(Photo courtesy: Miss California USA)

If you asked me a few months ago about Miss USA 2009 first runner-up Carrie Prejean, I was among those who felt she got a raw deal at that pageant.

And, that she deserved credit for sticking to her beliefs in a public forum, knowing full well many people wouldn’t agree with her. (In my first take on that, I pointed out the hypocrisy of the pageant’s Q&A format).

Today, my opinion of Prejean regarding that night on the Miss USA stage hasn’t changed. She had a chance to speak her mind and she did. Clumsily, but she did.

But her time in the public eye over the last week, promoting her book, has essentially made it hard for even the people who would’ve have purchased her book to like her.

It offers three quick lessons for people and businesses in the PR world, seeking bigtime PR hits on network TV:

If you’ve got baggage that’s going to be the “story” instead of what you want the story to be, stay home

With the timing of the “sex tape” revelation, it made no sense for Prejean to do major network TV PR this week. As she learned, your interviewer – who has been around the block a few times – controls the interview. Not you. Sure, she tried. And she and her publicist thought she could handle it. But she failed.

Expect the unexpected in interviews.

If you truly can’t talk about a certain topic, make sure that’s understood by the host before you start. If it’s not, don’t go on the show. As Prejean found out, the result of this oversight only makes you look like the idiot – in permanent YouTube fashion – not the host.

Although, Larry King deciding to finally be a journalist – for this hard-hitting topic of all things – only made him look like a putz too. (The full segment is here).

King also claimed he wasn’t aware of an agreement to keep Prejean from taking viewer questions. The point is, assume the host will ignore that, or forget that, etc… and be ready for anything. (Though, when King mentioned he would take questions off the top of the interview, you’ll notice Prejean didn’t speak up).

Don’t lie

Again in this case, choosing to do major network TV PR, Prejean could have actually gotten some sympathy if her story about the video was what she said it was. But the tide turns in the viewers’ mind when the story isn’t what you said it was. If you were 20 when you made a video for your boyfriend, say you were 20, not 17.

To wrap this up, clearly Prejean needed better PR advice.

And, I should point out, how about a website? (Couldn’t find one… what a missed opportunity to promote herself with videos, podcasts, a blog, etc…).

The publisher of her book (Regnery) doesn’t even have more than an article on her on its site. It has audio interviews with its other authors, but apparently couldn’t get one done with Prejean in time for the book’s release?

Odd.

With her PR fail this week, I actually think she’s done some damage here even among the crowd that was in her corner just a few months ago. Sure, she’ll get a few speaking engagements in churches and with teenage girl youth groups. And, she appears to be positioning herself to do that.

But I’d suggest she try a different PR approach for a few months…  put her energy into some causes that highlight the community service and compassion of others. Find some friendly situations to be a part of that highlight what other women and teenage girls of faith are doing.

Start a blog, do an online video podcast “show” or series, find a voice for providing strong guidance for Christian teenage girls and young women.

That’s about the only PR play she has.

If it works she stays in the public eye (if she even wants to at this point), builds a supportive following in her niche, and repairs her image as a clueless prima donna. If it doesn’t work, she fades into “normal” life out of the spotlight eventually. Perhaps with still an effective message for girls but just not on a national stage.

One more thing, in terms of the media coverage of Prejean and her book… Her interview with Christianity Today shows that she also faced tough questions from them.

It’s her answers to some of those questions though, that still give her some PR trouble.

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Elizabeth Lambert might be a nice person. She might genuinely feel bad about what she did in a soccer game that now lives online for all the world to see. Again and again. (ESPN has more of the video, and analysis, here).

But thanks to letting her emotions “get the best” of her, she’s now forever the “angry soccer player” from the University of New Mexico. With the evidence prominently on display on YouTube for who knows how long.

You want her coaching your daughter on a youth soccer team in 10 years or so?

Aside from the obvious idiocy of her actions – calling it “poor sportsmanship” doesn’t seem to cut it – Lambert’s 15 minutes of fame provides yet another study in how a university’s media relations/communications team has to put together an apology for an athlete who decided to play dirty.

