Proof & Rewrite for Klarity

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately, especially those about marketing, higher education and Web 2.0.  I’m continually amazed at the number of typos many contain.  (I write this knowing that someone will eventually catch me. I just hope it’s not in this particular post*).
Actually, I see typos in a lot of different blogs and emails, from college students to college professors.  The technology has encouraged us –if not forced us — to move faster these days, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of clear communication.
I started my career as a reporter for a daily newspaper.  The paper had two full-time proof readers, another job long ago sent to the Museum of Artifact Professions.  Granted, spell-check tried to come to the rescue, but it stumbles.   It doesn’t correct you when you use “too” instead of “to,” etc.  And it’s totally neutral if, after some quick revisions, you’ve missed a word and wind up with a sentence such as: “Actually I actually see typos. . .”
When a reader runs into too many typos or bad sentence construction, the writer’s credibility suffers.  If we’re moving so fast that we don’t check spelling, grammar, and sentence construction, can the reader feel confident that we’ve spent the necessary time researching, checking facts, attributing borrowed material or borrowed ideas?
At core of marketing, public relations and advertising are clear, accurate, concise communications.
Many bloggers are writing quickly — yes, with passion and conviction — but they aren’t doing much rewriting.  Some, it’s obvious, aren’t doing any rewriting.
Write your draft and set it aside.  Come back to it later and look at it cold. Then. . .
Rewrite without mercy.
That rule of writing will never change.

Check out Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail whose blogs about marketing trends, social media and 2.0 are informative, entertaining and well-written.

*Yes, “Klarity” was intentional.

“The Whole Book Thing. . .”

You probably read the January 5, 2007 Chronicle article in which college students were interviewed about their learning preferences and reading habits. A statement made by Sarah Mihelic., a communications major, stuck with me: “My dad is still into the whole book thing. He has not realized that the Internet kind of took the place of that.”

It’s not the message. It’s the delivery. By packaging it as “the whole book thing,” she has wrapped up the concept and placed it on display next to the brontosaurus over there in the corner. Both are curious kinds of things not really relevant — not even alive — to her.

Combine her sentiment with the Time Magazine announced Jan. 19 that it is cutting nearly 300 employees, “including the most profitable publication, People, as it moves to invest more in its Web sites.”

My conclusion? http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/19/business/media/19time.html?_r=2&ref=technology&o
The written word is alive and well. It’s just in a different location.

This is underscored in a mind-bending 32 page 2007 Horizon Report brought to our attention by collegewebeditor.com/blog

As editor Karine Joly says, this is a must read if you’re going to keep pace with the quickly changing ways of communicating. Reading this report was like stepping into Second Life and experiencing a lecture by Phillip K. Dick. (Notice I didn’t say “listen to a lecture.” PKD’s ideas are transmitted instantly as thought images complete with sound and emotional gradations shared by all in the virtual classroom).

The report is a great primer for those just wading into the 2.0 world and those who are in up to their knees.

Okay, the Baby Boomers are the last generation to value reading words on paper as a way of gaining knowledge.

But I will admit, the evolving forms of education and knowledge sharing are really exciting, fast, and more democratic.

(Psst. Dad! I’m still into the whole book thing, too.)

 

 

 

Six Word Stories

One of the pleasures of blogging is finding new blogs by pros with really unique perspectives. Director Tom is one of them. Recently, the director who will be featured in a Wired Magazine article in April, issued an invitation to his readers to create six word stories. They took him up on it. The results is a growing collection of stories that are clever, funny and thought-provoking.
Check them out. At six words they don’t take long to read, but you may spend more time on the site than you planned. They’ll make you think, smile and even inspire you.
Robert Hruzek is collecting them on his site.

Lonely Girl 15, Part 2

The genius of Lonely Girl 15 is its simplicity, directness and interaction.
Every show is shot with one camera. The actor talks directly into the camera. The eye contact is with you. The emotion is shared with you. You become directly involved with the character, the intrigue. It’s myspace exhibitionism to the max.
As I said before, Bree evolved from a silly, cute girl with eyes as big as a Japanese anime, in her bedroom talking to her camera. Millions of kids do it. Before we know it Bree, is running from The Order, living off garbage. And she’s still sharing her life.
If she and Daniel walk, the cameraman walks. If they’re in the car, the camera is in the driver’s seat shooting the driver, or Bree in the back seat. There’s no apparent extra lighting and no external microphones. There’s some basic editing but it’s done in a way that makes the edits obvious.
The other two main characters, Daniel and Jacob, speculate, confess fears and quandaries to the camera, to you. In the January 15 posting, “Bree and I Hook Up,” Daniel tells the viewers about his night with an upset Bree who needs comfort. It sets off a firestorm of debate about what really happened and whether it was good or bad for Bree and Daniel.
And it finally occurred to me that, my God, the Creators are seeing the thoughts, feelings and speculations of their viewers. In nearly real time the producers are literally reading the minds of those watching. What better way to get to know your audience?
Seems to me this is part of what Web 2.0 is all about. The Creators create the initial product but in total, it’s a collaborative effort. From viewer comments the Creators know when the audience is getting antsy, or bored, or doesn’t buy into a particular direction. They know how viewers feel about the characters, when they feel suspense and when they’re happy with a character action or plot twist.
They can direct and redirect the plot based on audience feedback.
The creators have shown us that almost anyone can do this. But will we in higher ed?
Entertainment laced with information? Human intrigue? Emotional involvement?
I hear a collective shudder among America’s higher education administrators. Emotional involvement? That’s so anti-intellectual!
How do we remain politically correct? What if we offend someone or some group? How do we guarantee representation from all necessary factions?
Every student on our campuses has a story and yet we never use their very human sagas. What we do is a quick interview and boil it down to some bland testimonial about how great the campus or a professor is.
Video and audio are perfect media for letting students and faculty tell their own story in their own words.
The real Lesson of Lonely Girl 15 is that with nearly 7 million views and around 1,000 comments per show, she really isn’t lonely.

