The significance of remembrance

On the left is a poster with photos, names, and stories about those lost in combat. The center and right are posters with handwritten messages to the troops. This is near gate C-1 at DFW airport.

A Texan advised me to arrive at Dallas Fort Worth airport extra early because the Transportation Safety Administration lines are notoriously long there. Turns out this is not the case at Terminal C at 11:15 on a Sunday morning. At least, not this morning. A zero-minute wait at TSA left me with two hours to kill before my flight.

Since I'm coming off a four-day writers' conference at which I totally ignored my calorie count, I figured I could use the time and get some exercise by walking from one end of the terminal to the other.

At the far end of DFW's Terminal C, which is occupied entirely by American Airlines, I found this Memory Wall. Posters contain messages of support for the armed forces, alongside the names, faces, and stories of military personnel killed in combat between Memorial Day 2011 and Memorial Day 2012.

I admit it's possible that American Airlines put up this display as a public relations stunt, so people like me will see it and tell the story. But I think that's unlikely. I think this is a gracious gesture by a company that transports members of the military on a regular basis and chose to honor their service and sacrifice. That this results in a little PR is a side effect.

I only hesitated to write this post for a moment. If a company is going to make an effort to show love for our troops, I can take a few minutes to share the story. If an endorsement of American Airlines is implied, so be it.

Rejection is not always about you

Hope Clark had a great post yesterday on writers, editors and rejection. An excerpt:

Writers have good days and bad days. … Editors have good days and bad days. They accept and decline submissions for a wide variety of reasons, most of which a writer will never know and the editor will easily forget.

As I wrote in the comments at Hope's blog, the calls I most dread are from the public relations people who want to know why we didn't use the item they sent. Because usually, there's no easy answer, and even when there is, the truth isn't pretty.

One reason we might skip a story is that one of our competitors has already done it.

Other times, it's just not the kind of thing we ever publish. For example, I had a call from FOCUS about getting coverage for their Interfaith Prayer Action for Health Care Reform. I'm a supporter of FOCUS and have many friends who are actively involved there. But I had to tell the caller it's not something I could cover because it's national and nonprofit and we're local and business.

But most of the time, at least with the "People in the News" and "Biz Digest" columns, it's simply because we have a limited number of pages, and when they are full, we stop. A good news item might get moved to the queue for next week, but if something bigger comes along, that will move to the front of the line. A $5 million deal is a bigger story than a $500,000 deal. If enough million-dollar deals come along, the $500,000 deal may become old news before it ever sees ink.

Here's a scary statistic that I share liberally: We get five hundred press releases a week just for these two columns. There's room in the paper for about fifty. That doesn't mean the other 90 percent are no good; it just means there wasn't room for them.

As much as an editor may strive for objectivity, not every editor has the ability to set dollar-amount cutoffs to determine which submissions make the cut and which go to the bitbucket. It must be especially difficult for fiction editors, as fiction is so difficult to quantify.

Sturgeon's Law surely applies at every periodical and book publishing house. No one has the resources to publish everything they get. There are too many writers -- and PR people -- out there.

Sturgeon's Law -- named for Theodore Sturgeon, a writer and magazine editor -- says 90 percent of everything is crap. But crap is relative. The 11th percentile may not be crappy at all. It's just slightly less good than the 10th percentile. And when you're making decisions about how to spend your publisher's money and your reader's time, that 1 percent difference is enough, even if the reasons for the difference aren't quantifiable.

That's why targeting your market is crucial. You must know what the publisher or editor needs in order to increase your chances of landing in the top 10 percent.

Initially concerned

Sometimes when I get an intitialism-riddled press release, I can decipher it with some judicious Googling. But I was stumped by a release from a bank about its new "BSA officer."

Boy Scouts of America?
Business Software Alliance?
Boston Society of Architects?

Those were some of the top Google results. None in the first pageful had to do with banking.

