Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Work: The Two Worlds

The world of work has split in two. 

There are those full-time jobs with benefits.  They are increasingly at danger.  With Goldman Sachs halving projected GDP growth to 2 percent, they have likely become even more insecure.

Then there are the just-in-time or temporary jobs.  At the end of the 1980s, Charles Handy predicted in "Age of Unreason" that the lion's share of work for organizations would be configured that way.  Handy's prediction had been followed in the early 21st century by Daniel Pink's "Free Agent Nation." 

Currently, all that visionary talk has mutated into reality.  Since the buzz began about the coming recession, the third downturn in the 21st century, my phone - yeah the old-fashioned medium - keeps ringing.  Prospects are nice.  They have tasks that need to do get done and that's that.  Three cheers for the recession.

Will this trend continue if a boom happens?  It could.  The freelance economy has been running very efficiently.  In addition to the traditional word of mouth referrals, there are the help-wanted on Craigslist, Mediabistro.com, and JournalismJobs.com.  The initial screening is done by email, followed by phone.  If the vetting is global, then there's Skype.  Services like GoToMeeting provide the ability to mutually review documents.  For collaboration in real time there's Google Docs.

Given a choice, most in communications would likely go for the full-time jobs with benefits.   However, by time this next recession is over that might be re-thought.

One more thing:  Outside of journalism, writers are in demand again.  We're the content providers for both long and short form in digital communications.

 

Mark Halperin: Good time had by all

The media is totally entertainment.  Those who know that do well.  An example is the wildly popular digital site Abovethelaw.com.  Despite the reality that its target market - law students and young lawyers - is downsizing, it still owns the territory on many issues related to law.

So, we have to wonder if Mark Halperin engineered his current crisis.  He referred to our trusty leader Barack Obama as a "dick" on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."  The seven-second delay mechanism wasn't operating.  Of course, Halperin has been suspended.  That's part of the melodrama that's so much fun.  Likely Halperin will get a plum job covering Campaign 2012.  That will make him hotter than ever.  All politicos will want to be interviewed by Halperin.

 

MySpace - RIP

The saga of MySpace is a testament to the volatile ways of the web.  That media property, purchased by Rupert Murdoch for $1 billion, has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million.  Obviously Murdoch didn't understand digital and didn't hire those who did. One wonders how much progress on the learning curve has been made by News Corp. 

But that's all history.  Now eyes are on the merger of AOL and HuffingtonPost.com.  We wonder if it will fizzle out in expensive fashion like MySpace?

Bernie Madoff: Kvetcher

That circumspect laconic Bernie Madoff has mutated into a kvetcher.  According to NEW YORK MAGAZINE, he sees himself as a "human pinata."

 
For those of you who didn't grow up in a Jewish neighborhood, "kvetcher" is a Yiddish term to denote someone who has turned complaining into great performance art.  In his book "Born to Kvetch," Michael Wex describes the kvetcher in this way.  An old man is riding on a train next to a younger man.  Bit by bit the geezer becomes more dramatic in lamenting his thirst.  Finally he gets to the point at which his seat mate can't take it.  He leaves his seat, goes to the waterfountain on the train, and brings back a cup of water.  The complainer gulps it down, then bitches at how thirsty he had been and how long he had to wait for the water.

Madoff is an official kvetcher.  The guys in prison aren't going to go for that.

Andrew Cuomo, why can't we all be like him, perfect in every way

Andrew Cuomo has had an amazing comeback.  That 180, and the obvious lessons he learned along the way which he applied so brilliantly, has some folks looking at failure in a different - and more judgmental - way.

One angry man writes to the Ethical Guerrilla that the U.S. government should mandate that failures turn themselves around, just like Cuomo did.  If they don't, then measures should be taken.

 
The Ethical Guerrilla, that is Mark Matousek, doesn't buy into the modest proposal of punishing personal and professional failure.  Here you can read his iconic analysis of a society which engineers itself only for success.  Such a society would, like the Inuit culture, put its non-winners on an ice floe, headed toward the ocean.

