Monday Morning Media Minute

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Follow the KISS Rule:  Keep It Short and Simple.

I saw the movie Inception over the weekend.  It’s getting rave reviews because of its complicated, multi-layered plot.  Making the audience work to follow the story can work for a movie.  But it’s not a good idea for telling your story.

Don’t make your audience work to understand your message.  Because most of the time they won’t.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans.  But you already knew that — unless you’ve been on vacation and ignoring the news or in a coma.

The anniversary — along with stories examining where New Orleans stands with its recovery — was well covered in the media.  No surprise there.

And Harry Shearer has made great use of the anniversary to publicize a new documentary about Katrina called The Big Uneasy that will be shown tonight in about 200 theaters across the U.S.

Shearer was all over the media last week talking about why he believes the devastation from Katrina was a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster — and why he believes the mistakes that led to that damage are being repeated.  The movie was the hook, but his warning about the future of New Orleans was the message.

Shearer will be on hand in person tonight for a screening in New Orleans, which will give him another round of media visibility for his movie and his message.

Shearer’s publicity campaign is a perfect example of how to use an anniversary to generate news.  He’s gotten far more attention for his message through the media coverage he’s generated over the past week than he’s likely to get from the movie itself.

As far as I can tell, the movie will show one time in one theater in the Denver area.  And that apparently is typical of what’s happening in other cities as well.

Anniversaries of events that made news often make news, too.  If there’s an upcoming anniversary of a news making event that fits your story, is there a way you can turn it into an opportunity to publicize your message?

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

To be a good storyteller, be a good writer.  And a ruthless editor of your own words.

To be a ruthless editor of your own words, put your ego on the shelf.  Fall in love with your writing and it won’t be as good as it can be.

Over the years, I’ve come up with some editing games to help me improve my first drafts.  Here are a few of them:

• Eliminate widows and orphans: Go through your document and edit any paragraph with a word or two stranded alone on the last line.  Most of the time the words I delete to get rid of the orphans didn’t add anything.  So, my writing becomes tighter.  A more extreme version is to go after the widows — a single line from a paragraph on a page by itself.
• Make your document one page shorter: Your document’s six pages long?  Eliminate words and phrases until you have a five-page document.  If it was easy, repeat the exercise to make it a four-page document.
• Lower the word count: A variation of the “one page shorter” game.  Check the word count of your document and arbitrarily pick a lower number, then eliminate words and phrases until you reach your goal.  If it was easy, pick a lower number and do it again.  Keep trimming until you can’t take anything else out without deleting something important.
• Replace commas with periods: If you use a lot of commas, consider replacing as many of them as you can with periods.  Your document won’t be shorter.  But your sentences will be.  And your writing will be punchier.  No, you won’t be able to eliminate every comma.  And you don’t want to.
• Delete empty words: Replace “in order to” with “to,” for example.  My favorite target:  “that.”  Most of the time taking “that” out of a sentence will make your writing tighter without affecting your meaning.  No, you won’t be able to eliminate all of them.  But declare war on “that” and your writing will be crisper.
• Listen to what you write: Something I learned as a speechwriter.  If it doesn’t sound right there’s a better way to say it.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Hook me at the beginning if you want me to notice your story.  Then keep it interesting if you want me to stick around until you’re done telling it.

Good storytellers know it’s important to grab their audience’s attention right from the start.  That’s why the lead of a news story is so important.  And it’s why you need a strong, attention-getting lead for your news releases and pitch letters as well.

