The first question is, “What was he thinking?” Not “What was he thinking making whoopee with a recovering P addict former prostitute on home detention?” (although those of you with taste may wonder “WTF was she thinking having a fling with him?”).

What was he thinking when he decided to blow the affair in a lengthy, tortured, and largely incomprehensible statement on Radio Live on Friday before there was any mention of the matter in the mainstream media?

It seems he’d surmised (wrongly), on the basis of rumour or paranoia, that the woman had leaked spicy email and text correspondence to a Sunday paper and decided “to take the sting out it” by outing himself.

Instead he only foolishly stung himself, inflating this tacky story’s  newsworthiness and in doing so he broke every rule of crisis management.

Rule No. 1. First engage brain and try to think the problem through rationally.

Rule No. 2. Assume nothing, clearly establish the facts, and don’t ascribe motives to what’s happening until there is clear proof.

Rule No. 3. Wait for the media to contact you. Then, first interview them to find out what they know and what they intend doing with it.

Rule No. 4. If the media haven’t contacted you and you cannot bear not knowing what’s going on, make inquiries of the editor as to his/her intentions (preferably without compromising yourself by revealing all when the paper knows little or nothing).

Rule No. 5. Before making any comment stall the inquiries while you work out exactly what you need to say and don’t wish to say.

Rule No. 6. Tell the truth and nothing but the truth (you don’t have to tell them the whole truth – that’s their job to find out) and don’t embroider the story with patently lame excuses of the “I just popped in for a cuppa and chat about a book” variety.

Michael Laws, the smoking gun comes from the hole in his foot

The first serious mistake Laws made was making assumptions. “OMG they’ve got dirt on me, what would I do in the same circumstances? I’d crucify them!” As a talkback host and politician Laws has lived by the sword and so he assumed he would die by it.

On radio he has always been quick to rush to acid-laden judgement and so he assumed others would do the same with him.

If he took a moment to think about it, what did he have to fear? A single (albeit recently separated) adult male has a liaison with a woman who had a colourful past but is now on the road to redemption and turning her life around thanks to finding God, him and a rehab programme.

It’s obvious now that the “correspondence” cannot have been as lurid as first implied because neither Sunday paper reprinted it. The Sundays have never hesitated in the past to ignore individual privacy and publish private correspondence, emails, texts and Facebook posts, so I assume the editors decided it was juicier to leave the contents to the prurient imaginations of the reading public.

What was he so worried about? He is not standing for mayor of Whanganui again? He may nurse ambitions to run on the NZ First ticket at the next election but he’s been forced to resign the party and Parliament before and I hear Winston Peters doesn’t want him back.

In my opinion Laws has always been a shameless self-publicist, commenting to the media on many aspects of his private life that most of us would want to keep private were we in the same position, so what did he have to fear from this latest exposure?

He could have been working on the Tiger Woods theory (or what Tiger should have done but didn’t): Apologise early, often and fully. But in this case he apoligised too early publicly, too late privately to the woman, and nowhere fully enough so the media and blogosphere have continued speculating.

I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague Dr Brian Edwards who’s blogged on http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2010/08/reflections-on-the-lawssperling-affair/#more-3686 Laws “did exactly the right thing”. Wrong Brian and wrong Michael. There may well have been no story if he hadn’t started panicking and flapping his jaw.

If he had waited, the media would have come to him and he could have taken the high ground, made his comments, and looked the aggrieved party subjected to cruel and unwarranted tabloid attention.

I believe there are two schools of thought in this country about Michael Laws. The first is comprised of the masochistic voters of Whanganui who elected him and the 2-3% of radio listeners who afflict themselves with his morning show, all of whom think he’s great.

The second group, who are in a massive majority, regard him and his bigoted opinions with barely disguised disgust and hastily flick past his unreadable rabid  Sunday Star Times column with a shudder of revulsion.

Neither group will change their opinions of him due to this fiasco.

Perhaps he hopes it might improve his radio ratings? I doubt it. In fact, I suspect Sean Plunket will soon be dusting off his c.v. as a result.

However, the sight of Cameron Bennett stepping out of the Deathstar (ahead of being pushed) provides an insight as to why I feel compelled to comment on the train wreck that is TVNZ News and Current Affairs.