As we enter the nation's third downturn since the 21st century began, too many of us are feeling bad about ourselves.  We shoulda been wiser.  We shoulda saved more money.  We shoulda majored in business, not English literature.  This invidious pattern, notes Matousek, comes because:

"too much of our lives are spent adjusting our expectations, tweaking our standards, and managing our reputations in light of other's accomplishments."

Instead, like Cuomo, we might just embrace our problems as uniquely our own and solve them in our unique ways.  While we're doing that we become self-protective about letting the angry in who are on a mission to punish us.  We also don't compare the pickle we're in to anyone else's cucumber.

Matousek has published "Ethical Wisdom."  It's available in bookstores.  Or you can purchase it here online.  [Disclosure: After Matousek read my review of "Ethical Wisdom," he asked my firm Download Socialmediamarketing to represent him.]

Writing as fine art: Shrinking market

Amidst all the commercial applications of writing, there has always been that niche known as "fine art."  Writers who could master that and continue to develop found buyers for thought-filled and polished work in publications such as THE NEW YORKER. Likely the best of them will always find buyers.  Institutions such as THE NEW YORKER can persuade sponsors to provide the funds to keep them going.

However the fine art of writing is a dying one.  As we all know, the world of media has been becoming visual for a while.  Digital technology, which facilitates embedding or showcasing videos and photos, has accelerated that trend.  Those with a story to tell realize that.  They contact me about writing scripts for visual presentation, not a book.

Words, though, still have power http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgi0t2ap-us&feature=youtu.be.  That's exactly why we who know how to use them still are in demand as content-providers.  Those opportunities require that the words function as vehicles to transmit a message, issue or product/service-oriented.  No employer or client wants the language to be a stand-alone beauty.

Some writers facing unemployment or underemployment can't or won't make that shift. They might be better off finding a totally new way for them to make a living.  They can continue to write as a hobby.  Some may develop enough to be in that elite circle who publishes in THE NEW YORKER.

San Francisco could end sales of small animals: Step toward preventing current tragic glut

There doesn't have to be so many small animals around.  If breeders stopped breeding them and owners - who animal rights advocates want to rename "guardians" - spayed and neutered theirs pronto, there would be the beginning of the end of the current tragic glut. Those animals which don't get adopted either have a lonely existence in shelters or are put to sleep.  In this time in history, that should not be.

San Francisco is considering banning the sale of all small animals, including cats and dogs.  For one thing that will shut down those awful puppy mills.  For another, those intending to go to the breeder for a pedigreed puppy would have to do without, shop at the shelter, or go outside the city for the contraband.  If that happens, many animals will never have to know the uncertain existence faced regularly by the lion's share of cats and dogs. 

When I was a volunteer at the Manhattan ASPCA, I adopted Havana Brown cat Carlotta.  That's a pedigree brand. Yet she wound up on the streets of Manhattan skin and bones and with a litter.  The kittens were sick and so was she.  But there was a happy ending to that story.  Carlotta still lives with me and her animal companion Jason, a black cat.  Saturday at the vet I asked him if animals have the capacity to recall trauma. He said he didn't know.  I hope that Carlotta doesn't.  

Seton Hill, Greensburg, PA - Class of 1967

'Tis the season of college reunions.  Here in New Haven, Connecticut, geezer Yale alumni have a spring to their step as they pass through the Ivy doors young paid help hold open for them.  They will boast, gleefully grant some favors to those who didn't fare as well in life's career lottery, and before heading home shoot over to Barnes and Noble and pile up on Yale paraphernalia for grandchildren.

Next year will be the 45th reunion for the Seton Hill College [now a university], Greensburg, Pennsylvania, class of 1967.  Its trusty leader is currently JoAnne Boyle.  In Creative Writing, she, a professor then, gave me a "B." Today I make a good living as a creative writer.

