Dean Beckman’s Blog

With the fall semester about to begin at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, there’s troubling news about 2010 high school graduates who took the ACT college-entrance exam. The story indicates only one-quarter of those who took the test possess the skills necessary to pass entry-level college courses.

Fortunately for me (I teach communications courses), students scored the highest in English with 66% meeting college benchmarks. Still, the story as a whole paints a frightening portrait of entering freshmen. But this is where the atmoshphere of Saint Mary’s strongly comes into play. The close relationship developed by the students and professors allows many of these initial academic barriers to be overcome. Students, over time, tend to feel more engaged in their classes and more confident in their work. And while the story shows it won’t be easy, I’m confident this year’s incoming class will rank with some of the very best.

Just returned from a 1,600 mile driving trip with my family. We stayed in a lot of hotels and ate at many restaurants. It was a great opportunity to observe customer service behavior. And, on this trip, we had the good with the bad. It’s clear that for some employees a job is a job and they are generally unhappy doing it. They go through the motions and pretend to care, but it’s clear they don’t. An example of this is at one hotel we asked the person at the front desk, who was not busy at all, for directions to the nearest Wal Mart. She must have guessed because she gave us the wrong name for the road and we ended up driving around looking for it (she did get us in the general right direction). Instead of guess, why not look it up and make sure we knew where we were going. It might have taken an extra minute, but if she really cared about the customer she would have done that.

We had a completely different experience at the Drury hotel in St. Louis (the one across from the Arch). Every employee we came into contact with was friendly and helpful, and it seemed genuine. On numerous occassions they went out of the way to make sure our stay was pleasant. It became clear that, at least in St. Louis, Drury is careful about who it hires and the training put into its employees.

A company’s best and worst public relations comes from its front-line employees. A company can talk all it wants about putting the customer first, but the employees on the scene have to put it into action consistently for the concept to take root. The bottom line is I now know what hotels and restaurants I’ll revisit, based on how my family and I were treated on this trip.

Normally I don’t like to do this, but BP makes it too easy. The PR gaffes made by the company in the last few months are mindboggling; meanwhile, the communications staff at corporate headquarters actually defends them! You can be sure this topic and these examples will come up in my Case Studies class next spring.

Steve Jobs’ latest comments at the Wall Street Journal’s “All Things Digital” conference on the iPad and journalism are quite interesting. To a degree they are self serving considering the future of news organizations are dependent on the success of the iPad. But at the same time the comments reflect a sincerity about the importance of traditional journalism that you don’t always hear from a techy guy like Jobs. You can read and hear it yourself here.

I’ll keep this blog post short. And according to a recent article in Wired magazine, I’ll need to. The article uses some compelling research to discuss how the internet is rewiring our brains to graze information rather than absorb it. While I’ve talked about this topic in my Introduction to Mass Communication class, research had been mostly ongoing or preliminary.

While this concept isn’t shocking, it does show how reading habits are changing. As mass communicators, this is critical to understand. And while those of us who consider ourselves “print media snobs” may not like it, the fact is it’s not likely to change any time soon – or ever.

When the Minnesota Twins game against the New York Yankees was suspended after the 5th inning due to rain on May 25, 2010, the game was tied 0-0 and was scheduled to be completed (beginning in the 6th inning) on Wednesday, May 26 at 4 p.m. before the regularly scheduled 6:05 p.m. game between the same teams. The problem for fans who attended the Tuesday suspended game is their tickets cannot be used to get them into the Wednesday completion of that game. Only those with tickets to the 6:05 Wednesday game will be admitted to the completion game.

This makes zero sense to me. The Twins cite Major League Baseball policy which states that after 5 innings the game is “official” and therefore complete. Really, though, the game isn’t “complete” because the score was tied. Otherwise they wouldn’t be completing it on Wednesday. Let’s say you bought a $50 ticket to Tuesday’s game (the one that got suspended). Why wouldn’t you be allowed to see the game you paid money to see through to its literal completion? Why should another ticket holder to the original Wednesday game get to see your game through, but not you, even though you paid for the ticket and they didn’t?

I’m sure the Twins might argue they would need to empty the stadium after Wednesday’s completion game ended to allow those in with tickets to Wednesday’s regularly scheduled game. Well, then that’s what they need to do. Or start the completion game sooner which would allow them more time to clear the stadium. They way I see it, that’s the team’s problem. Why hurt the fan who paid money to see a game in which there was no winner or loser?

Bad policy….bad PR. Here’s the official policy.

Now that summer is nearly upon us it’s a good time to discuss a couple of books I thought looked interesting for those of us interested in the media.

One is called Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power by James Morris. A bit lengthy at 576 pages, but what a read it should be for those who enjoy a good narrative history of the newspaper industry.

Another is about the history of Time magazine. This one should be fascinating. I can’t wait to get to them, though my summer reading list is filling up more quickly than usual!

I’ll be joining Saint Mary’s University Sports Information Director Donny Nadeau as an announcer at this weekend’s 2010 MIAC Track and Field meet in Winona. I’ve only announced track and field one other time, but found it to be both enjoyable and challenging. There’s more to it compared to announcing at other sports, but it’s fun being track-side to see the impressive athletic performances up close. Well….gotta run!

I’ll admit it; it’s difficult to do this. Write daily blog posts, that is. Oh, my heart is in the right place. It’s just that my fingers often aren’t. It seems like every time I sit down to update my blog something happens that takes me away from it. By the time I get back to it, if ever, I’ve lost both my train of thought and my motivation to post.

Still, the importance of blogging in public relations has not gone away. While there are numerous other social media outlets that draw our attention, blogging remains a free and mostly unlimited way to present information or communicate messages. My students are required to do it, so I will too (perhaps not daily, but often). For those of you who find yourself lacking motivation from time to time, here’s a post that offers some tips regarding content. It’s not rocket science, but sometimes we all need a little push.

There’s only one creature I know that can get away with sleeping on the job and that’s a cat. In fact, that’s the only job a cat has.

The rest of us are expected to show up on time and put in a full day’s work. Or at least keep our eyes open long enough to look like we’re working. Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners can’t even do that, as he was recently caught napping in the clubhouse during a recent game and wasn’t available to pinch hit when called upon.

And this column by Larry Stone of the Seattle Times indicates this has been an ongoing ritual throughout this career. So here I am, an average Joe who doles out hundreds of dollars to take a family of four to the game, and the guy can’t stay awake for three hours to help give me my money’s worth?! Not only is it shameful, but he should voluntarily reimburse everyone who went to this game and pays his salary. What a classless act and despicable example to youngsters.