If you want to get people talking, ask them about their kids.  If you want to get reporters talking, ask them about the future.

At the annual Media Predicts dinner hosted by the PRSA of Silicon Valley, six Bay Area reporters stood for this version of “question time” with results that were predictable (”Apple is good,” “Facebook will IPO” and “The big will get bigger”), arguable (”Twitter is Pointcast” or “Twitter unlocks something in us”) and insightful.

It is this last list that ought to be most remembered from the discussion.  For a company hopeful of earning a reporter’s or blogger’s attention, they are the most helpful.

First, every company depends on others for its success.  As Wired’s Steve Levy said, “crappy cell coverage will hold back the mobile market.”  The snappiest devices are dependent on the service(s) to which they are tethered.  It suggests that communications ought to be collaborative.

Second, leading companies are those, as defined by GigaOm’s Om Malik, who are playing offense and setting the agenda.  This demands that a company’s communications ought to focus not just on its product and services, but on its aspirations.

Third, the best companies are those whose success leads to the advance of an entire market.  As Brad Stone of the New York Times said, ” the iPhone is an extraordinary platform” and USA Today’s Byron Acohido added that
“owning the platform is key.”  Promoting the increasing value of your ecosystem is an essential element in corporate communication.

Fourth, companies that are solving big problems ought to let people know.  Matt Marshall of VentureBeat touted technology that “makes us more efficient.”  Who can’t see the value of that?

Most of the predictions made last night will fall flat in the year ahead.  But what will remain constant is the value of creating corporate communications programs that respond to the guidance we heard.

The food was pretty good, too.

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At a recent set of focus groups –  you know where a small group of subjects is quizzed on a particular subject while being scrutinized through one-way glass by a smaller group of people hoping for insight that can be extrapolated across thousands — I heard confusion arise.  The facilitator said: “6 cents in every 100 dollars,” but it kept being played back as “6 percent in every 100 dollars.”

Big difference.  How come?  For nearly 60 years we have seen the meaning of numbers and percentages overtaken by the importance of the argument they are used to promote.  The focus group insight is: we are all guilty.  One reason may be how the apparent objectivity of numbers lends credibility to any argument no matter how contorted the equation that produced them.

Go back to 1954, when Darrell Huff and Irving Geis published “How to Lie with Statistics.” It kicked off a trend of adding math to marketing.

Here is how the book opened:

“‘There’s a mighty lot of crime around here,’ said my father-in law a little while after he moved from Iowa to California.  And so there was — in the newspaper he read.  It is one that overlooks no crime in its own area and has been known to give more attention to an Iowa murder than was given by the principal daily in the region in which it took place.

“My father-in-law’s conclusion was statistical in an informal way.  It was based on a sample, a remarkably biased one. Like many a more sophisticated statistic it was guilty of semiattachment: It assumed that newspaper space given to crime reporting is a measure of a crime rate.”

Guarding against the urge to confer credibility on every random column of numbers that “foot” — add up correctly — puts a burden of all of our five senses.  If extra sensory perception is the ability to see things without evidence or experience, it may take that sixth one to protect us from ourselves.

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It will likely only last for a few days, but the back-and-forth over the self-dealing of Burson-Marsteller president Mark Penn by building business on the back of a column written for the Wall Street Journal has the look of mock outrage.

Think of Claude Rains as Captain Renault, in 1942’s “Casablanca,” who closed Rick’s Cafe because he was “Shocked, shocked to find gambling going on in here” only to be handed his winnings.  Even if it is only on the basis of Penn’s work for Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he is widely k nown as a public relations executive who is comfortable with more than one master.

The industry has helped create this problem with its focus on transparency as the sine qua non of communications.   So, if  Penn’s position is well-known and the Journal was clear on his intentions — the New York Times reported that “Robert H. Christie, a spokesman for The Journal, said, ‘the reality is that freelancers do use their columns as ways of marketing themselves.’” — what’s the problem?

The problem is context.

When Penn gave Senator Clinton bad advice, he was a bad advisor, but when he traded on his position to curry favor with the Colombian government, he was far worse.  When the Journal decided to give Penn a column bearing the same name has his book, it likely sought business advantage in the endorsement, only to be surprised that some found the business advantage an, well, outrage.

There is calming advice for all of us in a film that ought to be on every public relations person’s list of “Top Ten.”  “The Big Kahuna” is a 1999 film starring Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as industrial lubricant salesmen setting up a customer suite at a conference.  They are searching for the largest customer — the big kahuna.