 

At his reunion, Phil Spector rented a table apart, just for himself and his body guards.  He wanted to communicate the message of how isolated he had felt back in his school days.  I too felt apart from Seton Hill's ethos.  But my need for attention trumps any adolescent resentments. 

My fantasy is landing a helicopter on the rolling hills of Seton Hill [cute, how it took on the name of the hills] and out climb dead wringers for the cast of "Criminal Minds" - Hotchner, Rossi, Morgan, and Baby Girl.  Me too.  These stand-in FBI agents say I got a pass from prison to attend my reunion.  I wonder who will, as when I was a school girl, steer clear and verbally tear me to shreds, who will find the situation totally titillating and want my prison mailing address, and who wants a walk on the wild side and promises to visit me in the joint.

However, it's unlikely that I will make that pilgrimage all the way to western Pennsylvania to be strong-armed to make a financial pledge to help with the further development of "The Hill."  And, please, spare me the slide show about how much expansion has already taken place.

Since we live so long the past is no longer prologue or, to my amazement, even important to us, not in the way of needing to prove ourselves to those who saw little good in us or snub those who snubbed us.  For that reason, reunions might attract fewer geezers.  School days lose their pull power.  What does hold our attention is that, as David W. Galenson documents in his book "Old Masters and Young Geniuses," we have a shot at being late bloomers.   To do that, of course, we have to leave the past way behind.  

New Normal = Low Growth: Happy days here again for contract communications folks

The U.S. might be slouching toward bankruptcy and the experts such as Gary Shilling and the brainiacs at Goldman Sachs are predicting a recession.  The new normal seems to be slow growth, for years perhaps. 

That means happy days are here again, perhaps for an extended period, for us contract or just-in-time communications folks.  In downturns organizations and individuals turn to us to get work done cost-efficiently.  With plenty on their minds, they also want creatives who will get in and out fast, that is, no imposing the burden of a relationship.

The shift happened rather quickly.  Just a few months ago more of the opportunities had been positioned as full-time, usually without benefits, jobs.  No slouch when it comes to reading developments, I went after and got interviews for those full-time jobs.  Even though I am an aging Baby Boomer, I did receive two offers. 

Why I didn't take them is my fundamental trust in the ability to market and sell.  After years of a Goldilocks existence of trying out different kinds of space in earning a living, I really got it that at the end of the day what matters everywhere is positioning and packaging ourselves, our ideas, and our terms and conditions for doing work.

 
Even in organizations, marketing and selling often trump fitting in.  My hunch is that all that is going to count even more in our relationship to those who need results.  Chastened by three downturns since the beginning of the 21st century, they are all ears about how to get things done.

In the past seven days more contact has come from prospects and current clients than I had experienced in the few months before.  Freelancing could become the path to financial security.  

Goldman Sachs Halves GDP Forecast: Communications Market Reconfigures

The bad economic news from Goldman Sachs is proving to be good financial news for us just-in-time or contract communications professionals.  Goldman Sachs had been predicting about 4% GDP growth rate for the U.S.  Recently it has cut it in half to about 2%.

Immediately, the market for the kind of services wanted changed.  Instead of the surging demand for full-time onsite employees, there has been a return to just-in-time telecommuting ones as well as part-time ones who will spend some time at the client's facility.

Starting around Wednesday, requests for bids for various kinds of assignments have been coming in.  About 10 days I had driven all the way from New Haven, Connecticut to mid Long Island to bid on an assignment revising all the content for a property management website and then starting a blog, FaceBook account, and Tweets.  That story ended without a profitable ending.  I had bid too high.  During the process, when I read the faces of the prospects, I might have asked, "At what price would it take to get this assignment?"  I wanted the experience in that particular niche the company was in.  Also, hey, we're heading into a downturn.

 
The sweet spot is the pricing.