Bennett was set to become a casualty of News and Current Affairs boss Anthony Flannery’s plan to ‘make staff multi-skilled’ (What? They aren’t already?) and see those who still have jobs work across all news and current affairs programmes.

Oh, and it’ll save around $3.3 million and cut more news and current affairs jobs – this time ‘only’ 15.

There have been disquieting rumours doing the newsroom rounds that Cameron was told he wasn’t “contemporary enough”.  One news manager even apparently used the “O” word – no, not awesome. “Old”.

Now age, like gender, doesn’t necessarily confer ability, expertise or talent but Cameron Bennett has consistently demonstrated, year after year, that he posses all of those things.

Broadcaster Cameron Bennett, leaving TVNZ after 24 years

The fact that news bosses didn’t see him as an asset proves TVNZ news managers have no appreciation of the need for a balance of reporters of all ages and many of those with the longest history are part of a news organisation’s vital “collective memory”.

In other words, in losing Cameron Bennett TVNZ has just shed a valuable part of its intellectual property. This mistake from a business whose New Age managers constantly stress the importance of retaining its IP?

It’s this same attitude by news bosses that’s seen Pippa Wetzell fly to Samoa recently for Sunday to report on the country one year after the tsunami (interestingly, Cam originally covered the disaster).

Now, Ms W is a good presenter – and in her day an equally good news reporter  - and a nice person to boot.

However, the difference between a news report of 1 minute 30 seconds duration and a crafted story of 14 minutes isn’t just a matter of sticking in slightly longer sound-bites and more stand-ups on palm-fringed shores.

In “long form current affairs” there’s a level of expertise in story telling and structure that I’d be surprised she possessed. The ability to tell and construct a good 14 minute story is something that only comes with training and experience.

I’m guessing her erstwhile field producer, Joanne Mitchell, will be left with the responsibility for making sense of it.

“Disestablishment” is such an Orwellian TVNZ phrase. One hatchet man once told me when I worked there, “After all, Janet, it’s not about people, it’s about cutting positions.”

Disestablishment is indeed all about cost cutting.  Otherwise why only choose the oldest and probably the most highly paid?

There are other old, wise heads at TVNZ news and current affairs who either have had their positions wiped altogether or who have to go through the ignominy once again of applying for their jobs.

The female producers on the 4:30, 8pm and Tonight shows have had their jobs disestablished and Hannah Wallis, the long serving and trusted “Fair Go” reporter, has been told to reapply for her job for the second time in three years.

It seems that women, especially the older ones, at TVNZ News and Current Affairs have to worry more about cracking their heads on the glass floor rather than any glass ceiling.

Even in wishing Cameron a cheery “bye-bye and good luck”, the publicity machine at TVNZ has more spin than a Fisher and Paykel. “Cam’s departure arises from format changes to the Sunday programme, which provided him with a natural opening to assess his personal priorities.”

Translation: “We wanted someone younger and sexier and, phew, thank God Cam jumped rather than waited to be pushed”.

The New Zealand Herald’s John Drinnan opined that Pippa Wetzel might take over Cameron’s role as Sunday presenter when she returns from maternity leave next year.

So, with a CV showing a few years as a news reporter, a few more years sitting on the sofa with Paul Henry on Breakfast and a much needed cachet for securing the covers of women’s magazines, it is said Pippa is to replace a former foreign correspondent and current affairs journalist of 24 years?

If true, Cameron Bennett’s departure proves that the cutting edge of TVNZ news and current affairs just got a whole lot blunter.

And, for the sake of this blog, let’s put aside the fact that the upper echelons of newsroom management have been barely visited, let alone conquered, by women in any medium.

What’s more disturbing in television is the changing criteria for hiring women reporters and presenters – and what that means for you and I, the viewer.

Over at the State Broadcaster, the little-head-making-decisions-for-the-big-head rules ok with, on “Breakfast”, a string of women who look better than their stories (which are execrable).

The one exception here is Charlotte Bellis from Christchurch who seems to have got off her chuff and stopped the tits-and-teeth smirking and got out there and told me something I hadn’t heard before.  After all, it is called news.

