*      *      *

Email/resume/samples. For most internship candidates, the email and its contents create the first impression. And it’s usually an accurate one. You don’t need my help evaluating these packages, but let me recommend you focus on these questions:

Did the subject line break through? Did the message offer a clear and concise introduction of the candidate’s qualifications? Was it accompanied by the the writing samples you requested — or links to them? You did request writing samples, right?

One caution: Don’t expect students to be too creative or flashy. They’ve likely been advised to make a simple, crisp presentation — and with good reason. If you find a few smart candidates who also write well, test their creativity later.

The interview. Vet your candidates carefully and narrow the field to 3 or 4 who will earn face-to-face interviews. Talk to references in advance, not after the interview. It will save you time by further culling the herd. Also, be sure to examine each candidate’s online presence in advance. Review LinkedIn profiles, blogs, and public social network activity.

Aside: One of Kent State’s most loyal internship employers tells me internship interviews have become anticlimactic in this 2.0 world. “We know an awful lot about the kids before we meet them, just from checking their online activity,” he said.

Be sure candidates should interview with the staffers they’ll work with most. Chemistry is critical. But most important, leave at least 2 hours for an intense writing test.

What’s in the test? That will vary according to your needs, but I recommend a two-part test:

• News release or publication story. Not everyone you interview will be schooled in writing news releases. But all should be capable of writing a straightforward story that’s publication ready. Supply a list of facts along with quotes and background. Ask for a 250-300 word story that presents the message as you’d like it to appear in the targeted publication or website.

Include a clear strategy with audience and objectives spelled out. Allow the candidate access to one of your staff in case questions arise. In fact, if you want to be really sneaky, leave out one or two critical info nuggets to see if the candidate is savvy enough to raise the questions. Critical thinkers won’t be fooled.

• Problem scenario. Develop a 1-page scenario that presents a problem or opportunity your client is facing. Ask the candidate to write a memo that presents recommendations to the client for both action and communication, along with a rationale for each one.

This two-part assignment allows candidates to demonstrate clear thinking and clear writing. Oh, yeah. Be sure tell ‘em that grammar, spelling and punctuation count.

Warning: Bad writers are everywhere, and a lot of them want to work in PR. Don’t ask me why.

Part III: You get what you pay for: Why unpaid internships are for losers.

About now, PR firms and departments are reviewing resumes and interviewing internship candidates for summer positions. If you plan to hire interns this year and you haven’t begun the process, get a move on. The best of the crop are interviewing now.

How do you find the best intern candidates? As one who’s been guiding internship placement for nearly 20 years, let me offer a few tips:

• Maintain contacts with faculty and advisers at the schools that produce the best candidates. Ping them 2-3 times a year (email or Twitter is fine).  Remind them you’re always scouting great talent. Court the best schools with a phone call once a year. That personal connection gets faculty and student leaders thinking and talking about you.

• Prepare job descriptions that include a bulleted list of internship duties. This will take you 10 minutes. Include information about compensation. Send the job descriptions to faculty influencers at your targeted schools. Be sure the job description includes specific instructions on how to apply and the deadlines for those applications to arrive.

• Post the job description and instructions to your website. Provide a tab or link from your home page or your jobs page. Make it easy to find.

• Post an interview schedule and stick to it. I know that’s a tough one, because internship oversight is seldom a priority. But remember that your internship is one of many available out there. I can tell you from experience, the best candidates receive multiple offers. Make yours one of them.

Be clear about follow-up procedures. If you don’t want phone calls, say so. But give students a means to follow up with you directly. Email is fine. You’ll learn a lot about a candidate by how he/she manages this connection.

What should candidates submit? Most employers ask for a resume, cover letter and 2-3 writing samples, submitted as email attachments. For you 2.0 types, I know that sounds soooo 1999. But it works, and everyone knows how to do it.

If you want something else, then say so. Were I the internship czar for a PR firm or department, I’d require students to submit a 250-300-word email pitching their candidacy to our selection committee. That email would include links to an online portfolio and LinkedIn profile. Other links (Twitter, blog, Flickr, etc.) can be added to the signature line of the email.

