The Lois Whitman how-not-to-do-PR saga continues. She was called out by us and others in December for verbally abusing bloggers and spamming Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporters.
Things quieted down when she issued an apology, saying “Official Apology to Rich Brome And All Offended Bloggers -Just posted this on Twitter. Received over 100 emails, most of them angry. They are right. I was wrong. Thank you for the support emails but this is the right thing to do. Amazed by the power of viral marketing and learned a lot. I should take the heat. I love the blogger community and I did them wrong. I apologize.”
But now the PRSA, always willing to eat their own, is holding a seminar called Social Media for Skeptics: The Care and Feeding of Bloggers in Colorado. The description: “Pitching a blogger is like pitching a reporter — a reporter who can and will publicize and criticize and rationalize your every word. So, can you pitch a blogger to cover a story for your company or client? Yes! But do it wrong, and you might just end up like Lois Whitman (we’ll tell you who Lois Whitman is and what she did at the session!).”
Whitman isn’t pleased and has commented a couple of times in the blog post. Screen shot is below.
I completely understand Whitman’s desire to leave this whole mess in the past and not to have PR seminars dedicated to avoiding her situation. But her new comments also make it clear that she was never really that sorry for her actions. Rather, she was just sorry she got slammed for it – an important distinction.
This is how she now characterizes what happened last December: “The bottom line of my story is that I emailed press releases to a list of high profile bloggers signed up for a trade show. They didnt know their names were being issued to publicists. So I took the heat for an entire industry. Many of them are now closefriends.” Read our post for the real story. We don’t quite see her as the defender of the PR industry. Rather the opposite.
I feel sorry for Doyle Albee, who now has to face Whitman’s potent wrath.
