
Jaws is the best movie of all time. I watch it several times a year with intention and focus, hoping and searching for some new meaning or lesson I have not yet encountered [...]
A Chain of Command Checklist
When Secretary of State Alexander Haig stepped up to the White House podium on March 30, 1981, he surely recognized he was facing any number of difficult questions. President Reagan was on an operating table at a nearby hospital, undergoing surgery to remove a bullet from his chest. The media frenzy [...]
Cokie Roberts shared with various news outlets the late great former First Lady, Betty Ford, requested that when the time came Roberts deliver a eulogy at Mrs. Ford’s funeral. Mrs. Ford asked Roberts to discuss the old ways of Washington, when R’s and D’s were friends and as a result government worked.
I often hear the [...]
Widmeyer Communications hosted Katja Smirek, a colleague from Public Relations Organisation International (PROI) partner fischerAppelt, one of Germany’s largest independent communications firms, in DC for two weeks this June. Katja is a project head in fischerAppelt’s Berlin office. She works regularly on a number of public affairs-focused programs on topics such as transportation and higher education.
What’s in a title? Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan takes the PR industry to task over what we call ourselves in a recent post. I suppose other firms are starting to look inward at what these titles really mean. At one large agency the solution is converting vice presidents and such (why so many of them, anyhow?) into [...]
This is the time of year when everyone loves to hit American higher education like a piñata.
After months or even years of preparing for and enduring the grueling quest for fat envelopes, applicants and their parents consider college admissions offices and, more specifically, their marketing efforts, fair game for criticism. Regardless of [...]