Sure, not everyone hoping to work in PR is a geek, but anyone can set up a LinkedIn profile, and anyone can post work samples using a WordPress blog or an online portfolio site such as VisualCV or Carbonmade. If they can’t, do you really want them on your team?

Follow-up with every applicant. While you’re at it, include a paragraph explaining your interview and selection schedule. If you get hundreds of applicants, don’t feel guilty about using an auto-reply. But acknowledge the applicants and respond to their questions.

It’s easy to sit back and wait for the resumes to pour in, especially if you’re a hot shop or large department. But as an intern employer, don’t forget the “sell job” goes both ways. Candidates must sell you on their credentials and abilities, but you must sell them on your company.

Let me say this again: The best interns will have multiple offers. And the best interns, like the rest of us, appreciate clear, timely communication.

Coming soon:

Part II: Putting Your Candidates to the Test

Part III: When It Comes to Interns, You Get What You Pay For

Photo via FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Chris Brogan

Then, last Friday, I spotted this post from Chris Brogan. The title: “How passion powers everything.”

I’m sure you see the common thread.

Is passion critical to reaching your goals? Absolutely. But it’s only one ingredient to success, and that’s a lesson that students and young professionals must learn early on.

While passion does fuel the human machine, it won’t get you anywhere unless you add knowledge, critical thinking, talent, and a good bit of personal sacrifice. Simply loving something doesn’t make you good at it. Otherwise, I’d have pitched Game 7 of the 1979 World Series. (We had ‘em all the way!)

My passion didn’t surface until the mid-1980s. When I was 10 years into a public relations career, I began teaching a college course in PR Principles. That class was my “holy shit” moment. It’s when I learned that my passion lay in the classroom, not the boardroom.

My career change would take 7 years of retooling, and a lot of it wasn’t fun.

From 1985-88, I honed my teaching skills, and I began to study the PR theory and the history I’d missed as an undergrad. When the chance came to serve as a “visiting professional” at another university some 200 miles away, I grabbed it.

While passion may have driven me to academe, it was my knowledge of PR and great course proposal that earned me that teaching gig in 1989. My 8 weeks as a full-time college professor erased all doubt about where I belonged. But there was so much work yet to do.

I went back to school in the evenings to learn the theory and research that so few PR professionals ever bother to read. En route to an advanced degree, I made a philosophical connection to the public relations discipline and picked up a specialty in applied ethics along the way.

Passion saw me through the process, but Kent State didn’t hire me for my exuberance. My colleagues demanded that I demonstrate a mastery of the PR field. I survived the search process not on my passion, but on my knowledge — and a wee bit of stage presence.

Gary Vaynerchuk

My point: Chris and Gary probably won’t disagree with this post. They’re both knowledgeable guys who are driven to succeed. But I worry that these titans of 2.0 sometimes overemphasize the passion message without enough focus on the hard-work message.  But maybe they don’t see it as “work,” because they’re having so much fun doing it.

As an educator, I can do only so much to prepare students. I don’t supply the passion. The acquisition of knowledge and experience is an act of will on their part, not mine. At times I’m a conduit, other times a catalyst — even a motivator. But students must ultimately do the work, and it’s sometimes a painful journey.

If you work hard and stay focused, the knowledge, experience, and clear thinking you acquire may pay off in spades, or it may not. But without all those elements, passion is just a buzzword.

Acknowledgements

• This post  grew from a discussion with my new colleague, Dr. Bob Batchelor. He’s preparing a speech titled, “How to become the smartest person in the room.” Passion is not a central element to his presentation.
• Seth Godin’s post titled “On Self Determination,” urges students to take control of their lives. It also inspired some of my thinking here.
• I owe that last paragraph about the “act of will” to my good friend, Dr. Blair Boone, who used the theme it in a speech before a group of inmates at Upstate New York prison.
  

