Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

OUT and THE ADVOCATE: Will they modify upbeat tone?

Alternate-sex lifestyle publications OUT and THE ADVOCATE still arrive snail mail in a plain gray wrapper.  I subscribe to follow trends in outlier media.  However, in the past several months the tone in both has been upbeat.  As it should.  Across generations we have accepted not only gay culture but also gay marriage.

However, with the recent violent hate crimes against gays in Manhattan, a usually liberal mecca, that tone might become more subdued.  NEW YORK Magazine chronicles three incidents.  The battle has not been won.

The success of gay rights, I am convinced, is a model for Baby Boomers to have our own aggressive campaign for better treatment.  We are invisible.  Also, as soon as I walked into job interviews (obviously they hadn't googled me), jaws dropped.  Actually that worked out fine since I have returned to freelancing and am making more money doing that than I would have in any full-time position.

If gays continue to suffer, so will we the aging.

Connecticut - Metro-North commuter train, symbol of success, crashes

The Metro-North commuter train from Westport, Connecticut to Grand Central Station in Manhattan is a symbol of success in that iconic novel "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit."  Today, it has joined the other tragic events in the state as being associated with tragedy. 

THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that yesterday during the evening rush hour the train heading back to Connecticut crashed with another Metro-North train.  About 60 were injured, 5 critically.  Those tracks which carry the Masters of the Universe from their suburban homes to the money pits are damaged. Never again will anyone board that train, start working on their laptops, and assume they will arrive at their destination safely.

Watergate 2.0: Take it from survivor of Watergate 1.0, there will be tremendous loss of productivity

It's not Watergate 2.0 yet, Bob Woodward tells POLITICO.  For example, there's no clear line to the White House on the IRS' providing extra scrutiny on the tax-exempt status of conservative organizations. 

However, take it from a Baby Boomer who survived Watergate 1.0: Productivity will take a hit.  The hit will be bigger than when the Watergate 1.0 hearings were broadcasted on television.  That's because there are so many more venues for presenting the news and opining.  Name one person who will not be caught up in this?  I will be hitting all my three syndicated blogs, tweeting, and commenting on Facebook.

Back during Watergate 1.0, everyone took the time to express thoughts about government, human nature, power, the GOP, Richard Nixon, all the president's men, and Everyman.  In addition everyone caught snippets of the hearings. Sometimes in university towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan, where folks have flexible schedules, we had Watergate-hearing parties. 

Watergate 2.0 will bring the nation a nice pause after so much tragedy.  If there is no Watergate 2.0, there will probably be great disappointment throughout the land. 

Being Snooped On: The new symbol of power

The nose knows.  It smells power and the rest is the material for some of the most audacious scandals which have hit since Watergate. 

Bloomberg News has been caught snooping on masters of the universe as well as the crowd at the Federal Reserve.  POLITICO chronicles the snooping by the IRS on conservative groups and that of the Department of Justice on reporters. 

Not being snooped on can be perceived as a negative, transmitting the message that we aren't powerful enough to bother with.  Not since I was deposed about a trial I covered in 2005 through 2006 have I been snooped on.  That was heady stuff, with lawyers representing both sides flying into New Haven, Connecticut to grill me. That included questioning me about what I had posted on my blogs.

Likely I am not alone in craving the attention of being watched.

 

Everything Changes: Hillary Clinton no sure thing for '16

The Democrats, so recently riding high, are now under the kind of attack which could keep them out of the White House in 2016.  Hillary Clinton as the first U.S. President is no longer a sure thing.  Be ready to read plenty in the media about conservatives who are being groomed and funded for campaigns for 2016. 

Scandal is one of the most effective tools for cutting the legs off a political party.  It could be driven out in the wilderness for several election cycles. Since Clinton is associated with one of the them - Benghazi - Democratic party leaders may already be searching for other suitable candidates for the next presidential races.  Other scandals, as POLITICO reports, include the IRS' targeting conservatives and the Justice Department's snooping into members of the media's phone records.

Shell-shocked Democrats might decide to start studying zen, the philosophy which teaches that everything changes and provides tools, including meditation, to stay centered amidst the flux. 

Entrepreneurs: They can pay as well as Fortune 500

Entrepreneurs, the super heroes of our times, usually were shunned by us ghostwriters.  We figured they wouldn't pay as well as the Fortune 500.  That was a few years ago.

By now, some of them have become successful enough to be able to match establishment compensation.  They also have become famous enough to be in demand to produce books, bylined articles for brandname media, and keynote speeches, including for TED.  In addition, in the Fortune 500, some have set up entrepreneurial or enterprise units to get new products and services out there in the marketplace.

