Category Archives: Old Media, which is still Big and Strong

by | November 24, 2012 · 7:07 am

Is journalism dead?

By Alex Corey
Contributing Editor

Every day, you see stories wailing about the death of journalism, about newspapers shedding jobs or closing their doors.

So is journalism dead? Or is it a phoenix, dwindling close to the end of its life points only to come back bigger, faster and stronger?

The rise of citizen-journalists

A big part of the revival of journalism will involve citizen-journalists. Billions of people around the world are now portable news production studios, with every iPhone and Droid giving them the power to shoot photos or video and share breaking news with the world.

The negative side of this trend is quality control. Journalists have editors. There’s no editing involved with hitting the share button on your phone, leading to the very possibility of words, photos and video that simply stink up the joint, and wouldn’t have seen the light of day at a newspaper or TV station.

There’s also the problem of sorting through a sea of random stories, blog posts, Tumblr pages and YouTube videos about breaking news, all with similar taglines and descriptions.

Yet those negatives are outweighed by the positives. Giving any citizen the power to document events and break news can only be good news for transparency and fairness and bad news for censorship and oppression.

Quality control

As far as journalism’s overall quality, the milk’s gone bad–a little bit. The carton says it expired yesterday but you might still be able to drink it.

There used to be a 24-hour news cycle, back when newspapers got printed once a day. Blogs, Twitter and the Series of Tubes have made the old 24-hour news cycle as relevant as your dad’s collection of eight-track Meatloaf tapes.

Now there’s pressure to break news all day and all night, even when there’s not really any news to break. Added pressure for sports reporters covering the NFL to search for a scoop of raisins in the Raisin Bran when there aren’t any raisins to be found because it’s the off season.

With more pro athletes, actors, politicians and celebrities using Twitter and other means to break their own news, the pressure to produce has never been greater.

That pressure eventually reduces quality. It’s hard to do a big investigative story when you’re trying to crank out three blog posts a day while tweeting and replying to Facebook comments. The pressure to produce can lead journalists to begin poking and prodding when there is nothing to be poked and prodded, or to focus on the newest shiny object or controversy, whether that controversy has merit or not. Conflict is news.

White noise

Don Delillo’s nightmare from White Noise could be coming true. Soon enough, we will be speaking TV-glish instead of English and having difficulty distinguishing theWalking Dead on AMC from theWalking Dead on TMZ, the people who are famous for being famous — the Snookies, Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians of world.

Rise like the phoenix

Snooki and other passing media obsessions will fade away. Journalism, though, will rise like the Phoenix.

Despite Jersey Shore still being on TV for one last season, there is still lingering hope for journalism and civilization.

There’s a misconception that people aren’t reading as much these days. Not true. People may not be subscribing to newspapers, but that’s because they’re reading those same stories online. And it’s wrong to think content needs to be dumbed down to attract readers. Not to start a conspiracy thread but it is partially the marketing ploys of the media which perpetuate this kind of thinking. For example, you never see Neil deGrasse Tyson on Dancing with the Stars or plastered on a bottle of soda pop, but that doesn’t mean we don’t, as consumers, want to see that. What we see commercialized in everyday life can be misleading.

People want substance, and they’re getting it wherever they can. The Economist could not be denser and meatier, yet circulation of it is skyrocketing while fluffier magazines like Newsweek are going online-only.

While the way we get our news is shifting from paper and broadcast to the Series of Tubes, there’s a growing demand — not less demand — for good content.

Journalism will adapt, evolve and eventually thrive because it’s the only way to feed that demand, that hunger in every person to find out what’s going on in their neighborhood, their state, their country and the world.

Give us the who, what, when, where and why. Show us men landing on the moon and women becoming presidents. And yes, tell us about celebrities, but only if you’re breaking the news that Snooki is going away forever.

Alex Corey, writer from California

Alex Corey

Alex Corey is a writer studying journalism at California State University-Northridge and a staff reporter for the bilingual El Nuevo Sol. He can be reached on Twitter @ptyjournalist and on the Series of Tubes at ptyjournalist.wordpress.com  

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong

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by | November 1, 2012 · 6:06 pm

A media star is born, then goes all supernova on us

Who ever suspected that a sign-language interpreter could ROCK?

