I am often asked to define the value of a public relations firm and what our services actually can bring to a client or potential client. Having served on “both sides” of the equation—as a corporate communications officer for two Fortune 500 companies and as a board member hiring PR firms—and now as a founder of a leading PR firm, I feel uniquely qualified to answer.

My family is from Chile, and despite the fact that I’ve never spent more than two weeks there at a time, when I am in Santiago or spending time in Viña del Mar surrounded by my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, I really feel at home. Growing up, I always had to explain to friends that it’s pronounced “CHEE-Leh” not “Chili.” And no, it is not something found in the refrigerator next to the ketchup, it is the country in South America that looks like a piece of spaghetti and runs down the western coast.

As we head into the last few months of the year, many PR professionals find themselves using Q4 as a time to make sure all the promises they made to their clients a few months ago will be delivered—if not surpassed—by year’s end. This is why I think the release of the Media Spamming Charter couldn’t have come at a better time.

I am on a flight to LA, tepid decaf alongside me, watching one of those drippy in-flight movies where women flee to Italy to find true love, and they spend much of the movie laughing alongside their elder-stateswoman actress counterparts, their faces iridescent in the glow of candlelight the color of honey. There is always some clever, devilishly handsome chap, who ends up stealing her heart.

Recently, I found myself advising a client that all financial journalists secretly wish to be reporters of general news.

“I went to a garden party” (with apologies to former teen idol Ricky Nelson) last night in Georgetown. It was a combination birthday celebration and book signing with Arianna Huffington who wrote the New York Times bestseller Third World America. 

The Washington Post reports that an Iranian judge has sentenced a blogger to 19 years in prison for…well…blogging. Iranian-Canadian citizen Hossein Derakhshan, who wrote his blog from Canada, appears to have been nabbed following a trip visiting Israel, charged officially with cooperation with hostile countries.

The Department of State’s official blog turned three this past weekend.

Alec J. Ross, special assistant for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told a rapt audience this week that he typically uses RSS feeds and news digests prepared by erstwhile State public affairs staffers to keep abreast of breaking news on the road. But when he’s been away from his desk, or not connected while riding his daily MARC train from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., he jumps on Twitter feeds. That’s the fastest way to get news bites.

Last week’s four-hour outage of social media behemoth, Facebook, caused global pandemonium across the social media universe. Fans were left with a sense of loneliness and despair of not knowing what their friends and colleagues were thinking, where they were going for coffee, what was happening around the world, or what their latest political thoughts were.