This has expanded the pool of possible assignments for us in executive communications.  For the first time in a very long time I have had to create a waiting list.

Blogging: When life intervenes

"I'd rather be blogging." That's what I told my blogging coach Paul Chaney back in 2005, after he helped me get this site up and running.  I was totally taken with the ability to publish what I wanted, without middleman editors poking around, making changes, and telling me that their efforts were necessary for me to go to the next level in writing. 

Since 2005, I have fallen apart when, well, life intervened and I couldn't blog as much as I wanted.  There is this nasty reality of having to earn a living.  Today, I started the day with several hours of blogging for this syndicated site and two others (here and here.)  As the day went on, I realized that time should have been invested in two client ghostwriting projects.  Progress on one, for example, was interrupted when the client wanted me to interview two sources for his book this afternoon.  I really felt the loss of those early morning hours.

I dread my blogging time reduced.  There will be major developments I can't comment on.  Not that the world will care.  But that has been my priority for eight years.  Will that priority have to be changed to take advantage of the bull market in executive communications?  

Forward.Us - Facebook doesn't understand power

Is power an old man's game?  Maybe.  Facebook's Millennials have shown they know how to make money.  But their attempt to leverage power to influence public opinion has blown up.

As TECH CRUNCH reports, the Facebook lobbying vehicle Forward.us has become a sort of public nuisance rather than a public-opinion game-changer.  Its mission is to create a conversation about the controversial Keystone Pipeline Initiative.  However it has been doing that in state politics like California in a hardball manner that has been triggering a backlash.  Hardball is the game played in Washington D.C.

In the world of business, companies are not only evaluated on their earnings but also on their power.  The Facebook brand is taking a major hit.  Its founder Mark Zuckerberg looks foolish.

Amanda Knox Kept Together in Prison through Reading: That wouldn't work for us digital folks

It seemed strange to read in THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW's interview with Amanda Knox that she depended on reading to maintain sanity in the Italian prison.  That's what most of us would believe pre-digital times.  Now, books are hardly anyone's emotional, spiritual or even intellectual salvation.  At least not anyone on my networks.

Several at my colleagues back in the auto industry used to opine that a stint in the slammer would be a vacation for them.  That's because they could do all the reading they ever wanted to do.  Bosses who retired gushed that for the next six months they would just read.  I craved to have the time to learn Russian and then read Tolstoy et al. in their native language. 

Then came digital.  When I tunnel into myself, which is a dangerous place to be for someone with a history of severe depression, I don't reach for a book.  I surf the web to my favorite provocative spots like Abovethelaw.com, especially the comment section.

I doubt if the correctional system, federal or state, would allow me the hardware and the WiFi to remain whole.  Books wouldn't do it.  They did, though, years ago.  That's why I majored in literature and didn't stop until I was working on a dissertation on the novels of Thomas Hardy.  When I lived in Spain, I was a regular at the bookstore.  In my early days of executive communications, I peppered speeches, books, and articles I ghostwrote with the wisdom from the great authors.  Currently, clients want allusions to Mark Zuckerberg and TECH CRUNCH.

Books have become all-business.  I read them to review them and to present ideas to clients. I ghostwrite books to help clients share their ideas on how to make more money.  In our interactions we never sit around and praise the beauty of a sentence or paragraph.  We do, though, commend the cleverness of how BUSINESS INSIDER built itself to such a high-traffic digital media property.

If Knox has to return to prison after this next trial, I wish her well with the books. 

Fame: Is the need for it getting re-wired into our brain patterns?

"Neuroplasticity" is the term researchers use to describe how human beings can re-wire the patterns of their brains.  Most commonly this is accomplished through mindfulness training.  MRIs show, for example, how monks' gray matter changes.

But our brains can also be changed through the collective push of contemporary culture which salutes fame. In some circles it has become a dominant value.  Of course, that makes a growing number of us vulnerable to doing anything which we assume will lead to fame.

This fame mania might have taken hold during the "Me Decade" we Baby Boomers are known for.  The Me demanded all the attention we can get.  The drawback from that was that too many of us, including myself, became public nuisances.  We clamored for more than a sensible share of attention.

Ironically, that addiction, like all dependencies, can hurt professional success.  Through mindfulness I am exiting a lot of that noisy self-promotion and just settling down to doing the work.  Amazing results are happening.  For example, without my going after attention, more and more professionals, from diverse  fields, are checking my LinkedIn profile and contacting me about possible assignments in ghostwriting and speechwriting. 

Fame or at least the pursuit of it may be counterproductive to enduring success.