Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

New Year's Eve: Early start for some workers

Everyone has a work ethic or how they define what their commitment to their employer is.  Often that notion differs from that of their particular employer's.

Late morning today I was shopping in Wal-Mart.  I overheard some employees jabbering about other employees who had called in sick.  Their assessment was that their absent colleagues had started New Year's Eve "early."

We free agents, though, don't have that option.  When work comes in we jump.  And work does tend to come in on every U.S. holiday, especially in a global marketplace.  I backed out of an invitation for this evening because of two assignments.  A nerd before the term was invented, I rejoiced at having an excuse to hunker down and be entirely task oriented.

Manassa News & Messenger: End of the road, declares Warren Buffett

Yesterday the final copy of the Manassa News & Messenger in Virginia had been published. 

As WTOP reports, all employees lost their jobs after Warren Buffett, who owns parent company World Media Enterprises, decided to close it down last November.  The reason was that it was not competitive in its market segment.

2012: Good riddance

To many trend watchers, 2012 was a very bad year.  We don't know if it was fortunate or unfortunate the world didn't end on December 21.

There was Sandy, which the Northeast Corridor hasn't recovered from yet.  Its true commercial toll will be obvious this summer as resorts in shore areas from Westerly, Rhode Island to Atlantic City gear up for the tourist season.

Then there was the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.  Be it our mindfulness group at the Unitarian Church in Hamden, CT or our 12-step meeting just down the road, we human beings continue to need to sort that out.  That job may never get done.

In communications, the Public Relations Society (PRSA) inflicted more negative publicty on itself as it blocked Jack O'Dwyer of Odwyerpr.com from covering its activities.  And, as Gini Dietrich points out on "Spin Sucks," the folks from Pizza Hut disappointed us when it caved on its idea to have presidential candidates indicate the toppings they prefer on their pies. 

Workers aren't happy campers.  A survey from the ManpowerGroup found that in 2013, 86% of the workforce plan to leave their jobs and only 5% intend to stay put.  Threats to harmony between owners/management and labor are mutating.  The most recent kind comes in the form of robots.  If they can be programmed to simulate the tone of leaders, we speechwriters/ghostwriters are in big trouble.

We aging remained an invisible segment in American society. High profile achievers like Rupert Murdoch and Warren Buffett could mitigate that but in general society gives us the message that it doesn't want us on the front lines, especially in the workplace. Clearly the burden is on us to do for ourselves when gays did for themselves.  No one is going to fight this battle for us.

Could this get better in 2013?  The power of hope was brought home in the season hit "Les Miserables."  Hope creates expectations of good things to come and, as science is proving, expectations are self-fulfilling. 

Inner peace and prosperity in 2013 to all readers.  

Hillary Clinton: Will health issues sideline her?

The political talk is now all about Hillary Clinton.  Will a health issue such as a blood clot sideline her from a run for the presidency?

Politics is a volatile game.  A player such as Clinton can go from a position of strength to one of weakness in a few hours, given the media's 24/7 cycle.  While she is in the hospital being treated she might scan Nassim Taleb's new book "Antfragile" which helps people navigate chaos.  

Davos: Is the World Economic Forum over, much like central planning?

Next month, "Downton Abbey" will resume on PBS for its third season.  Also, the World Economic Forum will meet in Davos where papers are presented and supposedly powerful people network and cut deals.  But one has to wonder which event will have the most influence on human affairs.  Could "Davos," as it is called, have become as irrelevant in how the world works as central planning?

As many know, that world has changed.  Just ask any psychotherapist.  Those professionals are overwhelmed with people contacting them for appointments to try to sort out where they are in a universe which has become chaotic.  No surprise Nassim Taleb's new book "Antifragile" is #95 on Amazon.com.  Its message is: Turbulence is here to stay, get used to it, find the opportunity in it, and you can thrive.

The 2012 election showed that conservative ideology was an anachronism which had had good run.  The shift had been to more progressive economic, cultural, and social mindsets.  Sandy demonstrated that climate change was real.  Commercial centers built near water could be doomed. Waterfront property, rather than being a symbol of making it, became an albatross.  And the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut proved that, no, no one had all the answers, not on guns and bullets (Eliot Spitzer's position), not on violence in teenage pop culture, and not on how to manage loss.

Given the paradigm shift, what do the famous men (and women) have to preach to us?  The world is no longer so willing to Let Us Praise Famous Men (and Women).  Meanwhile, we expect to learn about life from the goings-on at Downton Abbey after World War I. Can a person like Mary really change and how do the wealthy deal with less money?

Madonna Badger and The Media

A little over a year ago, Madonna Badger, who had done ad assignments for the likes of Calvin Klein, lost her three young daughters and parents in a Christmas morning fire in Stamford, Connecticut.  The rest of us in the state woke up to the horrific story in the media. 

Since then, the media have been following the aftermath, ranging from Badger's suicide attempt to her lawsuit against the city of Stamford for tearing down the house before evidence could be collected.  The insurance company had denied her claim.  The house was worth over a million dollars.

