Memorial Day -- Flying the flag is just a start

Unlike just about everyone on our little street, I try to fly the American flag on a regular basis at our house, not just on patriotic holidays. It is a gesture of my appreciation for our country’s traditions and ideals.

Similarly, I do try to spend some time around Memorial Day to say a silent prayer en behalf of those who have served our country and given the ultimate sacrifice.  We wouldn’t be here without their service.

But it isn’t nearly enough to fly the flag or express patriotism verbally alone.  Being truly engaged in our democracy, by striving to remain informed should ensure the war dead are memorialized. Presumably, being knowledgeable leads to better decision-making and puts pressure on our leaders to act wisely and responsibly. That’s how it is supposed to work, anyway.

That’s why an otherwise innocuous exchange in a local store struck me as an unfortunate example of failure to act in a way that’s consistent with what our forefathers intended. 

It in was a little shop in suburbia. I was wearing a fleece given to me by C-SPAN, non-profit the cable television network which televises proceedings of the federal government, as well as the National Press Club. I was Club president two years ago.

The young man, who looked to be in his 20s, seeing the C-SPAN name and logo, said “that looks like a television channel, or something.”  I said “yes, it’s a channel devoted to the affairs of the government.” He mentioned that he likes watching YouTube and looking at a website devoted to technology. And then he added, “I don’t really care about what happens in this country.”  Without much pause, I said, “It is good that you have that luxury.” It wasn’t necessarily a constructive reply on my part, but reflected my inner frustration. 

Who knows what led the young man to be disinterested in government?  It could be lack of education, cynicism, or parents who also failed to set an example.

Our country is far from perfect, but we have more than two centuries of history demonstrating an ability to innovate, adapt and improve.  

In an ideal world, in which we don’t live, there would be a better balance between true community involvement, at the intersection of awareness, action and comfort.  Clearly, this young man’s world favored only the latter.

Our exchange was not unpleasant, and he undoubtedly was unaware of my unease about his orientation.

As I prepared to leave, he failed to make the correct change from our transaction, giving me about a half dollar too much in coins.  I corrected him and handed it back.  Here’s hoping he also begins to understand the transaction of our democracy and why so many people have given their lives so we can look forward to a long weekend.

Some things for aspiring journalists and communications pros to consider

The top 5 things I wish someone had told me:

1.     The pace of change will accelerate and show no sign of easing. That includes many aspects of society and experience such as politics, technology, economies, demographics and climate.

2.      You set your own high standards and be your own critic and fan. While you should ask for and be ready to accept constructive criticism, managers or others might not have the time to give a full accounting of their assessment of you.   

3.      Basic skills such as writing and storytelling are absolutely critical.  Technology and skill sets will change, but core abilities will anchor you amid change.

4.      Many journalists do very well beginning as generalists and that is appropriate for someone starting out. Later, specialization may help your career, whether differentiated by beat or location.  If you can afford to be a freelancer, consider that option.

5.      Journalism and professional communications careers can be very rewarding, financially and personally. They can also take a toll on family and individuals. Most of the people who’ve gone into the professions will say it was worth the effort.

Here are some action items for you:

1.     Begin immediately to create and build a solid portfolio for display online. Ideally it crosses platforms, such as text and video. Have you learned to do all you can? What about excellent photography and videography, lighting, SEO, interviewing and presentation skills such as on-camera?

2.    Write, blog and write again.  When you are blogging, consider having a content partner or mentor who can give it a second look and edit before you publish. If you publish material containing errors, that sets you back.

3.      HR professionals say LinkedIn is the primary online tool they are using for prospective employees. Don't be shy about asking for recommendations and get specific on your skills and accomplishments.

4.     Think about being a role model, including with your digital identity and in your professional interactions with nearly everyone.  Are your public photos on Facebook a potential embarrassment? In interactions, how you treat people matters, whether in an office or in the field. 

5.     Your network is what sustains and propels you. No matter where you are located at any given time, set up meetings and maintain connections over time. Work to put yourself in a position so you can take advantage of every possible opportunity to learn, fail and succeed again.

A Few of My Favorite Quotations

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Soren Kierkegaard.

"I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial." - Thomas Jefferson

"Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke." - Will Rogers

"We are ever bound in community:
We build on foundations, we did not lay.
We warm ourselves at fires, we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees, we did not plant.
We drink from wells, we did not dig.
We profit from persons, we did not know.
We light this chalice in thanksgiving
For those who have passed their light to us." - Adapted from Deuteronomy 6:10–1.

