Robert (Bob) Lederer

As journalists cover the news of the day, they frequently find themselves iced out of communication with key sources, who simply refuse to respond to questions. This happens with elected officials, public servants and even people running for office. While this is a definite barrier to informing the public, it's not new and it's not insurmountable. In fact, although the practice of refusing to talk to the press is on the rise, journalists have faced this challenge for time and eternity. In order to do their jobs, reporters have to develop both relationships and expertise. They have to independently be able to determine what's new that public needs to know, what public figures and doing and saying, how their positions are evolving, even when they are trying to keep it from the public. That means tapping into secondary sources, interviews from other publications and broadcasts, recorded meetings, and even anonymous sources. When well-sourced reporters have the details nailed down, they just have to explain to their audience how they know what they know. They also put more pressure on central figures to answer questions and be accountable. My colleagues Fernanda Camarena and Mel Grau have produced this wonderful report that tics off many of the best practices for getting the story when the door gets slammed in your face. It's worth a read. If you're a reporter or a producer, it's a reminder that source development is the most important part of the job. If you're an editor or a boss, it's a reminder that source development takes time, and it should be encouraged and rewarded. Here's the report: https://lnkd.in/eJTQh2wd

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Are you considering publishing a book in 2025? Looking for tips on landing an agent or drafting a query letter? Wondering what the heck a "hybrid publisher" is and whether any are legit? Jane Friedman will be presenting a host of affordable webinars coming up on these topics! I highly recommend Jane's courses. I've taken quite a few over the years and *always* learn something new. - The first one is coming up soon! Hybrid Publish or Self-Publish? on December 18 (hosted by Craft Talks) - How to Get Published: Land a Book Deal in 2025 on January 16 (hosted by Writers Digest University) - Roadmap to Yes: Plotting Your Path to Publication on February 22 (hosted by Midwest Writers Workshop). Links in the comments 👇

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Ex Ordo looks at events data through the lens of the research lifecycle. They describe how this data can help you better understand your society’s community and promote the value of your events, journals and programs. #associations #associationmanagement

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Reading Harari's recent book Nexus. Excellent text to anyone interested in knowing how we got here, in this world full of toxic information, fake news and absurd conspiracies.

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Are you self publishing? Join me in just two weeks for an information-packed session on Self-Publishing Foundations—aka, everything you should know to ensure lasting success for your book—hosted by Jane Friedman. We'll cover the 9 irreversable publishing decisions, entity/imprint considerations, distribution, preorder strategy, comp research, review strategies, and more. Learn more & register here: https://lnkd.in/gQhKPM_w #selfpublishing #selfpublishers #bookpublishing #indiepublishing

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New H-Diplo Roundtable on Rosie Bsheer's _Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia_. https://lnkd.in/ehi4Aabf Introduction by Rohit De, Yale University; reviews by Ananya Chakravarti, Georgetown University, Ahmed Dailami, University of Exeter, Finbarr Barry Flood; response by Rosie Bsheer, Harvard University. 18 From the introduction: "_Archive Wars_ poses the fundamental question for historians of modern states: what does it mean for a state to not have an archive? Or indeed, can there be a state without an archive? And most generatively, can a material and ideological history of state-building be told through the attempt to construct an archive? The puzzle at the heart of _Archive Wars_ is the inability of the Saudi state, despite making it a political priority to create a national archive fifty years after the process began. Archive Wars examines Saudi state’s attempts, after the Gulf War, to ground its legitimacy around a secular national mythology built around the history of the house of Al Saud and away from religious millenarian thought, through assembling state archives, building museums, and transforming the built environment. Rosie Bsheer sets out a compelling case for locating materiality at the center of the politics of historical knowledge. In this case, the state’s material politics that shaped the creation of the archive reveal how state power is manifested. Taking materiality seriously, Bsheer offers a more expansive vision of the archive that encompasses both more traditional documents and the historical built environment. As she shows, the push to collect and centralize documents held in private hands both created economic value and market for the documents themselves and also led to fierce resistance, from princely families, local communities, and international oil corporations, to surrender their documents. These sites of historical knowledge production also became an economic resource and the basis for a new national tourism plan that allowed for capital investment and land development around these memorial spaces. Importantly, Bsheer shows how the production of this new archive was based on the erasure of sites that “alternative social imaginaries that were antagonistic to the regime’s legitimating mythos” (23), and how the people who inhabited these spaces found themselves navigating these new identities. The production of these archives mirrored the state’s constant negotiation between its political elites and its population, as well as within elites and those who were tasked with carrying out the process of centralization. Inter-institutional distrust led archivists and preservationists to subvert the processes of collection and curation.