Just for kicks,* I looked at Wikipedia, which gave me a very entertaining list that includes:

• Bearing Specialists Association


• Belarusian Socialist Assembly


• Bethesda Softworks Archive


• Birmingham School of Acting


• Bismuth (Bi), Tin (Sn), Silver (Ag) solder


• Botanical Society of America


• Bovine serum albumin


• Brazilian Space Agency


• British Soap Awards


• British Stratego Association

and much more.

Fortunately, the bank's publicist quickly responded to my e-mail request for a translation: "Bank Secrecy Act." Without that information, I would have had to omit the item. Of course, I would be much happier had I been given plain English to begin with.

This is a larger issue at daily newspapers, where staff cuts have been staggering. As journalists increasingly rely on publicists to provide information, that information must be correct, concise, and clear.

Clarity requires translating initialisms and other jargon into plain English. Only a handful -- CEO, CPA and MBA are the first that come to mind -- are so well-known as to need no explanation.

And frankly, outside of a business context, even those are iffy. There are circles in which those would be seen as referring to "Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization," "Craft Potters' Association" and "Marine Biological Association," respectively.


* — That Wikipedia is unusable as a source for proper journalism has, I think, now been well-established.

Following too closely

Following up on a press release is not an unforgivable sin, just a minor annoyance.

Understand that the press release file is to a newspaper what the slush pile is to a book publisher: a big mass of unsolicited submissions that may or may not see the light of day.*

A follow-up phone call or message asking about the status of a press release usually requires the editor to dig through that big pile -- if she is so inclined -- to find it. Mind you, now that most releases are sent by e-mail, this is a lot easier than it was back in the day when we actually had to dig through real piles of dead tree matter.

If you believe your story is truly a perfect fit for the outlet, then yes, a follow-up call or message to point out that perfectness is allowable.

But following up Friday on a press release sent Thursday is following a little too closely. Give it 3 business days, at least. By then, it might actually have been read and slotted.

Helpful Hint: Your press release will stand out in the e-slush pile if you make the subject line as specific as possible. "Our Co. signs $3 million government contract" will get more attention than "Press release," even if the latter is about a $30 million deal.

* Sturgeon's Law applies in this matter, as in everything else: 90 percent of everything is crap. Including, I don't doubt, 90 percent of all blog posts.

Publicity requires forethought

Every day, I—and many people in newsroom jobs similar to mine—receive press releases that immediately go to the bit bucket.

Or, in the case of the one that was on my desk the other day, the real-world recycle bin.

This dead-tree release, which came by fax, goes along the lines of "[Firstname Lastname] recently addressed a meeting of [nonprofit group or industry association], speaking on the topic of [something probably very interesting that my readers might have cared to listen to].

The problem, of course, is that I have been told after the fact, when it is too late to tell my readers so they could attend.

If the senders of these notices—and I get dozens of them every month—ever read OBJ, they would realize that we don't publish this sort of post-event notice.

Look at this front page story from the Oct. 3 issue of OBJ. Had we been sent a release after the meeting that said "Dr. Deborah German recently addressed a meeting of BioOrlando, speaking on the topic of recruitment and funding at the UCF School of Medicine," we would not have known there was a story.

But our reporter was notified of the meeting beforehand, so she could attend, glean information from the talk, learn more about the subject, and transmit that news to our readers.

Getting such notices before the event allows us to
• Publicize speakers our readers might be interested in hearing for themselves
• Send a reporter to an event where appropriate

But Kristen, if Firstname Lastname's talk would be interesting to the readers, why not write about it afterward?

Because we weren't there to hear the talk firsthand.

Mr. Lastname's discussion may have been very interesting. But if he wishes to convey his knowledge to our readers, he needs to notify us of the event early enough for us to list it in our calendar section so the readers can attend.

Sending the release after the event tells me that he's not interested in conveying his knowledge to our readers. He's just seeking publicity for his public-speaking career. Sending a post-event release is not the best way to do that.

Here's the right way for a public speaker or other topic expert to get publicity:

• Invite media to attend events. (Mind you, I can't guarantee they'll show. Budgets are tight, and at many papers, staffs are shrinking. But if the event, like BioOrlando, is one that draws industry leaders, reporters might attend. Good reporters are always looking for new sources.)