“Freedom makes a huge responsibility of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.” - Eleanor Roosevelt

"You stay classy San Diego." - Ron Burgundy, Action4 Newsteam

"Stake my future on a hell of a past
Looks like tomorrow is coming on fast
Ain't complaining 'bout what I got
Seen better times, but who has not?" - from Bob Dylan's "Silvio"

"You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." —Wayne Gretzky

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

A Young Boy's Meeting with Stan Musial in 1970

It is hard to imagine a man who was more loved by his community. The legendary St. Louis Cardinal Stan Musial owned a restaurant which I recall was dimly lit with red leather booths.

It was 1970. I was in 5th grade when my father took me to "Stan Musial and Biggies" one night to celebrate my good grades.  Hard to imagine at this point they were actually that good, but apparently they warranted some recognition. We both wore neckties and jackets and the occasion seemed formal and special. This was the steak house long before the sanitized chain experiences we've come to know today.

I remember my father and I were sitting down, probably early in our meal when Stan strolled through the restaurant and saw that I was the rare child among his customers that night.

Dressed in jacket and tie himself, Stan 'The Man' came straight to the table and engaged us in what I remember to be a delightful conversation. He congratulated me for my would-be achievement. He excused himself saying he'd be right back. When he returned quickly, he had a personalized autographed photo in hand. I was thrilled.

That was one of first experiences meeting a celebrity. It was a time when we only knew mostly positive things about athletes, before the 24/7/365 news cycle and so much transparency. 

A year later we would move to my eventual Kansas hometown. Unfortunately, because of a number of moves by my family over the ensuing years, the autographed photo was lost. But that's okay. The wonderful memory and the image of the remarkably kind Stan Musial is emblazoned in my mind. I can treasure that with great pleasure after all these many years.

RIP Stan Musial.  It only took you a few minutes to make a positive difference in a young boy's life.

This Concludes My Broadcast Day (at The AP)

Back when television stations would sign off the air late at night, they'd run color bars with an announcer saying something like, "and this concludes our broadcast day".

So for me at AP, "this concludes my broadcast day".  The next part of my journey is with Bankrate.com, as Washington Bureau Chief. It is a tremendous and exciting opportunity. 

For now though, I'd like to share some thoughts about the steps proceeding this day.

My recollections of AP go back about as far as any memories I have. That’s because my father had his own 11-year AP career in 5 cities going back to my birth, ending in St. Louis in 1971 when I was 10 years old.  

In the 60’s, I remember visiting the New York headquarters at Rockefeller Center and watching a “Photofax” machine receive images just minutes after a space launch at Cape Canaveral. There were teletype operators back then and tickertape used to help transmit the news. It was there that he wrote the national broadcast report for about 5 years. I have more vivid memories of the bureaus in Topeka and St. Louis.


Fast forward. Having worked in radio for about a decade, including while in high school and college in Kansas, and later in Buffalo, New York, I would be hired by the AP in Dallas in 1986 by the late Brad Krohn. 
 

We operated the regional “Sunbelt” bureau for AP Radio and  the “Texas AP Network”.  A year later, I was transferred to the Washington Broadcast News Center, or what has been called the "BNC". There, I have remained for the last 25 and a-half years.

What a trip it has been.  

Some 26 years ago, we were writing on clunky custom-made computers, each requiring two large floppy disks. Heavy cell phones used in the field were the size of lunch buckets. A fax was sent by placing a phone receiver in an awkward, ill-fitting plastic cradle.

It was in July of 1986 that I first stepped inside the AP bureau in Dallas' Southland Life Building. That month, the Dow crossed over the 1,900 level.  It is now above 13,000. We recorded audio interviews on a cassette recorder or on reel-to-reel tape. A few miles from the bureau, Southwest Airlines was a scrappy upstart company vying against a seemingly unstoppable giant also headquartered in the city, American Airlines.  The latter has since filed for bankruptcy.  

Through it all, the core principles of good journalism have remained the same. But the changes in the media industry have been breathtaking.

By my own rough estimates, I anchored approximately 8800 AP Radio newscasts (including several dozen in the past few weeks after an 18 year interlude). During the AP All-News-Radio era I did about 15,000 “Business Updates”, live and taped. I will always remember the incredible current and former colleagues who always delivered, sometimes in the face of tremendous adversity. I think about wars, 9/11, earthquakes, the fall of the Soviet Union, deadly destructive storms and a whopper of a financial crisis.

