Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Hillary Hillary Hillary Everywhere: Replaces Mary Tyler Moore as America's Sweetheart

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the face of Hillary Clinton is everywhere.  She's on the cover of tabloid GLOBE MAGAZINE, a continuing story on influential POLITICO, and even in a flattering photo on the conservative DRUDGE REPORT.

Finally in her mid-60s she has become America's new sweetheart, replacing the former sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore.  Like Mary Richards, the character Moore played in the 1970s, Clinton represents a breakthrough role.  She started out as a political wife, ambitious as her husband but with work to do on her persona.  And work she did. 

She came into her own as a U.S. Senator, then bounced back from the public humiliation of a failed run for the presidency.  As U.S. Secretary of State she tirelessly traveled the globe with a whole new kind of identity for a female professional who did everything right in terms of image.  She rarely smiled.  She spoke firmly but not stridently. She practiced caution without seeming guarded.

America loves this trailblazing Clinton, including every line in her face.  Richards had no wrinkles. 

Persona Crisis: Only entity less marketable than displaced lawyer is displaced law professor

When there is a game-changing  event like the Crash of Law Inc. in 2007, there is usually a lag between when it happens and all the ripple effects. 

It is only now that law professors are beginning to be made to suffer.  As THE NEW YORK TIMES reports, with the job prospects so poor for law graduates and student loan debt at six figures, this year there are 38% fewer applications to law school than there had been in 2010.  That isn't expected to bounce back since the whole structure of how legal tasks are performed (think outsourcing) and delivered (via technology B2C) has changed. 

So, law professors are beginning to get the boot.  The University of Vermont Law School, THE TIMES notes, is already busy with buyouts and possible layoffs.  There are lots of empty seats in other law schools.  There is a number floating around that in the next decade about 10 law schools will probably fold.

Those displaced law professors will have a difficult time retrofitting their persona to something the real world will put up with, never mind be eager to have part of the team in the workplace.  Many of us in the time of affluence attended law school.  Most of us were stunned that the law professors could comport themselves in the classroom as they did.  We were not convinced that was necessary to shape our minds into the legal mode.

The only persona worse than that of a former lawyer, who had been rewarded for aggressively questioning, arguing, and never surrendering, might be that of a former law professor who has been even more well recognized for the height of seeming crass indifference to students.

My time at Harvard Law School as a 1L was the most unhappy in my life, which had not been one especially filled with sweetness and light.

Ann Curry in Penalty Box: Assertiveness is risky business

On her last day on "Today," Ann Curry asserted herself on camera, on her behalf and to the detriment of her employer NBC.  At the time some praised her courage and considered that a shrewd career move.

Now that some may be rethinking all that.  NBC remains Curry's employer and it is not allowing her to do live interviews, only taped ones.  Those of us who understand how organizations operate would contend that Curry is in the penalty box.  Her employer is showing her, one might say, who is boss.  In addition, this muzzling could be construed as a public spanking warning others who might be considering asserting themselves in the future about the possible consequences.

The reality is that employers have the upper hand.  That's why those with naturally assertive natures find making a living in them impossible.  They go the self-employed route.  As long as employers are signing the checks they can determine the terms and conditions of employment, as long as those are legal.  That carries over to myriad client relationships.  In some cases we vendors sign ironclad NDAs (non-disclosure documents) about the relationships.  In most other cases we know to keep our mouths shut, take the experience and the money and go.

From the time caveman went hunting for dinner and often became dinner for another species, surviving has not been easy for the human race.  In the 21st century, it has even become tougher for many of us.  The bottom line is that if we need to change an employment situation we have to become more skillful as well as cunning in how we go about it.

"Downton Abbey" - Will we come to view the Earl as a jerk?

Many of us are still haunted by Sybil's death in childbirth last Sunday.  As her mother and Mary say, she would have been alive if her father the Earl accepted the opinion of the more competent doctor.  That was that Sybil needed a C-section in a hospital.  The other doctor shrugged that off.

Cora is not sleeping with the Earl.  Mary has distanced herself from him.  The writers of "Downton Abbey" could be setting him up to appear increasingly like a jerk. 

Part of that will come from Matthew's determination to bring modern financial management to the businesses behind Downton Abbey.  The more the Earl resists, the more Matthew will push. We could bear witness to a man of grace and style who becomes a doddering old fool.

Another way the Earl could undermine himself is not understanding the opportunity that has been extended to his spinster daughter Edith to write a column for the newspaper.  This could be her ticket to a place in society.  The Earl denigrates the whole notion that any daughter of his would be involved in that kind of commercial enterprise.

If the Earl is shut out by the women in his life, he could again turn to a servant for companionship as he had with Jane.  This time he might not choose someone as decent a human being as Jane had been.

 

Media Placement: Most in demand, highly paid sector in PR (Ghostwriters aren't doing badly either)

Soon enough this nonprofit which put an ad on Craigslist, offering $3,500 to have article placed in THE NEW YORK TIMES, will learn how badly it low-balled it.  Here is the ad.  This is sad because the organization has a worthwhile mission.

The last time I searched for quotes to place a simple opinion-editorial in top media, even though it would carry a powerful byline, the expense was about $8,000 a month, with no guarantee.  The expert would shop it around for those 30 days.  Then, if there were no buyers, he would migrate down to second-tier media, also with no guarantees.

