Another clear example this week of why publishers need to sort out their approach to online headlines and overcome the current SEO constraints that water down our enjoyment.

Sun online: Bobsleigh girl’s split b-end gaffe.

Sun print: Plunge bob tear pants.

A way to transpose the brilliance of puns to the internet is the real Holy Grail of the future of journalism.

The Press Complaints Commission’s ruling that it was inappropriate for a journalist to contact a dead person’s relative through Facebook has brought the thorny issue of media intrusion into the spotlight again.

Meanwhile, one of my family is being extremely intrusive amongst hundreds of thousands of dead people, wandering the devastated streets and shacks of Port-au-Prince to file copy for The Financial Times on the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti.

So the Facebook intrusion decision is being heralded as something of a watershed but really just marks the card of digital media techniques as a no-go for snooping journalists. But it does somewhat miss the point that while digital audit trails make it easier to check whether journalists are crossing the line, in the real world they do so all the time.

The breach, of Clause 5 of the Editors’ Code of Practice, bars the media from “intruding on the shock of grief of a bereaved individual”. If journalists do that by Facebook, there’s a growing chance they’ll be snagged. Whereas in newsrooms around the country, you can still hear news editors saying to beat reporters “this person has just been killed in a crash. Get yourself around to see the family for a quote”.

As a hack, doorstepping was something that got me some of the stories that developed my career, but something that lives long in the memory. Child fatalities were the most harrowing. A colleague who knocked on the door of a remote farm to interview a mother who had just lost three sons in a smash found she “knew he’d be coming” and had baked him a cake. Still in shock, a shotgun was propped against her kitchen door and he made a swift retreat. After he got the quote.

That media desperation to get a stronger story than the competition did, in my experience, prompt journalists to go way beyond the moral line and breach the code of conduct by introducing on grief, often at its height. Yet there are many cases, such as the Haitian tragedy, where doorstepping people can be for the greater good.

Reports from the scene can deliver awareness and tell the true story to the rest of the world. The full horror may be something that is difficult to stomach and many parents consider to be adults-only material. But, perhaps ironically, the more casualties the more ‘doorstepping’ can be a good thing. The media has an important role to play in ensuring help arrives for those left behind.

Equally, doorstepping in the case of an individual death can be justified if, in the instance of a tragic accident for example, the grief expressed by families can be a force for change or help save other lives by raising awareness.

But turning up minutes after, or even before, the family has been informed by police is a dirty business and typically only the interests of the media are served. It’s something the media has practiced for years, but with digital media making the methods more transparent – and giving families the ability to make their displeasure known – the PCC may have less to police if the press feels forced to redraw its own line of acceptability.

An American company has come up with the idea of introducing a sarcasm punctuation mark to overcome any ambiguity or misunderstanding when making comments in emails, and obviously an American company would be best placed to do this.

I say that because Americans are masters of sarcasm.

We English use it all the time but Americans have a rapier-like grasp of the subtleties of sarcasm so are always several steps ahead.

The SarkMark can be used as a tool for indicating irony too, and again let me state that an American company has come up with this idea.

And if you’ve read this far, let me just say that you’re looking great today.

There’s an old adage that worker bees slave away all their lives and have nothing to show for it from their employer but a cheap gold watch.

RMT boss Bob Crow is still very much in employment, yet has already bagged an altogether more enviable timepiece.

At our Mandrake talking shop last night, the man dubbed “the most hated in London” gave a bombastic and credible account of his views on how the British workplace – and society – should function in order to be fair to all.

While I’m sure he has had tougher gigs, you have to admire the pluck of the Essex-born industrial action figurehead. Addressing a room full of entrepreneurs, managers and marketing types, he gave a 360 degree view of why he believes the union movement is still very much relevant today, why private healthcare and education are immoral, and why Baroness Thatcher is not his best ever mate.

And a stern rebuke of political parties and the forthcoming election (“you can’t get a fag paper between ‘em), which was difficult to argue with. At a time when party politics continues to appear pretty bland to the electorate, the RMT’s views at least stand out from the crowd. Not that Crow has his eyes on a move into Westminster anytime soon.

After a barrage of heated questions about taxpayer burdens and the morals of pension debts, I thought I’d ask him a lighter question, a bit more gossip mag than weekend supplement. So I enquired what his most extravagant purchase had been.

After all the earlier bluster, he stopped, looked a little sheepish and appeared to blush. A £2,800 Rolex, he then said, with deliberate fervour.

At least some things are likely to run on time.

The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) has long-taunted the PR sector with its baseball bat approach to managing copyright assurance. Yet having oiled its weapon in a bold bid to modernise its business for rapidly diversifying media, the rot is setting in.