Lydia Callis has been the star of NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s pressers. (That’s journalism slang for a press conference, which is PR slang for “Hey, reporters, bring your cameras and notebooks and we’ll talk about stuff.”)

 

Do I know sign language? No. But when I watch her, hey, even I get the gist of things. She is seven separate flavors of awesomesauce and deserves her own show, teaching kids across America sign language.

 

 

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by | October 27, 2012 · 8:08 am

5 ways to make blog posts GO ALL VIRAL

There is no guaranteed method, no secret way, to make a blog post that causes the Series of Tubes to explode.

Anybody who says otherwise is a lying liar full of lying liaosity.

Because this is an art, not a science.

HOWEVER: There are things that are smart, and give you a chance.

yoda after the death star blows up

If your magical blog post causes the Series of Tubes to blow up like a Death Star orbiting the second moon of Yavin, then Yoda will celebrate by dropping it like it’s hot.

5) Swing for the fences

If all your blog posts are kinda the same — the same topic, the same length, the same tone — it’s a good bet none of them will ever magically shock the world.

Learn from PETA, which gets gobs and gobs of free ink and airtime by trying bold, crazy PR stunts.

Most of them fail. Sometimes, they get a little bad press for a stunt gone wrong.

But they keep swinging for the fences, because there is no real penalty for swinging and missing. Continue reading →

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong, The Twitter, the Book of Face and the Series of Tubes, Viral media math

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by | September 29, 2012 · 10:43 am

Hunter S. Thompson + Conan O’Brien + whiskey + machine guns = WIN

 

Most interviews of authors, actors and artists put the B in Boring.

(Related: Top 10 evil tips for authors, actors and artists)

Hunter S. Thompson did it right with Conan O’Brien, because he didn’t sit on Conan’s couch and blab about his latest book / movie / art project. No. That is standard and typical and such. You can’t get atypical results by doing typical things.

Here’s the interview segment.

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Guy - Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.

Google+

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by | September 12, 2012 · 5:05 am

Top 10 Myths of Journalism School

Oh, if I could go back in time, and whisper in the ear of my younger self during journalism school.

Not that I was busy screwing it up. Editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, graduated No. 1 in my class, won a bunch of awards, blah-blah-blah. (Related: Who is this Guy?)

But the traditional things that most journalism students think they SHOULD be doing — well, often those are seven separate kinds of wrong.

And there are other things Serious Journalism Majors scoff at, things that you actually should not only embrace, but hug tightly to your bosom.

So here we go with the Top 10 Myths of Journalism School.

Myth No. 10: Hard news is the only true love of a Serious Journalism Major

Sure, unfiltered Marlboros and Jim Beam come close. But nothing beats a scoop about an amazing scandal. You laugh at people trying to make the words flow for their feature story on dumpster divers, a story packed with all these photos, which are for nancypants who don’t have the stones to write more words.

Here’s the truth: hard news is all about news gathering and using the inverted pyramid, which is a horrible structure for any sort of writing and needs to be taken behind the barn and shot.

Hard news is worthy, and does the public a great service. Yet if all you do is hard news, you won’t truly learn journalism — or how to write.

Related posts:

Myth No. 9: Journalism school will teach you how to write

Once you get that pigskin from j-school, and land your first journalism  gig — at The Willapa Valley Shopper or The New York Times – you’ll go home after 12 hours of banging on the keyboard to stay up past midnight, banging on the keyboard some more while smoking Gallouise Blondes and drinking cheap whiskey sours as you write (a) the next Great American Novel, (b) a Broadway play involving a debutant who falls in love with a struggling young reporter or (c) a Hollywood screenplay about a vast government conspiracy unraveled by an intrepid young intern at CBS.

This will be a lot of fun, and you’ll remember this as being the Best Thing Ever until you’ve been doing it for seven months and turning every draft of your extra-curricular writerly fun into three-point attempts. Also, you will miss this thing we call “sleep” and these other things we call “money in the checking account” and “a social life that does not involve typing on a keyboard chatting with a person who may, or may not, actually exist.”

Continue reading →

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Filed under 4 Writing Secrets Wednesday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong, Speechwriting, The Twitter, the Book of Face and the Series of Tubes

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by | August 25, 2012 · 11:22 am

Journalists just wanna have fun

As a reformed journalist, I can tell you secret things.

Number One: Coffee.