On a lighter note, scores of visions and anecdotes rattle inside my brain. They were while working the overnight and every other hour of the day, 7 days a week including holidays. Amid the work, there were plenty of side-splitting laughs between the deadlines. 

The work included those hourly radio newscasts and live special reports, television stand-ups in the field and in the newsroom working with our wonderful photographers, interviews with celebrities and political leaders, and with admirable, regular people. I covered the economy's ups and the downs, and before that, handled the music industry beat in the late 80s while I was a news anchor. 


It is our craft to work with words, but this is one instance where there are no sufficient expressions appropriately reflecting the deep appreciation I have for my experiences. These opportunities were afforded me by a variety of managers, most of whom have since departed. But most of all, I'll treasure my friendships with highly talented, hard working colleagues.  In the future here in Washington, I'll still be down the street in the National Press Building or covering a story. So whether online, on the air, or elsewhere, I shouldn't be hard to find. 

Tips for PR Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Shift

 (Speech to PR News' Media Relations Next Practices Forum 11/30)

Little did I know when I accepted the invitation to speak here on the digital transition, that I would be involved in a digital transition of my own. After 26 years with the Associated Press, I’ll be joining Bankrate.com at the beginning of the year as Washington bureau chief.

It is a tremendous opportunity and one that I’m very excited about.  I’ve had a wonderful run with the AP and am grateful for that experience.

The first we need to acknowledge is the pace of change, which I’d argue is more significant than most of us realize.  That creates both challenge and opportunity, the challenge to process, adapt and position, and the opportunity to be among the winners, and to separate from those who will fail to keep pace.

Change is occurring at virtually all levels of what we experience. Think about it.  Climate, global leadership, the economy, regulation, politics, technology.

An image that I think portrays this situation is “running to catch a moving train”.  

That’s the view from 50,000 feet.  Oops, I’m mixing transportation metaphors.

Let’s come back down to earth and talk about how some of these things affect journalists and professional communicators. As a benchmark of how things have changed, it is no secret that people are consuming news and information in different ways than before. Those differences are more pronounced among younger people.

As I’ve spoken to college journalism/communications students over the past couple of years, many expressed an affinity for printed newspapers. But if you ask them, how many of you are willing to pay for news, you won’t get many, if any hands raised. Someone wisely branded these folks, the digital natives, and they’re accustomed to getting information for free, don’t see a justification for paying for it.  

We know from the iTunes experience that people can be influenced to change, to be forced to pay for content.  Remember when Napster was all the rage about a decade ago, when mostly youngsters were essentially just stealing music all of the time?  

Steve Jobs and company came up with an ingenious model that made it easy to download and quickly pay for content. It is part of an experience using the browser,  iTunes, the ipod, and the Iphone.

Too bad, Steve Jobs wasn’t alive long enough to try to figure out a solution for news that works so well.  Our society, as we presently know it, is dependent upon excellent journalism. The quality of government breaks down when that information flow is hindered.

So there’s a lot at stake.

Let’s take a few minutes to offer some practical advice about the link between journalists and professional communicators. The first, most important thing is to urge folks to do their homework before making a pitch.

Of 100 pitches that come my way, 97 percent are non-starters.  That means it is a waste of time for me, and a waste of resources for you.  I’d argue that if you aren’t thinking about efficiency in this regard, then you might be basing your world on a potentially at risk business model.  The client, or the person paying your paycheck isn’t really paying you to throw a wild ball.  

So, why are the pitches wrong?

They don’t take into consideration what we do.  When I pick up the phone and I have someone say, I’ve got a guest for your show (and that happens), I’m forced to say something like thank you, but I don’t have a show. I cover breaking news and do enterprise stories on the business and financial beat.

In the past month alone, here are some actual pitches that came my way, that didn’t quite hit the mark -- expert tips on bird feeding, a hypnosis expert on how to manage election day anxiety, and interview with the author of “Buddy, How a Rooster Made Me a Family Man.”

For our audience and most of the audiences served by most of the journalists I know, we’re going straight to the consumer, the saver, or the investor.  The B-to-B story doesn’t work.  

I can appreciate why you might want to pitch a B-to-B story. But I can’t use it.

There’s something that you should think about, with regard to leveraging the news cycle better.  Every news shop has a news hole to fill.  And you’ve seen over the years, that some stories occupy much of that by their very gravity or import.
When those stories aren’t around, we’re left to fill the hole with the best thing we have.  

