By Robert Hudson Westover
What does it mean to be seen, read or heard by over one
billion people? Well, apparently not much--or much.
I say this because as I completed a bibliography
(of sorts) of my published works, broadcasts, and newspaper quotes, I soon
realized that with the coin of the realm of what I do for a living in public
relations, media hits and impressions, I have, well, somewhat conquered the world. I mean
from just 1999 to 2000 my media impressions alone where over 100 million!
Like Johnny Cash, "I've been everywhere, man.”
Yet, unlike the country music legend, no one
knows my name, man. Truth is if I were to get hit (the bad kind of hit) by a
meteor doing yardwork the headlines would read: local man killed by meteor.
Not, “man who did all this amazing, fun and exciting stuff”—you know him,
right?
|
Robert in the New York Times, Easter Sunday, 1999 |
|
Robert standing next to a Smokey Bear sign in Griffith Park, Los Angeles |
So, all this begs the question: Why do so many of us in the
public relations world (and its cousin profession, advertising) desire that
brass ring of fame--of recognition?
And we do.
I guess it’s the desire to be relevant, immortal. Right? I
mean, we’re all going to go from this amusement park called Planet Earth sooner
or later—even if we can all live more than 100 years--someday our number comes up
and we’re escorted out of the place--with most of us leaving as if we had never been here at all.
I did have that moment of feeling relevant once and it was,
well, meteoric. It happened at work. A new intern had started for the summer.
She had come in from Los Angeles and me also being a native Los Angelino I went over to
introduce myself. As I welcomed her to the shop I said, “Hi, I’m Robert
Westover and I work on…” at that moment she looked like she had seen a ghost. I
had to asked her if everything was ok—I mean she was literally shaking. She
said yes everything was ok and then explained to me that an article I had written
about conservation
vs preservation in managing our national forests and grasslands had
inspired her to follow a career in wilderness land management!
So perhaps this is why we carve our names into those
proverbial trees or want to have a building, park bench, or something named
after us. It’s our hope, I think, that future generations might stumble on one
of our achievements and connect the dots to get an outline of who and what we
were and how we added to the Autobiography of Us.
Now I can see why I have done a lot of carving on trees. Maybe
I might even have a billion more carved by the time I’m escorted out of
Planet Earth having been “everywhere, man.”
My Bibliography and How I Came Up With Over One Billion
Impressions
The list below is by far not exhaustive of all hits and
impressions my news stories have generated over the
past 40 years. In fact, none of my media awareness campaigns where my name
isn’t mentioned appear below.
I’ve organized my major media awareness and personal
achievement third-party validation* reach into nine categories:
·
The SS United States awareness campaign (1998 to 2005),
·
Stories related to my service in the United
State Marine Corps (2004 to 2006),
·
My historic run for Congress in 2000 (as the
first openly Gay man in Virginia’s history),
·
My time as a ballet dancer and actor (1982 to 1992),
·
My husband and my LGBTQ activist work (2012 to 2015),
·
My performance art character, Lord Westover, and
other royalty related stories (2010 to present),
·
My articles/social media livestreams with the
USDA Forest Service (2007 to present),
· My work in bringing awareness to the importance
of the Digital Millennium Copy Right Act (1999 to 2000),
Miscellaneous: Jackie Kennedy connection, book credits, career promotion articles, movie, TV and other videos.
|
A photo seen around the world of Robert and Tom taken on the day the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay marriage equality. This was the lead photo on the Huffington Post that day. (Courtesy photo, Huffington Post) |
I need to point out that many of my hits and impression
happened when the Internet age was just getting started (or before the Internet
even existed!) so the reach was much more limited. For instance, before the
ubiquitous use of Internet search engines the New York Times, like all major
newspapers, could count its possible impression by its subscribership x 3 as
it was estimated that up to 3 people would share a story via hardcopy in those olden
days. In fact, this is exactly how those of us in the Public Relations world
calculated the worth of a hit to our clients.
|
Robert's first news story |
Now, with something like 20 million subscribers, and the
ability to easily send a story to reach far more than 3 people per subscriber,
the impressions generated by the New York Times is potentially well over 100
million. It is for this reason you’ll notice that my hits in the New York Times,
that were not picked up by its syndicate, were in the several millions vs the
syndicate pickups that exceeded 75 million impressions—but would now be in the
hundreds of millions. It’s a little confusing for sure!
By far the largest media story I was ever part of happened
in June of 2015 when the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gay and Lesbians
having the legal right to marry nationally. The side story of my marriage of 15
years (at the time--we're now at 22 years and counting!) to my husband, Tom Fulton, was picked up by nearly every
major media outlet in the US and by the Agence France-Presse (AFP), the
oldest and largest media outlet in the world. With bureaus in over 100
countries the AFP’s potential impressions exceed 2 billion. I cut this figure
to 500 million as many of the dozens of newspapers and broadcast news stations
that picked up the story internationally were the English editions as was the
case in both China and India.
And just for fun I added my book sales and my acting career
“hits” as they certainly deserve some mention, though the impressions are
difficult to calculate.