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Listen is a song from the 2006 movie Dreamgirls. It is sung with mesmerizing beauty by Beyoncé—who stars in the film. https://buff.ly/47LxxWe At one point the lyrics call on Jamie Fox, Beyoncé’s mentor and later controlling husband, to Listen. She’s had enough. Oh the time has come for my dreams to be heard They will not be pushed aside and turned Into your own, all ’cause you won’t listen It may be literary heresy to bridge from the artistic splendor of that song to something as commercial as Marketing, but the shoe fits. Listen is something we can all do better in our personal relationships, but business owners and marketing directors fail to do so at their risk. Surveying is vitally important to successful marketing campaigns. They provide a look into the mind of the public about what it is you are selling. But—news flash—you must listen to what your customers and/or prospects have to say. Sometimes management has a fixed idea as to what the public wants and doesn’t seek their input, or doesn’t listen to it when marketing makes it available. Some years ago, we conducted surveys for a large financial services company—revenues in the hundreds of millions. The company had come up with a new service and hired us to survey the brand it had chosen for the service. The brand had come from the mind of the Chairman without surveying it or other possible names. The Chairman, an otherwise brilliant businessman, was sure the name would “click” with his customers without checking with them first. A PR firm had convinced the Chairman to at least survey the brand he had chosen. The PR firm hired us. The public for the service was CPAs. We went to a convention awash with pocket-protector wearing accountants. We surveyed the brand for the new service. It was a bust. Not so-so. When the CPAs were asked about the name their faces would contort as if they had bitten into a lime. They disliked it because it was a made-up word that no one but the Chairman understood. We sent up the report. The Chairman was sure there was some mistake. Despite my encouraging him to survey some other names or ask the CPAs for some suggestions, we wound up conducting three more surveys of his brand in different parts of the country. All yielded negative results. He finally gave up – the project stillborn, at least for the time being. We took on a project of conducting surveys for a politician in a local race against an incumbent. Some years earlier, our client, then a public figure, had been set up for a crime he did not commit and was the target of a black PR campaign. Eventually, there had been a trial and he had been acquitted, after which he retired https://buff.ly/3zCjtl8 Now he wanted back in the game. Our surveys discovered that many of the public still associated his name with the salacious allegations of the earlier black PR campaign even though he had been acquitted and the charges proved false. Call me directly: Bruce 1-818-397-1401

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East and West: Culture, Diplomacy and Interactions: the title says it all, doesn’t it? Curious about the history of diplomatic relations between the east and the west? Or do you have new perspective to share? You know the way: - www.brill.com/EWCD #brill #relations

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🔔 NEW BOOK HAS BEEN RELEASED 🔔 Publishing House "Virtus Interpress"​ is happy to release a new book titled "Barriers, Perceptions and External/Internal Variables to Digital Transformation Acceptance in Exogenous Shock Era" authored by Giuseppe Modarelli and edited by Christian Rainero. The book analyzes the potential of #blockchain technology from a managerial perspective for #publicadministration. This book highlights the need for a multidisciplinary approach to address the complexities of #innovation in the #publicsector and underlines the potential of blockchain as a tool to improve #administrations’ efficiency and #transparency, providing a third way to build self-generative and re-generative value for society as a whole, in light of the exogenous shocks that afflict the era in which #organizations and #individuals currently move. You can preview and order the book following the link: https://lnkd.in/e6CmqXfu Simona Fiandrino, Riccardo de Caria, Laura Corazza, Simona Alfiero, Sardi Alberto, Luca Regis, Fabrizio Bava, Alain Devalle, Maha Radwan, PhD, Gabriele Santoro, PhD #artificialintelligence #digitalization #digitaltransformation

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Why would anyone--a government, specifically--want to execute someone who has invented an alphabet? Yet it has happened at least four times, and at least another four script authors have been exiled, arrested, or driven underground. Read the short answer at https://lnkd.in/eDSpcQWg; as always, the full four-color version is in my book Writing Beyond Writing, available on Amazon.

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This is similar to my own experiences while running the Panorama Project, where some individual publishers — and even more individuals within their organizations — were willing to explore ways to collaborate, but most hid behind trade associations that refuse to seriously engage libraries as valued partners. While CDL has often been misrepresented by publishers and some library-adjacent organizations with their own agendas, it can be a mutually beneficial option in specific instances. That'll never happen as long as publishers' default stance is that libraries are the enemy. Meanwhile, next week, dozens of publishers will be in San Diego declaring their love for libraries, which really just means all the free marketing they provide despite regularly being treated like pirates. #libraries #publishing #ebooks #cmonson

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Exciting news on the ASJA conference!

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