Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Arianna Huffington - The Dominick Dunne of Finance

Arianna Huffington knows how to own space.  She took ownership of the liberal voice with HuffingtonPost.com, when neo-conservatives still dominated the conversation.  More recently she took ownership of candid analysis of finance, more specifically the global meltdown. 

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Huffington took on the role of the Dominick Dunne of the economy.  Her posts about Davos on her site leverage the Dunne formula:

• High-placed sources
• Mysterious people floating over to deliver information
• Celebrity gossip
• Solid insight, and
• Provocative analogies.

What Huffington serves up takes us way beyond the mainstream business media [MSM] such as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  That's where an influential such as Huffington who starts out digital, rather than attempts to do digital, has the advantage of living and breathing the conversational tone and content of digital.  Can those in   MSM take that great leap off their top-down preachy perches and talk peer-to-peer  with the rest of us? 

If they want to try, here is my [free] e-book on saving their and other digital souls Download Savingsoulsonparkavenuekstreet.  So far, more than 1000 old-media souls - and jobs - have been saved. 

Oprah - Is she nothing but a, well, pest

Believe the tabloids, like the February 9, 2009 edition of GLOBE, and once-mighty Oprah has morphed into, well, a pest. 

According to Paul Bannister, Michelle Ohama perceives the talk-show host as an incorrigible spotlight-grabber and credit-taker.  Therefore, reports Bannister, "Michelle ... issued a blistering warning to Oprah: Stay in the background and keep quiet."  Oprah did just that, not only at the Inauguration but also at the Democratic National Convention.

Why might we believe the tabloids?  Well, they could be sued for false or misleading information by celebrities who have all the resources to file lawsuits that come to trial.  But, more to the point, we watched Oprah barging in uninvited to two brides's special day.  That was during her road trip with Gayle King.  By the looks on some of the wedding guests's faces, Oprah was not especially welcome. 

Is it because her aura is fading and her ratings declining that Oprah has become more nuisance than entertainer.

Passing of the Torch - Oh, Please, Not Yet

Buddhism tells us we have nothing to hold on.  I embraced that.  With one exception.  I had my writing.  No matter how down-and-out my professional and personal life became, I could always write my way to a fresh, and often stronger, start.  Here is the latest permutation of that tale Download Geezerguts.

Now I realize there could come a time when writing dissolves into another one of those entities we can't hang our sense of self on.  That stunner came when I was surfing the web.  I came across what could be the byline of my 20-something nephew Jonathan Murga in a Maryland newspaper.  Had that branch of the family and mine not been estranged I might have been in on his entrance into journalism.  But I wasn't.  So, shock shock shock.  Now he's likely there, in my space, writing.  

Clearly he is going to be writing longer and maybe better than I.  Those making a living in buzz-phrases would refer to that as "passing the torch."  But I don't want to pass the torch.  I want to remain the only writer in the dysfunctional family.  I guess Buddhists would assess this as my wanting a separate, permanent self.  They would contend that is impossible and will only cause suffering. 

I think I probably opted for the suffering.

   

Let 'em eat broccoli - Suits at NBC nix PETA Superbowl ad

Typical, the too-cautious suits at NBC nixed the PETA Superbowl ad that depicted the vegetable broccoli in an erotic manner.  Fortunately for PETA and all the animal lives it will save, this no from NBC will generate enormous publicity. 

No wonder TV is going the way of the dino, as NGOs such as PETA thrive.

Just Show Us You Care - Emotional Intelligence [EI] is everything in Great Depression 2.0

We need someone in our corner during Great Depression 2.0.  Companies which show they care are getting our business.   And they will get more of our business as hard times continue.

Allstate Insurance, a company which had been my insurance carrier forever, didn't seem to care about me.  Its tone always seemed rushed.  Its approach always struck me as corporatese.  Its prices seemed high. 

One gray day last December, State Farm sent me a caring little letter about reducing my rates.  I followed up.  With Earth Mother State Farm agent Tamika Brown in the New Haven, Connecticut office [203-781-9956], I wound up getting both car and renter coverage for half what I was paying for just car with Allstate.  A deal closer might have been that her desk was chock full of goodies such as candy and darling magnets to post my reminders on my refrigerators. 

Being with Brown was just was like doing business in the old neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey.  There the guys [it was the 1950s and only guys then] in the butcher, dairy, car repair, and the-then version of Cheers knew they better care.   Otherwise, we would run them off the block with our mouths: Yenta power.

Why can't more companies get it about caring?  Answer: Low Emotional Intelligence [EI].  My gift to Corporate America is my [free] e-book on EI in the workplace and in running our own business Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.

Snuggie - Sending all the right messages, with perfect timing

Pop culture products like Snuggie send all the right messages, with perfect timing.  The term "doing a Snuggie" could enter the public relations vocabulary to refer to anything that is a perfect fit for client's communications needs.

