Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Monkey Business for laid-off VF folks

Flexibility's the thing, right.  So, laid-off folks at once high-flying VANITY FAIR might take seriously the publisher's offer to them of work at his restaurant Monkey Bar.  Graydon Carter's worlds are all interesting.  So why not try out some Monkey Business.

This tip about Carter's generosity to the axed comes from Hamilton Nolan at Gawker.  As Gawker reported earlier Carter wasn't around when the ax was falling.  Guess he doesn't have the stomach for that.

Spam aka "Content Seeder"

The term for spam is now, at least on the help-wanted, "Content Seeder."  No fool, the placer of the help-wanted did not identity itself.  All it indicates is it wants folks to leave comments on blog and video threads. 

This opportunity is on Craigslist Costa Rica section.

Jobs Jobs Jobs with Tucker Carlson aka "Dancing with the Stars" pro

Change or Die.  Tucker Carlson seems to have chosen the former.   On the Washington DC Craigslist help-wanted for Writing, Carlson has multiple listings.  This one is for an executive editor for an online news site.  Wonder if he's taking on the folks at Politico? 

In any event, these may be opportunities for the TIME writers who will be losing their jobs before Turkey Day.

Time ran out for Time Inc.

Time Inc. and its flagship publication TIME had time to Change or Die.   The Internet is no spring chicken and social media has become mainstream.  Just look at the help-wanted on Craigslist. 

Yet, TIME didn't change.  Oh there were the superficial cosmetic tuneups.  Both the whole thing was old-media:  Too polished, too top-down and closed to a conversation, the writers too full of themselves.  That iconic publication we were encouraged to become loyal to in college just drifted into irrelevance.

It will be a Bloody Turkey Season for about 540 employees at Time Inc.  That's the number floating around.  It could be more. 

And my hunch is that these seemingly insulated old-media types are clueless about how to sing for their supper in a new-media world.  Here's a complimentary e-book that might help them out, if they are willing to break open to reality Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova

GDP 3.5% Growth 3Q: Darwinian Reflections

It is good news.  The GDP grew in 3Q 3.5%. 

It is good news because my business has, like the "Night of the Living Dead," been jumping out of nowhere on all fronts.  It's grabbing me by the throat, cutting into my lazy routines of reading for self-improvement, gossiping, and shifting credit card balances to lower interest cards for hefty transfer fees.  Yeah, it's even, well scary. 

A FOB [Friend of Bill], I even brought to the rooms my angst about what to do with the revenue, the tax implications, and if I should get a dog.  Meanwhile my first novel "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" will be published early winter. Here are the first few chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2.  That could mean significant royalties.

I know there are jobless out there and, The Horror, homeless.  But I can't put that on my emotional radar screen.  Not now.  Not ever, unless some policy think tank hires me for contract ghostwriting.  The world of making a buck has turned Darwinian.  It's that binary: I make a living/I don't make a living.  If the latter occurs, my three animal companions Jason, Carlotta [who are tight] and Point Pleasant don't get their Fancy Feast. 

I got the epiphany in 2002: Change or Die.  I changed.  It was brutal. Download Geezerguts.  But I got on the other side of all that.  Others will have to too.  Or die. RIP. 

Jewish Lite - Hunger for Community

There will never be the deep Jewish identity that was the ethos of "Annie Hall."  Too old-world ethnic.  And we all have had with every aspect of Woody Allen. 

But Jewish Lite, the best of what Jewish culture offers, is taking over, at least among us educated somewhat alienated types.  Not that we will convert to the Jewish religion like Ivanka Trump. 

It's more that we hunger for its sense of community, taking care of its own, candor, and that wonderful Yiddish dialect.  We want to know more about the beliefs and lifestyle of the Jewish.  We want to adopt some of their practices, maybe even bringing back the fasting we did as former Roman Catholics.  We want some universal rules, as long as they're not from the RC hierarchy.  We want the comfort foods and the big dinners that aren't conducted like dinner parties. 

So, yes, as I advised a client last night, there is a goy market for Jewish Everything.  Maybe even a sort of nickname.  Call me Rebbecca Blackstone.

Gold Coast of Connecticut - Its Very Own Versions of the Full Monty

Layoffs continue, new good jobs tough to land - and keep.  And, as Gawker's Hamilton Nolan observes, American husbands haven't been telling their wives that they're jobless.  Yeah, right out of the 1997 British film "The Full Monty." 

Let's bypass why men, both in the UK and in America, can't or won't tell the folks at home that they are unemployed.  For me, what's more fascinating is how they spend their days in order to simulate being on the job.  A FOB [Friend of Bill], I have been in the rooms bearing witness to many of these tales of creativity, cunning, and persistence.

There was one graduate of Harvard Law School who was let go at an investment bank.  This wasn't the first time he had lost a job - or a wife.  Actually it was the third time he had been canned and he was on his third wife.  That third wife wasn't a classic trophy one.  She was about his age.  But nevertheless was obviously in this deal for the money. 

Every morning at 6:10 A.M. he would board MetroNorth in the Greenwich, Connecticut railroad station and return to that same station about 8:15 P.M., with real or feigned exhaustion.  His time was mostly spent in the New York Public Library.  He felt it that the universe was smiling on him when some official type at the Library asked if he wanted a position as the checker of handbags, attache cases, and backpacks.  To our surprise he didn't accept the offer, as did the author Michael Gates Gill of "Starbucks Saved My Life."

The ruse was unmasked when his borrowing ability tanked.  He confessed to his wife.  She left him.  He re-started starting to drink himself to death.  I have no idea if he succeeded.