The rest belong to that inglorious group, the Pick Me Tribe.  These are the prancers who endlessly pick up stories from the front page of that day’s Herald and simperingly regurgitate it on camera.  What did they learn at ‘varsity or tech?  There’s no doubt they’ve learnt to “walk and talk at the same time”. It just seems that any talking will do as long as it’s All About You.

Across the road at TV3 it’s not much better.  Earlier this year it was suggested to senior current affairs journalist, Mel Reid from 60 Minutes, that maybe she was a little ‘old’ to be on camera and maybe she should consider an off-camera role.

Fortunately, the bearer of that news, so-called hatchet man Ian Audsley was himself axed and she continues to report stories.

The fact that Reid and Amanda Millar are still on camera says something about 3News.

But why is that age group only represented in 60 Minutes? Where are the senior women in news, not to mention “Nightline”?

If it’s good enough to have 3News reporter Bob McNeill on the payroll for the past 20 years, then why not a Roberta McNeill?

It’s even worse on “Nightline”.  The 20^th anniversary show highlighted a trail of bland female presenters, (oh, and one uptight Old Trout – me) who looked fabulous but whose journalism for the most part (notable exception, the present incumbent Rachel Smalley) was entirely forgettable.

That’s what happens when news bosses call female reporters “eye candy”.

Eye Candy; attracting an audience but not necessarily a story

This treatment of women on our screens, both in fictional and real form, has caught the eye of one Susan J. Douglas.

Her recently published book “Enlightened Sexism” describes TV as a powerful medium that shapes people’s views and creates “embedded feminism” – a false impression that equality has been won.

Which creates another paradox; while telly’s fictional characters are powerful and in control, the non-fictional ones (for instance, those washed up on the shores of reality TV) are “shallow, materialistic, obsessed with guys they barely knew, involved in cat fights.”

And that’s the point when it comes to some female reporters.  They’re not there because they can do the job better than anyone else; sniff a story out at ten paces or craft a yarn that makes us think.  They’re there because they simply LOOK good. Try contrasting that with female reporters in the American networks who aren’t considered up-to-speed journalistically til they’re approaching middle-age.

And that’s the point. Good newsrooms reflect the communities they serve. And when they don’t, viewers simply go elsewhere.

And, sadly,  they are.

And there’s nothing like an Australian political coup – especially when it comes to the Australian Labor Party.  The ALP knows how to do the ruthless, rolling maul of backroom politics more than any other political party of the OECD.

Just ask Kevin Rudd – and before him, Bob Hawke.

So, how could an Australian Prime Minister last less than one term when he had come to power on such a wave of popularity 2 ½ years ago?  After all, six months ago Rudd was a man who was one of two of the most popular Prime Ministers in the 40-year history of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Nielsen poll.

Some may say it was Rudd’s plummet in the polls in April and May that lead to his demise.  But those polls had stabilized. What’s more, using political history as a guide, two polls this week put Labor ahead by 52 to 48.

No, it wasn’t panic at the polls that saw Rudd off but rage. It was anger at a leadership style that was both high-handed and dismissive, not to mention highly centralized and dismissive of the all-important ALP factions.

Despite that style, Gillard his Deputy Leader, had been emphatic that she would not challenge her leader, that he was the man to lead the ALP into the next election – that is, until yesterday, when media reports emerged that Rudd’s Chief of Staff, Alister Jordan had been lobbying for support in the party room.

It was that lack of trust of Gillard, despite her utter loyalty, that sparked the political firestorm.

Julia Gillard, Australia's first female Prime Minister

Put it down to bad management or as my brother, living in Melbourne, succinctly put it in a text, “workaholic, control-freak micromanager who let his ego interfere with him relating and communicating with the electorate.” Quite right, too.

And as the Aussie media proudly trumpeted that Down Under had it’s first female PM, we all yawned on this side of The Ditch and said, “yeah whatever”.

Our first female Prime Minister came to power more than a decade ago and since then we’ve had another who held onto power for an unprecedented nine years.

Julia Gillard could learn a thing or two from both of them.

There are strong parallels in how Gillard and Jenny Shipley, New Zealand’s first female Prime Minister, rose to power.  Both became leaders as the result of a coup.

