Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

WikiGate: State Dept. should have watched "The Sopranos," "Rubicon"

Shame on the U.S. State Department.  Why didn't those power brokers know enough about leaking and even human gossip to be more circumspect in their communications.  All they had to do was watch some American TV.

When Tony Soprano needed to ensure his conversation remained private he had the chat in a medical doctor's unused office.  When the world de-stabilizers had to set disaster in motion during fictional "Rubicon," they transmitted information in an elaborate code system - letters in crossword puzzles published in newspapers.

Well the State Department, including its celebrity head Hillary Clinton, won't be the only ones to come across as thick as a brick about how to communicate in a protected manner.  Following probably another dump or two of State Department material WikiGate will spread to other industries.  Banking could be the next.  Let's see how dumb the bankers are.

 

Business of Ghostwriting Admissions Essays, Term Papers, Dissertations

As Francesca Di Meglio chronicles in BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK, there is a ghostwriting niche for producing admissions essays for professional schools.  I would add that all branches of ghostwriting for use in academia, ranging from students to professors, represent a growth field. 

Some using those services are dumb enough to post help wanted ads on Craigslist and could easily be smoked out by a clever investigative reporter. Others are more subtle.  They surf the web identifying ghostwriters, then contacting them in an evasive manner. 

Those providing those services vary in quality, pricing, and ethics.  The whole ghostwriting industry for academia is the wild west.  But since writing is a craft not drilled into students beyond my generation of Baby Boomers, those whose admission to a prestige school, graduation from an undergraduate or graduate program, or tenure as a professor depend on writing skills are usually desperate.  I know.  They contact me all the time, even though I explain I haven't done a pure research paper since my own days in the late 1960s as a doctoral student at the University of Michigan.  I also mention I am out of touch with what admissions officers are looking for.  They still plead for the service.

Of course, all this is unethical.  In fact, once these students wake up and realize that the degree ghostwriters produced papers for didn't provide thinking skills, it's likely they will sue the university or college for not having mechanisms in-place to detect that fraud.  My hunch is that the lawsuit will take the form a class action one in which millions of unemployed Generation Ys participate.  Along with the institutions of higher learning, the defendants will include the ghostwriting services.

BU's MFA in Creative Writing: But, why?

Good placement.  Boston University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences MFA in Creative Writing has a quarter-page ad for its program in the December 9, 2010 issue of THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS.  Also, good positioning and packaging.  Both the tone and content of the ad stress the craft of writing.  There is also a laundry list of big names who had attended BU's workshops.  Think Sylvia Plath.  At the end of the promotional piece there are both a snail mail address to contact and the website www.bu.edu/writing.  Nice touch, the welcome of snail mail.

Curious, I went to the website.  It took a bit of hunting to locate the information about the price of the program.  It's about $40,000 in tuition per year.  Add on, of course, living expenses and the opportunity cost of attending classes rather than working full time.  However, one would have to pay for living expenses whether or not one was matriculating in a program.

The MFA program requires 32 credits, which could be completed in one year.  That means that for $40,000 in tuition and the lost wages from not having a full-time job, someone can obtain the MFA. 

For no tuition and no opportunity cost one could also learn the craft of writing, as the saying goes, "on the job," as well as enhance existing skills.  There are so many options. 

One is a full-time writing position in a journalistic or commercial setting.  

Another is being a contract employee for an online writing service. 

There are also paid internships.

Then there is the option which used to be bohemian but is becoming increasingly mainstream.  That's being a freelance writer.  Thanks to middlemen such as eLance and Craigslist, the freelance part is doable even without marketing skills. Also, the market for freelance writers started unfreezing about six months ago. Just check the growing number of ads for freelance help on http://journalismjobs.com and Mediabistro.com

The reality is this: writing is a hands-on pursuit.  At one time most writers honed their trade by simply jumping in and writing.  As in sales, if they produced, they were a keep.  If not, they went on to try out other lines of work.

So, why do people go for an MFA? 

Confidence?  Plenty of that comes with payment, even a low one, when a piece is sold. 

Contacts?  Plenty of them are made making a living through writing. 

Constructive criticism?  Plenty of that comes right here in the trenches.

The PR News War

Public relations is one industry that's growing.  Depending on who's doing the counting, it could expand by more than 20 percent by 2018.  No wonder.  After all, as Richard Nelson hammers in WHAT COLOR IS YOUR PARACHUTE?, it's not the best qualified who gets the goodies.  It's those who present themselves best for those goodies.  PR's core competence is positioning and packaging to give clients the edge out there.

