Negative PR and sports labour unrest...not limited to North America

It's interesting to note that unchecked greed is not something isolated to North American professional sports.

While the National Football League (the billionaires) and the players (the millionaires) fight not just a labour, but a public relations battle (hears and minds), everything is not rosy in Spanish futbol.

The Spanish government recently decided that one La Liga game per matchday must be shown on free television. This is the equivalent of the Canadian government mandating that Hockey Night in Canada must exist or the American government saying that CBS has a legal right to air Sunday afternoon football.

The concept of sports on non-pay channels in North America is pretty-well accepted. Not so in Spain, apparently. La Liga and its member teams have taken the Spanish government to court over the decision, claiming it will effect their revenue streams. If the decision is changed, the league will collectively go on strike.

This can't be good pr for a league that pays some of the highest salaries in soccer and has some of the largest revenue-grossing teams.

Social Media Slam Dunk

Ah, it's that time of year again. The temperatures are rising, the snow is melting, and Winnipeg is beginning to turn into one gigantic, dirty puddle. Beyond that, another sure sign that its almost spring is that March Madness kicked off on Thursday.



The 68-team, three week NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship is treated like a religion by hundreds of thousands on both sides of the border. The prospect of seeing, not only college's best teams, but also the prospect of a "minnow" knocking off a "big fish" makes casual basketball viewers fanatics for a short period of time each year.



In the world of Web 2.0, March Madness is a perfect avenue for social media marketing. Facebook was one of the first social media websites to take advantage of this, when they launched a NCAA bracket pool in 2007. This year they've expanded on this app, by partnering with Citizen Sports and having a $5,000 grand prize. For the iPhone, Citizen Sports offers a mobile version of its Facebook app.

Talk Hoops offers an app for the iPhone that provides in-depth information, news, and game scores about all 68 teams taking part in the Madness.

The NCAA and tournament broadcaster CBS haven't been left behind in the social media derby. The NCAA offers on-demand streaming of all tournament games, while CBS has an app that allows you to watch every game on your iPhone.

All these new social media avenues for the tournament are a goldmine for their creators and everyone out there jonesing for more coverage of March Madness.

With these new apps you have no chance of missing the 2011 version of Valparaiso-Mississippi or Princeton-UCLA.

IPPP Time

Wow time has flown by over the past few years. It feels like only yesterday that I was sitting in the multi-purpose room at Red River College's Roblin Centre at the Exchange District Campus, having the Creative Communications program explained to me. But, in reality it has been almost a year and a half since this event. In the meantime, countless written, audio, and visual assignments have been produced, I chose public relations as my career path, and I, along with roughly 70 of my peers completed an IPP.

What exactly is an IPP? In order to graduate from Creative Communications, students must complete an Independent Professional Project. This can be a written project, audio or video project, or a promotional project. Students pitch their idea in the form of a written proposal and to a panel of instructors for approval. They then have roughly a year to complete this project.

I chose to produce a travel blog focusing on Manitoba's stunning and diverse provincial parks. Thanks to the support of the Winnipeg Free Press, I was able to market my project by having it featured prominently on the front page of their website. Manitoba Parks: A(sessippi) to Z(ed Lake) ended up being a great success.

Next week marks the completion of the IPP, when every Creative Communications student is tasked with presenting their project in front of an audience of their peers, instructors, family, and media industry professionals. The Independent Professional Project Presentations (IPPPs) will take place Wednesday, March 9 to Friday, March 11 at the Winnipeg Convention Centre. Students will each have 10 minutes to present their project and all the work that they have accomplished.

If you have the time, stop by and learn about Manitoba Parks: A(sessippi) to Z(ed Lake) and Steve Dreger's South African World Cup Odyssey. Watch Jeff Ward's feature film, "The Trainman" and learn about "Debuts" thanks to Lennie Eulalia's documentary, among many other excellent and thought provoking projects.

If you have the time

Exploitative PR?

This is from Michael Grange's blog for The Globe and Mail. He discusses the UFC taking advantage of good pr coming from a man who fended of an attack by a mass murderer.

Which brings us to the dramatic events in a New York City subway station earlier this week, where a Maksim Gelman, 23, accused of killing four people in a weekend crime spree, allegedly attacked Joe Lozito with a butcher knife.

The burly father of two survived the first swipe and told reporters he used a wrestling move he picked up from his years of watching UFC fights on pay per view to help subdue his attacker.

