Derek DeVries

A colleague of mine recently had an unfortunate experience with WWMT Channel 3 here in West Michigan.  One of their reporters burst into the offices of Patriot Solutions with cameras rolling and accusations flying. It offers a “teachable moment” to point out two problems I see public relations professionals encounter with their counterparts in the [...]

Detroit Free Press Technology columnist Mark W. Smith recently described the workings of the nascent social network Pinterest to readers in a column titled “Pinterest: 11 Things to Know About the Surging Social Network.”  Unfortunately the column focuses on practical and factual things. Here’s what you will learn from using Pinterest: Pinterest is Like Falling [...]

In his zeal to advance his attack on the Public Relations Society of America my favorite curmudgeon Jack O’Dwyer has finally discovered Wikipedia. Unfortunately O’Dwyer doesn’t really understand it, and now he’s attacking the Wikimedia Foundation and Jimmy Wales because of the articles on “public relations” as well as its “history” and the fact that Wikipedia [...]

A sad note that marred an otherwise unseasonably-warm and dry week in Grand Rapids was the death of a blogger’s dog after a careless right turn by a man driving a truck who then left the scene (even though he later admitted to being aware that the distraught owner was trying to flag him down; [...]

[Updated] Facebook again changed its front page (as social networking platforms are wont to do), which means that the dynamics for hacking the front page have changed yet again.  Here’s how to have fun with (or for marketing/pr types – how to “leverage/maximize”) the new Timeline Profile: 1.  Make sure you have the new Timeline. [...]

[Updated] It’s 2012, and the presidential primary season is upon us.  In reality, it’s been upon us for the past year – the news media seems to have the same proclivity for stretching out presidential campaign season as retailers have for stretching out the holiday gift buying season. Plenty of others have written about our [...]

Earlier this week, a YouTube video from a security camera made the rounds showing a FedEx employee carelessly tossing a package (containing a computer monitor) over a fence to deliver it.  As of today, the original has over 4 million views and opportunistic content-scrapers who have re-posted to their own profiles have garnered hundreds of [...]

The Public Relations Society of America asked me to write a little piece on Brand Journalism for a series they’re doing on trends for 2012 (“#PRin2012: 12 Trends That Will Change Public Relations“). As a follow-up, I’d love to hear from journalists who recently made the jump to public relations who perform a similar journalistic role [...]

Internet startup AllThis drew fire recently after it was discovered (by writers like Rob Beschizza at Boing Boing) that the site scraped content (including profile photos) from the social media profiles of prominent tech pros and created profiles for them in its service. The service seeks to sell ten-minute chunks of “time” with individuals that [...]

One of the greatest gifts [curses] white people have is the ability to forget or take for granted the numerous advantages they’ve had in life. I’ve certainly been guilty of this many more times than once in my life. The same is true of the tech-savvy.  We take for granted all of the things we learned [...]