The Must List: 5 Best Articles We Read This Week

This is not how we read these articles. This is how we wish we read these articles.
This is not how we read these articles. This is how we wish we read these articles.

We read. A lot! Sometimes we feel like 95% of PR is reading (the other 5% is weeping in a corner of a room). A lot of the articles we read are depressing (mostly because they’re about Donald Drumpf), some of them are funny and an even smaller handful are compelling and useful. So we’ve gathered those small handfuls for you, so that you don’t have to suffer like we do. Here are the five best articles that we read this week. Warning: it was a pretty slow news week.

Just F@$%king Do It. #EqualPlayEqualPay

It's Time.
It’s Time.

OK, this isn’t actually an article, but a video clip from The Daily Show. But we loved it so much that we decided to subvert our own rules and include it in our roundup (and like we said, it was a slow news week!). As big fans of sports, women’s sports and equality, it’s pretty appalling to us that the #1 women’s soccer team in the world is still paid significantly less than their male counterparts. Three World Cups and four Olympic gold medals have still kept the U.S. Women’s National Team from being paid what they deserve, let alone what the U.S. Men’s National Team (World Cups: 0. Olympic gold medals: 0) makes. Like the video says, Just F@#$king Do It.

When Ridesharing Becomes Political

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Uber is no stranger to politics, but in their battle in Austin, Texas, they may have crossed the line. Buzzfeed’s Caroline O’Donovan reports that Uber and Lyft have been texting their customers to vote for a proposition that would repeal a local ordinance requiring drivers to be fingerprinted as part of their background check.

The move is annoying Twitter users, but remains to be seen if their ire translates to votes against the Uber/Lyft-supported proposition. The lesson for Uber/Lyft (and other apps like it) is to not abuse your access to your customers’ data.

Is Tech Media To Blame for The Rise of Theranos?

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Tech reporter Nick Bilton raises an interesting question with his article on Theranos and its secret culprit: tech media. Much like Glenn Greenwald’s criticism of fellow media inadvertently propelling Drumpf into the Republican presidential candidacy, Bilton wonders if tech media, who have often been criticized for being too cozy of bedfellows with the companies that they report on, helped push Theranos to great heights without questioning the science behind the technology.

SFWeekly Sheds Light on SFPD’s Sexaul Assault Case Failure

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The beleaguered San Francisco Police Department, who had an officer accused of covering up another officer’s rape allegation, has a serious backlog of sexual assault kits waiting to be tested. The SF Weekly sheds light on the severity of the situation, and the trauma that it inflicts on rape survivors awaiting justice. Beyond the backlog, the entire process is in need of serious overhaul. The SF Weekly, and its friend across the Bay, the East Bay Express, have continually written excellent investigative articles exposing flawed processes and injustices like this, highlighting the importance of alt-weeklies.

An Oldie But A Goodie

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Alright, we’re cheating by including this article from 2015, but hey, Hamilton recently received record-breaking Tony nominations and a Pulitzer, so we think it’s still relevant. We only recently discovered this pseudo-oral history of the genesis of Hamilton from The New York Times, and we loved it. Now if we could just get someone to hook us up with Hamilton tickets…(c’mon, someone? Anyone? Dad?).

 

 

 

The Must List: The 5 Best Articles We Read This Week

Remember when we went on and on about how writing is the most important skill in PR and then we continued to proselytize how you can get better at it by reading, and reading A LOT?

Here are the 5 best articles we read this week:

The cover story everyone's talking about
The cover story everyone’s talking about

The whole world’s talking about Caitlyn Jenner, and with good reason. There’s been so many articles about her – good, bad, annoying, provocative, thoughtful, and everything in between – so we decided to go with one that focuses on how she handled her announcement. Yes, we chose the PR angle. We’re shameless. Josef Adalian at the Vulture goes in-depth into her press strategy. h/t to Peter Himler for sharing the link.

 

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Mary Meeker, the OG Digital Prophet

 

Speaking of reading A LOT, do you have a couple of hours to spare to dig through Kleiner Perkins’ legendary Internet seer Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report? It’s worth every second you’ll spend soaking up Meeker’s considerable expertise. If Meeker told us to wear white after Labor Day, we’d listen!

 

Lyft's search process isn't fooling Rupal Parekh
Lyft’s search process isn’t fooling Rupal Parekh

 

If, like us, you want to see the agency search process completely overhauled, you’ll find former AdAge editor Rupal Parekh’s criticism of Lyft’s “wildcard” agency RFP stunt of interest. Parekh brings up that underdog startup Lyft is courting tried-and-true big name advertising agencies instead of scrappy shops that might better fit their own image. This is the startup that plastered giant fuzzy pink mustaches on people’s cars and insisted on “fist bumping” as a greeting, after all. Yet their agency search process appears to be as boringly rote as everyone else’s, while under the guise of throwing a bone to the little guys. No fist bump for you, Lyft.

 

You'd be smiling too if you were Walt Mossberg or Kara Swisher
You’d be smiling too if you were Walt Mossberg or Kara Swisher

 

Last week’s news that highly respected tech media outlet re/code (founded by the two most powerful tech reporters Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher) was being acquired by Vox Media surprised many industry insiders. Business Insider’s Alyson Shontell convincingly lays out the reasons why re/code made their decision. In light of Gigaom’s shuttering, combined with the proliferation of good tech reporters leaving to become venture capitalists or start their own startup, what can tech media do to maintain eyeballs, quality reporting and their overhead?

 

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Finally, this last link isn’t an article but very worth checking out. Apparent “Entourage” hater, Wendy Molyneaux Drake, came up with a very clever, funny way to raise money for nonprofit CureSearch. Drake didn’t dump ice cold water but instead leveraged her amusing (and some might say, completely rational) hatred for the HBO brofest to shed spotlight on a very worthy cause – children’s cancer research. She raised a whopping $30k for CureSearch – amazing. Congratulations/Sorry, Wendy! h/t/ to our pal Pamela Ribon for sharing the link.