"It was my instinct to get him down," Lozito said. "Like getting an opponent down in MMA, what do you do? You go for the legs. When we were on the ground he was flailing at me with that knife. I just wanted to get control of that right wrist. In the process, he got me on my thumb and left triceps, but I was aiming towards getting control of his wrist for sure."

Dana White, UFC president, invited Lozito to be the guest of honour at the upcoming UFC card across the river from New York, in Newark. This picked up heavy news coverage from the New York media.

New York State is the last major market in North America that refuses to sanction mixed martial arts events. This good news story will likely go a long way to convincing state legislators to change their minds.

When I first read the blog post, I thought that it was a good PR move, but after thinking about it a little more it seemed a little exploitative. Four people were killed by the attacker. Taking advantage of any PR, for financial gain, out of this story doesn't quite seem right?

Blogosphere, what do you think?

Hockey goes Pink

It's almost surreal to imagine grown men shooting, hitting, and fighting in a pink jersey, but in Anchorage this February 14th that will be the case.

Minor league sports is a cutthroat business. In order to maintain a small, loyal fanbase and attract new customers, teams have gone to every extreme to draw fans to the arena, diamond or stadium. Minor league hockey is no exception and promotional jerseys have become the norm, with Valentine's Day jerseys being worn by hulking, behemoths every year.

These promotional jersey's have become a public relations staple for minor league hockey teams and obviously have been proven to be a successful tactic, as teams constantly trot them out, year after year. Valentine's Day jerseys are just the tip of the iceberg though. Teams have commemorated New Year's Eve, Christmas, beach night, and Milwaukee legend/Mr. Belvedere star Bob Ueker, among many others.

The Alaska Aces, of the ECHL, join a long line of team's that have tried to draw in couples celebrating Valentine's Day. Here are some of the best of the worst.

Bakersfield Condors



Las Vegas Thunder




Grand Rapids Griffens

New ideas at the FreeP

It's nice to see that the Winnipeg Free Press is taking steps to evolve and diversify at a time when the future of media industry is uncertain and constantly in a state of flux.

I was just reading an article about the "News Cafe" that the paper plans to open in the Exchange in the spring. The Free Press describes the cafe as a place that people can come for food and interaction with journalists. I like the idea of having working journalists in the downtown area, instead of just operating out of the Free Press offices on the edge of the city.

This new office/cafe seems like an ideal spot for more co-operative work between the Free Press and journalism students in Red River College's Creative Communication program. That seems like a win/win for both parties involved.

Whether this new Free Press venture lives up to its potential remains to be seen, but it's nice to know that the "old guard" of the Winnipeg media is thinking outside the box. The staff has introduced a lot of new features in the last year, including Winnipeg Free Press TV, live-tweeting of events, interactive chats, and large amounts of video content. The Free Press seems to be catching on to the interactive role that media plays at the present time.

Manitoba parks still threatened by logging

This week marked the end of my IPP (Independent Professional Project) journey to visit all 77 of Manitoba's road-accessible provincial parks and to document it for the Winnipeg Free Press.

I thought I'd take this space to republish an article I wrote roughly a year ago, concerning the on-going logging that takes place in one of Manitoba's flagship provincial parks, Duck Mountain. The research I conducted for this article helped inspire me to take on my IPP.

A year later and logging continues to take place in Duck Mountain Provincial Park and logging trucks continue to rumble through the caribou migration path in Grass River Provincial Park.

This feature article originally appeared in Sustain Magazine.

Logging Manitoba's Mountains

A disruptive protest at a downtown Winnipeg hotel far away from the majestic Manitoba boreal forest became a catalyst for change in the logging policies of Manitoba. Combined with an extensive education campaign, this event, organized by the Wilderness Committee lead to the end of industrial logging in 79 of 80 Manitoba provincial parks. Left off the list was Duck Mountain Provincial Park. The chain saws continue to rip through the heavily-forested park.

“Duck Mountain is one of the most beautiful areas in Manitoba. It’s one of the few forested, elevated areas in the province,” says Robin Bryan of the Wilderness Committee of Manitoba. “Yet it’s 61 per cent available for logging.”

Bryan and the Wilderness Committee began a campaign in 2006 to mobilize citizens to speak out against logging in Manitoba’s provincial parks. The campaign was a natural extension of the Wilderness Committee’s goal of protecting boreal forest throughout Canada. The organization was created as a citizen’s action group in Vancouver in 1980. Its concern was the conservation of wilderness and also to mobilize citizens to take action and become more politically active concerning the environment and its issues. The group’s Manitoba offshoot includes 6,000 members, while the national organization boasts 30,000 members, making it the largest member- based wilderness group in Canada.