Lonely Girl 15, An Ancient New Technique

I’m hooked on Lonely Girl15. It’s paving the way toward a new type of communication. The episodes are short with a minimalist yet engaging plot. There are four characters. Well, three with the disappearance of strange-eyed Gemma. But what’s really impressing me is the interaction between The Creators (yes, the producers refer to themselves as The Creators) and the audience. For awhile the show was averaging nearly 1,000 comments and peaked at 2,000.
Lonely Girl has become a huge community of people focused on the characters, their plight and their future.
Viewers empathize. They look for clues in the story, much like Losties do, following every detail of the dialog, action and scenery.
Just as importantly, they suggest to the creators future directions.
Lonely Girl has evolved with the help of viewers. Central character Bree started out as a doe-eyed silly teen talking to her stuffed animals. Then we find out she’s being pursued by members of The Order. Her friend, Daniel helps her escape. Her father is murdered in front of her and in the following show “What Dad Said,” she gives a riveting performance — just Bree talking to the camera. Talking to you, the viewer.
Keep in mind that the two creators produced Lonely Girl as “an experiment in storytelling.” Every show tells a story in 2-3 minutes and ends with a cliffhanger.
Yes, Lonely Girl is a fake whose exposure gained The Creators a ton of publicity in the traditional media. But you know what? It didn’t matter.
Some viewers treat the show as reality. The majority look at it as a good show in which they have some influence. Lonely Girl has created a huge, lively community in which viewers from young teens to college students and parents have discussions that are passionate, insightful, silly and savvy. They then disperse, gathering again when the next show is posted.
Now think donors, alumni, prospective students, constituents .
I wonder why we aren’t doing something like this? It’s a brilliant use of the Web! Old fashioned storytelling at its most stripped-down and powerful with the added dimension of viewer interaction.
More in the next post.

Google Docs Rocks

I’m writing this blog on docs.google.com
In fact, I’m doing all my writing on docs
When my news director wrote the last issue of our alumni quarterly, he posted it on docs where I edited it. At one point, both of us were working on it at the same time.
If I had a question, I wrote it in a different color ink
When it was ready for our designer, she simply copied and pasted it onto her software.
Several of us are working on historical articles for our sesquicentennial (one of the most tongue-unfriendly words in English). The writers post their articles to our shared site where I can edit at my own pace. (I was going to say “at my leisure” but that doesn’t apply anymore). When they’re ready to be posted, I simply give our IT department access. They cut-and-past and upload.Okay, I’m spoiled. Whatever I’m working on is simply saved to docs.google so when I go home I can keep working without having to email it to myself, or carry a jump drive (which I refuse to wear around my neck).
Does Google own me?
Almost.
They don’t have my wedding ring yet.
But they’re probably working on it.

What Am I Doing?

I’m creating this blog as a result of a conference I presented at in October 2006 in Orlando. Though the Disney rodent was ubiquitous, there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the three-day session sponsored by Academic Impressions. In fact,”Integrating Interactive Technologies into Public Relations” was the most well-organized, thought-provoking conferences I’ve attended (except for CUPRAP, of course).

I learned a lot more than I gave.

Anyway, I couldn’t get the conference off my mind. I started looking at others’ blogs and doing more research. As far as the new technology, my specialty, as it were, is higher ed podcasting. I spent the summer of 2005 researching to come up with concept and content . We posted our Mansfield University Podcast in October 2005 and within a year had posted more than 125 show.

Within weeks of our first post, video casting (vodcasting is the term most people are using now) took off. Suddenly the West became wild again. No states, just territories.

I approach this blog as a dialog. I”ll post my observations, our experiments, explorations.

I’ll mix in stuff from nearly 40 years of writing experience (I started young; I was just coming off potty training when I began work as a newspaper reporter), and 30 years of higher education public relations in public and private institutions.

I want to thank a lot of people for giving me the inspiration to toss one more activity into my schedule (and all of you share this feeling, I know).

Thanks to Karine Joly at collegewebeditor.com for your interest in what we’re doing at Mansfield. Thanks to Betsy McNair at Academic Impressions for inviting me to speak. It was great meeting Paul Baker, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Joe Hice, University of Florida, Dan Karleen, Thomson Petersons, Charlie Melichar, Colgate University, Matthew Winkel of The College of New Jersey. And it was good seeing Bill Mahon of Penn State whom I’ve known (when are we getting rid of “whom?”) for two decades. He’s one of the most dedicated professionals in PR.

I want as much as anything to have fun with the blog. This is a great time (albeit a crazy time) to be in the communications business.

Comments, please.