If you want to make a reporter smile, or an editor not growl at you, feed them industrial amounts of coffee.

Number Two: Stress requires unstressing.

Journalists do a stressful job for tiny amounts of monies, and they’re under the Most Insane Deadline Pressure Known to Man, which makes them look for ways to unwind.

Here are my favorite journalists finding ways to unstress.

First we’ve got Bob Herzog.

Bob’s a TV reporter from Local 12 in Cincinatti who took the thankless job of “Traffic Reporter, A Job We Sometimes Have Interns Do” and turned it onto a “Dancing King of the Glowing Tube.”

Then we’ve got WGN anchors Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, who look quite Serious and Somber while delivering the news.

Once they hit the commercial break, they transform into silly nutballs and do a special shebang, which they’ve honed over the years to take up exactly two minutes.

Also, just because I can, the original Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cindi the Lauper.

The Killers once covered Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj covered it EVEN BETTER.

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Guy - Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.

Google+

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, The Glowing Tube, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong

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by | June 9, 2012 · 6:33 am

Old Media versus The Series of Tubes

Internet Fanboys claim that the invincible air attack of the Series of Tubes will shred the ground game of Boring Old Media  — that there’s no way newspapers, TV and radio stations compete with the lightning speed and low-cost goodness of the interwebs,

It’s like a power-running football team from the ’60s trying to win a shoot-out with Aaron Rogers and the Green Bay Packers, who chuck the ball all the time and score touchdowns like crazy.

Four yards and a cloud of dust has no chance. This game will be over at halftime when the score is 44-7.

So, it’s halftime and we’re bored. Let’s talk about a blog so powerful and amazing that it posted not seven times a week, but hundreds of times every day — a blog with a professional staff of writers, designers and minions, cranking out news scoops and funny posts.

A blog so strong that it doesn’t burn through venture capital like cocaine at a ’70s disco, but MAKES monies year after year, with millions of page hits and paid subscribers.

Oh, that kind of blog must be making Boring Old Media quake in their boots. See? The Internet Fanboys are right. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Except that blog is called “every newspaper on the planet in a city large enough to support at least one Home Depot.”

Continue reading →

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong, The Twitter, the Book of Face and the Series of Tubes

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by | April 21, 2012 · 5:05 am

Top 5 reasons why Twitter CRUSHES Facebook

Sure, the Book of Face is the big green hulking monster of social media right now. You don’t want to see him when he’s angry.

the incredible hulk tv show lou ferrigno

The Incredible Hulk featured a lot of green body paint and the Best Hair Ever.

And yes, it has more money than God.

HOWEVER: Just like Ang Lee is a talented director who never in a million years should have touched the story of Lou Ferrigno Wearing Green Body Paint, the Book of Face is a powerful monster … and exactly the wrong tool for people who actually want to get things done.

Reason No. 5: Facebook is really for friends and family

If your goal is to share wedding photos with family who are across the country, or on the other side of the world, sure, Facebook is perfect. Post every photo you’ve got.

And if you want to find old buddies you knew in college, high school or Initech, then Facebook is the right tool for that job.

Also, the Book of Face is fine for playing Farmville or whatever, though my first act as dictator for life would be to ban requests from Farmville, Mafia Wars, Shopping Girl and all that other nonsense.

Is it the right tool for meeting people around the world? No.

Is it a good tool for chatting with experts who are in your field? No.

And is it something that’s easy to pop in and out of? No.

Reason No. 4: Twitter makes you a better writer

Writing anything in just 140 characters is quite tough.

Twitter makes you write — and think — in soundbites.  THIS IS NOT A BAD THING.

In fact, it’s beautiful, and one of the toughest skills to master.

Because less is more.

Let’s say it in French: Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue parceque je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte. — Blaise Pascal, Lettres Provinciales

Translation: “I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.”

Short takes work. That work is worth it.

The more you practice making your words tight, the better you’ll become as a writer.

Reason No. 3: Facebook is invasive

If you let it, Facebook will track every web site you visit. Every click you make, every breath you take, it’ll be watching you.

And with this new Timeline thing, every moment of your life is on display. Technically, it’s possible to edit and delete all that stuff, though it is a tremendous PITA.

All this Big Brother horsepucky makes you far less likely to truly use Facebook to meet new people.