Shipley executed hers while then- Prime Minister Jim Bolger was attending a conference in Scotland.

Shipley however couldn’t hold onto power and her National government became increasingly destabilized, eventually losing the 1999 general election.

Lesson # One; it’s one thing to get power, another thing entirely to hold on to it.

Gillard’s similarities to Helen Clark, New Zealand’s second female Prime Minister are even more acute.

Both have steadily risen through their respective Labo(u)r parties from their university years.

Both have been slandered with the “B” word (for barren, the ultimate sexist epithet), both have a focused determination that is white hot.

And Gillard can learn a thing or two from Clark, arguably one of our greatest Prime Ministers. Like Rudd, Clark had a highly centralized leadership structure but unlike him she was prepared to play the faction game. Labour’s NZ caucus was always split.  She managed to bring them together by a combination of patronage and fear.

Lesson # Two; Gillard’s role now will be to meld the even more faction ridden ALP in time for the next election.

Already, even as PM-elect, Gillard was putting as much space between her and her predecessor as she could, saying she would immediately cancel the government’s multimillion dollar advertising war with the mining industry over the super profits tax.

She told a press conference that a good government was losing its way.

The trouble is, she was an integral part of that same government that came up with the mining tax policy in the first place.

How Julia Gillard manages that in the next ten-months before Australia must hold a general election determines if she’ll be like Jenny Shipley – and never elected by the voters as a Prime Minister – or if she’ll be Australia’s version of Helen Clark, carried into office by a popular mandate far bigger than just her caucus.

This was a programme touted as a celebration of all that we’ve known and loved on the box for the past half-century but which resulted in the boring vying with the banal for two excruciating, culture-cringing hours.

Given that TVNZ began broadcasting in this country – and indeed were the only game in town for nearly thirty years – you’d think that they’d want to mark the moment using the not inconsiderable resources of their Archives, which is, let’s face it, a rich resource to exploit.

What we got was a mash-up of the State Broadcaster at its worst, a game-show that was so badly done even host Jason Gunn looked as if he was dying from rigor mortis by the programme’s end.

Jason Gunn, Cheers to 50 Years Host

The panel was comprised of children who barely knew the answers to this decades telly questions, let alone the last 50, while those who actually made television history were caught in cut-away shots in the audience, no doubt thanking their lucky stars they weren’t actually up on-stage, dying like their younger colleagues.

TVNZ; Back To The Future

The channel responded to the national thumbs down in their usual, insular way.  “Well, it rated,” was their answer.

Ratings have now become television’s gold and only standard.  The ultimate in quantity over quality.

So it was a terrible programme that was an insult to its audience and all who worked on it? Who cares, it rated, mate!

Ratings equal revenue. It’s the cash coming in that counts for a beleaguered broadcaster like TVNZ. Best business news headline of the week, by the way, was the one that said “TVNZ Makes A Small Profit – Much to Its Surprise”.

I suspect the high ratings the programme received indicated more an audience desire to enjoy an evening of television nostalgia (a desire cruelly thwarted by the self-congratulatory twaddle they were dished up) than any real viewer endorsement of what they received.

This supposed showcase of TVNZ’s cultural fire-power comes at an interesting juncture in its survival. Television, like all media, is at a crossroads. Its future depends on its ability to be relevant to its audiences.  After all, ‘Content On Every Screen’ is the network’s mission statement.

“Cheers” was not relevant, did not engage its audience and simply burned off a lot of preciously needed viewer loyalty and respect for TVNZ.

Interestingly, just 24 hours before this excrement was dished up, the network launched Heartland Channel, not surprisingly on its own Freeview platform but on Sky, the competition.

Heartland, a channel comprised of “repeats”, is a much better tribute to our television history than “Cheers to 50 Years” could ever hope to have been.

Maybe we’ll be better served by the documentary series “50 Years of Television” screening on Prime from Sunday, June 13^th.

How ironic if a private broadcaster, funded by NZ ON Air, delivers a better serving of our TV history than the official state broadcaster.

So, a final irony. Whereas TVNZ could have accessed some marvellous archive material for free, no doubt Prime has had to pay top dollar for the same privilege using tax-payers money.