Two weeks ago, it was the Petraeus story, then that was pushed aside by the exchange of missiles and rockets in Israel and Gaza.  Then, a bit of a void, and TV, radio and newspapers, all did the obligatory Black Friday shopping story, which one can argue is a bit of a time filler. Last weekend was relatively quiet for news. My advice would have been looking to fill that space with your story.  

News organizations know that the holiday weekend is likely going to be fairly slow.  
Same for weekends in general, and Mondays.

Along with the changes in the business model that have come with the digital revolution have been that consumers have taken a table, at the virtual editorial meeting. That means that certain stories or issues get moved to the list of items that are up for consideration, because of their popularity.

The challenge is to identify when these situations occur, decide whether or how to respond and to do it in a timely fashion. That can create a PR crisis in no time, so the challenge is both on journalists and professional communicators to be ready to react.  

Another message I’d like to leave you with today, is that if you work it right, speaking globally here, you can trust us.  Or you can trust me and my colleagues, wherever I’m working. That means for us to move forward on a story, it helps to share some information.  

I can’t tell you how many times, I’ve had someone promise a “major announcement” seeming to think that by withholding information on what the announcement is, that we’ll just to show up with the hope that news is made.   

Experience has shown that when that is held out there for us, it is less than newsworthy.

The best situation is where we’re given an opportunity to prepare a story in advance, with an agreed to embargo, or release time. That way, we can get all of the content we need, such as an interview for radio, video, or quotations for print.  

Along the lines of thinking about story placement, there are prime times for radio, online video, television and print, and they don’t all intersect. Radio does best during commute times, so morning and afternoon drive. Online video is after people get seated at work, so beginning around 10 am or so. That shifts as the time zones come into play across the US. Newspapers want things ready for the morning paper. And TV has the morning and evening news shows, both local and network.

So, if you are pitching radio, don’t say we’re holding a news conference at 10 am and then we’ll do interviews after that. That’s too late. We’d want it for morning drive. Video, that might work.  

For me, there are a couple of ideal ways for a pitch to go. Ideally, someone gives me a head’s up, and says we’re going to have a story coming down the pike, maybe a week or so out, want to gauge interest.Since journalism tends to be a collaborative process, that gives us an opportunity to have a discussion to plan for coverage.  

Then, we have a discussion whether its a viable story, and we work out a process to get the story done.  I prefer email pitches, Phone calls are too hit and miss, so it is a much more efficient process to take a look at email. And I can hit delete more easily.

I do occasionally miss or fail to understand an email pitch. But my advice is to make the pitch as concise as possible. I don’t want to be pitched via LinkedIn, or Twitter, or Facebook. If you can’t sum up the pitch in 20 seconds, you haven’t though it through quite yet.

Social media are fine places for you to put some story ideas out there for general consumption, or to provide a link to a news release or something like that.

If you do reach someone over the phone, most of us know within 10 to 20 seconds whether the idea might have legs. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally we’ll get someone on the phone who is argumentative. That’s not the way to build a sustainable relationship, that is if you ever want to try to do business with us again.

In that ideal world, that doesn’t exist, we have established relationships with pr professionals, and we both have an understanding of each other.  Over the years, those have been the most productive relationships that I’ve enjoyed relative to the workplace.

That’s why I’d argue opportunities such as this one here today, is a step in the right direction.  Thank you for being an attentive audience.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

For which I'm thankful:

I give thanks for my wonderful family, my bride Jeanne and son Chris at the very top of the list, good friends, including colleagues over many years in a number of locations, and the opportunity to work and make a living in journalism, which I love.

We give thanks for our nation, which has triumphed over so many daunting challenges, including the Great Depression, recessions, disease, two World Wars, the Civil War and evil as embodied in modern terrorism and Adolph Hilter and Nazism.

There are also the many, smaller things that we take for granted in our country. Natural beauty, entertainment, such as music and films, technology, college and professional sports, great restaurants and the ability to take a vacation and travel now and then.

We're very fortunate that the experiment, known as America, has given us all so much. Perfect? Of course, not.  But there's nowhere else on earth that works through its challenges so well, because of a system of laws and ideals ingeniously devised by the Founding Fathers and upheld by industrious people.

For these reasons and many more, we have reason to give a prayer of Thanksgiving each and every day our lives.