my podcast on how to write the statement of a Public Relations plan. It was the first in a series of 10 podcasts that I have dedicated to how to write an effective PR plan. The 10-step plan is based on Writing Winning Proposals PR Cases by Tom Hagley, a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. In the first episode, I went in depth into the six steps that will lead you to effectively writing your statement.  I took a case study from Professor Hagley’s class and used that to construct a statement based off of the case study that I provided. Then at the end of the podcast, I gave an example of what a good plan statement would be in a PR plan. The example I gave was one that my group and I wrote together.

 Writing a great statement in your PR plan is how you grab the attention of the person reviewing your plan. IT is what draws them into wanting to listen to what you have to say. A good statement serves as the foundation to what the rest of your plan will end up looking like. 

 Preparing Your PR Plan was a podcast I wrote and recorded because it is furthering my interest in becoming a great PR practitioner. That class has been inspiring me, so I thought I would share my inspiration, in the form of a podcast.