What’s scary about the decision to red-line these budgets is that by doing so, organizations run the risk of becoming forgotten by, even obsolete to media, clients, shareholders, analysts and future business prospects. Now more than ever, stakeholders want to know what’s going on – and it’s now that businesses need to increase the lines of communication and boost confidence that they’re weathering the storm with confidence and strategy. By keeping quiet and avoiding the radar of media and clients, notions of uncertainty and fear of the unknown bubble up. Rather than let these audiences wonder, keep them informed and encourage open communication.

Though this author’s clearly biased, others also agree that while ad campaigns can often prove costly, PR is one of the most valuable ways to keep in front of your clients and prospects in a smart way. Speak to the market, keep us in the loop on successes and failures – and what you’re doing to remedy failures.

Allegedly, reportedly, maybe, coulda, mighta…but since Michael A. Schwartz, counsel to former Philadelphia’s CBS3 anchor Larry Mendte, has stated that his client is expected to plead guilty to federal felony charges for privacy invasion, let’s just say that Mendte did in fact spy on his former co-anchor, Alycia Lane.

And let’s just also say that Larry Mendte is a stalker.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Mendte hacked into Lane’s email, “537 times in 146 days, checking in 10 or more times” on days when he oft indulged his aggressive desire to harm Lane. And these are just the times that the FBI can count. Reports indicate that this obsessive charade of smiling at Lane on camera while electronically stabbing her in the back went on for nearly two years, beginning with Mendte’s discovery that Lane was about to sign a contract worth more than his own.

Had his own carelessness (and sign of his sense of invincibility?) not exposed his secret—a co-worker noticed Lane’s Yahoo email account was open on a computer screen, weeks after she’d been let go by CBS3—what was to have been the natural conclusion of Mendte’s mental game?

His obsessive treachery had already factored largely into Lane losing her job, in damaging her reputation and employability, and in turning her into the high profile target of jokes. But he kept on spying. He kept on feeding the media tidbits about the fallen Philly star, months after she’d already been fired because, as the station put it, she’d “become the news” and so she could no longer report on it. (Question for Philadelphia Daily News gossip columnist Dan Gross, and the New York Posts’s Page Six: what did they know about the root of their source’s (alleged to be Mendte) info, and when did they know it?)

According to the Inquirer, US Attorney Laurie Magid considers Mendte’s snooping: “an attempt to undermine his former colleague’s ongoing legal cases.”

But, beyond the legal view, what Mendte did was harass and mentally torture Lane. How could she not have become paranoid that every move she made—and worse, every email conversation she had with her lawyers—wouldn’t end up in the news? How could she not have begun to wonder whether she was going crazy and that someone was out to get her?

That’s sick. Did Mendte plan to stop?

No one is all good or all bad. Philly.com offers a profile of Mendte that notes his many good works for charity, citing praise from the beneficiaries of his efforts. But people often do the right things for the wrong reasons. It’s always a fair question to ask what the real agenda might be for making a public show of beneficence. In this case, it’s more compelling to ask if Mendte’s good works were part of a campaign to engineer a perception of himself as the hero, more than it was about being purely altruistic.

Having been fired from CBS3 in June, Stu Bykovsy jokes in the Philadelphia Daily News that Mendte might land on his feet at Philly’s Fox29, co-anchoring with his wife and current Fox host Dawn Stensland. But if sanity has a place in broadcast news (does it?), Mendte should be finished in Philly.

That’s because while Schwartz claims that Mendte is cooperating with the Feds, and “will accept full responsibility for his actions,” his client has demonstrated not just a systematic pattern of utter disregard for the law, but a taste for stalking. If you’re the next news director Mendte asks for a job, do you want to chance he’ll indulge it again?

The media is abuzz with Batman. While the comic book blockbuster broke box office records by raking in more than $155 million in its first weekend, the even bigger talk is Heath Ledger’s chilling portrayal of the Joker. The actor, who died in January just before the film wrapped, is being touted by many for a posthumous Oscar nod. Some experts are saying he could be the first to win one since Peter Finch won for “Network” more than two decades ago.

The question here is whether Ledger’s performance was that good or if the media and fans are just being swayed by nostalgia and what would make a great story. We know that Americans love their tragic heroes. Whether it’s James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain or even JFK for that matter; it’s difficult to distinguish how great their achievements were, from how much they have been embellished or glamorized in the wake of their untimely deaths. For some, it seems that the untimely death was the biggest achievement.

So was Ledger’s performance the greatest of the year and the capper to a career cut short; or was it a very good job being viewed through the media’s rose colored glasses? Does it really matter? The media has something to write about, the public has something to debate and Warner Brothers is jokering all the way to bank.

Lease Payment on Car You’ll Never Own: $ 485/mo
Wardrobe Bought with Store Credit Cards: $ 2,000
Mortgage on Condo in City You Can’t Afford: $ 250,000
Putting Yourself on a Path to Bankruptcy
in less than 3 years? Priceless.

Okay, so the “Priceless” device is a little contrived and a lot clichéd, but it’s one that could headline any of the countless sob stories about foreclosures and bankruptcies on Main Street, Anytown, USA, in the media every day.
While there are so many factors that caused the collapse of consumer credit, all changes in behavior start with a change in mindset. Consumers had to start thinking it was okay to spend away, and campaigns like Mastercard’s “Priceless” campaign helped do just that. The campaign doesn’t just encourage foolish spending behavior, it actually tells consumers to use the card for things they can’t afford — “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”

Perhaps fearing backlash from the blame credit card companies have gotten for their rising interest rates’ contribution to the credit crisis, Citicard, whose slogan was once “Live Richly,” attempted a somewhat more reassuring position to entice consumers last year. The company’s “A deal is a deal” slogan came with a guarantee that it wouldn’t raise interest rates “at any time for any reason.” Corporate struggles, however, have forced the company to reconsider its guarantee.