All jokes aside (but do send me your answers to the title question for fun) what do these three have in common?

Failed attempts at message control.

Let’s take Weiner – his foolish use of social media (Twitter is a broadcast system NOT a private conversation), his week of narcissistically courting national media interviews only to lie to the even more narcissistic anchors, and his disastrous press conference where he broke all the rules of crisis management, made for a historic screw up of message control.

Specifically, he did not reinforce his mea-culpa with real action or proof that he would change his ways. He also ventured into unbelievably dangerous ground hypothesizing about the ages of the girls to whom he may have sent lewd photos and messages. Third, he gave actual clips that were so damning and unnecessary, his future opponents won’t even have to edit their attack ads. And finally, he broke the cardinal rule by staying up there too long. The more you say, the more you can say wrong.

Frankly, the narcissism that got him in the mess in the first place is the same that kept him up there, sucking in all of the negative attention. How bad was it? PR professors will teach about it. I will use it in my media training courses. The world will now refer to screwing up a communication as “weinering it”. It was that bad.

In the same week as Weinergate we found ourselves talking locally about the public school board’s attempt to control the communication of its trustees. As you see in the clip, the actions are too close to the scandal time-wise to appear as anything less than a blunt attempt at damage control. Like Weiner, they should have given a little more thought to the strategy of controlling their messaging crisis before going public with this hammer. And back to the Mayor’s office - their attempt to limit media access to those with a boss was both the subject of my last blog post and another example of how NOT to attempt message control.

So Weiner, school board, and Mayor’s office here are three simple tips:

1. Take a good look at your audience and their CURRENT communication habits, needs, and expectation. Communication and crisis management are evolving.

2. Take a deep breath before launching anymore defences of your attempts at message control. Don’t further Weiner it.

3. Understand that (as my husband is so fond of saying) control is an illusion. Encoding your message properly so your audience can decode it, and receive it as intended, is a good strategy.

Grasping for control however, is not.

See the U.S. Representative for New York’s 9th congressional district Weiner it.

As you can see in this week’s For The Record clip I was incensed at the attempt by the Mayor’s office to limit local media access. It’s not the goal of increased decorum or message control I oppose, but rather the flawed logic at the heart of it.

I respect the media credentials of both Mayor Bratina and Peggy Chapman, who got her journalistic bona fides in the formal media setting of Queen’s Park. They are traditional media experts but they seem to be missing the fact that new media means things have changed – in Hamilton and around the world.

The comment by Peggy on the Bill Kelly show is what best illustrates this – she said media  “have to have a boss I can complain to”. 

Social media does have a boss.  Every blogger has a boss. Every online publication has a boss. 

It’s not some exec in an office down the hall who can take calls of complaint from the Mayor’s office and apologize and / or broadcast a retraction and / or fire the mistaken journalist. 

It’s a much more powerful and responsive boss than that. It’s called the PUBLIC.

Not every person with a Facebook page is an independent journalist.

You have to have an audience – a following that trusts you to relay the news and inform them. And if you become lazy, inaccurate, overly biased (I am not talking opinion pieces here, I’m talking legitimate fact finding and interviews) than they stop following. 

Recently an indy journalist in Hamilton wrote something that the Mayor complained about and the complaint was presented and analyzed at length for the public to evaluate. And if the public, that powerful boss, thinks the journalist screwed up than they will stop following them. Once their audience is gone, so is their journalistic platform. That’s how it works.

So, Peggy, with all due respect NO independent journalist in Hamilton who has a regular online presence and following of the public is without a boss. That is the flaw in your logic and that is why they should all get media access to the information their boss wants.

Two weeks after the issue was first raised about Council getting free lunches it is still front page news.

What exactly is the big deal about $30,000 going to lunches for politicians to work through meetings? Nearly every board meeting I have ever attended there is free food.  Councils in a lot of cities likely get free lunches.

But this is Hamilton. Not only do we constantly struggle under the burden of downloading, crumbling infrastructure and a manufacturing base that is in transition, we have way too many people living in poverty.

And, like I said on the show last week, Mayor Bob’s response to the issue was too casual. Add today’s comment in the Spec by Councillor Merulla that the amount saved has absolutely no tangible impact on the city’s bottom line, and you see why free lunches IS a big deal.

As standard as free lunches may seem, the response from council has been a mixed bag of lame rational and dismissive comments that smack of entitlement at worst, and deafness to the public disgust at best.

And although the city budget is large, every saving - even $1 - actually does impact the bottom line. How could it not?

To Sam and Councillor Jason Farr’s credit they are actually listening to the outrage and asking colleagues to forgo the free lunch.

I just hope that Council can listen to Hamilton and do what needs to be done.