I bet it’ll be no-contest on which network delivers the better product.

We could not believe it when, on Sunday, we received the call that Paul had suddenly died.

He commented on one of our posts just a few days ago, last week he spoke at a social media conference and he was filing material on his own Facebook, his blog peoplepoints and Twitter accounts as late as Thursday afternoon. By late Saturday morning, he was gone.

It’s testimony to Paul and Helen’s great skills as teachers that two old analogue dinosaurs like us could suddenly come to terms with operating a website – although, if we have to admit it, we must have disappointed him with our infrequency of posts, the failure to illustrate our arguments as well as he would suggest and our babbling of technological malapropisms. When the website was being built he would engage us in patient, passionate discussion about blogging.  The fact it was the media of the future.  And, even though he was older and wiser, it was he dragging us, these two Mainstream Media denizens, into the Twentyfirst Century.

Paul was the earliest of early adopters. Years ago, when we were still barely coming to grips with handling Microsoft Word, we both used to listen to his articulate and literate radio commentaries on the Brave New World of the web and its potential. His grasp of his subject was immense and he had the ability to put the most complex of arguments into easily digestible English.

He understood and knew where that information super highway was taking us long before we did. A time when most of us saw it as a gimmick or a toy, he saw the global information industry that would soon arise.

Paul Reynolds, Internet Visionary

The thing we will miss most is his mind. His intellect. His calm, logical way of stating his case with such wry humour. His ability to see a bigger picture than the rest of us could and cogently explain it to those of us who were a little slower than he. These were attributes he brought to the board of the Auckland War Memorial Museum Board, which he left just last year.

The frustrating thing is we had only just really got to know him. We’d sampled less than 1% of his wit, humour and wisdom. It’s hard not to feel somehow cheated.

We aren’t the only ones who feel that way. See the grieving comments on his Facebook page, the tributes on Russell Brown’s http://www.publicaddress.net/hardnews and a special tribute page at http://internetnz.net.nz/paulreynolds to sense the common feeling of loss.

Our thoughts are very much with Helen and Paul’s daughter Melanie.

For example, look at the hype over “social media” (presumably this means traditional or mainstream sources are “anti-social media” and perhaps that’s right).

The cyber charlatans smell their chance to cloak in complex jargon and gobbledegook what is a rather pedestrian development in the age old behaviour of human conversation and gossip, so as to give themselves an edge and a marketing opportunity. So arises the new priesthood of the  “social media expert”.

They are generally the humble common or garden PR hack but they garnish their profiles with witless phrases like they’re into “relationship building”, “stakeholder management” and “community building” through mastery of the dark art of online marketing and, in one absurd case, describing themselves as being a “human media monitor”.

Social media and marketing has become the Macarena craze of 2010, a meaningless orchestrated pop chorus that someone, somewhere, is making big bucks out of.

The money lays not so much in using social media or mastering it as a form of commercial communication but in selling the pseudo-science of “understanding social media”.

I read on Dave Farrar’s Kiwiblog of a thing called The Social Media Junction, a social media conference that apparently costs around $700 to attend.

$700?! For that huge sum you can hear people talk about things like, “Becoming a Trust Agent – Social Capital and The New Tribe.”  If you have no idea what that means, apparently it’s about “being human at a distance.” Right.

Apparently places like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, You Tube, Linkedin and the blogosphere are the new frontier where only those well educated in the enterprise of social media can “boldy go” where no one has gone before and make their fortune.

There is no mystery in social media, no real secrets, because using social media for marketing, branding and selling is much the same as using any form of media.

Yes, you have to engage with your audience, grab their attention, and earn their trust but that is the same with any form of advertising or public relations.

Social media just provides yet another channel of communication.

Sure, as with any form of media, you can make mistakes. One peculiar to the online world is that your audience there probably have better attuned “bullshit detectors”.

Online is a reasonably savvy, slightly cynical world and falseness can easily shine through the spin. Even if one reader fails to spot it there are plenty of others out there who will enter an online conversation to point out hypocrisy and pretence.