While New Mexico’s damage police at least used the “uncalled for” phrase in the statement below – No, I don’t think Lambert wrote this – I don’t think it goes far enough:

“I am deeply and wholeheartedly regretful for my actions. My actions were uncalled for. I let my emotions get the best of me in a heated situation. I take full responsibility for my actions and accept any punishment felt necessary from the coaching staff and UNM administration. This is in no way indicative of my character or the soccer player that I am. I am sorry to my coaches and teammates for any and all damages I have brought upon them. I am especially sorry to BYU and the BYU women’s soccer players that were personally affected by my actions. I have the utmost respect for the BYU women’s soccer program and its players.”

A “heated situation”?

It was a soccer game.

I also like how Mario Trujillo puts it on the Daily Lobo, that “She let her emotions get the best of her on a second, third and fourth occasion before she was finished.”

I think this line from Lambert’s statement is a bunch of crap too: “… accept any punishment felt necessary…”

Liz, you don’t think something, anything… is necessary?

For the moment Lambert is suspended, but still on the New Mexico team. At least New Mexico’s VP for Athletics, Paul Krebs, used stronger language in his statement to the media:

“Liz’s conduct on the field against BYU was completely inappropriate… …There is no way to defend her actions.”

Exactly, so do something about it.

I know there are aggressive women’s soccer players across the country. But I highly doubt Lambert’s ponytail pull and punch to the nose is common practice on the playing field. Play the game. It’s not football. That crap would get her kicked out in basketball in a heartbeat.

What’s most surprising in this entire episode is that the BYU players didn’t fight back. Kudos to them for not taking the bait. And to those who say the BYU players may have engaged in pulling of shorts and tripping too… the answer is to snap a neck and smack someone on the nose?

The lack of fists used by the BYU players in retaliation is the real lesson for soccer players like my daughter, who watched the Lambert clip with me and just said, “Why did she do that?”

It was a “heated situation,” honey.

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(Photo courtesy: Chicago Tribune)

If a Chicago-area pastor’s goal was to create a little buzz, it has certainly worked.

But will that buzz around his church’s cash weekly giveaway lead people to a meaningful, personal relationship with Jesus?

Only time will tell. Maybe the real goal is to raise awareness of the church itself and its impact on its community. In any case, not unlike many PR and marketing campaigns, you can’t always measure it and judge it while it’s still in play.

I read about Rev. Dan Willis and his Lighthouse Church of All Nations in Alsip, Illinois on the PR Junkie blog, as well as a story in the Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune explained the premise:

At each of the three Sunday services, the Rev. Dan Willis pulls a number of one seat from a bag and the worshiper in that seat wins a cash prize. Two of the churchgoers win $250 and the third gets $500. The church gives away $1,000 each Sunday, Willis said.

The tactic is working, according to Willis, as he focuses his messages on what the Bible says about certain aspects of money and debt-free living:

Willis concedes the cash prize is a gimmick to fill the pews. But he’s unapologetic about the plan, because it’s working. On a typical Sunday, his church draws about 1,600 people to its three Sunday services. But since the money giveaway started, about five weeks ago, the congregation has grown to about 2,500 each week, he said.

But besides increased attendance, a story in the Southtown Star says Lighthouse is actually seeing an increase in the weekly offering too. And it’s giving him a chance to teach financial discipline.

I have no problem with the premise. I’m actually surprised though that attendance at the services has jumped during the giveaways. I’m guessing more of the “regulars” are choosing to make sure they make it to church each Sunday rather than them getting many new faces into their building.

But the lure might not just be about the money.

At a time like this, we all need to hear the message Willis is preaching on. Relevant, biblical lessons on our finances and debt hit home… hard. Maybe that’s what people are connecting with. Not necessarily the cash.

Yes, many churches are into marketing. Yes, they’re using tactics traditional churches are scoffing at.

But I’d argue the critics of these kinds of tactics should renew their own efforts to strengthen the faith of their flock and make better efforts to lead more people to Christ. It doesn’t have to be flashy or gimmicky.

Just be relevant to the daily lives of the people who walk through your doors every weekend.

Relevance goes a long way, whether you’re marketing a product or a message.

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Anyone who knows me well knows that I have have zero patience… for crappy customer service.

Usually, I let the offender know via a nice old-fashioned letter. Feels good to get it all out, stick the stamp on, and see what happens. 100% of the time I get a call or letter seeking to remedy the situation.