Fire at Malden Mills, 1995 (firenuggets.com)

In late 1995, a fire at Malden Mills put 3,000 union jobs at risk. The timing couldn’t have been worse. The 90-year-old manufacturer in Lawrence, Mass., has seen its revenues triple and employment double since emerging from bankruptcy in 1982. It’s popular Polartec and Polarfleece fabrics were one reason. A loyal and productive workforce was the other.

In a time when offshore manufacturing became standard procedure in American business, Malden Mills’ CEO Aaron Feuerstein opted to stay put and to rebuild his factory on the very site where his family had made textiles for 90 years.

But what would the employees do in the meantime?

The fire came just two weeks before Christmas, affecting employees both financially and emotionally. So just 2 days after the blaze, Feuerstein announced plans to pay his employees their full wages for 30 days. He would eventually extend that offer to 90 days for the paychecks, 180 days for benefits. Total cost to Malden Mills: $25 million.

Business madness? Many thought so. But in an interview with CBS News/60 Minutes, Feuerstein disagreed: “I think it was a wise business decision, but that isn’t why I did it. I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

It took years, but Malden rebuilt in Lawrence and eventually hired back all the displaced workers. The workforce repaid Fueurstein with cooperation and productivity. According to the report in the Center & Jackson text, commitment to employees drove significant bottom-line outcomes.

• Business grew 40% from pre-fire levels.
• Customer and employee retention reached 95%.
• Off-quality products dropped from 6-7% pre-fire to just 2%.
• Production increased from 130,000 to 200,000 yds. per week.

A business fairy tale? It would seem so. Unfortunately, the case doesn’t end here. Feuerstein found himself back in bankruptcy court, saddled with $140 million in debt, much of it tied to the rebuild. The company hired a new president in 2004 as part of the Chapter 11 reorganization. It wasn’t enough.

In 2007, Malden Mills made its 3rd trip to bankruptcy court, this time emerging as a company named for its flagship brand, “Polartec.” It’s still in Lawrence, but employs around 1,000 people worldwide, versus the 3,000 who once worked at the New England mill. Aaron Feuerstein is out of the picture. (Confession: I only spent about an hour searching for updates on this story. If you know more about the post-2007 Malden Mills, please chime in on the comments.)

Did Aaron Fueurstein do the right thing in 1995? Or did he let his high moral principles cloud his business judgment? Putting people before profits certainly seems the ethical thing to do, but is it the prudent thing?

After his decision, Feuerstein became a legend in both business and PR circles — a textbook case in excellence theory. But in the end, he leveraged the business into bankruptcy. No one will question Feuerstein’s good intentions, but there’s no line on the balance sheet for “loyalty” or “ethics.”

The business of business is messy. Always has been. But we don’t often talk about the ugly side of it in our PR casebooks. Instead, we select cases that exemplify symmetrical communication, ethics and trust. And we celebrate them.

When students leave my classroom, few will work for principled managers like Aaron Feuerstein, the man they called the “Mensch of Malden Mills.” If there’s a silver lining to this story, it’s that Polartec remains a great product with a loyal customer base, including me. None of that may have occurred had Feuerstein not saved the day on Dec. 13, 1995.

Sadly, Malden Mills didn’t turn out as such a classic case in employee relations. To me, it’s a depressing reality of business world that makes “maximizing shareholder value” its top priority.

Have a nice weekend!

Here’s part of the “60 Minutes” interview someone posted to YouTube.

Regulars in the social media space won’t gain a lot from the books cited in this post. All 3 are penned by SM evangelists and tend to target the late majority in the space. They sing the praises of social media, but the evidence is anecdotal and the outcomes nearly always positive. Nonetheless, newbies in the 2.0 world may find 2 of the 3 books useful.

Trust Agents, by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Had Dale Canegie lived in the digital age, he would have liked Chris Brogan. For me, “Trust Agents” is a digital rendition of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The authors take Carnegie’s relationship-building concept and translate it for the online space.

