Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

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. 

Mirror Neurons: Why man the social animal is returning from virtual

In the presence of each other, a number of species, including us human kind, affect each other cell by cell. Some of us always knew this.  For example, our moms told us to stay clear of "bad companions." The transmission process happens across the species. My dog Molly Mittens could pick up that I was depressed before I did. The vet, part Dr. Phil, told me she had been hanging on despite her bad heart trying to keep me together.  

But how we resonate off each other was confirmed by researchers such as Marco Iacoboni on mirror neurons in Italy. He made all that science user-friendly in his book "Mirroring People: The New Science of How We Connect with Others.  Last night at the New Haven Zen Center in Connecticut we discussed why meditating together in-person can center us so quickly.  As a guiding teacher noted, we feed off each other's strength.  The same principle operates in 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

No surprise, we are returning to in-person speeches, meetups, chats by the water cooler, author presentations at bookstores, and church services. Virtual social networks were fun but they left us, well, unconnected.

For the past four months, although I was doing my time virtually on Facebook and LinkedIn, I would get attacks of extreme alienation. They were brutal enough to dry up the creative processes as I tried to write.  When I packed up the laptop and went to the public library in North Haven, CT, the juices started flowing again.  Clients raved about what I had created there.  Blog posts done there went viral. The help-wanted I answered there brought in good assignments.

We need other human beings around us. They don't have to even actively interact with us. For this very reason, we speechwriters have been busy preparing what speakers are delivering in the flesh, not on webinars. Social networks have proved to be unable to transmit from mirror neurons.

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?  

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. 

Layoffs at VILLAGE VOICE, NEW YORK POST, Say Media, and additional ones at DAILY NEWS

What will be next for those laid off (or as it is sometimes called "accepting a voluntary buy-out") from Say Media, the NEW YORK POST, VILLAGE VOICE, and (again in a second round) at the DAILY NEWS?

In pre-digital times, journalists, especially those getting older and having families, could arrange plum jobs for themselves as public relations representatives at agencies or in corporations.  In covering stories they got to know the game and the players and became valuable commodities.  Often offers were made to them rather than their chasing after The Next.

Now, journalists and editors are being tossed on the street, with little warning, and with a glut ballooning. They should beware of radical career changes.  Email and ads on the subway are full of messages of how easy it is to become a nurse or substance abuse counselor.  The reality is that career change is a painful experiment which doesn't always pan out. 

When executive communications went into the dumper at the turn of the century I tried a lot of things, ranging from providing content for social media to part-time sales.  The parts of those ventures which went okay paid peanuts.  Also, every day was filled with angst. As the career-transition folks hammer, yes, I left my comfort zone but outside it I remained unsure of myself. 

Had I to do it over again I would have remained as much in my comfort zone as possible and embraced the reality that I wasn't as easy to remold as the ads for career change claim.  Executive communications as a field is back.  There are more assignments than I can handle.  And because I am again confident, I can shrug off clients who are unhappy. 

I wish those laid off less pain than I had in their struggle to make a good living, again.

Serious Journalism: Downsizing to niche market

This is the era of entertainment.  So, it's likely serious journalism will continue to downsize and become a niche market.  Perhaps THE NEW YORK TIMES will find a foundation to support its investigative reporting and in-depth articles such as the popular feature on a fatal avalanche at Tunnel Creek.  If not, journalistic holdouts will produce their content as monks created manuscripts in olden days - far away from the mainstream.  It just could be that journalists become the monastics of contemporary times.

Not that nurturing people's need to be distracted from brutal reality is a new phenomenon. Back in ancient Rome the gladiators served that purpose.  P.T. Barnum substituted bearded ladies and pint-sized humans for the warriors.  Currently, the most successful  supposed journalism properties, ranging from Gawker.com to Abovethelaw.com, select topics, adopt the tone, and provide headlines to entertain.  None of that, of course, would cut the mustard with THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Not long from now there could come a time when no one holds up THE NEW YORK TIMES or what had been THE NEW YORK TIMES as a standard for measuring anything. 

Ghostwriters: Just shut up and do the assignment

The kiss of death for a ghostwriter's career is to become known for asking a lot of questions about the assignment instead of just doing it.  That's what I am hearing from clients who give me the assignment, instead of them, because the busy men and women they are they want the ghostwriter to get in and then get out.  Fast.

For example, I was told that one ghostwriter, when told to do a short rewrite as a test sample, contacted the prospect five times with questions.  By time a writer is experienced enough to go out there as a ghostwriter he or she should have the territory down cold.  We look at the job and we know what to do.  What's with the questions!

We get stimulating work to do and earn better than average compensation in WriterLand because we are expected to be invisible.  Yes, we are assumed to be the ghosts in the machine.

 

Jared Keller: Had he thought like a lawyer about direct mail, he'd still be at BLOOMBERG

Had Jared Keller been thinking like a lawyer he might still have his plum job as director of social media at BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK. 

Lawyers, those neurotic, hyper-cautious, ultra buttoned-down creatures would know (or should know) not to transmit direct mail that could boomrang against the sender.  Prison cells are now filled with miscreants who pressed "send" without assessing the implications of the contents of the texual material.

Obviously, Keller was not thinking like a lawyer when he sent direct mail to former deputy social media editor at Reuters Matthew Keys stating about his place of employment, I f____ing hate it here."  Keys, who had lost his own job after he was indicted on hacking charges last March, made that mail public, reports Stefan Becket at NEW YORK Magazine. 

Even if Keys hadn't outed the mail, it could have been picked up in e-discovery if there had been some legal matter at BBW.  For example, Keller could have been dragged into Keys' legal mess. According to Becket, Keys might have been retailating for when Keller leaked to Gizmodo a conversation concerning Keys when the latter had been indicted.

In a world without trust and prone to legal action, all communications should be circumspect. However, sometimes the need for expression overcomes common legal sense, even for lawyers.  For example, some lawyers at law firm DLA Piper sent humorous emails about how the client was allegedly being overcharged.  When the client sued DLA Piper for the alleged overcharging, those emails came to light during e-discovery.

In this interview, a BigLaw partner warns BigPharma about being loose-lipped in email. 

Y Combinator: We ghostwriters need that kind of pitch boot camp

Y Combinator, Nathaniel Rich at THE NEW YORK TIMES tells us, is a sort of camp where entrepreneurs learn the art of the pitch for funding. 

We ghostwriters need exactly that kind of training in how to sell our services in a changing marketplace.  During the past 18 months, I had to figure out on my own how to sell myself to pick up those growing number of lucrative assignments for print and e- books, articles and opinion-editorials for publication in brandname media, blog posts, white papers, and case studies.

Somewhere during the two recessions in the 21st century, a shift took place.  Instead of just looking for a ghostwriter, prospects recognized they needed a communications strategist, media-placement expert, and pragmatist savvy about repurposing the original content such as for their own media center or direct-response marketing.  When we pitch we have to focus on those requirements.  Demonstrating that we are good at ghostwriting per se is not enough. 

For me that has meant getting the hang of presenting myself as a player, not a inward-looking scribe.  On these sales calls I find out that the prospect has received 200 to 300 replies to an ad or a "casting call" put out there by a recruiter.  From the get-go, I have to speedread their real agenda, such as becoming a brandname in digital marketing, and then explain how I know how to configure the manuscript so that it becomes a platform for that.  Sometimes they might not even be aware that is their end goal. Yes, we have to discern that, quickly.

Just like entrepreneurs we have to master performance art, sending the signal to prospects that we can provide a superior return on their money.  In this case it's a fee for service, not an investment with a 7% stake in profits.