Politics 101: Bridging the Ethnic Gap

With Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy now running for New York governor as a Republican,  New York City's vote might well split along ethnic lines.  The city's Jewish population would, of course, vote the Republican ticket in large numbers while the city's Italians would tend to vote for Andrew Cuomo, the state's attorney general and a Democratic, who is expected, ultimately, to announce he'll also run for the state's top office. 

So what's the Nassau County executive to do to bridge the ethnic divide and capture the Italian vote?  We suggest he dig, dig, dig way back into the annals of advertising and adopt one of marketing's classic campaign slogans:  You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy.  

-- Jeff Bogart

Can Digital and Mainstream Media Co-exist?

According to Kenneth Li, media correspondent for the Financial Times, they can.  Li said as much at the March meeting of Public Relations Society:New York.  As a seasoned media observer, he ought to know.  Besides covering media for the FT, which he joined in September 2008, he was global media correspondent for Reuters, and he was a co-founder and co-editor of Reuters' MediaFile, a blog that focuses on the juncture of media and technology. 

Li also said that digital is at the "cusp of the next great flexion point with the launch of the iPad," Apple's new tablet computer.  (iPad orders, by the way, are currently reported to be "averaging 10,000 per day," according to a Macsimum News post by Dennis Sellers, citing blogger Daniel Tello.) 

Referring to The New York Times' decision to start charging non subscribers for articles on its web site, Li noted that the Financial Times invented the meter model two years ago.  Under the model, a certain number of items can be accessed free of charge, he said, after which the rest can be viewed for a price.

PRS:NY's next two speakers are Vivian Schiller, CEO of National Public Radio (NPR), in May and Amanda Bennett, executive editor in charge of enterprise stories at Bloomberg News and the former top editor at the Philadelphia Enquirer in April.  This is a good group of experienced PR executives with a good roster of speakers.  I'll be returning.

-- Jeff Bogart