Badger had appeared on a morning talk show and THE NEW YORK POST caught up with her in Thailand this holiday season.  She went there to spend Christmas with girls in an orphanage.  In the interview with THE POST Badger says she cannot stop crying.

One wonders if Badger could begin the hard work of trying to heal and regaining hope if she stayed clear of the media.  We can understand their chasing the story but Badger doesn't have to cooperate, at least not right now.  She doesn't seem ready to use a public forum to sort out the tragedy, its meaning for her, and what could come afterward.

Healing comes in many different ways.  Usually, though, many of those ways demand time spent apart from ordinary society.  After I couldn't let go of the past, I spent three months, attending almost every day, meditation sessions at a Buddhist temple.  Friends tell me that did the trick.  For the first time since I was 11 years old I am in the present.

 

Writers Can Semi-retire to the Good Life: Crafting our version of "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel"

When the universe was giving out gifts to us writers, we counted ourselves lucky that we received instincts about what angles were marketable and the skills to package them to close the deal. Our own bylined work and the assignments we did for clients generated the outcomes needed. 

Rarely, though, did the gifts include financial security.  However, come on, if that had been a goal we would have become investment bankers or security analysts.  Instead we stayed in the writing sandbox, playing around with ideas and words.

As we age, there are sadsacks among us who drag themselves around lamenting not being able to retire.  They see themselves as slaving until they are carted off to a nursing home.  Obviously, they haven't researched the options for the aging or have missed the film "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel."

Exiting the U.S. for a lower cost standard of living is an attractive option for writers in this era of telecommunications.  Have connection to the Web, will relocate. "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" does not make India seem ideal for that.  Much better might be Mexico, Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Spain.  Our Social Security monthly check would likely leave us enough over after paying for necessities to enjoy the good life.  Since Mexico is so close by, we could try it out without a major geographic and emotional upheaval.  For the initial homesickness we can zip across the border to California and Texas. 

I have been finding out what a big world it is for the aging without a hefty nestegg by creating articles for a personal finance site.  Believe me, there is plenty of interest in the comfortable lifestyle possibilities and adventure of becoming expatriots.

THE NEW YORK POST: You bet, we all read it, both right and left

THE NEW YORK POST, full of gossip, sensationalism, and right wing opinions, is the tabloid we all read, mostly first thing in the morning and then a few times during the day.  For both bloggers and mainstream media it's the source for the stories we will either piggyback on or simply aggregate.  Incidentally, it frequently has a legal story before any of the established Law.com publications.

THE POST's influence has been confirmed by the drop of 2.7% in Facebook's stock price after it reported that 4 million Instagram users had fled.  Facebook owns Instagram which had changed its privacy policy.  NEW YORK Magazine provides the facts on this one. That means that the investors are also among those who follow THE POST.  So much for $200,000 Ivy League educations which train communications students to think and write like THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Language of Persuasion in Antifragile Era: No more should/ought/must in 2013

We ghostwriters/speechwriters are on the front lines of professional rhetoric, both for editorial and copywriting purposes.  Therefore, we owe it to our clients to educate them about stylistic shifts.  One is the elimination of all the shoulds/oughts/musts from back in an era when the business world seemed more certain. 

Those were the days when financial reporting demanded stable returns and the marketing department would dump extra revenue by turning it into the expense of buying more ads.  Now, uncertainty is the new normal.  That's exactly why personal finance has become such a plentiful and lucrative niche for us writers to research and provide content for.

The best guide on the tone and word choice for a new age may well be Nassim Taleb's book "Antifragile." A sign of these volatile times, it is #76 on Amazon.com.  Essentially the meme is that since we can no longer predict what will happen in business we not only better get used to it.  We can learn to transform that chaos into opportunity.  That's exactly what the college admission preparation industry has done with providing services which help students start their careers with the supposed edge of an Ivy League education, an assumption Taleb shoots down.

In the 21st century when few could have predicted how the Interact would reshape institutions and that weather patterns would really become threats to commercial life as we know it (e.g. locating firms in densely populated metro areas near water).  Consequently, our clients shouldn't be framing their messages in mandates or even best practices.  Instead, they should be presenting evidence of what has produced positive outcomes recently and recommendations about how others might replicate such success.

Reflection: Opportunity is out there to be grabbed.  Leave central planning to the Russians.

"Les Miserables" - Love opens up human beings to see the face of God

To packed audiences who frequently applaud afterward, the film "Les Miserables" presents the theme that being able to love opens a human being to see the face of God.  This message comes at a time when it's so easy not to love.  Bosses, the wealthy (if we are not a member of that tribe), financial institutions, and the insensitive are easy to even work up a hate for. 

Can the transformational power of love become something more of us want to experiment with?  I learned love through my animal companions.  That's probably why wise parents entrust a pet to their children's care.  It's not just to get the hang of responsibility but also to break them open to a force out there beyond their own wants.