And that’s the real purpose of social networking in the first place. Meeting new people. Making new connections. Talking to people, around the world, who are passionate about the same things you are, whether it’s miniature schnauzers, model trains or romance novels featuring men in kilts.

This is why people tend to really love Facebook at first, then peter out and stop using it. There are only so many people in the world who I want to give access to all kinds of family photos and random snapshots a friend took of me at a bar in Kentucky.

The invasive and intimate nature of Facebook makes it tough truly reach out to people you don’t already know. Are you going to “friend” somebody from Ireland who you don’t know at all, and give them access to every little bit of your personal life, just to START talking to them?

No. That’s backward. It’s like you’ve got to invite people over to your house for dinner before you shake hands and say hello.

Reason No. 2: Twitter is made for making friends

There’s no pressure. There’s no worry about giving people access to all your private photos and an online biography of your entire life.

Twitter is a happy little bar where the drinks are free.

You don’t need to “friend” somebody to chat with them. It’s not a flipping crisis requiring therapy if you don’t follow them, or start to follow and then unfollow later. You can still see their tweets if you really want, and talk to them.

No big deal.

And since tweets are limited to 140 characters, nobody can put you in a coma.

Making new friends on Twitter is painless and easy. You can chat with all kinds of people who you would never (a) friend on Facebook, (b) send a random email to or (c) call on the phone.

Reason No. 1: Free ink and airtime

Twitter is the best tool not just for social media, but for regular media.

There’s a reason why ESPN, The Colbert Report, CNN, MSNBC and every other TV station with letters of the alphabet are talking about tweets all the time, live and on the air.

Because tweets make for easy news.

The media needs soundbites, which are hard to find.

Twitter gives you instant soundbites, whether it’s from regular viewers responding to questions from the host, professional football players making news by tweeting insane things or cat-fights between rap stars and Hollywood types via snarky tweets.

Take it from a former reporter: tweets are like catnip for newsrooms.

Reporters drown in emailed press releases. You would not believe how many they get every day — hundreds is not an exaggeration. Their inbox gets so full, a lot of reporters don’t bother reading them.

They’d rather get their tips from tweets, because (a) they can see the tweet in a quick glance, (b) they don’t have to open every email, read it and delete it and (c) they can reply right away or click on the link to get more while (d) getting a response by email is almost always slower.

And journalists hate nothing more than Things that are Slow, because they are forever on deadline, and always trying to break news.

Reason No. 1 also combines with Reason No. 4, since all the tweets you’ve written in just 140 characters have not only made you a better, tighter writer, they’ve also taught you to write in headlines, soundbites and pitches.

That is some sneaky penmonkey magic right there.

Final note

Now, I’m not saying Twitter is a replacement for mass media and publicity. Not at all.

Twitter isn’t made to sell things. Don’t try to pimp your book / album / movie with a bunch of tweets. Just don’t. Are you tempted? Read this: The Twitter, it is NOT for selling books

Twitter is made for making new friends. Use it for that.

Now, there will always be new social media sites like Pinterest popping up, becoming the hot new thing. Twitter may grow bigger and start buying up companies, or it may get slaughtered by something that hasn’t been invented yet. Same with Facebook.

The thing that won’t change is that you need different tools for different jobs.

Tools like Facebook keep your current friends and family happy. They want to know when your birthday is, so they can send a note. Wedding photos and baby pictures are stuff friends and family want to see.

Tools like Twitter are for entirely different purposes. Twitter-like objects are for meeting new people, for chatting with fellow soccer maniacs or writers of cozy mysteries involving talking cats.

(Talking cat cozies — am I kidding? No. Click here to read the first page of A BOWL OF WARM MILK AND MURDER)

Completely different tools. One’s a hammer, one’s a screwdriver. Don’t get them mixed up.

But if you only have time for one, and you’re some kind of writer / musician / actor looking to bust through, pick Twitter.

Related posts. Read this stuff. DO IT NOW. Then tell your peoples, so they don’t waste time hiking down the same dead-end paths.

Special note: This is my 100th post, and the posts will come more often now that my busy season is over. Got an idea for a post? Are you a writer, editor or author dying to write a crazy guest post that you couldn’t pull off on your own blog? Shoot me a note on Twitter @speechwriterguy — and, yes, I tied this back to Twitter. NOT AN ACCIDENT.

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Guy - Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.

