User talk:Miriam Lyons

What I'm working on:

I'm working on updating & expanding the Australian content on sourcewatch, in a way that makes it easy & intuitive for users interested in Australia-specific content to find.

I'm hoping to get the key content areas laid out in some coherent way, by developing consistent naming practices (e.g. Burson-Marsteller Australia, Hill & Knowlton Australia, and creating pages that introduce & list other relevant pages in a content area, e.g. Public relations firms/Australia, Lobby groups/Australia and Think Tanks/Australia.

I'm trying to get the bones of this laid out - along with BobB et al :) - before doing a big call-out to other interested folks in Australia to start adding & editing & using the site.

I'll be keeping my own to-do list on this page, & I'll start drafting a "priority research areas" page here as well.

Some questions for other users

• Should we add even small Australian PR firms to the "Public relations firms" category as well as the Australia category, or would that not be useful?
• What other intro/lists pages are needed? Maybe a seperate one for front groups? Still not sure what to class the HR Nichols society etc as - currently they are listed on the Lobby Groups/Australia page.

to-do list: Australian content

Big PR

international:

• Burson-Marsteller Australia (add case study)
• Edelman Australia (flesh out)
• Fleishman-Hillard Australia (add case study)
• Hill & Knowlton (flesh out - add 2001 menopause seminars case study)
• Porter Novelli (start)

Australian:

• Hausmann Communications
• Zing (start)

smaller PR

• National Capital Communications Pty Ltd (agio connection)
• Metro Media Communications - Stan Zemanek
• Hannigan & Bushnell (small, melb-based, climate change denial connection)

Lobby firms

• Hawker Britton
• CPR
• Jackson wells-morris (liberal connections)
• Parker & Partners (lib connections – Andrew Parker, former Hewson advisor)

polling/advertising

• Crosby-textor - look for details on their role in IR advertising.
• do entry for aust govt information office - especially budget, who the big contracts go to. See gillard’s office re high court plus hansard (senate clerk)

individuals

• Charles Kemp profile (founded the IPA, was linked to Liberal Party, nothing about him online or in factiva)

associated entities

• the 500 club (Liberal)
• Cormack foundation (Liberal) - Hugh Morgan, CIS Distinguished Fellow, and John Calvert-Jones, CIS board member, said to be on the board (hansard).
• Vapold - registered in same address as Liberal party. John Calvert-

Jones is said to be the director (hansard).

• The Free Enterprise Foundation

PR Australia page

• expand info on profit squeeze after dotcom crash with some quotes. Try to track down some very old quotes from observers of the growth of the PR industry in Oz. Add number of seek jobs in pr versus journalism. Add 'revolving door' highlights - journo to PR, pollie to PR.

Notes to self

• Adam smith society (see quiggen)

(check out PPR, used to be big, got taken over by one of the big international PR firms. Not much of a profile.)

• Check out greenfields foundation - associated entity?
• NB - Government Communications Unit: "Advertising and research are exempt from the mandatory procedures of the 2005 Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines (CPGs). The exemptions apply only to Division 2 of the CPGs and other aspects – such as value for money – still need to be applied." [1]

Wilson da Silva, AFR Magazine 26.6.02

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Welcome, Miriam. Just wanted to say hello and let you know, if you have not noticed already, that I have been "tidying up" a bit on a couple of your new articles by putting a few lists in alpha order and references in chron order, connecting some SW internal links, and linking some items to existing SW article titles. This helps me and others to connect with the material you are so generously adding. :-) Artificial Intelligence 11:15, 24 Nov 2005 (EST)

thanks!

Cheers AI - nice to meet you. Very happy to have my contributions cleaned up! :) Mim.

Note from Mc

Hi Miriam - this is Mike from the Pacific conference (you may have guessed already...)

Thanks for your note from the other day - sorry it's taken a while to get back to you, but my computer totally died soon after I got it :(

I just wanted to reply to your comment about front groups. First, it would be good to start a page on Australian front groups (similar to the one you started for Oz think tanks...)

Re: The Uranium Info Centre - I think they still qualify as a front group, becausae their name appears to connote a non-partisan perspective, which is not borne out by their funding or output. If they were called the "Uranium Miners Association", they wouldn't be a front group. But I think their name makes them one. When I have seen them quoted in the media, there is never a qualification about who is behind them, so jounalists have obviously taken them to be a "reputable" source....

Another question is whether groups like Lavoisier and Bennelong should be included as front groups - Quiggin refers to them as such: http://johnquiggin.com/index.php?p=152 so perhaps they are worth including?

Keep up the good work, Cheers, Mike

(thurs 2:42pm)

Titling question

Dear Miriam,

I just posted a note on the 'discussion' page of the article you wrote, titled "Beast opens spin business." I may be missing something, but I that title seems to be more of an editorial statement that a descriptive title that will help people find the info contained within.

Can we find a more descriptive title and move the article there?

thanks, Diane Farsetta 10:44, 21 Apr 2006 (EDT)

Title fixed

Thanks Diane, good point. I've just changed the title to Stan Zemanek opens PR business and put a redirect on the old page. That was its original title when I wrote the story last year - pitched at an Australia audience who would be aware that Stan Zemanek played the 'beast' on the controversial daytime talk show 'Beauty and the Beast'.

I'm still not entirely sure whether 'articles' - as opposed to profiles etc - fit well on sourcewatch. Despite the lack of an NPOV policy my instinct on any 'encyclopaedia' is for a dry, unemotive tone - but i'ts also nice to have the odd more reader-friendly piece with a bit of spark.

I've attempted to move towards some distinction between the two by adding an Articles/Australia page linked to from the Sourcewatch/Australia page. What do you think? Is this helpful?

I suspect that the average reader would find it a bit weird to read an article that has a clear 'voice' without also seeing who that voice belongs to. So over at Minerals Council of Australia's National Education Program I signed & dated it, but that also looks a little odd. Still I'm reluctant to have that one unauthored as it contains quotes from original interviews - it was meant to be published elsewhere first but never went up.

Is there some kind of article template that can be used in such cases? Or is it best just to publish somewhere else first (on a blog for example), and link from the sourcewatch page to the article?

Refs needed

hi, Miriam,

The Nuclear Industry PR in Schools article is great, but needs references... Could you please add them? Anything would be helpful - describing the sources in the text, placing bracketed links to online sources, or using the <ref> tags and <references/> section as newer pages do.

thanks, Diane Farsetta 11:45, 30 August 2007 (EDT)