I’ll be doing the letter-writing thing again for what I experienced today at a Verizon store in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

But… I also want to let it breathe a bit here on my blog. Because an online rant seems fitting for a company that tries so hard to get it right in its ads and in what it does online. And, is trying so hard to compete with Web favorite, Apple. Case in point, the whole iPhone envy “There’s a map for that” campaign.

Well, as Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try.”

By the way, I’m not holding my breath for a response on this one. Because I simply don’t think the particular store manager on duty today cares, or is informed enough about the phones Verizon sells.

The issue:

I went into the store last week on the first day I was eligible to upgrade my phone. I chose an LG Dare. Liked the touch screen. Liked the features (micro SD, the camera, video, etc…) and it was in my budget with a $100 rebate. Went home, put the phone on the charger overnight and saw it was fully charged the next morning.

At noon, I pulled the phone out of my pocket for the first time. I thought it was odd it was already down one bar. Used it once in the afternoon, saw it was down to two bars. At 5pm, as I got into my car for the drive home I looked at it again… one bar of battery life. By the time I pulled into my garage it was dead.

Must be a bad battery I thought.

I charged it up again overnight, but the next two days brought the same result. So I figured, better go get a new battery.

Friday night, I stopped into the Verizon in Apple Valley and explained my situation to the service rep. He took my phone, noticed the make and model, said nothing about it and comped me a new battery.

Saturday morning, I put the fully charged phone on the kitchen counter. Picked it up at 5pm when I left the house to go shoot video at a high school football game and saw the phone was down halfway to two bars. Huh? Guess it wasn’t the battery. The phone stayed in my pocket until after the game when I went to call my wife… the phone was dead.

Clearly, it wasn’t the battery.

So I trudged back into the Apple Valley store today, explained my situation, told the rep I wanted my phone replaced because clearly it wasn’t operating as it should.

I expected an “Okay, let’s try another LG Dare.”

Instead, I got “Okay, you’ll have to pay the $35 restocking fee though.”

“No, I won’t,” I replied. “Not for a defective phone.”

Enter clueless manager. Should have gotten her name, she deserves the pub. She came out and told me the battery life I was experiencing was normal for a touch screen phone. “You’re going to find that with all the touch screen phones. My BlackBerry Storm is the same way.”

Really. 8 hours of battery life? Not even enough to allow me to use it on the commute home from work each day?

She then told me I would have to pay the restocking fee to replace it and try another one.

Idiot.

I told her I didn’t think so, and then she went to look for another LG Dare.

When she came back, she told me she’d waive the restocking fee but I would have to choose another make and model of phone. They were out of the Dare.

Given her ringing endorsement of the touch screen phones Verizon offers, I didn’t want to even bother with the Versa or any other phone with a touch element if crappy batteries are the norm. Who would buy one, I’m thinking? Until I bought the Dare, I’ve always been able to get 3-4 days max out of my phone battery.

I chose a fairly basic phone, for less money, and left the store. Disappointed that I’m stuck for another two years with a phone I’m not excited about. (I’ve been a Verizon customer for several years, renewing faithfully every two. My wife has her phone, my son has one and my in-laws are on our plan. We’ve got a few bucks tied up in Verizon).

As of right now, I’m not exactly a satisfied customer. Might be time to take my family’s phone business somewhere else.

Enter the next chapter:

When I got home this afternoon I decided to search for any other customer stories about bad batteries and the LG Dare. Or just customer reviews, good or bad, about the phone. Or, solutions I should have sought, if any exist.

Yes, I found some complaints about the battery life.

But I was pissed when I also started reading comments like the following on this page:

“One of the strong points of the DARE is the Battery life” (with a link to a review that says: I’ve been using the standard battery since Sunday morning, its now Monday afternoon and I still have a full level bar without using my phone constantly. I made a few calls, two text messages, and phone on 24 hours, and took one photo, not to bad.)

And:

“Great battery life here as well. I can go a couple of days without charging even when using bluetooth for almost all my calls, texting, and using the web browser. This phone gets the best battery life of any phone I’ve used on Verizon.”

I know online reviews only tell some of the story. Sometimes, they’re planted company propaganda.

But they do provide some perspective.

I can only assume the manager I met today doesn’t know what she’s talking about. If battery longevity is an issue with the Dare, why didn’t the rep I talked to Friday night throw that at me?

Remember, he comped me a new battery.

Why make the statement that all your touch screen phones have horrible battery life? Not exactly the sales language Verizon’s higher-ups want you using, I’m guessing.

