Email is the communication tool we all love to hate. It’s fast, inexpensive, convenient and effective. It also is overused or used inappropriately. From sports teams to fashion retailers to political candidates, everyone, it seems, wants my attention and my dollars.
A few years ago, I heard an NPR story about a man who had translated Herman Melville’s Moby Dick into emoji. It seemed yet another cruel assault on the English language and, for that matter, on language in general.
It’s that time of year again. Communications planning time! Don’t have one? Maybe this is the year to create one. And if you do have one, it’s time to examine how well you did against this past year’s efforts and what adjustments you would make for the coming 12 months.
Several years ago, a colleague asked me to do an informational interview with a young woman who was thinking about getting into public relations. Happy to do this as a favor to a helpful colleague, I met with the young woman on a Saturday, answered her questions, and gave her the names of a few others to contact. I never heard from her again.
While doing a radio interview recently, I did what I tell my clients to do—taped myself so I could listen to the interview and grab some soundbites for the future. Instead, I discovered that I have an “um” and “you know” problem.
The California drought brings into sharp focus the value and fragility of a vital natural resource. After four years of little rain, the state is so parched and the situation so dire that the governor imposed severe restrictions on water usage, and those who appear to defy those limits find themselves in the headlines.
It seems everyone and everything these days is strategic. We have strategic plans, enter into strategic partnerships, undertake strategic marketing, make strategic hires, and even, according to one State Department official, practice “strategic patience” in the Middle East.
It seems that my opinion is in high demand these days. Companies from Comcast to Toyota to my neighborhood dining spot all want to know how they are doing. Or do they?
Brian Williams may have disappeared from our television screens. But the issue that led to his becoming the news instead of merely reporting it, has not—and that is, trust. For a journalist who is supposed to seek and tell the truth, embellishing the truth is careless malpractice.
The start of any new year […]