Google+

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong, The Twitter, the Book of Face and the Series of Tubes

by | April 14, 2012 · 6:06 am

You can pitch ANYTHING except quality

Quality matters. Oh, it matters a lot.

Nobody wants to pay money to see a movie that stinks, a book that you can’t get past Chapter 1 or an album where every song hurts your ears.

You want quality. I want quality. Everybody wants it.

But you can’t pitch quality.

And you can’t package it.

So unless you’ve got something else — a quirk, a hook, a unique twist — quality alone won’t get you anywhere.

It won’t get people to look, listen or read in the first place.

This is why untalented shmucks are living in mansions while amazing writers, musicians and actors are waiting on tables at Applebees and selling copies of TWILIGHT: BELLA GIVES BIRTH TO TRIPLETS at Barnes and Noble.

So let’s pitch and package random, made-up things. Why? Because it takes practice, because you’re too close to your own stuff to do it right and because it’s fun.

First up: two different bands.

The first band is a trio: drummer, guitar and bass / lead singer. They’re all recent music school graduates in their late twenties, serious and talented. They play a lot of punk rock and post-grunge.

The second band isn’t much of a contender by comparison. They’re all five years old. College degrees in music? Try “Hey, we’re potty trained, and we know our ABC’s.” They don’t know how to read music, write music or understand music theory like the other band.The guitarist knows one trick: crank up the distortion and make it loud. But they know the rough melodies and words to three different Metallica songs, and they do a cover of ENTER SANDMAN that’s close enough to be damned funny.

Here’s a real-life example of this sort of thing. A ton of people — 383,000 plus — have watched this kid sing, DON’T BRUSH MY HAIR IN KNOTS while her brother or neighbor kid banged on the drums.

Alright, here’s your homework: Write a one sentence pitch for each band. Four words, if you want to ace this. Six words if you feel like a nancypants and cheaty McCheater.

Do it now. Go. Find a piece of paper or fire up Word and do a pitch for each. Don’t even think about it.

I’ll go find silly videos on YouTube about swamp monsters in Louisiana or whatever.

OK, time’s up. Let’s compare pitches.

My best shot at the music majors: “Nirvana minus flannel / angst.”

Four words, and I’m sort of cheating with the slash. Hard, isn’t it? You can’t get anywhere saying any kind of variation on, “This band, they’re really good.”

My pitch for the kids: “Kindergarteners cover Metallica.”

Three words. Doesn’t have to be poetry here. Are you going to click on a link that says “Really great band” or “Nirvana minus flannel / angst” when there’s another link that has five-year-olds playing heavy metal?

Who wins the quality test? The serious music majors, by a mile.

Who wins the pitch and packaging test? The metal kids. It’s so much easier. Could I get newspaper reporters and a TV crew to shoot the post-grunge band? Not unless they show up and rescue a grandmother and her 14 cats from a burning building.

Could I get free ink and airtime with the Heavy Metal Monsters of Hillman Elementary? Absolutely.

Next: two different books.

Our quality book is a literary masterpiece that will make you cry while snorting coffee through your nose, then take a fresh look at life and possibly quit your job and join a Tibetan monastery. It’s about a middle-aged man who works in a cubicle farm and lives in surburbia with a wife who’s on industrial amounts of Prozac and a teenage daughter who’s too busy thumbing her iPhone to notice who provides her with food, shelter, clothing and a VW Passat with only 13,000 miles on it. The hero’s life changes when he gets mugged on the way home. Also, a mime is involved, and a janitor who lives in a shack but says witty, wise things before he gets hit by a train.

The other book is a cheesy sci-fi novel with horrible dialogue. The premise: dinosaurs didn’t die off after some asteroid hit. They were smart. Really smart. And they left the planet in a fleet of spaceships to escape Earth long BEFORE that asteroid screwed things up for millions of years. Now they’re headed toward earth. And they want their planet back.

Ready? One sentence pitch for each. Four words.

GO.

While we’re waiting, have you noticed that Kevin Bacon doesn’t really age? I mean, the dude has to be at least 84 by now, but he looks 40-something. On the other hand, Sylvester Stallone is living proof that action stars should stop with the action, and the plastic surgery, when they hit 55. Also, the teaser trailer for EXPENDABLES 2 is out, and it stars every washed-up action star on the planet. It’s like there’s a nursing home in Hollywood full of them, and the owner woke up one day and kicked them all out. Van Damme and Chuck Norris and Schwarzenegger? All these geezers make Jet Li look like he’s 12.

