Let's ditch the algorithms

Welcome to Field Notes, little digital postcards from the public sphere and my own messy worlds of work, family and middle-aged uncertainty. Wishing you were here, and please write back.

Unprecedented scale

Few cover the PR trade as thoughtfully as my friend and colleague Arun Sudhaman, and his take on the early days of the Omnicom takeover of IPG is reassuringly measured.

I’ve been a little surprised by some of the almost innocent commentary surrounding the acquisition on LinkedIn, but maybe I’m just a little jaded after a 25 years on the inside. The more I think about it, the more inevitable it seems that at least one of the iconic PR brand will be sold off.

Barriers to entry

Every Friday on The Week Unspun, I join Farzana Baduel and Doug Downs to look at the headlines from the eyes of professional communicators. Last week: the bid for Warner Brothers, a new UK initiative to promote the legal trade, proposed new requirements to enter the US, and a whole slew of predictions for 2026. Also on YouTube and Apple. Give us a like a share, if you dig it.

Reverse apocalypse

Wouldn’t it be great if we all just, you know, got along? Not so fast. Pluribus is the consensus favorite in our house this season. Reviewed here in The Guardian.

Crisis survey help

My Lisbon-based colleague Phil Borremans is looking for practitioner input for his 2026 Crisis/Emergency Comms Trends Report and needs practitioners to complete a survey: 12-15 minutes, covering AI in crisis response, trust issues, deepfakes, disinformation, org readiness. All confidential, reported in aggregate.

Too soon?

I listened to Ezra Klein interview California governor Gavin Newsom and I think he might just run away with the Democratic presidential nomination for 2028.

But seriously

Shane Legg, Google DeepMind founder, says it’s time to take artificial general intelligence seriously. BTW: I host a WhatsApp chat on AI and communications, with regular input like this from Andrew Bruce Smith (and others). You can join here.

Everything is television

This piece by Derek Thompson really struck a chord: “A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television.”

I think it goes beyond media. I wrote a paper last week for a university board I’m on and I couldn’t help thinking it would be a lot more impactful as a TikTok video.

Mature Content

My friend and fellow American in London Delia Lloyd publishes Mature Content and it makes me smile every time it hits my inbox. It’s not about what you probably think it’s about.

Flesh

I’ve drifted away from fiction - from long-form writing of any kind, actually - but this Booker Prize winner by David Szalay has reeled me back in and thrown me in the boat.

Revolutionary times

Not apocalyptic ones. A conversation with Ivan Krastev.

Lives well lived

And finally, 2025 took two extraordinary creatures from us in the space of five months. We said farewell to Poppy and Hugo with a little celebration at Hampstead Heath, the place they loved more than any other. And they loved a lot of places. They were very good dogs, those little dingos.

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