It’s a topic that has stirred passions on Wadds’ blog recently. And now web monitoring service Meltwater has mounted a legal challenge to the NLA’s bid to charge licence fees for the receipt and passage of online media content, it looks like the NLA’s days – unless it makes substantial changes to its ways – are numbered.

I’ve spent a few hours wading through Meltwater’s statement to the forthcoming Copyright Tribunal. Meltwater is seeking to have the end-user licence obligation of the NLA’s new scheme removed. Doing so would render the NLA’s web licensing scheme practically impotent.

Meltwater’s approach in bringing the tribunal hinges on its insistence that end-users who receive its lists of breaking online news stories are not breaking copyright law in any way, so the NLA cannot legally compel them to pay licence fees that assure their copyright compliance.

At the core of Meltwater’s case is its belief that the information it provides to its customers is “a necessary step in the act of receiving a literary work”.

In my view, that is very difficult to argue against given current copyright legislation and the fact that the internet – and recent media trends in particular – has thrown the very intention of copyright law into question.

Meltwater’s business model is centred on ‘signposting’ news that breaks online. That is what it does. Any copyright obligations are between the publisher and the end-user, its case says.

The NLA has always tried to play piggy-in-the-middle, but that role is not longer a straightforward one. And may not even be legal, according to Meltwater.

There are many more fundamental questions covered by Meltwater’s claim to the Copyright Tribunal. They include whether URLs are part of the copyrighted literary work – how can they be, it would be the same as copyrighting paper surely? It reminds us that publishers statement terms and conditions of use on each of their web sites, so a blanket approach to managing copyright assurance is fundamentally flawed.

It makes a case for the NLA’s contractual terms being unfair and/or impractical, calling for a far lower cap on licensees’ financial liability and for the NLA to bear its own costs when carrying out on-site audits to ensure copyright adherence. And it points to the NLA’s refusal to give mid or long-term pricing assurances as being unfair.

By my reckoning the NLA’s attempt to get a tight grip on ’copyright’ licensing for changing media is at best clumsy. It smacks of desperation and the justification for its approach to online media is pretty short-sighted.

For me, there’s a broader consideration too. Print media owns copyright and so the NLA original intention of providing a service for publishers to at least recoup some of the value from others’ use of their material was spot on, even if it became more and more aggressive in its methods.

Digital content is completely different and cannot be licensed in anything like the same way. Publishers can exercise some control over how their content is used because they provide it directly to readers rather than selling it via newsstands.

The big copyright question is not how best to tax the industry, rather, the big content question is how media owners will choose to make money from their text, images, audio and video. Once that has been determined, they can manage copyright infringements themselves.

In Meltwater’s words, if the NLA scheme is allowed to continue in its current form, “the internet would simply cease to function as any publisher of online content.”

If the NLA has had its day and an article eventually appears about its demise, I might consider making a few copies.

We’re a consultancy, not an agency.

I’m a PR professional, not just a PR guy.

I’m a consultant, not just a do-er.

We’re strategic, we rise way above mere tactics.

All things PR firms and people have been saying for years. So why is it, then, that each year when we should be reviewing our rates with confidence and determining increases ‘because we’re worth it’ that we frequently chicken out?

There are some notable exceptions: agencies (alright, consultancies) that put a rate review as a fixed item on the board meeting agenda and have a common-sense, systemic approach to introducing changes. But from conversations I’ve had recently and over the years with people at a pretty broad spectrum of agencies, this is certainly not the norm.

The more usual scenario is a hasty review based largely on guesswork and assumption, then a pretty hamfisted communique to clients in hushed tones.

Costs go up. That’s a basic economic factor. Inflation may not be flavour of the month, but rarely are PR rates index-linked anyway. When I get a letter or email to tell me that my TV package, my utilities or my insurance is going up, there’s typically a sensible (albeit not always completely credible) explanation to accompany it. No-one likes paying more, but if it’s a service you value, you understand. It can also remind you what you’re actually getting for your money and why you need or like it.

Yet PR seems to have adopted a similar stigma to council tax or prices at the pump – there’s a ground-in fear that customers will just shake their heads and view it as having to pay more, yet get nothing more in return.

It’s daft. PR’s modernisation is, steadily and on many fronts, making its costs easier to justify. It remains, and probably will always remain, something that seems opaque to those who do not bathe regularly in the editorial world. But as media diversifies and consumption increases, its influence continues to be better understood.

There should be an expectation set that rates are reviewed at least annually, and that frank and constructive conversations will be had with clients at those times so that they can explain the rationale to their colleagues. If not, we’re pursuing a slow road to waning profitability and eventual death. Dramatic maybe, but the only way to interject would be less frequent but more stark price hikes, which are invariably more difficult to justify.

Rather than pussyfooting around about price changes, we should use them as an opportunity to underline our value (even if rates are staying static) and have conversations with clients about how PR is helping their businesses.