There are many kinds of good leads. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Ask a question. Asking a question intriguing enough that the rest of us will want to know the answer is a good way to get reporters to read your news release to learn your answer.  Not everyone agrees with me on this one.  Some purists believe beginning a story with a question is a no-no.  Why would you ignore such a powerful way to bring me into your story?
  Example: Why are local bird watchers putting down their binoculars and picking up protest signs?
• Start with an anecdote. News is about people and things that affect people. Anecdotes humanize your story. A good anecdote is a great lead for a story about an individual or a group of people.
  Example: Joan Doe has spent the last 43 years helping others. On Tuesday, several dozen of them will be on hand for her final day at work to say thank you and tell her how she changed their lives forever.
• Say something unexpected. We’re hardwired to notice the unexpected — a strange noise that may indicate a problem with your car or a slight movement by a stranger on a dark street.  It’s a survival technique.  Because we’re hardwired to pay attention to the unexpected, a lead that surprises your audience is a great way to get their attention.
  Example:  Giving away money isn’t always easy.
• Use a first-person story. A self-directed version of the anecdotal lead.  Don’t overdo this one. But some feature stories lend themselves to first-person leads.  Just make sure there’s a reason for the rest of us to care.
  Example: The bear stared at me. I stared back. What I did next probably saved my life. And it could save yours.
• Just the facts. Once almost universally used for spot news stories and news releases, and still the most common type of lead for both.  Make sure your facts are interesting or your lead will be boring — and your news release will probably end up in the trash.
  Example: XYZ Company opened a new plant today in Localville, bringing 500 jobs and a $25 million annual payroll to the city.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

If you’re a public relations practitioner who writes news releases, speeches and articles for a living — as I am — there’s a pretty good chance you’ve written a lot of words attributed to someone else.  I certainly have.

And if you’re an executive who delivers a lot of speeches or gets quoted in news releases, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve said or been quoted as saying things written for you by someone else.

I believe that’s a perfectly acceptable practice under most circumstances.  Ghostwritten speeches, articles and news release quotes have become common.  Most of us understand and even expect it.

Nevertheless, there are some important boundaries that need to be respected.

For example, Scott McInnis, who’s a campaigning to become the Republican candidate for governor in Colorado, is in hot water for plagiarizing the words of a Colorado Supreme Court justice in an article about water issues that appeared under his byline.

When that story broke, McInnis tried to portray the incident as a case of a ghostwriter lifting the plagiarized material without his knowledge.  That ploy didn’t work very well.  One reason it didn’t work is that McInnis got paid — rather handsomely — for the article and one of the conditions of his contract was that he would write the material himself — not turn it over to a ghostwriter.

Dan Haley, editorial page editor for the Denver Post, cites another interesting example of questionable bylines.

Haley recounts an incident involving an op-ed article from Weld County Commissioner Sean Conway about a water storage project in northern Colorado.  The Post ran the article with the understanding it was original and exclusive to the Post, Haley says.

But Haley says the Greeley Tribune printed a nearly identical article two days before the Post article appeared.  The Greeley Tribune article appeared under the byline of a different Weld County commissioner.  And essentially the same article showed up and short time later in two other newspapers under the byline of State Rep. B.J. Nikkel.

Who actually wrote the article?  Here’s Haley’s description of what happened:

“I contacted Conway, who told me he wrote the column.  He did his own research and writing, and it took him upwards of eight hours to do it.

“And when he e-mailed it to me on July 5, he was offering an original piece that was exclusive to The Post, which follows our guidelines. He did not get paid.

“Yet he also shared it with other elected leaders, who he had been working with to generate publicity for a rally in support of the water project. He says he invited them to use whatever parts of his column they wanted.

“Basically, they lifted the entire column and presented it as their own.

“Is that plagiarism? It’s murky, given that Conway willingly shared his material. But one expert, speaking on a different matter, told The Post last week that presenting previously published work as your own is plagiarism.

“It definitely misleads readers, which is very concerning. Readers of those other publications were led to believe they were reading the words and thoughts of those authors.”

I encourage you to read Dan Haley’s article if you write words that get attributed to others – or if you’re someone who uses words written by someone else that get attributed to you.

That’s my’ two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Forget what you learned in writing class:  Cliches are your friend.

So are jingles, slogans, catch phrases, soundbites and any other rhetorical tricks that make what you say stick in the minds of your audience.  They make your message easier to remember.

Jonathan Alter, a senior editor of Newsweek and political analyst for MSNBC, suggested last week that one reason for President Obama’s growing unpopularity with his own progressive political base is that his administration “has not done a good enough job of framing its message in memorable terms.”  I agree.

Obama has a “disdain for soundbites,” Alter claimed during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball. “He thinks it’s somehow beneath him in some way to use catch phrases and slogans that linger in the mind.”