So what gives? I guess Verizon’s just another company that can’t see the big picture. It’s about the customer, Every customer’s situation is unique.

Don’t assume every customer is out to get you and is lying about their experience. Don’t pretend to be smarter than your customers.

Don’t make stuff up.

Can you hear me now?

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(Photo courtesy: Star Tribune/Time)

Before I tackle some PR-related points about Brett Favre’s return to Lambeau Field this Sunday, let’s make something clear right off the bat:

I bleed Viking purple.

And I’m not thrilled Brett Favre is on the Vikes right now. I’m just not big on one-year fixes with 40-year-old quarterbacks. But that’s just me. While I’m pleased the Vikings are winning, and I realize they wouldn’t be 6-1 with any other quarterback on the roster at the helm, I’m also preparing for a playoff collapse like any good pessimistic Minnesotan.

If you’re one of those goofballs who went out and bought a Favre #4 Vikings jersey, you and I couldn’t have more opposite takes on his place on the team.

That said, I do think Brett Favre has a will to win, and an ability to win, unlike any other quarterback in NFL history. He’s fun to watch. Win or lose.

So it puzzles me why the Green Bay mayor felt the need to spend his and the city’s time on a photo-op campaign dubbed “4 Days to Victory.”

Seriously?

Okay, I lived in Green Bay for a year. I get that the people and news media there have a problem prioritizing what’s really important in life. But if you’re really pissed about Favre playing for the Vikings why bother with the small town PR stunts? Why not just let your team try to beat him up on Sunday?

The best PR approach to Favre’s return, by the Packers and any politician in the city, is to ignore him. Take the high road. The guy is a legend and he’s going into the NFL Hall of Fame as a Packer. Get over it!

No, instead, mayor Jim Schmitt thought it would be cute to play up things like “Flip Flop Friday” to encourage people to wear their flip flops to work. And, he had a city employee put up a new temporary sign to rename Minnesota Avenue, “Aaron Rodgers Drive.”

(Image courtesy: WBAY-TV)

Yikes.

And then there was the “Funeral-4-Favre” today, organized by WAPL Radio.

(Photo courtesy: Green Bay Press Gazette)

Really, a funeral? Nice touch.

KARE-11’s Boyd Huppert has a recap of that stunt here. I guess the beer bottles in the hands of the mourners explains it.

At least the Green Bay Press-Gazette strikes a reasonable tone about Favre’s return in this editorial. Too bad the rest of the city doesn’t get it.

Cheer him on Sunday, or boo him… just let the fans at Lambeau have their say, no need for the silly stunts.

Here’s another interesting take, from The New York Times.

I’ll end this post noting my three quick, up close and personal Brett Favre moments:

*During my TV stint at WEAU in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, I met Favre when a colleague did a one-on-one interview with him at the Packers training camp in the summer of 1993.

*There are photos and video to prove this – I just don’t have any of them – but I’m the idiot standing on the one yard line on the sidelines at County Stadium on Dec. 18, 1994 with my arms signaling Favre’s touchdown dive right in front of me to beat the Falcons. Hey, he was on my fantasy team that year! (I was on the sidelines for WEAU, if you find me in a photo let me know… I think it’s in the book, Favre by Brett and Bonita Favre)

*When I produced newscasts at WFRV-TV in Green Bay in the fall of 1994, Favre came into the newsroom once a week to do live interviews with our sports guy, former Packer Larry McCarren. Favre sat just a few feet away and I was tempted to trash talk him during Viking week, but I played nice.

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If you want employees, colleagues, your kids or a 4th grade basketball team to perform better you offer an incentive, right?

Dan Pink doesn’t think so.

I recently watched his TEDtalk titled “The surprising science of motivation” and found Pink’s argument pretty compelling, in terms of what it means for business and other areas of your life when motivation matters.

Put simply, Pink challenges traditional thought that incentives are necessary to get people to perform better. Not the case, Pinks says. He believes incentives can dull thinking and creativity. He says there’s “a mismatch between what science knows and what business does.”

Pink, who I first became aware of through A Whole New Mind (via a reading assignment from my boss for our external communications team) has built his latest book, Drive, around his take on motivation. That book comes out in late December. So, his TEDTalk is a bit of a preview.

Here are a few quotes from Pink to consider:

*”…too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, and if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.”