OK, let’s see what we’ve got. I’ve got nothing, since I’ve been busy making cracks about Stallone and Chuck Norris, so here’s my instant, no-thinking pitches.

Literary book: “Hell is a cubicle farm.”

Five words. More of a title than a pitch. It sings to me, though, in a small, squeaky, off-pitch voice.

Sci-fi nonsense: “Space dinosaurs invade earth.”

This is a kissing cousin to “Comet to destroy earth,” which has been the basis for about six different  movies, including five by Michael Bay, with the other one starring Morgan Freeman for some reason, despite the fact that Morgan Freeman has ZERO CHANCE of flying up in a space shuttle with Bruce Willis and that dude who is an old college buddy of Matt Damon to blow up the comet / asteroid / whatever with nuclear bombs.

The bottom line is, quality is one thing. An important thing, in the end.

Yet nobody will read your masterpiece / listen to your amazing album / see you act like no actor has acted in the history of acting-hood if they don’t get hooked by your pitch and packaging.

Quality isn’t a pitch. It isn’t attractive or descriptive. “You should see that movie — it’s really good.” That doesn’t work. Your friends and family will ask, “What’s it about?” and if you don’t have four words to explain it, to give them a pitch, then forget it.

The next time to read a book, see a movie or listen to a great new song, think of four words. How would you pitch or package them? What could you possibly say — not just to your friends so they could see it, but to a reporter or a TV producer?

If an idea is truly interesting — controversial, ground-breaking, weird, unique — it’ll get there. If all you have is quality, there’s no pitch or packaging to make it break through.

Related posts:

Writers, we are doing it BACKWARDS

The Twitter, it is NOT for selling books

Forget the Twitter: free ink and airtime are your MOST DANGEROUS WEAPONS

Using free ink and airtime to BUST THROUGH

Why blog hits DON’T REALLY MATTER

Quirks and legs matter more than talent and perfection

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Guy - Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.

Google+

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by | March 31, 2012 · 5:05 am

Media Strategy Saturday: Tim Tebow’s favorite word, ‘excited’

So the gym where I sweat plays ESPN without the sound on, but I didn’t need any sound to watch Tim Tebow‘s press conference.

He is excited to be a New York Jet. Very, very excited.

So excited, he said variations on “excited” 4.5 bazillion times.

ESPN kept a tally. Watch it:

Now, that’s funny.

HOWEVER: there’s a serious point to be made here.

“Excited” isn’t a bad word to have attached to your name. Yes, if you say it 45-flipping times, people will make fun of you on TV, on the radios and in papers of news. The word, though, isn’t horrible. And it fits Tebow, who is — all controversy aside (can he pass the ball? will he ever stop Tebowing?) — definitely energetic and excited. The man isn’t boring.

Here’s the deal: what is the one word you want attached to you?

One word. Not a sentence, not a paragraph, not a page.

Because you’ll be lucky (a) if even a fraction of people recognize your name at all and (b) those people associate your name with a word.

Let’s play a little game. I’m going to list famous and not-so-famous people. You think of the first word that pops into your head. I’ll put my word in paranthesis.

You’ll notice that bad things are sticky. There’s a good reason for that. I explain why, including references to Dunbar’s Number and all sorts of fancy-but-useful stuff, in this series of posts:

Name recognition is KING; also, famous peoples doing it wrong

So the one-word game, it’s easy with other people. Hard when you do it for yourself. Even harder when you do it for yourself plus something creative. Can you sum up you, as a writer / musician / artist in a word, then pick one word to describe your latest novel / album / series of black velvet paintings of dogs dressed like Elvis?

Hard to do. But worth it. Because people only have so much space in their brain. They won’t digest a sentence or a paragraph, not when their heads are already jam-packed with pop culture nonsense about Snooki’s engagement and who just got booted off Dancing With the Stars.

One word. Think hard.

Just don’t pick “excited.”

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Guy - Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.

Google+

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Filed under 7 Media Strategy Saturday, Journalism, publicity and scandals, Old Media, which is still Big and Strong, The Twitter, the Book of Face and the Series of Tubes

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