If you’re looking to expand your influence in social media, Chapters 3, 4 and 5 may help you get there. Brogan and Smith call it “becoming a trust agent.” I call it networking. But it comes back to the relationships that Carnegie wrote about in 1934. People haven’t changed all that much, but thanks to technology, the sociology of networking has.

Old wine, new bottle? Maybe. But I’m recommending “Trust Agents” to my students and newcomers to social media. Even though the millennials are immersed in social media, few use it effectively to to enhance their business and professional networking. “Trust Agents” may help them do that.

Twitterville, by Shel Israel

“Twitterville” is a pretty decent case book. So if you’re looking for stories about companies that benefitted by using the microblogging site, you might want to check it out. Last I checked, you’ll find this book at some Amazon booksellers for less than $3.

The cases in “Twitterville” include the usual suspects: Dell, ComCast, H&R Block, et. al. The B2B and small-business cases are less well known and do offer some ideas for folks who don’t counsel the Fortune 500. I was familiar with at least half of the cases, having read about them on blogs or in media reports. So for me, “Twitterville” offered no “Aha!” moments.

The author admits that he’s a big Twitter fan, and his book reflects that evangelism. You won’t find balance in this book. For a more thorough review of  “Twitterville,” see this excellent essay by Richard Bailey.

I’m disappointed in the book’s editors, who didn’t work hard enough to smooth the rough edges and purge the passive voice. But that’s the way of things in business publishing today. Speed seems to trump quality.

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

If you’re a fan of “Gary Vee” and his Wine Library TV, buy this book. You may enjoy reading Gary’s success story about how he used social media to grow the family wine business. I’m guessing entrepreneurs will pull some inspirational from Gary’s message, but it didn’t work for me.

If you’re looking for real insights on the social-media world as a marketing platform, “Crush It!” probably isn’t for you. Vaynerchuk’s advice on using SM is pretty lightweight stuff and unlikely to be much help to PR or marketing professionals. At 140 pages, “Crush It!” is mercifully short. So I’ve decided to apply that same lesson to this post.

In the old joke, that’s one of the the “3 Great Lies.” But for so many Americans in these troubled times, mistrust of government is no joke at all. Officials at the U.S. Census Bureau worry this mistrust along with overall low awareness, could prompt citizens to ignore the national headcount that begins in March.

As part of a nationwide PR campaign to promote the census at the grassroots,  Kent State’s 5-person Bateman launched its 2-week PR campaign in the midst of the season’s worst snowstorm on Feb. 11. The campaign, which relies heavily on face-to-face tactics and word of mouth, has team members crisscrossing the city — seeing the people and telling the story.

And while there’s no advertising budget for the campaign, the Bateman team did secure a few days of exposure on Kent State’s most famous rock. Does that thing have a name? You’d think I’d know after 20 years, huh?

Kent State's most famous rock promotes the U.S. Census.

Social media includes a Facebook page and an aggressive messaging campaign on Twitter. With each event, each story, and each impression, more folks in Kent, Ohio, are learning why it’s important to be counted.

Traditional publicity efforts earned coverage for the story in the Record Courier and Daily Kent Stater newspapers, Kent State TV2, the Kent Tree City Bulletin and the Kent 360 Blog and Kent State’s E-Inside.

We’ll know more about the impact on awareness once the team does its post-campaign surveys and compares them to the benchmark research.

This year’s Bateman team includes Aubrey Haskins, Rachel Polchek, Erin Orsini, Stephanie Mathias and Katie Young. They are one of 85 teams in the competition.

Why does it matter? Congress uses census figures as a guideline to distribute federal funds and also to redraw congressional districts to reflect shifting populations. But did you know that resident students in a college town are eligible to be counted as part of the local population? I learned that tidbit from a video clip from a presentation by Kent City Councilwoman Heidi Shaefer. She, too, is helping the Bateman team drive home the message.

Classroom presentations were among the F2F tactics of the campaign.

“College students are a hard-to-count population,” said Bateman team member Katie Young.  “We want to be sure to  we communicating in all possible venues.”