National/International Broadcasts:
CNN
(SS United States Foundation, 1999) 15 million
impressions
ABC
World News Tonight (SS United States Foundation, 2000) 20 million
impressions
BBC World News (SS United States Foundation, 2000) 350
million impressions
PBS
New Hour (LGBT issues 2015) 10 million impressions
AFP
(LGBT Issues 2015 – Was picked up and broadcast internationally in dozens of
news stations and newspapers as well as being picked up by Getty
Images.) 500 million impressions
PBS
News Hour (Capitol Christmas Tree 2015) 10 million impressions
Op Eds and other published pieces:
Soundings Magazine (SS United States Foundation, 1999)
Westmoreland Times (SS United States Foundation, 2000)
Letters to the Editor:
Christian Science Monitor (Ballet 1990) 100 thousand
impressions
New
York Times (SS United States Foundation, 2004) 3 million impressions
USA Today (SS United States Foundation, 2000) 5 million
impressions
Features/Articles/Mentions in Newspapers:
Morro Bay Sun (Ballet, 1981)
San Luis Obispo Tribune (Ballet, 1981)
Associated Press (Chicago Sun Times—SS United States
Foundation, 1998) 2 million impressions
Washington
Post (job promotion/Arnold Worldwide, 1999) 1 million impressions
Washington
Post (Run for Congress, 2000) 1 million impressions
Wired Magazine
(DMCA cover story, 2001) 3 million impressions
Maritime
Magazine (SS United States Foundation, 2003)
Honolulu
Star Bulletin (SS United States Foundation, 2003)
Seattle
Times (SS United States Foundation, 2003)
Readers
Digest (USMC, 2005) 100 million impressions
Washington
Post (Washington, DC ANC work, 2005) 1 million impressions
Washington
Post (Grand Mother’s obituary —appeared first in the San Diego Times Union,
2007) 1.5 million impressions
USA
Today (Real Estate Issues, 2009) 5 million impressions
Washington Post (Lord Westover/State of the Union Contest, 2010)
1 million impressions
Yahoo
News (Royal Wedding/William and Kate, 2011) 3 million impressions
Christian Science Monitor (Lord Westover at John Stewart
Rally, 2010) 100,000 impressions
South Tahoe News (Forest Service, Fire story, 2014)
TSI
Magazine (Forest Service antique furniture story, 2021)
The
Patriot (Forest Service fire story, 2021)
Roanoke
Times (also appeared in Advent News and Opera News Forest Service fall
colors, 2021)
Quotes in Articles of Major National and International
Media Outlets:
New
York Times (SS United States Foundation--Save the SSUS–1999 front page
national section and entire syndicate including Dallas
Morning News, Detroit Free Press and the Times Herald) 75 million
impressions
New York Times (SS United States Foundation), Visit to New
Port News in Metro section)—1999) 2 million impressions
New
York Times (SS United States Foundation, 2003 NCL buys SSUS/Front page
national section entire syndicate including the Times Herald) 10 million
impressions
New
York Times (SS United States Foundation--Commodore Anderson obit– 2004) 4
million impressions
Newsday (SS United States Foundation – 1999)
Newsday (SS United States Foundation, Book – 2002)
Philadelphia Inquirer (SS United States Foundation, 1999 –
2004) 500 thousand impressions
Orange
County Register (SS United States Foundation, 2002-2006) 300 thousand
impressions
Wall
Street Journal (USMC 2004) 6 million impressions
Huffington Post (LGBTQ issues – lead picture 2015) 12
million impressions
CBS News (LGBTQ Issues 2015) 15 million impressions
Yahoo
News (LGBTQ issues 2015) 3 million impressions
Muck Racker
(Stories written about the USDA Forest Service—not exhaustive)
Books:
SS United
States, Fastest Ship in the World (Turner) sold over 20,000 copies
Lessons
in Nobility (self-published) sold over 1000 copies
Nobility
Lessons for Dummies (self-published) sold over 10,000 copies
Academic Recommendations/Scholastic References:
Course
Hero (Forest Service – Conservation vs Preservation)
Course
Hero (LGBT+ Issues)
William
& Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review (Forest Service --
Conservation vs Preservation)
A
Man and His Ship – The Story of America’s Greatest Naval Architect (SS United
States Foundation reference)
Janet,
Jackie and Lee (Jackie Kennedy bio where I am both quoted and referenced)
Jackie: Public, Private, Secret (Jackie Kennedy bio where I am both quoted and referenced)
Movies/TV/Livestreams/YouTube:
IMDb (entertainment listing)
Uncle Joe
Shannon (MGM/Actor -- 1978)
Love Thy
Neighbor (ABC/Actor -- 1982)
MCI (national ad campaign/actor--1993)
Historic run for Congress (News 8, Washington, DC)
DNC National Convention in Los Angeles (News 3 LA -- DNC spokesman, 2000)
History of
Veteran’s Day (History Channel/highlighted--2004)
Meet Robert Hudson Westover (Faces of the Forest Service, 2016)
Woodsy
Owl’s 50th Birthday (Forest Service livestream)
Pride Month
(Forest Service livestream)
JFK's Summer White House (You tube video that features Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss, Jackie Kennedy's beloved stepbrother.)
Smokey Bear’s
78th Birthday (Ad Council livestream)
*Third Party Validation is a term used in public relations to emphasis the importance of a media outlet selecting to broadcast a story without being paid to do so by the firm or author. Unlike paying for advertising space, something anyone can do, third party validation means one has had to convince an editorial board that the story is worth being disseminated to the public.