Stories by Seth Arenstein

The start of the year means many things: new goals, fresh opportunities and, of course, the annual Trust Barometer report from Edelman. This indicator of global attitudes has been a sobering read during the past few years. It’s not too much different in 2018, although media’s low trust factor hasn’t slipped too much.

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel announcements in PR and marketing. This week’s stories include several about the Dr. Larry Nassar scandal at Michigan State University, Cision closes its deal to acquire PRIME and Rupert Murdoch suggests Facebook and Google pay for the premium content it carries.

We know brands and fans of brands take photos and post them on Instagram and Tweeter. So which brands find that their logos are pictured the most on those two visual platforms? Brandwatch looked at 100,000 brands to find out.

It’s not a secret that Americans lack confidence in the media. Here’s another study verifying that point and offering findings that are very close to those contained in the Edelman Trust Barometer. Once again fake news is a huge issue, the study finds.

PR pros and marketers are awash in data and the future doesn’t indicate a slowing of that situation. The question then becomes what should you measure? In addition, how do you report insights from all that data to executives who are pressed for time and may have short attention spans? A quartet of PR pros provide best practices to tackle these issues.

In previous editions we presented wrap-ups of the most-engaged B2B and B2C brands ( PRN , January 9 and January 16, 2018). This week we offer a look at the nonprofits whose social posts attracted the most consumer engagement.

One of the big data security stories last week was the $17 million sum insurer AETNA will pay to some customers as a result of compromising their personal data. Ironically with all the hype surrounding cybersecurity, this one was totally analogue. On the other hand, are PR firms secure from cybersecurity threats? A Gould + Partners quick poll reveals the disturbing answer.

President Trump’s pounding of the media has hurt trust in journalism tremendously. A new poll shows Americans trust their media even less than citizens in Turkey and Russia, whose lack of press freedoms is well known. It’s enough to make brands want to re-think the idea of creating a newsroom.

CEOs need to adapt to the times, a new report from Ruder Finn says. The modern CEO needs to be engaged and open to authentic communication, it says, and that includes social media. What the report calls high-performing CEOs are active across social media platforms, but are avoiding posting about current events, progressive issues and politics.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in the world of communications, marketing and PR. This week we have stories about President Trump’s awards for the awful media, and journalism’s response, France’s attempt to legislate away fake news, Facebook’s algorithm changes and Univision’s Jennifer Ball has a new job.