Face-to-face encounters included information tables with games and prizes, set up in the student center, residence halls basketball games and most recently at the Jay Sean concert where Batement team members filmed a rap video promoting the census, performed by a local hip-hop group.

The team made short presentations in big-box classes like Intro to Sociology and Media Power and Culture. Their pitches included a 2-minute video and census-related trivia quizzes and prizes for the winners.

This weekend, street teams plan to mingle with downtown shoppers, then hit the bars on Friday and Saturday nights. Let’s hope they brought their snowshoes, eh? Seems like every event Bateman schedules in this campaign comes 3 hours into a major winter storm.

About Bateman

The Bateman Case Study Competition originated in 1973 as the National Case Study, a program that enabled PRSSA members to exercise the analytical skills required for public relations problem solving. In 1983, the competition was named to honor the late J. Carroll Bateman, a past president of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) who was instrumental in the founding of PRSSA. Bateman case clients pay a $25,000 sponsorship fee to cover costs at the national level. Local chapters are responsible for funding their own campaigns. By rule, out-of-pocket spending can’t exceed $300.

For some reason, PRSSA has requested that social-media elements be taken offline this coming Monday. We assume that order came down from the client. It underscores something I’ve known since 1977: Clients just don’t make sense sometimes. But this client, the U.S. Census, is sure getting a lot of mileage from a very small budget.

(Note: A good chuck of that boilerplate on Bateman comes from the PRSSA news release on the topic. I did edit it to cut the fluff.)

“What’s with Sledzik and the hair thing. Is he going hippie on us — or hermit-y?”

No, I didn’t hear the comment myself, but one of my colleagues was paying attention from a closed stall. She’s a veteran journalist, and I’m workin’ from her notes.

It’s the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Unless you’re good friends, it’s impolite to ask about personal appearance. So, instead, we chat in the bathroom or whisper out of earshot.

Enough with the gossip. Today, I meet the elephant head-on.

What’s up with the #%@*ing hair, dude?

So glad you asked.

With long hair, I can hear better. Last summer, I sought treatment for a longstanding condition I call CHS, also known as “can’t hear shit.” Yep, the old man got hearing aids. I wearied of asking students to repeat themselves, and my wife grew tired of shouting instructions. Today, thanks to my friends at Oticon, I hear way more shit than I care to. It’s a mixed blessing.

I decided to grow hair over my ears a that point, but just long enough to cover the appliances. Vanity is motivator at my age, and I don’t fight it. The hearing aids followed laser eye surgery 5 years ago. Can a nip-tuck be far away?

Then, things escalated.

Long hair is seriously cool. I learned this during a 2-week trip to the West Coast last summer. Old hippies and burnt-out surfer dudes abound in NoCal. They have ponytails, earrings, and the occasional tattoo. I’m not big on piercings and ink, but my wife — she was diggin’ those old hippies. So what are my options? After 33 years of marriage, you gotta keep ‘em interested, right?

Why not go for a ponytail? After all, there’s a little bit of hippie in everybody who came of age in the late 60s. That’s why I grew my hair and headed for the party school of the nation in 1971. It was “far out” while it lasted, and I intend to recapture at least some of that in my old age.

Long hair as a mid-life entitlement. OK, I’m past the mid-life crisis stage — unless I live to 112. But in the mid-90s, I did grow a cheesy mullet ponytail that looked like crap and tangled in the breeze. This time, I’m gonna get it right — a full-blown freak flag. All that can stop me is that awkward 12 months between “clean cut” and “duuude!”

I trust you’ll help me through the transition.

Because I can. You all know the dog joke, so I won’t bother. As a tenured college professor, I know being quirky is more or less expected. No problem. I’ve always been a renegade, just ask my mom and dad. They’re in their 80s now, and they’ll like my present mane about as much as the one I grew in 1971. They’ll get over it. They love me.

So there you have it: the elephant exposed. And you in the restroom — stop getting all WTF? over my hair. I’m old and increasingly eccentric. But if you pay attention, I can help you a get a job! Check the track record.