One potentially fatal fad being pushed by social media experts is “ghosting”, where busy CEO’s and public figures get a ghost-writer to Tweet or Facebook on their behalf. Sadly, there are plenty of ghostbusters out there who can spot the fake Tweeters and either lose all respect for the brand or, worse, blow the ghosters somewhere on line and forever damage their brand’s credibility.

People are not stupid. They know when they are being preached to or pitched to. Woe betide the social media marketers who put what amounts to a hyped up ad on a platform like You Tube. Derision and contempt is heaped upon them.

Yes, it pays to be up to speed on what social media marketing can do for your business, what nifty tricks can be found in that toolbox such as plonking key search engine words in blog posts for example, but beware the snake oil salesmen, the new social media priesthood who flog you their voodoo rites as the cutting edge of modern marketing.

They’re just dancing the Macarena and you’re paying for it.

Take yesterdays headlines; “What Your Home’s Worth”, “The Envelope Please….Oscars Special” and “Mayoress Speaks Out” a teaser to a page three piece of dross which had Michael Laws’s wife, Wanganui’s Mayoress Leonie Brookhammer, denying she had left the family home because of a supposed ‘violent confrontation’ that had been misleadingly reported in the Herald on Sunday.

Ms Brookhammer later published a damning response to the story on Dave Farrar’s “Kiwiblog” site.

Equally, ‘The Lockout of Auckland’ also came from the same Fear and Smear School of Journalism, generating more hysteria than light on the subject of Auckland governance.

If all of this shabby tabloid tack seems more reminiscent of the Herald’s sister paper the “Herald on Sunday” (known by the apt acronym the HoS) there’s a reason for that.

HoS Editor, Shayne Currie, has just been made Deputy Editor of the NZ Herald.

And with this appointment comes Currie’s news values.

Values that put the sex lives of so-called celebrities in the frame alongside crime and property values because that’s what gets the punters in front of their computer screens if not actually holding the hardcopy version in their hands.

Shayne Currie, on the rise at APN with Sarah Stewart, APN senior management

Currie would say that it worked for him at the HoS and to a certain degree, commercially speaking, he’s right.

The paper boasted a healthy readership of 382,000 at the end of last year, according to Nielsen Media Research figures.

There’s no doubt that he’s being elevated to the Deputy Editorship to eventually replace incumbent Tim Murphy.

Word from the floor of the Herald newsroom is that Murphy is being elevated higher and higher in the organization, his control over the daily coverage of the paper declining as Currie’s grip tightens.

Readers may remember Murphy’s predecessor as editor Gavin Ellis who was elevated to a point where he eventually evaporated.

And when Currie is in day-to-day control of the paper the question is: What happens to the Herald’s long established role as the newspaper of record?

What will happen to the Herald’s proud record of investigative reporting, detailed commentary and analysis and extensive political coverage?

Going, going, gone.

All those virtues are certainly missing from his former paper, the HoS.

In fits of black humour some Herald journalists are already “Currie-ising” their stories, writing the most tabloid version of the most mundane issues.

To their horror, some who submitted these jokes found themselves praised and the stories printed prominently.

Currie’s reputation as a news manager is Old School.

He’s said to verbally strong-arm his reporters into producing stories by announcing “There’s a hole on the front page of this paper with your name on it.”

Little wonder that under his watch and this kind of pressure the HoS produced some of the most scummiest journalism – and journalists – this country has ever seen.

Back in October, 2005 there was John Manukia who was sacked for allegedly frabricating a story about former South Auckland police officer, Anthony Solomona.

Interestingly, Manukia was named in a brief of evidence about another muckraker, Stephen Cook.  In the brief, Cook said that Manukia would be dispatched to the rival Fairfax presses in South Auckland on Saturday night to get an early copy of the Star-Times.

Manukia would take the paper back to the HoS offices and acting under the aegis of senior staff “would proceed to lift stories from the SST without any attribution for publication the following day’s HoS,” Cook said.

Currie admitted to this happening on “possibly two, possibly three occasions in 2005.”

Stephen Cook is a classic Currie appointment – before it all ended in tears.

The former Assistant Editor of the HoS was infamous for pressuring Debbie Gerbich, a colleague of bent cop Brad Shipton’s, into giving him an interview on being told he knew she was advertising for bondage partners.