No surprise, the ambitious folks at Mediabistro.com have been targeting ownership of covering PR news.  That means it's taking on the J.R. O'Dwyer operation, which has dominated for decades. Most of us in communications came of professional age following developments chronicled by Jack O'Dwyer.  If you made a move, you wanted him to note it in his myriad publications.

Most recently, Mediabistro's PR NEWSER claims that it's the first to report that Todd Burke, Vice President of Corporate Communications at JetBlue, is gone.  What's notable is that PR NEWSER noted this in its headline.

Milked Material: When does it start smelling sour?

Nora Ephron became a brandname in writing and then in film by fresh takes.  Then, like many successful people, she seemingly started to rest her creativity a bit and milk old material.  According to Alex Kuczynski some of it is starting to smell sour.

In today's NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW section, Kuczyski reviews Ephron's new book I REMEMBER NOTHING.  Familiar themes, like Ephron's divorce from Carl Bernstein, pop up.  Even before the mantra of the era became "move on," Ephron's defaulting to overworked material would have been suspect.  The artists of our society are the ones paid attention to because their role is to provoke thought.  Somehow a lot of us sense we are being bullied into thinking way too much about a smuck like Bernstein who couldn't handle success - and never got it again.

Incidentally, the supposed fresh material about her alcoholic mother is a little late in the genre.  Boozing, our own, our parents's and by our fellow 12-step friends, has been diced, sliced, and twice-fried.

Obama: Self-inflicted Wounds

Long before the hoops injury, Barack Obama was the walking wounded.  And unlike most leaders, those hits to his brandname, influence, and power didn't come primarily as a result from bad advice from his inside circle of advisers.  The wounds were self-inflicted.

The smartest kid on the block Obama never seemed to have grown up.  One definition of "grown up" comes from Truman Capote's short story "New York."  In it the narrator gets the gestalt that coming of age means you get it that not everyone loves you.  Obama didn't seem to get that.

However, he still can.  He can lift himself out of himself and have that key internal shift great leaders do. They become, as St. Francis of Assisi put it, "self-forgetting."  Here is his famous prayer about liberating the self from the self.

"Criminal Minds" Marathon

Of course, we love all those profiles of serial killers.  But that's just a small part why there was an audience yesterday for the "Criminal Minds" marathon.  Tons of previous episodes were re-played.

The show brings back values that some of us Baby Boomers remember but are certain will never witness again, at least not in real life.  The characters care about each other, instead of doing each other in, as happens in too many workplaces now.  They also care about what they do.  How cynical the rest of us have become about The Job.  And there's the willingness for them to be oddballs.  The only one near normal is JJ and she is gone from the show. 

The hunger for those values kept me tuned into the whole marathon.

It's Cathie, by a nose

After a sound spanking by the media, polls, petitions and a panel of educators, Cathie Black will go on to be chancellor of the New York City schools. 

State education commission David Steiner, when saying no to a waiver for Black, left the door open to compromise.  He and his panel held out the possibility that if a number-two, who is experienced in education, is brought into the loop, they would approve Black. 

The number-two is Shael Polakow-Suransky, who is a seasoned educator.

Fine, for now.  But if a crisis arises, as it often does in education, Black and even the number-two will be under a microscope for what they do or don't do.  Clearly, this new administration is not beginning off from a position of strength.

Ghostwriting: Big Game Played Underground

"Ghostwriting is an underground industry."

That's what a prospect of my book ghostwriting services observed.  I agreed.  The players in the business attend to a game underneath the radar.  That's where the big money is and where the big referrals come from.

The names in the ghostwriting industry aren't well known, except to clients who can afford them.  The names which are known are in the minor leagues, wasting their negotiating ability on having their name prominently displayed on the book cover.

An always-in-demand ghostwriter I know gets $100,000 from major publishers to see a major book off.  He is not even acknowledged in thank-yous posted in the book by the person who is considered the author.

No profile pays off in major ways.

Conde Nast: Unless it can get smart fast about digital

Where Conde Nast held its holiday party might symbolize where it is today - that is, nowhere.

In the NEW YORK POST, Keith Kelly reports that instead of the Four Seasons, the once red-hot media empire celebrated the holiday in "a windowless back room of Aureole."  Yeah, its fortunes have picked up some.  But the DNA of the company is 20th century print.  Meanwhile, old-liner Tina Brown has reinvented herself from being a print tiger to an equally aggressive one in digital.  Her startup DAILY BEAST has merged with NEWSWEEK.  And, you got it, she's in charge.

Conde Nast, as with NEWSWEEK before the Washington Post Company put it up for sale, has been inward-looking.  Where it's looking is backward.