Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

Thinking about Monster Carbon Footprint - When movers/shakers fly to Davos for World Economic Forum

The best publicity the World Economic Forum could get for itself and its members is to not host the annual conference in Davos in January 2009.  What a powerful symbol for reducing a monster carbon footprint as the new Administration takes office in the U.S. On the other hand, if the WEF doesn't use iChat or some digital means of getting together without consuming too many tons of airplane fuel, it's bound to attract very nasty publicity.  I can envision street theatre in Davos with protestors decked out as jet planes and making some 24/7 jet-exhaust noises.  Ah, all those jailed souls fighting to save planet earth.   What photo-ops. 

Howell Raines in PORTFOLIO - King of old media on new media

Maybe it takes an outsider to see inside new media.  That's what I thought as I read former THE NEW YORK TIMES head Howell Raines deconstruct digital communications such as blogs in the July PORTFOLIO.  He was able to explain what was happening in this shift from print to digital in ways I hadn't either considered.  Yes, I have come to praise Raines, not bury him.

"The Cluetrain Manifesto" and Clueless Business, American Right

Eight years ago Doc Searls et al. told us in "The Cluetrain Manifesto" that a human face, and maybe even a heart and soul, had returned to capitalism.  The human face and other signs of humanity vanished when work moved out of the home and, after that, out of the community, into disembodied corporate buildings it took time to even get to.  All the better to beat down those who had to make a living - e.g. 99 percent of us. 

Well, eight years later, too many in business and practically everyone on the American Right still is clueless. 

Is Mediabistro.com headed the way of Gawker.com

The world of high-tech moves fast.  And sites that are hot could quickly become not.  Think Gawker.com which launched the careers of such notables as Wonkette Cox.  Now that blogging has move beyond vicious snark, Gawker.com needs to find a new identity and hasn't been able to, not yet.  Ironically, sites born of the change from analog to digital seem to have as tough a time changing themselves as do GM and Microsoft.

There could be another high-profile site also entering turbulent waters. That's Mediabistro.com. 

Digital Technology: Short, fat, female with dreadful Jersey City accent gets enormous power

Evita was classically beautiful and skilled in leveraging feminine wiles.  I'm short, fat and have carried through life a dreadful Jersey City, New Jersey accent.  Yet, like her, I have acquired enormous power.  My tool is digital technology.  What Evita and I have in common, though, is that we both know how to connect with the people. That's a gift which comes from a horrific childhood in which the only way to survive is to understand people and the world - better than the people and the world do themselves.

Digital Guerrillas - Why the Clintons, NEW YORK TIMES, Linear Career Paths went kaput

Did Bill Clinton help deep-six Hillary's campaign because he was clueless about how digital technology has changed everything? That's sort of what Todd. S. Purdum seems to say in July's VANITY FAIR.  THE NEW YORK TIMES will also either disappear or be swallowed up by a Murdoch type because it also doesn't seem to understand that digital communications operate like guerrilla warfare - unexpected, out for the quick hit and then the next quick hit, cheap, obsessed.  Meanwhile those of all generations are struggling with finding and keeping work because the Internet is transforming linear careers into just-in-time assignments, as Tom Peters predicted.

"If NEWSWEEK is around in five years ..." - Michael Wolff

Old-line public relations pros must have to re-do their Rolodex of media contacts every day.  Sites like Mediabistro.com and HuffingtonPost.com regularly announce the number of layoffs in traditional [read that print] media.  Those who got the ax represent lost placement possibilities for those PR folks who haven't yet learned their way around cyberspace.  Yesterday, media guru who has a regular column in VANITY FAIR Michael Wolff predicted that even the iconic NEWSWEEK will be gone in five years.

Getting Work - It Takes a Small Valley

"We call 'it' here 'Small Valley.'"  Public relations guru and writer Marsha Keeffer was talking about her workplace: Silicon Valley.  And in the Small Valley, she explained to me on the East Coast,  all that counts is your performance.  No one cares where you picked up degrees, who you're connected to, or at what brandname you used to work.

Then it hit me:  That's exactly what's happening here in the once Establishment Northeast and Brahmin New England.  The old guard, recent Ivy grads, associates and even partners at law firms - they're dropping like flies.  No job, no hope.

Downturn Good for Digital Evangelists

A Silicon Valley communications expert calls 'em The Crusties.  Those are the monied, the old-line connected, the smug who have been able to ignore the digital revolution.  In public relations, they are running their brandname agencies without even pretending to provide clients with strategy that mixed old and new media.  And they're getting away with it.  Or were.  This downturn is hitting The Crusties in public relations with a punch they might not be able to get up from.

Requiem for THE NEW YORK TIMES & Other Old-Line Players

Rupert Murdoch likes to play.  And among the sandboxes he's playing in is that of the iconic old-line THE NEW YORK TIMES.  Murdoch's new & changed THE WALL STREET JOURNAL hopes, in its coverage, to eat THE TIMES' breakfast.  Instead of keeping up with both reads on the A.M. commute from the Gold Coast of Connecticut to Manhattan, power brokers, for example, can do just one with the Murdoch JOURNAL.  The saves precious minutes for text-messaging, returning cell-phone calls, and catching some zzzzzzs.