I know what’s coming next: What’s with Sledzik and the cargo-pocket pants? You’ll find the answer in my wardrobe mantra: “All khaki, all the time.”

But real life doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you gotta fight.

At the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University (my alma mater), they’re waging an ugly war over the denial of tenure to Professor Bill Reader. I wrote about it on Groundhog Day, and just like in the movie, the story has returned for another unsettling visit.

The story has gone far beyond simple university politics, and this post goes a bit beyond my typical 700 words.

• Update 2/17: Latest story from Inside Higher Education
• Excellent perspective from “Tenured Radical”
  

This time, I’m taking sides. And I’m urging the students of Scripps and its recent alumni — those who know Bill Reader — to do the same. Whether you support Reader’s tenure or oppose it, now it the time to put it in writing and send it to: Dr. Roderick J. McDavis, President, Ohio University, 108 Cutler Hall, Athens, OH 45701.

If you prefer to send email, McDavis’ office gave me this address: response@ohio.edu

Here’s why you must speak up now:

Yesterday, an ad hoc committee of OU’s Faculty Senate issued its report to President McDavis recommending that Bill Reader be awarded tenure and promotion. The committee’s investigation follows the denial of tenure by Scripps Director Tom Hodson and Dean Greg Shepard.

The final decision rests with McDavis, who has 30 days to act. The Faculty Senate report represents Reader’s last avenue of appeal. If you’d like to review the full letter from the committee, download it at the end of this post. Here’s the paragraph that stands out to me:

After carefully reading through all the documents provided by both sides, and listening to arguments presented by them at the hearing, the committee unanimously finds that Professor Reader’s tenure and promotion denial was tainted by procedural problems that both deprived him of due process and significantly compromised the ability of the administration to provide adequate consideration. Furthermore, the committee found convincing evidence that Professor Reader satisfied the requirements for tenure and promotion in his school and college. We unanimously recommend that he be granted tenure and promotion.

The report was prepared by a team of five full-time faculty members, all from outside Scripps. Some may say it’s just faculty supporting a collegue, but I’m not that cynical. It appears the committee has done its work with due diligence.

The report to McDavis presents a strong case that Reader was treated unjustly. But since OU doesn’t have the benefit of collective bargaining, Reader has no union muscle to support his position.

Most folks who work outside academe don’t understand the tenure thing. Hell, I’ve been working here 19 years, and I don’t get it. Who the hell awards lifetime job security other than the Supreme Court?

Tenure is an anachronistic system, but it’s all we have right now. And without tenure, Bill Reader will soon be unemployed, and because of the controversy surrounding his case, probably unemployable as well. So before my alma mater throws a popular educator under the bus, I hope President McDavis considers the consequences for students and alumni, and the impact his decision may have on the Scripps brand, long-term and short.

If you take time to read the ad hoc committee’s report, you’ll find that Professor Reader earned consecutive years of excellent performance ratings since he joined the tenure track. This means he met the high standards for teaching, research and university service set by his administration. Based on those annual reviews, Reader had every reason to believe he was destined for tenure and possibly promotion.

I’m no HR expert, but I do know that if you want to avoid messy lawsuits for wrongful dismissal, you build a “file” that documents a candidate’s poor performance and/or inappropriate behavior. You share that information with the employee in those come-to-Jesus meetings with the boss, and you outline recommendations for improvement.

According to OU’s Faculty Senate committee, no evidence of weak performance or bad behavior appears in Reader’s dossier. In fact, the report says that Scripps Director Tom Hodson was prepared to recommend Reader for tenure after the 7-5 vote by the school’s tenure review committee but reversed course after three faculty members filed harassment complaints.

It’s pretty clear that Reader isn’t the Casper Milquetoast type. He can be outspoken and at times intimidating. Those who filed complaints call his behavior bullying. But in the comments to my last post on this topic, Reader shared precise language from the report of the Office of Institutional Equity saying it turned up no credible evidence to support the complaints against him.