*We need a “new operating system for our businesses [that] revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy, the urge to direct our own lives. Mastery, the desire to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose, the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

*”…here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are a natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn’t rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter.

Will businesses listen to Pink? Is there truth to the concept that performance can go down when the reward goes up?

Maybe it explains why some youth basketball teams I’ve coached go in the tank after I reward them all with Gatorade for a good practice.

Okay, maybe that’s a motivation post for another day.

Again, check out Pink’s TEDTalk if this interests you, Great stuff.

By the way, Pink has a great blog and he’s on Twitter.

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Now there’s a blog headline that can’t be ignored, right?

With just four words it proves the case of the marketing effort I got a chance to learn more about at the annual workshop for the National Association of Bar Executives (NABE) Communication Section – in Las Vegas, appropriately enough.

In a session titled “Marketing Las Vegas in the Pasta Economy,” Terry Jicinsky, the senior vice president of operations for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, talked about the “What happens here, stays here” campaign.

Before I go into some details, I’ll explain the pasta reference. Jicinsky defined it as an indicator of the choices Americans are making in terms of discretionary income. That is, the number of people/families staying home on a Saturday night eating a cheap pasta meal versus going out for dinner.

Makes sense.

Las Vegas clearly is a discretionary destination. And that distinction requires a different approach to marketing and public relations.

Jicinsky outlined his case to the professional communicators in the room by considering the challenges we have in common:

-How do we get our message out?

-Where do we get our message out?

-How do we get people to care about our message?

-How do we get people over a certain perception?

Vegas certainly is perceived a certain way.

But it’s not by accident.

The “What happens here…” campaign actually began back in 2002. Only recently has Vegas gone back to it, as its marketing bread and butter.

But Jicinsky spent a lot of his time talking about the impact of the recession on the convention business in Vegas – and a bit of Vegas-bashing from President Obama – that forced Vegas to go on the offensive to and create a sub-campaign for 2009 – Vegas Means Business.

With 22,000 annual business events in Vegas and all the people who attend them, Jicinsky said the recession-fueled drop in convention business has been brutal for the efforts to fill the city’s 145,000 hotel rooms.

To try and increase the meeting business, Jicinsky highlighted the first of three points for communicators:

*Take on a cause

The cause, to combat “the anti-convention in Vegas” crowd, unified the hotels and politicians to get out in the media and tell the one story that companies with conventions to plan needed to hear – that Las Vegas has more hotels and more meeting rooms than anyone else… and is built for the convention business.

As part of that effort, and beyond it during the recession, Vegas turned to Jicinsky’s second piece of advice:

*Play the media

It’s the free publicity card… Give the media a story. With overall tourism to the city tailing off in the recession, the “Vegas Bound” campaign and Cranfills Gap, Texas came into the picture. Vegas offered all of the small town’s hard working citizens a free vacation. The campaign got huge play in the media, including several major media hits. Here’s a look at how Vegas packaged up part of the story on its YouTube channel:

Jicinsky said coverage of the exploits of the citizens of Cranfills Gap earned them more than 400 free mentions on TV, in print and online.

The playing of the media continued with the return of the “What happens here, stays here” theme. Ads like this were once again aimed at reminding the average American why Vegas is attractive, by offering a unique twist on life in their own home towns:

Jicinsky’s third point of advice for marketers and communicators was:

*Tell a story

Can’t get any simpler than that. Jicinsky said every business and organization can find their own way to tell their own stories, and make their content top of mind with their target audience.

One of the stories Jicinsky said that Vegas also has tried to tell through marketing is about its many restaurants, in an effort to remind would-be visitors that the city has many great places to eat. You may have seen that in its “Your Vegas is Showing” campaign.

I know I’ve rambled here a bit, but the session with Jicinsky was really interesting and hopefully this brought some of it to light for you.

Going into the session with Jicinsky, I would have argued that the “What happens here…”  campaign has become so entrenched in the U.S. that they could pull all the TV ads and other significant marketing and still not see a drop in tourism.

That may be true. But clearly Vegas still has a need to communicate and a strategy for staying a top business and discretionary income destination for people who like – and can put up with – the sinful nature of Sin City.

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Yes, there are bigger things to blog about.

But I can’t ignore the PR flap that the University of Minnesota – in my neck of the woods – had to clean up this week.

