Launch PR

AGENCY NEWS: SA and the Boston 2010 Project Look Forward to a Lead Safe Boston

Will childhood lead poisoning be completely eradicated in Boston in three years?  The Boston 2010 Project thinks so.  The number of new cases has already shrunk from 1,300 in 2000 to just 460 last year. The group believes they are on track to decrease that number to zero by 2010.

The Boston 2010 Project teamed with Angie’s List and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino last weekend to launch a new campaign to target the remaining communities where lead poisoning is still a major health risk. Lead poisoning is particularly dangerous for children, whose growing bodies absorb more lead than adults, leading to both serious health issues and learning disabilities. 

The Boston 2010 Project launched in 2005, when a group of local non-profit organizations including ESAC and Urban Edge teamed with city agencies such as the Department of Neighborhood Development and Boston Public Health Commission with the mission of eradicating childhood lead poisoning in Boston by the year 2010.  Schneider Associates has been promoting this effort through public relations, advertising and the design of informational billboards to raise awareness about the issue in Jamaica Plains and Dorchester.

Lead paint was banned in the US in 1978, but housing units built before then often contain lead-based paint.  Lead experts estimate that perhaps more than 55,000 housing units in Boston still contain lead, which becomes dangerous for children when it begins to deteriorate, peel or flake.  Most childhood lead poisoning cases are found in the Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan and Hyde Park neighborhoods of Boston.

To find out more about the Lead Safe Boston program, check out the City of Boston Web site.

Images
Top: At the campaign kickoff of a new public education effort to eliminate childhood lead poisoning by the year 2010 (from left), Schneider Associates’s Director of Public Affairs DeWayne Lehman; Bob Pulster, executive director of ESAC Boston and head of the Boston 2010 Project; Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino; and Mossik Hacobian, executive director of Urban Edge and a partner in the Boston 2010 Project, talk about their goal of eradicating lead in Boston through aggressive outreach and education.

Right: Schneider Associates supported the Boston 2010 Project and Lead Safe Boston program with public relations, advertising and marketing support, including this public information billboard displayed in Jamaica Plain.

Geographically Based Blogging

Blogging owes much of its dynamic nature to its boundless territory in cyberspace, but it seems that as the blogging phenomenon matures, some want to bring it a little closer to earth. And that may present new opportunities for public affairs practitioners.

In Brooklyn, NY, blogger and writer Steven Johnson and some of his colleagues recently launched outside.in, a blogger’s forum that is arranged by ZIP codes and provides visitors with a menu of bloggers to read within the visitor’s geographical, real-world community. Outside.in also gives cyber visitor access to an array of stories about everything from nearby crime to local restaurant reviews. The site encourages contributors to join the blogging commuity by finding and posting news stories about their neighborhood and ultimately building a geographically based blogging community.

In Boston, in a trend noted by the New York Times, the new daily commuter newspaper, Boston Now, runs subject-related blog excerpts next to news stories. John Wilpers, editor in chief of BostonNow, told the Times his aim is to try to address the difficulties newspapers have in connecting with the communities they cover. The experiment links the print news to area bloggers, providing better exposure for the latter.

It’s too early to tell if these attempts to connect social media mediums and traditional media outlets will work out, but it’s an area to watch for geographically based practitioners looking to better leverage the growing power of blogging.

Building Credibility with Blogs

There really aren’t many signs pointing to the declining popularity of blogs. Each day it seems the reach of blogs actually continues to grow and expand in different areas and industries. Many companies and corporations are turning to blogs with more frequency as a means to raise their internet presence while increasing the interaction with target audiences.

A blog can also be a great forum to help build credibility for an organization by highlighting an executive as an industry expert. By leveraging resident expertise on a particular topic that is germane to their industry, a company can take a leadership position in starting the dialogue, engaging their audiences and in the end, building credibility for the company about a specific topic.

It is not uncommon to see a CEO blogging about the next big industry trend. One of my clients, David Smith, president and CEO of Recap Advisors, a Boston-based affordable housing consultancy, has been blogging about affordable housing issues for several years. His in-depth coverage of complex concepts has brought him a level of credibility that few people enjoy in the affordable housing space.

If your considering launching a corporate blog-- great! Just remember, have a strategy and a policy before you start banging away on the keyboard. Keep in mind that that there can be serious ramifications of what you say, especially regarding sensitive corporate information.

To help guide you through blog planning take a look at Northeastern University & Backbone Media’s Blogging Success Study.