• Provide editors and news directors with a bullet-point list of topics on which the expert is available for interview. (Don't expect to get a whole article written about you this way, but you might get quoted as a third-party expert in a story about someone or something else.)

• Submit bylined articles. (but— you must read the publication and customize your article for its style and readership.)

Of course, one could always pay for advertising, but few people seem to like that option.

Don't ask

Today — and not for the first time — a businessperson asked something like, "If I buy an ad, will it guarantee my press release gets in the paper?"

No.

No.

No.

Questions like this really get my blood boiling. Let me make two things perfectly clear: First, asking this question is an insult to the integrity of a newsperson.

Second, if the answer is yes, you are dealing with a news organization that has no integrity.

With this second point, you understand, I acknowledge that not all news organizations have the same ethical standards. But what rankles—as it does with any group—is when all are painted with the same brush.

To imply that all newspeople lack integrity is precisely as prejudiced as to imply that all women are bad drivers or all men are too stubborn to ask for directions or … well, pick your subgroup and the stereotypical insult most commonly hurled at it.

I would say "all generalizations are wrong," but you see the inherent problem …

Please join the rest of us in the 21st century

About a year and a half ago, at my day job, I railed against companies that snail-mail press releases.

Don't waste money mailing dead trees

The amount of dead-tree matter landing in my inbox has diminished significantly, yet I still received the occasional paper press release.

Most PR professionals understand that media outlets want e-mail, not bits of paper, to work with. But many companies don't hire PR professionals; they ask a secretary or some other person who doesn't understand the media to send out a press release.

I often get phone calls from these folks, because they don't know what a press release is, exactly, or what it should contain. The ones who call are a step ahead of the ones who don't, because they at least learn the e-mail lesson.

The ones who don't send me a piece of paper that winds up in a file that's not part of my e-queue, and so halve their chances of exposure.

So here's a shout-out to all you non-PR-professionals who get yanked into PR duty because there's no one else at your company to do it: E-mail. Plain text. Really.

Satirical anomaly

I love it when copywriters remember that entertainment is a much better delivery mechanism than shouting (I'd tell Billy Mays to listen up, but I don't think he could hear me over himself).

The best advertising does two things: it makes you remember the product, and it keeps you entertained.

We all remember those stupid "Head On" headache potion commercials. And, for that matter, we remember the variety of products Billy Mays hawks. But we remember them because they make us reach for the mute button. Not good.

You remember really entertaining commercials for a better reason—they were fun. Or moving. Or thought provoking. These are the ones you talk about in the break room at work "I saw this great commercial..."

Except that half the time, the story starts with "I don't remember what the product was, but I saw this great commercial ..."

Well, if you don't remember what the product was, its wasn't a great commercial. It was a great 30- or 60-second entertainment, but it wasn't a great commercial unless you remember that the beer in the magic fridge was Budweiser.

So here's a Web site that's a great commercial for clean energy. Copywriters, listen up: satire can be a very entertaining delivery mechanism.

www.americascoalpower.org

What, no cheese?

NASA's press releases are often intriguing, but rarely are they this amusing.

The Cassini spacecraft "tasted and sampled a surprising organic brew erupting in geyser-like fashion from Saturn's moon Enceladus." Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, tells us that "Enceladus' brew is like carbonated water with an essence of natural gas."

At least he stopped short of calling it "charming, with an herbaceous bouquet."

The full press release is here.

Rounding up the usual subjects

When I'm sorting through the messages in my inbox—more than 100 per day, not counting spam—I'm dismayed by how many of them have non-descriptive subject lines or, worse, no subject line at all.

Tip: Write detailed subject lines. People who receive many messages each hour scan the list of subject lines and respond first to those that look most important.

For example, if you have a deal worth $20 million in the works, don’t ask for your supervisor’s input with a message headed “FYI – need input.” Send a message that says “Potential $20 millon deal - need your advice.”

This is doubly important if you are e-mailing a member of the press and expect to be noticed. A message with the subject line "Local firm signs $20 million deal" will get read before one with the subject line "press release."