My Top 10 Blogs of 2018

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As we begin to look back to 2018, it was another year of wall-to-wall Trump, bad behaviour by politicians, business leaders and others, and a bus crash that shocked our country. I blogged about it all.

 

Each week I use Google Analytics (great tool for bloggers) to see how popular each blog is and I tracked the number of views each blog got during the year.

There are a lot of factors that go into why one blog may be more popular than another, but without further ado, here are my Top 10 blogs of the year, based on their popularity.

10. Don't Blame Facebook - April 11

2018 was a rough year for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. There was the story about Russians using it to influence the 2016 US election, it was revealed the privacy of thousands and thousands of users was comprised and Zuckerberg had to testify in Washington, as politicians old enough to be his grandparents asked him how Facebook works. This blog laid out how Facebook advertising works and why it can be so effective. I’m sure Zuckerberg wishes the good ‘ol days were back.

 

9. Why the Kareem Hunt Story is Important to All of Us - December 5

This was last week’s blog. It slid into the number 9 position of the year in the last week possible. The story about the suspension of the Kansas City Chiefs running back should serve notice to anyone running an organization. It’s not just celebrities and star athletes who get into PR messes – it can happen to people in all walks of life, but unfortunately too many organizations aren’t prepared to handle situations like this until it’s too late.

8. Lies, Spin and Dishonesty - What Media Training Shouldn't Be - August 8

This blog answered a question I’ve been asked a lot over the years.  It comes in different versions, but basically gets down to “What happens when you do media training.” This blog gives the answer of what takes place in a typical media training workshop. It also got into what media training isn’t. It isn’t a day spent showing people how to lie better.

7. An Olympic-Sized Bad Interview - November 7

A week and a half before Calgarians killed any chance of their city hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics, CBC Radio did one of the most awkward interviews of the year. It was with the federal Sports Minister, who started the interview by seemingly reading from a list of Olympic highlights from over the years and trying to make it sound as though they were coming off the top of her head. Believe it or not, the interview went downhill from there.

6. Breaking News - The Anatomy of a Tragic News Story - April 18

In the next couple of weeks, I’m sure Canadian news organizations will announce the number one news story of the year was the Humboldt Broncos bus crash tragedy from April. This blog took a look at how major stories like this are covered by the news media and why they’re not the easiest stories to cover, despite the interest in them.

5. Rating Their Media Skills - October 31

In late October I did six training and speaking appearances in Calgary in two weeks and saw Mayor Naheed Nenshi on television a number of times. I thought about how good he was and whether he was as good with the media as Edmonton’s Mayor Don Iveson.  Then I started comparing the two of them to Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Trudeau and decided to give them report cards. Just because I can.

4. 2 Tragedies, 2 Countries, 2 Responses - November 14

Within hours in November, there was a terrible mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California and the bombing of a county office building in Sherwood Park, just outside Edmonton. This blog looked at the two stories and how they were handled very differently by police and the news media. It again illustrated the differences between Canada and our neighbour to the south.

3. A Bridge to Political Posturing - August 1

As I get older I hate political excuses, lies and posturing more all the time. This blog looked at Edmonton’s impressive Walterdale Bridge and why political reasons were behind the bridge being opened for traffic the year before without an official opening. The City of Edmonton eventually did an official opening, about a month later.

2. Lawyers Need Media Training Too - March 14

I was pleasantly surprised to see this blog become so popular.  It looked at a really embarrassing news conference called by a Vancouver lawyer who was defending the man who was in the middle of the RCMP security scandal during Trudeau’s ill-fated India trip.  The news conference was even worse than the PM’s trip.

1. Why Mike's News Was the Greatest Store Ever - July 11

I’m not sure if you’re like me, but each summer I tend to think back to summers gone by and this year when I did, I spent a lot of time thinking about my favourite downtown Edmonton store when I was a teenager- Mike’s News. This blog relived the experience of walking into Mike’s, looking at lengthy shelves loaded with magazines, smelling tobacco and listening to creaking wooden floors, as I caught up on the latest news.