Those who do media placement are the ones in most demand and at the top of the payscale in PR.  We ghostwriters who know how to configure content which can get placed are also again in demand and well compensated.  My advice to displaced journalists and editors: Analyze what ghostwriters do and figure out if it could be a fit for you.  Thought Leadership pieces are proliferating, both inside organizations and in external media properties. Books remain the price of entry for thought leaders to be taken seriously.

Time Inc. Chops 500 Jobs: It's tough to exit publishing industry

Time Inc., reports Bloomberg Business Week, is the worst performer in TimeWarner and so it's no shock the company chopped 500 folks from its payroll.  That represents about 6% of its workforce. 

This is no ordinary layoff.  Those employed in publishing tend to have a tough time with career transitions.  They felt their work was, in a very real sense, sacred.  To leave it would be analogous in trauma to departing the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church.  That's the real tragedy of the Time Inc. reduction in force (RIF).

In fact, early this morning a freelance journalist called me.  After being cut loose from his newspaper he has been bouncing around just-in-time assignments.  "My home is the newroom," he told me, again, today when I suggested that he leverage his background in law to providing communications services to public relations agencies, lobbying firms, and highly regulated companies such as in energy or meat. 

He blew me off.  I understand the foot-dragging.  In the early 1970s when I couldn't get a college teaching job in the Humanities, I turned my nose up at opportunities which didn't mirror the values of academia.  Wasted in that grief process were years when I could have been mastering new skills.

Online Networking: Takes more than that to develop new business

Digital corridors are piled high with stunned players in professional services who assumed that investing considerable time in online networking would bring in new business.  To their shock, that is not happening - at least not enough of it to represent a payoff in the resources invested.

RAINMAKER VT brings up that topic in terms of the legal sector.  Here you can read it, which has also become a topic for a LinkedIn community chat site dealing with lawyers.  

While it is true that online networking is useful in terms of expanding contacts, keeping up with trends, and gaining insight into your field, it often has no direct connection with nailing down a new piece of business. 

Several owners of once prosperous professional services firms have found that out the hard way.  They bet the ranch on putting themselves out there digitally.  One had to fold up shop and get a full time job.  Another has little business.

About 22 months ago I recognized that the entire sales process requires considerably more than a high profile online. 

To begin with, thanks to an executive coach, I exited glut areas and built up a knowledge base and a portfolio of samples in marketable niches like technology and personal finance. 

Secondly, thanks to a Buddhist monk, I took on a persona of the good listener/wise guide to replace the breezy personality I had honed through social media.  Prospects are buying information and insight, not personality.  Save the latter for entertaining the kids and stimulating the aging cat at home.

Third, I indicate that I am willing to travel to meet them face to face and to attend onsite meetings.  There is a pull back to wanting to get a feel for each other in the flesh.

No question, we have to be active in online communities and, of course, it is an excellent credential, to start and head one.  But that tool has proved to be increasingly limited as brandname players occupy that digital space.

Ghostwriters: Advising clients to hold back on humor, wit, irony

Money isn't funny.  It never was.  It became downright grim when there had been a lot less of it during the two recessions in the 21st century.  And figuring out how to accumulate and protect it during the recovery is a matter of serious focus.

Therefore, ghostwriters are advising our clients, especially those inexperienced in picking up on shifts in the culture, to avoid humor and its variations such as wit and irony.  There's no market for it, with the exception of professional comics such as Tina Fey and David Letterman.  Funny has become the enemy of credibility.

So, for those thought leaders who have a perception of incongruence, which is at the heart of laughter, programmed into their DNA, it's wise to think "poison" when tempted to reveal that one is, well, thinking funny.  Thoughts, as Buddhists are teaching more of us, shape action.  And the action of the thought leader is to make money while it can be made.

Jeff Zucker - We ghostwriters will be citing him as fresh example of leadership

Self-assured, decisive, and with a clear vision.  That's the kind of leadership Jeff Zucker is demonstrating at CNN.  For example, THE DAILY BEAST has published a laundry list of the changes already being made, including axing political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin.

And we ghostwriters anticipate we will be citing Zucker as a fresh example of how to lead in tough turbulent times.  Those citations will be in the articles, opinion-editorials, white papers, and talking points we produce for our clients.  As we know from this year's annual meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos, leadership is on everyone's minds.  THE ECONOMIST declares that the new meme is "global leadership."

What we ghostwriters will be monitoring is what Zucker adds to the traditional understanding of how leaders seem to think and how they act.

Sarah Palin: Didn't seem to know what sandbox to play in

There are phenomena like Hillary Clinton and Rupert Murdoch who endure.  Then there are entities like Sarah Palin whose game falls apart and there seems no way back to the sandbox, any sandbox.

THE WASHINGTON POST is no slouch in attempting to deconstruct the rise and fade-out of Palin.  The piece that is published has received more than 4,000 comments. Fox News didn't renew her contract and since she didn't build a clear and strong brand she is, well, over.

For years, there will be speculation about the four-year reign of Palin, including daughter Bristol who got into the act and what went wrong.  Some posit that her error was turning on those who could have helped her get to the next level of her game.  My hunch is that she was hedging her bets too much and played in too many sandboxes.  There was the conservative politico one.  There was the celebrity one.  There was the EveryMom one.  There was also StageMother for Bristol one, which might have been the most annoying.

The dynamics of the flawed Palin branding provide lessons for Ghostwriters on how to position and package messaging for our clients.  We have to get them to define the sandbox they intend to play in, be nice to the other kids in it, and only look around for more useful space if they assess they can manage a brand change.  Among those who have thrived amdist a brand change have been Michelle Obama, Henry Blodget, and Nassim Taleb.