“When he went out (in front of TV cameras last week) after he won on financial regulation, what’s the takeaway?,” Alter asked.  “What’s the soundbite, if you will, that comes out of that that people can sink their teeth into?  He’s only said one memorable thing politically this whole year which is they, the Republicans, drove us into the ditch.  Don’t give them back the keys.  That’s a good line.  If he could keep saying that kind of thing and focus it as a choice, he could make some progress.”

I haven’t been keeping score.  So, I can’t say whether Alter’s right about his ditch/keys example being the only memorable political line Obama’s used this year.  Actually, I suspect he’s wrong.  And I suspect some of you have already thought of another example or two.

But, details aside, Alter makes a good point.  There’s some irony in the fact that a man who used his ability to deliver a rousing speech to get elected isn’t very good at soundbites.

He’s not alone.  One of the hardest challenges of my job is getting clients to deliver their message clearly enough to be heard, understood and remembered.  Soundbites, catch phrases, slogans — and cliches — will make your message more memorable.

I encourage you to use them.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Sometimes the best response to a story you don’t like is no response.

The problem with responding to a negative story — even if you feel it’s wrong — is that your response may keep a bad story alive longer than it would live on its own.

Attacking a negative story that’s clearly true?  That’s just drawing more attention to the story while picking a fight you can’t win.  That’s a losing strategy.

Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed Republican running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has threatened to sue Reid for posting an old version of her campaign website that includes some of her more controversial opinions on Social Security, health care and other topics.  Angle’s campaign had replaced the old version with one designed to be less controversial.

She’s not challenging the authenticity of the posting by Reid’s campaign.  Instead, she’s accusing Reid of copyright and intellectual property violations.

The result has been a lot of media coverage of the controversy in Nevada and elsewhere, negating the Angle campaign’s effort to tame down her website.

I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is Reid will win the legal fight if the issue ever gets to court.  Even if he doesn’t win in court, every round of any legal battle will simply draw more attention to the very information Angle scrubbed from her website in the first place.  So, it doesn’t matter whether she wins in court.  She’s picked a fight that’s fueling a story she wants to go away.

Here’s my question for you next time you find yourself tempted to respond to a story you don’t like:  Will your response really make your point?  Or will you just keep a bad story alive for another news cycle?

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

I love oxymorons.  My current favorite:  Facebook privacy.

If you follow these things at all, you know Facebook recently changed its privacy policies.  And they kicked up quite a ruckus doing it.

I know almost nothing about the details of what they did, why they did it — or what changes they made because of the ruckus.  I don’t know much about it because, frankly, I don’t care what their privacy policy is.  I assume anything I post on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else on the Internet is public — no matter how hard I try to lock it up and call it private.

For many years, I’ve been one of those public relations practitioners who advises clients to treat all documents, including emails, as potentially public no matter how “secret” they are.  That doesn’t mean you won’t ever put secret information in your documents or in your emails.  Confidential information frequently ends up on paper or a hard drive.

But, confidential or not, it’s a good idea to avoid putting things in writing or pictures that would be embarrassing or incriminating if they ended up in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, your local newspaper (if you still have one) — or in the hands of an employer or potential employer.

I certainly encourage everyone who’s interested to use Facebook and the other social media.  And have fun doing it.  But if you’re posting potentially embarrassing information you think is private or confidential, you’re asking for trouble.  Facebook privacy is an oxymoron.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

Dedicated public servant who has “pursued justice fearlessly.”  Or a “high-handed” jurist leading a court that ignores the state’s constitution?

Mary Mullarkey, who announced last week that she will retire as chief justice of Colorado’s Supreme Court, is described both ways in an interesting trio of articles that appeared yesterday and today in the Denver Post.

Mullarkey was appointed to the Colorado Supreme Court in 1987 by Gov. Roy Romer and was elected chief justice by her fellow justices in 1998.  She’s the state’s first woman chief justice.  And she’s held the job longer than anyone else.

She’s highly regarded by many, but has become increasingly vilified by critics on the right who have come to resent her rulings on a number of issues they care about.

Colorado judges face periodic yes-no retention votes and Mullarkey’s opponents planned an all-out effort this fall to have her ousted from the court by encouraging Colorado voters to vote against her retention — a fight she short-circuited by announcing her retirement.