From where I sit, Bill Reader deserves tenure. He’s met the criteria laid out by his employer, and by all accounts he’s one of those great teachers that make the E. W. Scripps School the fine program it is.  The fact that he doesn’t play well with others on occasion shouldn’t trump a 6-year track record of solid performance.

Did Reader piss a few people off? It appears so. Did they feel intimidated? That’s what they claim, even though the OIE report finds otherwise. So is this all just politics and internal fueding? Or did something happen in the 11th hour that turned Reader into a pariah?

Sorry, the evidence isn’t there, or at least no one has bothered to present it. But I trust President McDavis will get those answers before he renders a decision in the case.

Disclosure: I’ve been corresponding with Professor Reader over the past two weeks and found him a reasonable and serious guy. And having jumped through the tenure hoops myself, I understand the stresses of the process, maybe even to the point of feeling a kinship with Reader.

I’ve also heard from students, not one of whom has a bad thing to say about the man. One called Reader “the best teacher at Scripps,” but was unwilling to lend a name to her comment for fear of reprisals from Reader’s opponents on the faculty. The place is really politically charged, she said.

I’m not blaming the students for their silence. Courage isn’t easy to muster when you’re 21 or 22 and your instructors hold the keys to your professional future.

Students are a critical stakeholder here — as are alumni. If you feel as I do, you must speak up. Whether you support Reader’s tenure or you oppose it, you owe that much to your school — and to Reader.

********************

Coverage of the Faculty Senate ad hoc committee report from the OU Post student newspaper.

Coverage by Inside Higher Ed.

Initial story from the Post.

To download reports:

Ad Hoc Committee of Faculty Senate: ReaderReport

Performance Review: 2009 Performance Review

Office of Institutional Equity Investigation: OIE Report

The problem: I’m unhappy with some of the news releases they’ve been writing this semester. It’s not the writing quality or mechanics that bothers me. The target of my ire is fluff — the fluff that oozes into their work in the form of vacuous, self-serving quotes.

Take last week’s assignment as an example. Students were asked to write a news release to draw local food writers to a story about a restaurant opening. While the story is one I made up for the assignment, it’s based on a real place.

For most assignments in this class, students are free to “craft” quotes they believe will add substance and color to their stories. All quotes are subject to client approval. Unfortunately, too many of those developed by my students read like marketing fluff and happy talk, and all they add to the stories is length.

A few examples:

“I’m excited for Cleveland residents to experience Murray’s Falafels,” Newman said. “It’s a great restaurant that will attract people from all over Northeast Ohio.”

“Cooking is so much fun,” Fishbein said. “Cooking and eating is the best way to spend time with your children and family.”

“I’m excited to bring the taste of the Mediterranean to Cleveland,” said Fishbein. “I enjoy sharing our unique cuisine with new people.”

“I can’t wait to see how the city welcomes the new addition to the community.”

My personal fluffy favorite:

“I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to continue the Murray’s brand here in Cleveland.”

I wish I were that  “excited” and “thrilled” about writing this post.

Sure, my assignment isn’t perfect. Students can’t interview the mythical Murray Fishbein or Howard Newman. But they do have access to the story of Murray Allon, the man upon whom this assignment is based. His website offers a pretty thorough character sketch and a nifty backstory.

News media love to criticize our news releases, and fluffy, contrived quotes are a primary reason for that criticism. Where do students get the notion these quotes are appropriate? From PR pros, of course. Students seeking guidance turn to the Internet, and what they find are thousands of news releases filled with the same worthless crap.

If you want to produce effective, on-point news releases, don’t read other news releases. Instead, read the stories produced by the journalists or bloggers you’re trying to influence. Mimic their style, not the style you find in  online newsrooms. And do some reporting. You need facts to create a compelling story, and you can’t make those up.

Quotes should add substance, not fluff. When a source speaks in a news story, he/she must add information of real value. Quotes should broaden the reader’s understanding; they shouldn’t sound like advertising copy.

I’m not worried about my students. I’ll beat on them ’til they get it. But as a teacher, I can only impart so much knowledge. Until students and consistently read news stories by trained professionals, they won’t learn the writing style that serves this vital public.