They also have brought along a novice, there to learn the ropes.  Here is the length of that rope that resonates most:

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re selling Jesus or Buddha or civil rights or ‘How to Make Money in Real Estate With No Money Down.’ That doesn’t make you a human being; it makes you a marketing rep. If you want to talk to somebody honestly, as a human being, ask him about his kids. Find out what his dreams are - just to find out, for no other reason. Because as soon as you lay your hands on a conversation to steer it, it’s not a conversation anymore; it’s a pitch. And you’re not a human being; you’re a marketing rep.”

Cancel your subscription to the Journal if you will, don’t hire Burson-Marsteller if you must and scratch Penn’s next book from your Amazon “wish list.”  But don’t buy into the outrage.

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The economy in the U.S. is getting better for all of us but not for each of us.

That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the upturn of the stock markets and signs of life in housing even as jobs continue to be lost.  This is called a “jobless recovery,” where, according to Forbes, “…companies can increase production by investing in new technologies, and thus delay re-hiring people.”  Real change may not come for “several years.”

The odd coupling of good-and-bad news has had an effect on consumer spending.  Whether described as down or up, it is clearly lower and slower than we have come to measure as normal.  It is natural for consumers to use a sharper pencil on expenses in the face of economic uncertainty.

But how should whole industries respond to a similar threat?

In recent weeks, we have seen reports from media companies — newspapers, magazine, broadcast and even online properties — that advertising revenues are off, way off.  With their sharper pencils, many have still found a profit.  It is axiomatic, though, that you can’t persistently cut your way to profitability.

As recently reported, “Gannett swung back to profitability in the second quarter, probably attributable, in part, to savings from numerous furloughs and layoffs nationwide.  Still, the plunging ad revenues suggest there is scant hope of a near-term recovery for Gannett — or the newspaper business in general.”

It is ironic that at a time when newspapers are read by fewer people, people and newspapers face such a similar circumstance.  With news that the Federal Reserve thinks unemployment will top 10 percent and that national advertisers, like Macy’s, have cut their spend in half, we may wind up with even more alike the less we have in common.

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In recent days I have been engaged in three conversations about the death of the media.

First came a chat with a former magazine editor and a discussion about magazines and their declining ad pages and circulation.  Check this out in the NY Times.  Next came a conversation with a television producer who had just filed an analysis of the public’s appetite for news — cherry flavor is best.  Last came coffee with a public relations executive who is trying to redraft his agency’s mission in the face of a fractious, self-publishing landscape.

Whew.

An answer for all, in particular the media, may come wrapped in the cynical adage of an earlier day:  “It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.”

Reporters are paid to pay attention.  A beat reporter knows more about his or her beat than anyone.  But reporters cling to an artificial construction of objectivity.  For every point of view expressed, a counter-balance is found; even if the reporter knows the point of view being expressed is bone-headed.

Reporters will have to break this silence and let us know what they know if the profession is to regain credibility in the current day. I was reminded of how far reporters go not to tell us what they know when I saw this story today about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “numbers” on her handling of the CIA criticism.

It leads with this: “More Americans disapprove than approve of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s handling of the matter concerning the government’s use of harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Majorities approve of President Barack Obama’s and the CIA’s handling of the matter.”  It could have led with:  “Whatever the criticism, more people support Pelosi than support either the Democrats or the Republicans as a group.”

My argument is not with the lead, but in the unwillingness to let readers know what the reporter knows.  That nearly everyone who is raising a ruckus about this story has also accused the CIA of lying, that Congress was tightly managed in the previous Administration and that Pelosi, as were the others who were “briefed”, had her hands tied by laws governing national security.

As long as reporters cling to antique notions, death will come; and at their own hand.

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Sometimes there is more than the devil in the details. Sometimes there is insight. Take, for example, this bit from Wikipedia’s guidance for members who want to create new pages for the online, collaborative compendium.

4. Gather references both to use as source(s) of your information and also to demonstrate notability of your article’s subject matter. References to blogs, personal websites and MySpace don’t count—we need reliable sources.

As traditional media fall (see: Portfolio magazine), a point is often made that bloggers have already moved to fill the gap created by contraction. People raised on newspaper reports, magazine analysis and the complementary sound and pictures of radio and television who voice concern are often counseled to “go to the web.” Their concern is based on a lack of confidence in the validity of what will be found online.

Of course, it is one thing for the new or unfamiliar to question the blogsphere. That doesn’t offer much counterweight to the rush to post. But when the Web savvy question the web savvy of blogs, you have to pay attention.

The closing of newspapers and magazines is not the real loss. We can argue about who is to blame. But the real loss is in the reduction in mediated content. Perhaps Wikipedia is a partial answer, but as “reliable sources” dwindle, their task — and ours — will only get tougher.

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