Gerbich subsequently committed suicide.

The HoS under Currie is a paper of few morals and even fewer scruples.

In his farewell editorial at the HoS Currie said he didn’t mind that “Over the years we’ve become known as the property paper, the car crash paper, the Tony Veitch paper, the All Blacks paper and the Millie Elder paper”.

In other words, he takes pride in printing the crass, the banal, and the predictable.

Take note of his next words; “Selling the paper is of utmost importance, and to achieve that it’s not what be considered the best, traditional journalism that makes the front page”. Or, one suspects, any page.

These are the news values he brings the daily NZ Herald and anyone who buys the Herald because historically it has produced “the best, traditional journalism” is about to be bitterly disappointed.

God Save the Royal New Zealand Herald and all who have to read it.

Whether an act of omission or commission the newsmakers generally find themselves embroiled in a crisis, seemingly without warning.

If they are honest with themselves they will probably admit they should have seen the consequences of their action (or inaction) coming and they could have evolved a response plan, put it on the shelf, crossed their fingers they would never need it, and moved on with their activities knowing that, if worst came to worst, they could cope with the crisis.

Every good business has a business continuity plan, what to do if it has an IT failure, a power loss or natural disaster strikes.

Good businesses should also worry about and plan for what happens if the unnatural disaster of a media furore erupts around them.

Which is why I have to ask: What was Dr Patrick Strange and Transpower thinking? Transpower has had more power cuts in this city than Aucklanders have had cold dinners.

Did anyone think: What do we do and say the next time we leave the country’s biggest city and the engine room of the economy in the dark?

Transpower has had a battle over many years with the highly excitable Matangi farmer Steve Meier, it knew his trees could cause a fire and damage the lines.

Pylons like these have farmers fuming

Why, when the inevitable occurred, did Transpower have as its only response a “Neighbours From Hell” type public slagging match with the farmer?

Why, when the fire and the cuts first occurred, did spokesman Dr Patrick Strange have as his only messages that Transpower was doing all it could, it was spending big bucks on upgrading the lines through to Auckland which is why it’s pushing more lines through the Waikato against the opposition of many other farmers there and, besides, it was all Mr Meier’s fault?

In the media that I heard, saw and read, Dr Strange (and Transpower) came across as haughty, arrogant, abrasive, hostile and a typically uncaring big bureaucratic corporation.

Can I suggest the first thing Dr Strange should have done is give a fulsome apology to Auckland and the businesses that lost considerable money due to his failure to supply them with power?

Patrick Strange, Transpower's CEO

When questioned as to “How could this occur, again?” he needed to make a partial concession – that Transpower was trying but obviously not well enough and he’d do everything he could to make sure any failures on his company’s part would be remedied.

When in confrontation with farmer Meier he needed to be conciliatory, not angry and certainly not blame Meier for the fire and the power cut. Again, Strange needed a partial concession that Transpower could have handled their relationship with Meier better than it has and offer to personally remedy the situation, and then he could have returned to his key messages.

When in confrontation with a furious Mayor John Banks he again needed a more conciliatory approach, not abuse Banks for supposedly not returning phone calls.

If you strike back at your critics you look aggressive and unrepentant.

The public are quite forgiving critters, if they had got an admission of fault, failure or flaws followed by genuine repentance, sympathy would have swung Transpower’s way.

The message that it is “spending billions to fix the high risk of power cuts and the infrastructure work takes time” is not a bad one but this plea in mitigation needed to be preceded by first adopting the far more reasonable approach outlined above.

What I find inconceivable is Dr Strange and Transpower failed to recognise the second stage of the story, that anyone else with a grudge against Transpower would come forward and label it ruthless, incompetent, high handed and uncaring.

By first saying that the power cut proved the need for the billion dollar new lines through the Waikato he immediately incited those vociferous opponents to come out and take up cudgels on the question.

He also gave South Island farmers a platform for their gripes and calls for better access protocols and rental compensation for pylon sites. In a National Radio interview the next day he disparaged the South Island farmers, seemed aloof to their worries, and as a result the farmer’s spokesman unleashed a frenzy of vitriol against Transpower.

Dr Patrick Strange is obviously a very intelligent man but he has been poorly served in this debacle.