Like GEICO's Caveman, for example, Snuggie tells us it's okay to feel bad.  And plenty of us are feeling just that way these days.  This is the ultimate comfort food, without the calories or guilt. Plus, it allows us to hide.  Only our hands need to stick out from the fleece womb.

Another key message is that healing is open to everyone.  Snuggie retails at about $14.99.  I don't know anyone who can't afford it.  And I don't travel in ritzy circles these days.

A third message is not to take ourselves seriously.  If an odd creation like Snuggie is useful, why not wear it?  And it doesn't matter a bit that we look, well, like we're medieval monks.

Those wanting or needing to make a bundle can deconstruct Snuggie, as well as GEICO's Caveman and New England cult figure Bob of Bob's Discount Furniture Stores.  Find the formula which underlies successful pop culture.  Hints: Contrarian, unsophisticated to the point of goofy, affordable, and promoted in cheesy ways.

"Without a Trace" - Does romance boost ratings?

On "Without a Trace" there's a second romance.  I had figured the love affair between Jack Malone and Samantha was plenty.  But no, we now have the Hispanic FBI agent and a white-bread in the office also caring deeply about one another. 

In most real-life offices surely not so many workers would be falling in love with one another.  Those arrangements are pretty complicated and, when over, usually even more complicated.

Have the writers and producers of "Without a Trace" caved to a gimmick to boost ratings? 

The Latest Books - Not what we're talking about - any more

Another blow to the Crusties [Upper Crust].  THE WASHINGTON POST is ending its stand-alone print book review section.  Books are not what the movers and shakers talk about any more. Yes, the ideas in a book get talked about.  But who needs the book or the book review.  Give us the idea in an analysis on a blog or four-minutes on YouTube.  That's plenty.

Crusties will now lament in their book-discussion groups the loss of this prime print real estate in WAPO.  They will further withdraw into their isolation.  They will continue to become irrelevant in conversations which influence.  Their offspring will likely still come to Manhattan to look for and maybe even get jobs in book publishing which don't matter any more. 

Can Crusties save themselves and their children?  Yes, here's my e-book which has already rescued about a million souls from not mattering any more, at least professionally Download Savingsoulsonparkavenuekstreet.

Writing Books - So Pre-Digital, So Non-Lucrative

Yup, we still hear too many folks, who should know better, saying, "I've got a book or two in me." 

But that fantasy might only function to out those people as so pre-digital.  Books in this era of the Net are no longer the path to decent earnings, name recognition, or even satisfaction.  As Motoko Rich explains in THE NEW YORK TIMES, we're on the brink of an age "when there are more people who want to write books than there are people who want to read them."  A sign of all this is that traditional publishing is imploding and self-publishing may be lucrative for the owners of the business but not for the writers themselves.

The extreme makeover for the book-writing fantasy is to create a digital site or community that brings in revenue and and anoints one a rock star.  Nick Denton was there.  Unfortunately, he allowed his digital kingdom Gawker.com to slip away.  Sustaining success is digital is a whole lot harder than putting a book out there, collecting royalties and being invited to orate over High Tea.

Updike Dead: Opening for Critic of Middle Class, at least what's left of it

Today, that critic of the middle class  John Updike died.  Lung cancer did him in at 76.  That has left an opening for a fresh voice to observe America's middle class, at least what's left of it.

Probably that voice won't communicate in books, the way Updike did with his "Rabbit" series.  The voice will come through on the web in blogging, tweets, podcasts, and maybe email blasts. 

Do I have fantasies about being that voice?  Not really.  I don't understand the middle class.  Never did.  Somehow I migrated right from lower middle class aka white trash in Jersey City, New Jersey to the upper middle class and, at least in values, back to ethos of the blue collar.  Here's my story on that  flight back to my working-class roots Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.   Another insightful deconstruction of the values of the blue collar is "Limbo" by Alfred Lubrano.

From what I've observed of the middle class, perhaps it's just as well it's vanishing in America.  It was an expensive way of life, plus a definite soul-killer.  And it wasn't only the Rabbits who wound up needing salvation and not finding it. 

In college in the mid 1960s, at the-then women's Roman Catholic Seton Hill, I bore witness to vibrant girls twisting themselves into dead-eyed women. They did that in order to snag a proposal by first semester senior year from one of those awful Rabbits Updike castigated in his books.  Over the years I ran into them.  They had gone from dead-eyed to dead-souled.  Yeah, all over. 

Probably I kept myself fat in order to keep out of all that.  A first-generation college in my family, I lacked the confidence and strength to buck the system directly.  As yet, I haven't married.  Maybe I'm afraid that I will still wind up with a twice-fried Rabbit, left over from a schoolmate's first marriage.  Predictably, they dumped or were dumped by Rabbit 1.0 to simply replicate the spiritual tragedy with Rabbit 2.0.