As PR Week points out, pharmaceutical companies have been buying “sponsored links” with search engines for years that show up when someone searches for a disease or medical condition. Usually the text descriptions of these links don’t or can’t give much information away, reading something like, “Learn about symptoms and treatments for (insert disease here).” Fair balance information, of course, would be included once someone clicked through the link.

In a somewhat confusing move, however, the FDA sent warning letters to many of the big players in the pharma space, claiming they failed to “provide the proper risk information.” This is an additional example showing that comprehensive rules for how pharma can legally participate online are long overdue:

But as more pharmaceutical companies become involved in social media, the FDA will have a responsibility to better define the regulatory parameters of the digital space, including paid keyword advertising, wikis, Twitter, and YouTube. Lacking a policy that detailed how to adopt these rules for the Web, companies followed the one click ad hoc system, which they’ve now been punished for and had taken off the table.

The fact that the FDA hasn’t adopted such rules isn’t fair to pharmaceutical companies, and isn’t helping patients, who may very well be missing out on valuable medical information they could use to educate themselves.

(Full disclosure: I work at Edelman, a PR firm, and do work on behalf of pharmaceutical clients.)

Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates.

Men’s Fitness magazine christened Detroit America’s fattest city, while Men’s Health called it America’s sexual disease capital. Should the editors of these two metrosexual magazines be concerned for their safety after slagging the citizens of a city which has won the “most dangerous” title for five of the last ten years? Probably not: 47 percent of Detroit adults are functionally illiterate.

What I like about this piece is that the writer doesn’t devote his space to slamming the city, even though that would be easy. Instead he talks to people who live in the city, from firefighters who battle blazes in the abandoned, dilapidated buildings that plaque Detroit, to a homeless man from the South who thought the job prospects in Detroit might be better than his former home in Alabama (he was wrong). They’re all fighting the same fight, hoping and fighting for a city that’s probably hopeless.

UPDATE: For a little more perspective on this story, Flickr user smooveb has a goal of photographing 100 abandoned homes in Detroit. At the time of this posting, he’s got 72 hauntingly beautiful photos in the set.

The Michigan Republican Party mistakenly sent out a news release Tuesday night congratulating John McCain for winning the state’s GOP primary.

It quickly issued a second statement praising Mitt Romney for his win.

“Heading into tonight, this race was too close to call, so we prepared a release for either scenario,” state GOP spokesman Bill Nowling said. “We simply pushed the wrong button.”

The correct release was sent a few minutes later. Still, the potential for mistakes like these is what keeps me up at night. If this gaffe had been committed with major client news, there’d be some people with some serious explaining to do.

This just makes me laugh every time I see it.

“Yeah, I’m flying into SUX today, I’ll be home about five…”

Nothing like taking a less-than-stellar situation and turning it into a positive, right? Until I read this, I didn’t know Sioux City, Iowa even *had* and airport. Now I’ll never forget.

In the last few months, front-page news stories have told us of the pet food scare that was inexplicably killing household pets around the country. Of toothpaste that contained chemical solvents used in antifreeze. Of produce contaminated with dangerous pesticides. Of seafood contaminated with antibiotics and anti-fungals. Today, news broke that 1.5 million children’s toys must be recalled because they are covered in lead paint. The source of these dangerous products? China.

I understand that China is a developing country, in spite of its vast resources and workforce. Nonetheless, if we look at countries like Japan and South Korea, which were absolutely decimated by war in the mid-twentieth century, we see that their quality of exported goods increased over time rather than decreased. Today brands like Toyota, Sony and Samsung are among the tops in their respective industries.

In order to stop the bleeding and prevent further harm to its national brand, China will need to take swift action to let the world know the steps it is taking to ensure the safety of its customers. And no, executing public officials for corruption is not a good start. There is no doubt that China, the “Sleeping Dragon,” is nearly fully awake – In the light of multiple, grievous quality oversights, however, sheepish consumers will keep hitting the snooze button.

New regulations require soldiers to clear content of blogs and e-mails with a superior officer, Wired said. The directive, issued April 19, could lead to the end of military blogs — known within the military culture as ‘miliblogs’ — observers told Wired.