He needs to soften his hard (almost ruthless and intransigent) image and appear to be listening to his critics.

If he doesn’t he will to continue to project Transpower’s image as an uncaring, bureaucratic monster that embodies the worst faults of a giant government-owned corporation.

Dr Strange may think he can ignore public opinion because he has the power of the state behind Transpower in what it does.

His main stakeholder might not agree. Minister Gerry Brownlee, himself a past critic of Transpower when in Opposition, will not be pleased.

In the Silly Season, lists, labels and mock awards reign supreme as columnists, hacks and bloggers scramble to write something, anything, in the news vacuum.

Hey, I know this as much as any other poor sap, I’m one of ‘em.

So, to that end, let’s joyfully enter into the fresh New Year fray and examine who’s who when it comes to The Soundbite Tribes.  These are the men and women who regularly fill newspaper columns with quotes, whose soundbites grace our screens and fill the airwaves.

Like any tribe these media practitioners are defined by what they say, how they deliver it and how they look when they do so.

They’re a diverse bunch with different styles and speech patterns.  Some are good, most are not.

The “Kick ‘Em In the Guts, Trev” Tribe

This mob don’t beat around the bush.  Simple, direct and often outrageous in their comments, they know the value of short, snappy soundbites, sometimes to the point of going overboard and damaging their own reputations. The media love ‘em – they can always be guaranteed to spice up a boring story after all but they’re always walking a fine line, with a strong aptitude for self-implosion.

Members: Billionaire Owen Glenn, Westie MP Paula Bennett, Maori Party’s Hone Harawira, Sensible Sentencing’s Garth McVicar, Sir Robert Jones, Trevor Mallard.

Property tycoon Sir Robert Jones

The “Bore For New Zealand” Tribe

This tribe prefers using ten words when one is already too much.  With egos the size of the Tongariro National Park they can drone on for hours in a monotone, dispensing with the need for sleeping tablets.  Some are seasoned media performers who know that television interviews have definite, short time-spans.  Armed with this knowledge they fill the allotted time thinking they’re avoiding the so-called hard questions, instead squandering an opportunity with nothing more than white-noise on-the-line.

Members: Alliance Party leader Jim Anderton, Act’s Roger Douglas, Christchurch Broadcasting School head Paul Norris, and anyone talking about Climate Change.

Alliance Party Leader, Jim Anderton

The “Proceeding In A Northerly Direction” Tribe

The wooden policeman clan.  Along with their other mates in the fire brigade and rescue helicopter these practitioners of the utilitarian soundbite are like some armoured personnel carrier wading it’s way through the media.

Their stilted delivery sounds defensive, as though their words were being weighed up in a court of law, where some of them serve, instead of the court of public opinion.  Many see speaking to the media as a necessary but evil part of the job – and it shows.

Members: Various members of the police, fire-brigade and rescue helicopter services too numerous to mention.

The “Fall from Grace” Tribe

The media love these guys.  They enjoy social standing but lack self-perception.  What’s more, throw a dose of hypocrisy into the mix and the hacks are all through it, like woodworm. The FFG’s usually fail to become part of the debate when doo-doo hits fan, allowing enemies and lovers to have their say unimpeded.  Their silence means they then enter the eye of the perfect Media Hurricane where allegations are traded about you and your reputation is torn to shreds.

Members; Former National Party MP Richard Worth, golfer Tiger Woods and a small legion of failed finance company directors.

Golfer Tiger Woods

The “Smooth Operator” Tribe

Otherwise known as The Swan Tribe due to their seemingly effortless gliding on top of the water while avoiding us seeing the frantic paddling feet underneath.  This group has strong communications strategies backed up by equally strong messaging.

They seem to answer the hard questions while keeping Relentlessly On Message using a good mix of Head and Heart Messages.

Members: Prime Minister John Key, Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe, Police Association President Greg O’Connor. Telecom’s Paul Reynold’s is getting close to joining the tribe.

Air New Zealand CEO, Rob Fyfe

One things for sure about The Soundbite Tribes – like all of us, their fortunes can change.  They can shift tribes according to how they perform.

Happy New Year.  May 2010 bring you all the good fortune you deserve.