The fight to end commercial logging in provincial parks was an uphill battle for Bryan and the Wilderness Committee.

“Logging companies have a lot of control and a lot of political sway in Manitoba,” says Bryan, who organized rallies, including a mass protest outside a 2007 Tembec logging conference in downtown Winnipeg. He was also involved in discussions with former Conservation Minister Stan Struthers and organized Wilderness Committee members to contact their MLAs with their concerns.

The protest outside the 2007 Tembec logging conference at the Place Louis Riel Suite Hotel in downtown Winnipeg kick-started the Wilderness Committee’s campaign against logging in provincial parks. Tembec was clear-cutting in the Nopiming and Whiteshell parks.

“We basically confronted them on the issue and that really kicked off this campaign,” Bryan emphatically explained. “We had some red-faced, embarrassed logging representatives on our hands, but it was a necessary step in showing our intentions.”

The fight was won in 2008, when the Manitoba government announced that it was banning commercial logging in Manitoba’s provincial parks. The ban included the Whiteshell, Nopiming, and Grass River parks, where large- scale clear cutting operations had been taking place. Logging companies found to be violating this ban could face fines ranging from $250,000 to $500,000 per offense. Missing from this ban was Duck Mountain Provincial Park.

Duck Mountain is actually not one mountain, but a series of pine, spruce, and balsam covered hills that rise up near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border. It is a diverse ecosystem, home to large herds of mountain and valley elk. Moose, white-tailed deer, black bears and lynx also call the park home. The area is a nesting ground for countless species of birds. It was established as one of Manitoba’s original provincial parks in 1961.

Logging in the Duck Mountains began when the first European settlers moved into the area in 1899. Lumber mills sprouted up in the new settlements of Swan River and Grandview, as the settlers realized the area’s potential as a source of timber. Industrial logging arrived soon after and continued throughout the century. Even though Duck Mountain Provincial Park was established in 1961, logging continued due to lack of government protection. American lumber giant, LP Building Products (formerly Louisiana-Pacific) established itself in the region in 1996. The company does not log in the park, but independent harvesters of the park bring the timber they harvest to its mill in Swan River.

“LP logs in the Duck Mountain Provincial Forest, outside the park,” says Wade Cable, LP Building Products Area Forest Manager. “Approximately 30 Quota Holders who were logging prior to 1997, when the Duck Mountain Provincial Park’s boundaries were changed, can harvest in the Resource Management Zone of the park.”

The industry’s effects on the region’s economy complicate the situation.

“Because there is no alternative replacement wood available in the region, removing logging from Duck Mountain Provincial Park would significantly threaten the viability of hundreds of jobs and several mills in the region,” explains Rachel Morgan, the Press Secretary to Cabinet for the Government of Manitoba, as to the reason Duck Mountain was excluded from the ban.

Bryan has another take on the situation, speculating on then Conservation Minister Stan Struthers’ ties to Swan River, where LP Building Products’ operation is based.

“I think the minister, Stan Struthers, is from Swan River and he doesn’t want to piss off his friends,” says Bryan, who received the 2009 Brower Youth Award from the Earth Island Institute in San Francisco, for his efforts to stop logging in provincial parks. “It’s a sign that there wasn’t the political will to make the legislation complete. It’s an incomplete piece of legislation.”

Bryan is optimistic that the work the Wilderness Committee is doing to ensure an end to logging in Duck Mountain Park will be successful. He is hopeful that new Conservation Minister Bill Blaikie will re-examine the case of Duck Mountain.

“I have a lot of respect for the history of activism of both Bill Blaikie and the assistant, Rob Altemeyer, so we’re hopeful that their background will carry through to this issue,” says Bryan.

Whether that happens remains to be seen. Rachel Morgan refuses to comment on the issue, saying that the government “does not want to scoop itself.”

So in Duck Mountain, the status quo remains. It’s a place where logging trucks rumble through the habitats of countless species of wildlife. It’s a place where the opening line of the Manitoba Provincial Parks Act is ignored: “Provincial parks are special places that play an important role in the protection of natural lands and the quality of life of Manitobans.”

If you are interested in contacting the Wilderness Committee, they can be reached at (204)942-9292 or at www. wildernesscommittee.mb.ca. If you are interested in contacting the Manitoba Department of Conservation about Duck Mountain, they can be reached at (204)945-6784.