Another pretender, a former celebrity publicity type, was more cost-efficient.  After all, commuting from the Gold Coast of Connecticut into the Big Apple isn't cheap.  He rented a room at a boarding house in Port Chester, New York.  There he labored from 7:00 A.M. until 10:00 P.M. designing a FOB watch and a marketing plan for it.  That panned out.  He convinced wifey he needed to change careers.  He said he cried when he moved out of his room. 

A third had been continuously employed since the early 1980s.  But before that he would hang out in those now-gone pay-phone booths in Grand Central.  He would drink vodka and call around for possible jobs.  The police found him passed out in the booth.  The rest is one of those FOB miracles.  

Want or need for one's own ruse more details of what others have done?  Attend an open meeting of FOB.  As a writer, I get my best material there.  So does my sponsor, a stand-up comic.

WSJ: Remember when it threw thunder bolts like Zeus? Now, over.

There was a time, and it was as recent as 2004 when I was first learning social media, that THE WALL STREET JOURNAL was a career-breaker and a career-maker.  

A negative article or even a quote could have the power of a thunder bolt thrown by Zeus.  A positive article or being quoted could be the reason for breaking open the good bottle of wine.  Public relations media pros who had "good contacts" at THE JOURNAL were golden.  Ghostwriters who penned the opinion-editorials, which actually once had influence, could charge whatever.  I know.  I ghostwrote three op-eds plus a number of letters.  For my own byline I published four.

Now, the business category itself is not hot.  Even if THE WALL STREET JOURNAL could have changed fast enough [Change or Die] it would still be a fading entity.  In the boom 1990s all those publications like "Red Herring" sprung up.  They're not around.  Neither is the well-funded PORTFOLIO.

But it didn't change.  It's proved to be Rupert Murdoch's folly.  At THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, its managing editor Robert Thomson announced that it's curtains for the Boston bureau.  Nine reporters, GAWKER's Gabriel Snyder tells us, will lose their jobs. Snyder's get is via FISHBOWL's Amanda Ernst.  The memo from Thomson hints that no one at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL should feel, well, secure.  Or, that's how I read it. 

My reflections: The pub had a very nice run.  Murdoch's business judgment is in question.  Flexible employees should start putting together a post-newspaper career now.

FORBES Slasher Tale: Twitter says 100, could be more

We anticipated Bloody Tuesday at FORBES.  It turned out to be Slasher Wednesday.  According to Dan Frommer's tweet 100 were cut.  Among them was that SILICON VALLEY INSIDER's girfriend on the editorial side.  However, as Rachel Kaufman reports on Mediabistro.com, there is debate about the exact number.  FORBES isn't confirming a body count.  Some say it could be more than 100.

Of course, our hearts break for the jobless.  But this was inevitable.  FORBES never got a handle on digital or on how conversational prose was changing even print's tone and content.  At this stage of business-as-a-conversation I can't even get through an edition of FORES any more.  Too preachy.  Too looking inward.  Too ponderous in style.

Chuck DeVore - First Conservative Pol Casting Spells through Social Media

Chuck DeVore's position on the issues: Those you can get from his news-sites,  YouTubes and the exploding media coverage of his "common-sense conservatism." 

What grabbed me by the throat tonight during the one-hour exclusive interview with him was that he is the GOP pioneer in social media.  For me, that's the story. 

The last time we bumped up against this kind of saga?  Those were the deconstructions of Barack Obama's win via digital tools.  The April edition of FAST COMPANY, for example, profiled Chris Hughes, FACEBOOK co-founder.  It was Hughes who created the social media campaign which gave The People the down-loadable tools to organize others, conduct special events [which only the wealthy could once do], and even fund-raise.  In Chapter 9 of his book "Grown Up Digital," Don Tapscott, who also wrote "Wikinomics," did just about the same thing.

With egg on its face for its lack of digital know-how and breatkthrough insights, some GOPers have tried to redeem themselves.  Here in Connecticut, that blew into a 1000 pieces as GOP got nailed for setting up 33 Twitter accounts impersonating Democrats. 

That's exactly why DeVore, a Republican who hopes to win Barbara Boxer's U.S. Senate seat, triggers a lot of neck-snapping among most of his watchers.  And daily the number of Watch DeVore surges.  Yeah, they smell the conservative analogue of JFK.

DeVore's approach to communications has long been to engage through social media. In his current position as a third-term Assemblyman [R-Irvine] he always blogged.  And he did it himself, everything from posting the content to responding to comments.  He constantly updated his website, when most considered that medium static. 

Today in his Boxer Rebellion that has simply been a must.  "I'm not a celebrity and am not wealthy," DeVore told me tonight.  "I can't afford those political consultants even if wanted them.  I have no choice but to reach out through social networking."

His version of Chris Hughes is volunteer Joshua S. Trevino [add a tilda over the "n."] of Trevino Strategies and Media.  And DeVore's digital metabolism is the speeded-up kind of Politico.com and HuffingtonPost.com as well as DrudgeReport.com, with its blue-light breaking news.  But there is none of the seeming lack of judgment and destructive hypomania of U.S. Representative Alan Grayson.

After Carly Fiorina, who could oppose him in the primary, voiced her anti-First Amendment stance about the Internet, DeVore's team sprung into video action.  Within eight hours it was a wrap on a YouTube piece rebutting Fiorina's thinking. 

This campaign will be post-Obama.  Leveraging digital tools this time around might come to be called DeVore 3.0.  That's my interest.  In fact the pull force was so strong that I volunteered my old-print-girl self to put together the opinion-editorials he will publish in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.