If you don’t read good writing, you don’t produce good writing. And the teacher can’t make you do either.

Feel free to review and/or download my notes on “Using Quote Effectively.”

********************

Two post-scripts, since I know what some of you are gonna say:

The news release is dead. I’ll skip that lecture if you don’t mind. This post is about good writing. I just happens that the context is a news-release assignment. I teach news-release writing because it’s a vital tool of PR. A professionally crafted news release serves news media well, provided the PR professional knows how to write it. Most do not.

Bad news releases deserve to die, and I’m doing all I can to ensure their demise. You should, too.

Crafting quotes is wrong. Spare me the lecture on this one, too. PR professionals craft quotes all the time. We also ghost write articles for internal and external publications and we write speeches that others deliver. We’re professional communicators, surrogates for clients who don’t have the time or skill to produce their own messages. So long as quotes present truth and are blessed by those who “speak” them, there’s nothing wrong with the practice.

There is something wrong with bad quotes. That’s how this whole thing got started.

I called out a journalist yesterday for two inaccuracies in her post promoting an upcoming news series. Here’s her response to my comment:

While I agree with you that accuracy is critical, not all subject matters warrent (sic) the same level of accuracy.

Forget the typo. Focus on the important question: When did accuracy become relative? In my 19 years on the faculty of a journalism school, no one ever told me that truth comes in “levels.” A fact is a fact because it can be verified.

Susan Arbetter, the Albany-based correspondent for WCNY, Syracuse, N.Y., sees it a little differently.

I found Arbetter’s story through a Google Alert that flags stories about my hometown: Indiana, Pa. What can I say? I still miss the place after 40 years. Apparently, so does Arbetter, who spent part of her childhood there, even attending the same elementary school as I.

In her promo for a series about oil and gas drilling, Arbetter describes Indiana as a small community “just a few miles from the West Virginia border.” Say what? Indiana is nearly 100 miles from West Virgina. No matter which definition of “few” you embrace, the number is always under 10. Why Arbetter moved our town 90 miles closer to West-by-God is anyone’s guess.

To shape the character of our little town, Arbetter also talks of heading “over to the Eat‘n Park for some homemade red devil’s food cake and a Rolling Rock.”

I don’t much care for beer and chocolate cake. But that’s OK, because you can’t get a beer at the Eat’n Park. The restaurant doesn’t have a liquor license, and Arbetter knew it.

Journalism students know that errors in fact are unforgivable. It’s beaten into their heads from Newswriting 101. Arbetter presents a relativist view of accuracy, based on what she calls “writer’s liberty.” From her response to my comment:

While I know that Eat ‘n Park doesn’t serve alcohal (sic), I wanted to give my listeners some western PA “color”. Rolling Rock, brewed in Latrobe was the beer of choice among the parents of my friends back then. And the Eat ‘n Park was an institution. Still is apparently. Putting the two together is a writer’s liberty.

Tell me I’m nitpicking if you’d like. Tell me the story will be much the same with or without Rolling Rock and devil’s food cake. That’s not the point. Once you learn that Eat’n Park isn’t a beer joint, and Indiana, Pa., isn’t all that close to West Virginia, you begin to doubt the veracity of the entire story, and maybe the outlet that carried it. Credibility suffers, all for a little “color.”

It’s OK to add color. It’s not OK to make stuff up.

I’m not a journalist, and I don’t play one in the classroom. But a lot of journalists depend on PR professionals to supply accurate information for the stories they write. So in our PR classes at Kent State, accuracy is more than a value, it’s an imperative. If you want folks to believe you, you gotta get it right.

So if you’re planning a trip to Indiana, Pa., call me. I don’t know much about the family restaurants, but I can tell you the best places to get a beer. Start with $3 Pitcher Night, Thursday’s at Sixers.

It’s not far from the Eat’n Park. A few miles

And forget about the Rolling Rock, OK? They haven’t made that stuff in Latrobe, Pa., since 2006.

You want to tell her?