Military officials have wrestled for years with striking a balance between the need for discretion in wartime and the benefits of allowing troops in the field to connect personally with the public, the magazine said — especially since the troops are often seen as among the most effective advocates for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I understand that some of the information coming out of the war is extremely sensitive, and the military needs to ensure confidential information isn’t accidentally distributed. In the real world, though, the majority of superior officers will simply not have the time to go through each and every blog post for approval, and blogging will shrivel up. It’s a shame, because most milbloggers strongly believe in their mission and are able to articulate their hopes and successes. They’re a rare source of positive PR in the war.

I would have really liked to have seen the military adopt a blogging policy similar to some large companies (such as IBM) which outlines what you can and cannot say, what information is confidential, and so on, and possibly require milbloggers to simply alert their superior officers to their blog’s presence. They would have the best of both worlds in terms of accountability and freedom, and I’d still be able to look forward to stories from the front lines.

A new bill called “The Social Networking Web Site Prohibition Act”, and would require that social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace are blocked on any computer made available to the public in a plublic (sic) library, and schools must prohibit access on any computer made available to students.

Here’s some details. Setting aside any possible justifications, this is a remarkably short-sighted and out-of-touch proposal. More and more sites are incorporating social-networking features to create more useful sites. Just look at Yelp, Last.fm, Blubrry, LinkedIn, and so on. To restrict people from discovering new restaurants and businesses, music, podcasts or professional contacts through these sites would be a shame.

Furthermore, as some have pointed out, this law would likely block established social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook while allowing newer, upstart social networking sites through the filters. It’s a terrible idea, through and through.

While by all accounts a successful program, the shuttle has also had technical problems that have resulted in the loss of life: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, the latter as a result of an issue with the insulating foam that protects the craft on re-entry. The problem hasn’t been completely fixed, which led the LA Times to issue an editorial urging NASA to “abort” flights until the remaining craft are repaired, finishing with a rather strong condemnation of the program:

Each shuttle mission costs about $450 million for a few days in low-Earth orbit. An awe-inspiring blastoff by Discovery on Saturday could make many people forget about the price. But it won’t change the fact that the shuttle is an unsafe, expensive way for humans to explore space just a few hundred miles above Earth. The problem with the shuttle isn’t chunks of foam, it’s the shuttle itself. NASA should mothball the program and put the nation’s scientific and technological expertise to better use.

I can’t tell you how often I hear arguments in favor of using NASA money for terrestrial programs. Many of those people call space exploration “a waste.”

Now, by all accounts, I’m a total geek, and I genuinely get excited by scientific discoveries- As such, I should be psyched for the space program. The only problem is, before researching this post, I had absolutely no idea what kind of experiments NASA does in space, and how humans on earth have benefited. Now, I may be simply ignorant, but why didn’t I know the space program was responsible for the CT scan, cellular phones and long-range weather forecasting? Those are major technologies that have greatly helped me.

As a government organization, NASA is reliant on taxpayer funding, but they aren’t doing a good job of telling the public what they get for their money. NASA should make more of an effort tell the public why the work they do is important, and why the public should support them. They have a slick Web site, but it’s rather impersonal. Why not create a blog that can be updated by the Discovery astronauts from space (is such a thing technically possible)? NASA also has a television channel, why not a documentary program about “Space Technology and People’s Everyday Lives?” Do NASA officials mention how missions will specifically benefit humanity at press conferences? Maybe they do, but I can’t remember watching a NASA press conference that didn’t follow a tragedy.

To sum up an already ridiculously long post (sorry), I’d like NASA PR to focus on these three areas:

1.    Do a better job of telling us why the benefits of a shuttle mission outweigh the risks.
2.    Give us a personal stake in the mission. Let us get to know the astronauts, why they’re on the shuttle, how they got there and what they hope to accomplish.
3.    Tell us what experiments are taking place and how these experiments will help enrich life on Earth. Remind us of all the useful technology we use everyday that comes from the space program or research that actually took place in space.

NASA’s public relations department needs to do more than damage control in the wake of a crisis. (Let me know in the comments if you feel they’re going a good job.) Until they publicize practical reasons for the space program (of which there are plenty) and help citizens feel a personal stake in the program, they shouldn’t be surprised to see further denouncement of the costly-yet-valuable space program on editorial pages or around water coolers in offices around the country.