More to follow!

I’d like to trade my list of Buffalo-area media contacts and online outlets with someone from outside the region, specifically someone who is not in the higher education industry (as would technically be a competitor). Knowledge is power, and you never know when you’d need media information about Buffalo.

This list is 99% publically available, so I’m not sharing anything secret. As I’ve collected this information over the past two years, and it represents dozens of hours of work.

Some specifics:

80+ print, web, and broadcast sources covering western New York and Canada

30+ bonus upstate New York sources

As an additional bonus, I’ll throw in my go-to social media outlets. 

What is M3?

Let us explore, for a moment, the Wikipedia entry on Money Supply.

• M0: Physical currency. A measure of the money supply which combines any liquid or cash assets held within a central bank and the amount of physical currency circulating in the economy. M0 is the most liquid measure of the money supply. It only includes cash or assets that could quickly be converted into currency.^[6]
• M1: Physical currency circulating in the economy + demand deposits (i.e. checking account deposits). This is a measure used by economists trying to quantify the amount of money in circulation. M1 is a very liquid measure of the money supply, as it only contains cash and assets that can also be used for payments.^[7]
• M2: M1 + time deposits, savings deposits, and non-institutional money-market funds. M2 is a broader classification of money than M1. Economists also use M2 when looking to quantify the amount of money in circulation and trying to explain different economic monetary conditions. M2 contains cash and assets that can quickly be converted to currency.^[8] M2 is a key economic indicator used to forecast inflation.^[9]
• M3: M2 + large time deposits, institutional money-market funds, short-term repurchase agreements, along with other larger liquid assets. This is the broadest measure of money commonly used and is used by economists to estimate the entire supply of money within an economy.

My econometrically-challenged mind likes to think of M3 as big money. Really big money. A very smart man who I happen to be married to explained it as such. Imagine having a dollar. You deposit that dollar in a bank. The bank lends out that dollar along with a credit of dollars above and beyond that dollar, because, hey, they’re a bank! They’re good for it. So your dollar + X dollars is loaned to a person or institution who has to pay it back over time. Unless they’re in a sub-prime mortgage and can’t handle the payments. Or for one of hundreds of other reasons. So when that loan comes due, oh noes!, the bank can’t get paid.

But here’s the thing. The bank is really only out the dollar that they have to pay you back. That other money- those X dollars – was just extended credit. Or M3. So boo-hoo, banks are losing money that they never had. At least that’s the way I see it. And my reward for responsible spending and aggressive saving will be watching my past and future tax dollars go to reward these banks with a $700B+ payday. Fantastic.

Although the Fed seems to have started to track M3 again as of August 2008, that doesn’t mean they have any idea how much of those funds are out there. $700B might be way too much, or not even close to enough.

And hearing that some of this payday will go to the pockets of foreign banks and foreign investors makes me vomit a little in my throat.

The Social Media Release is a hot, messy term for the old, busted press release. Take your standard, plain text news release – the one designed to languish in the stale piles of other press releases sent by eager, yet clueless, public relations professionals – stir in some multimedia content, shake it up with hyperlinks to web sites that stretch the bounds of standard spelling (Flickr, Digg, Del.icio.us), and send it out to the Intertubes.

It really is that simple. Joe Stabb gave a good overview of what the SMR is and how it’s developed, but I fear that some in the audience were so blinded and befuddled by the sheer volume of social media options that the creation of an SMR for their use will just be something they forget about.

Well, I’m not forgetting about it, and I learned today ways to make my social media release template that much more useful to the end user: the media. 

A thought about data and digitization. We’re in the digital age, apparently, and the most useful information is that which can be easily manipulated into other formats. Sending a PDF to a news organization that will have to then copy/paste/reformat text content before rewriting it into a form they can publish and/or broadcast adds an extra layer of steps that significantly reduces the chance that that information will make it beyond that gatekeeper.

Gosh, gatekeeper. I haven’t used that term since COM 101.

So, the digital data of a social media release takes some of the onus of work off the mass media outlet. I will happily take on a slightly more difficult production task, especially since it makes my ultimate goal, publicity, more likely.

Hearing from Joe about his work in the trenches as an online media producer for WIVB-TV made me consider more strongly the workload and attention span of the people to whom I’m sending releases. They’ve got a job to do, just like me. As a fellow professional if I can make life a little easier for them, then that’s what I’m a-gonna do.

Aside from beefing up medaillenews.com with multimedia/b-roll content and reference materials, such as administrative biographies and an extended fact sheet, I’m pleased with my current social media template. I don’t use all the components all the time, but I grok enough social media service to make my template morph and evolve.