NASA PAO Can't and/or Won't Coordinate With Itself

Keith’s note: The other day NASA sent out media advisories urging news media to cover NASA-sponsored and related events at the Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco from 9-13 December. But as is usually the case NASA cannot seem to coordinate among itself when more than one center is involved.
NASA HQ and NASA Ames put out media advisories that state “Briefings will be streamed for registered journalists on the AGU press conference Web page. They will not be carried on NASA Television.”
JPL put out the same media advisory but added detail:
“The briefings will be streamed for registered journalists on the AGU press conference Web page. Some news conference will be available via live streaming at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2, as follows:
Monday, 9 a.m. PST- Curiosity Rover Update
Monday, 10:30 a.m. PST – Mapping Snowpack from the Sky
Tuesday, 9 a.m. PST – Improving Natural Hazard Warnings
Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. PST – News from Juno’s Earth Flyby
Tuesday, 11:30 a.m. PST – Dynamic Mars Over Time
Thursday, 11:30 a.m. PST – New Results from Cassini Mission to Saturn
The briefings will not be carried on NASA Television.”
While these events will not be sent out on NASA Television, most people who watch NASA Television on the web do so via NASA’s UStream webstreaming accounts. So, why can’t NASA’s TV page link to these webcasts? Clearly there is some infrastructure in place whereby JPL is able to stream events over UStream. The events listed as being streamed are only JPL-associated events with JPL people involved. Why can’t this web streaming hardware be left in place to stream other NASA events? AGU apparenly has a UStream system in place, why can’t NASA tap that?
More importantly, why didn’t JPL PAO tell ARC, HQ, and other NASA centers that this would be streamed so as to make sure that the media advisories that “NASA” sent out were all in synch? Curiously both the JPL and HQ media advisories list Stephen Cole from NASA HQ PAO on them – so there is some level of contact between JPL and HQ PAO – at least on paper. Coles’s response to my inquiries on this matter: “confusing, I know, but such is the wonderful world of multimedia color we live in.” In other words ‘yea, so what’?
In addition to these AGU media advisories there is a separate NASA HQ advisory that was put out for a Mars Curiosity radiation briefing at AGU. MSL is a JPL mission. But wait, since no one on the panel is from JPL, JPL is not going to live stream it. But NASA HQ says they will provide an audio stream for news media and the public and JPL makes mo mention of the event or the audio streaming. And you wonder why the agency has 3 (or 4) official MSL websites?
Last week NASA SMD held an online Town Hall meeting with the planetary science community to discuss budget issues. Next week at AGU there will be many more of these official NASA-sanctioned events wherein NASA representatives tell attendees (taxpayers too) what the challengers are in the months and years ahead. There is no apparent way for NASA researchers to participate in these Town Hall meetings unless they pay the expense of going to a meeting operated by a third party.
AGU claims there is a virtual viewing option (which is confusing to use and tries to charge you $103 for “free” access) that offers free webstreaming but does not allow any interaction – which is odd since its rather simple to enable the chat function on these webstreaming events. I am now told someone is going to “fix” that. Meawhile, media has some access to online NASA press events but that assumes that the AGU decides that you warrant media accreditation. NASA has no input to that process.
In summary: instead of having all NASA AGU-related events in one place so as to best inform the news media, scientific community, and public as to what is happening and how to see/participate, NASA’s directorates, centers, programs, and Headquarters all seem to be running in a different direction ignoring obvious overlaps, points of cooperation, and ways to utilize limited fiscal resources.