Before I go on, here’s the video in question:

Clearly, the approval process at the U of M for carefully crafted media statements must be a nightmare. Or at least demands that several people massage the words and sentences before it sees the light of day. That’s certainly typical in the corporate world, and painful.

Because this statement released by the U of M after that insanely stupid Goldy Gopher incident at Penn State reeks of too many cooks in the media statement kitchen. I could be wrong, but have a look:

“The life of a mascot at a sporting event is fast-paced and enormously high-energy. This was plainly a mistake.”

Okay, get past the “fast-paced” and “life of a mascot” nonsense, I think we all agree there was nothing fast-paced about the endzone prayer. Focus on the “mistake” part.

This was no mistake.

I make a mistake when I don’t realize that I just threw in a red shirt with the whites in the laundry, and wash it on hot water. It’s not a mistake if I know I’m doing it.

The goof inside the Goldy head knew what he was doing. At the very least, he thought it would be entertaining. I’ll give him that. But it wasn’t.

And don’t get me started on the cheerleader who fist-bumped Goldy after his “mistake.”

Please.

The U’s statement also clearly struggled with trying to address the faith angle, but failed:

It certainly wasn’t his intent to offend anyone or trivialize their religion… …On behalf of Goldy and the University of Minnesota, I want to apologize to the Penn State player involved and anyone else who may have taken offense from this incident.”

What’s so hard about actually calling the prayer-mocking what it is, offensive?

Here’s my version of a statement:

“The actions of the students involved are inexcusable. They showed poor judgment. Mocking prayer is offensive to many of our University of Minnesota students, alumni, staff and administration and we apologize to them for this incident. We also apologize to Jerome Hayes and the entire Penn State community.”

It’s offensive to many of the people you’re depending on to fill your new stadium every Saturday. So call it that.

It wasn’t a mistake.

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Basketball coaching legend John Wooden recently celebrated his 99th birthday. He hasn’t coached in 34 years, retiring at age 65, but he has certainly remained in the public eye through several books and public appearances. He’s such a treasure of wisdom for sports and life.

With his birthday in the news, I saw a link someone shared to one of those public appearances, his TEDtalk in 2001, and wanted to share a few thoughts on it.

The focus of Wooden’s talk was his definition of success:

…peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do the best of which you’re capable.

Wooden says, “If you make the effort to do the best of which you’re capable, try and improve the situation that exists for you, I think that’s success. And I don’t think others can judge that.”

Whatever you’re doing, whatever your line of work. Wooden believes it’s about giving your best effort.

Did you catch that? It’s not necessarily about winning.

Winning is a product of what you do.

Wooden says, “…if you make effort to do the best you can regularly, the results will be about what they should be. Not necessary to what you would want them to be, but they will be about what they should, and only you will know whether you can do that.”

That’s a quote every youth sports coach should digest.

Wooden also quotes Cervantes, who said “The journey is better than the end.”

Yes, it’s the getting there where the real work happens, the “fun” as Wooden says.

Indeed.

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Think back to when you were debating what college to go to. It likely came down to cost, location and curriculum among the many factors, right?

You probably liked something about college A, something else about college B and so on… But you had to roll the dice and pick one, just one, to spend your four or five years at.

But… What if you could attend certain classes at several colleges before your degree is done? That is… As a broadcast journalism major, I would have loved to take a few classes at the University of Minnesota, even though I was officially a student 100 miles away at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Or, it would have been fun to spend a semester at Medill at Northwestern. Or, maybe another semester at a respected journalism school in the South.

Imagine being able to skip the red tape of an official transfer to do that. It’s really no different than studying abroad, I suppose. So with the massive advances in technology since I was in college, pre-Internet, why haven’t colleges embraced the possibility?

How easy would it be to take a class from another campus online or through iTunes. Why not use technology to provide a unique experience? Get past the notion that you have to be a grad of college A… it’s about producing smart and productive people for the greater good of society. Isn’t it?

Online or in-person, this kind of open enrollment just makes sense.

This concept came up for discussion in the latest episode of the Media Hacks podcast (#18), hosted by Mitch Joel. As Joel points out in the podcast, imagine how much better you’d be if you got to learn from the best at say eight different universities rather than relying solely on the faculty of the college you’re physically attending?

The Media Hacks discussion was inspired by a report in Fast Company magazine.

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