The fight over Mullarkey’s legacy as a judge belongs in another forum.  And I think most of us would agree that our politics have become increasingly polarized.

But there’s a good rule to follow when it comes to most public arguments:  Play to the middle.

In most fights, you’ll have a certain number of people who will be with you no matter what and a certain number of people who will be against you no matter what.  Don’t ignore your friends, but don’t waste time trying to convince your inconvincible enemies, either.

Most of the time you should focus on trying to convince the persuadable people in the middle.  More often than not, they’re the ones who decide the outcome of public debates.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?

——-

Here are the links to the three articles about Mullarkey, if you want to check them out:

There’s a positive piece in Sunday’s paper by columnist Susan Greene.  “As state’s chief justice, Mullarkey wielded law with quiet precision,” reads the headline.  And the column includes this quote from a lawyer who once clerked for Mullarkey:  “I’ve never met somebody who’s so smart and so committed to public service, yet at the same time so humble.”

A decidedly negative one by editorial writer Vincent Carroll that appeared Sunday under the headline “Mary Mullarkey’s troubling legacy.”  Carroll’s view is that Mullarkey “presided over a Colorado Supreme Court that in recent years has grown increasingly high-handed.”

And an editorial in today’s paper that appears under the headline “A force behind Colorado’s bench” that reads:  “For more than two decades, Mary Mullarkey has been a force to reckon with on the Colorado Supreme Court.  The barrier-breaking chief justice has drawn opposition from some who contend she led a political court with a liberal bent, and she has drawn praise from those who think she pursued justice fearlessly.”

By Jerry Brown, APR
www.pr-impact.com

One of the things I learned during my 20 years as a journalist:  The bigger the story, the easier it is to tell.

Big, dramatic stories pretty much tell themselves.  Your job as a reporter is to get the facts, put them into words and get out of the way so your audience can understand the story without having to work at it.  No fancy rhetoric or clever lead needed.  Just the facts will do.

The BP oil spill is one of those stories.  Ironically, that made writing this Media Minute harder than usual.  Everything I have to say falls into the “well, duh” category — so clear in hindsight it’s almost embarrassing to put it into words.

That said, some lessons from the BP oil spill:

• One of the best ways to avoid a catastrophic failure is to be really worried about having one.  The oil industry in general and BP in particular appear to have become lax about safety because the people in charge assumed a catastrophe like the one unfolding in the Gulf couldn’t or wouldn’t happen.  Like so many disasters, multiple warning signs were present and ignored.  What warning signs is your company ignoring?  What can you do about it?  Is it worth doing something about?  Consider these consequences in addition to the unimaginable economic and environmental damage being done:   BP may not survive as a company.  Some of its executives may end up in prison.  And the BP oil spill could become the offshore drilling industry’s Three Mile Island.  In 1979, the partial meltdown at a nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, helped solidify opposition in the United States to nuclear power.  It’s one of the reasons there have been no new nuclear power plants approved for construction in the United States since the 1970s.
• As important as it is to communicate openly, honestly and clearly during a crisis, what you do — or don’t do — is far more important.  BP has done a mediocre job at best of communicating with the public since the spill.  But the fact that they haven’t been able to stop the leak or prevent the ever-spreading damage is what’s doing the real damage — to the environment and to the company.
• Time is not your friend in a crisis.  As the days have turned into weeks, the options available to BP and the Obama administration have become more limited and the stakes to them have become much higher.  The stakes will continue to grow for them and us until it’s fixed.
• The BP oil spill has now been officially classified as worse in terms of oil spilled than the Exxon Valdez spill off the coast of Alaska.  The political consequences will be much, much higher than Exxon Valdez.  Why?  Because it’s more visible and far more people are directly affected.  The political consequences will become higher yet if a hurricane blows oil farther inland than it would reach on its own or if the oil begins working its way up the East Coast.

Investing the time, money and energy required to avoid a disaster can be expensive and hard.  But it’s a lot cheaper than dealing with the crisis that happens because you didn’t do those things.

That’s my two cents’ worth.  What’s yours?