Salesforce and Disney have given up on acquiring Twitter, citing its troll problems. To succeed in tech you need either profits or growth; Twitter has neither. So somebody’s going to buy it that doesn’t care about the users. As a result, if you’re a user, you can expect a very scary future — scarier than any ghosts…
In my experience, a big challenge for writers is the inappropriate edit. You know, the guy who corrects spelling errors in your outline, or wants to rearrange the whole thing during the proofreading stage. In fact, only 32% of business writers say that their process for collecting and combining feedback works well. I’ve written before…
It’s time to take this show on the road. I’ll be tearing up the Public Relations Society of America Conference with a talk on this Sunday, October 23 at 2:45 PM (room “White River E”). Given all the press releases I’ve ripped apart on this blog and my recent exhortation to give them up, this should…
My post about the New York Times’ response to Donald Trump raised a few questions about weasel words. So today, I’ll clarify the different types and why you’re better off avoiding as many as you can. My clearest take on weasel words is here. Here’s the definition: A weasel word is an adjective, adverb, noun, or…
The New York Times published an article about Trump sexually assaulting two women. Trump threatened to sue for libel. The letter that the Times‘ lawyer sent in response really hits you smack on the forehead, because it’s so different from anything else you read in the paper. I’ll analyze. There are three kinds of things you…
A groundswell occurs when a large number of people each do something very small. Those people don’t even realize they’re part of a movement until they see something to get behind, and to share. If you’re against bullshit, I’d like to give you something to get behind, and a way to make a difference quickly. Here’s…
Stop writing and distributing press releases. Please. They’re stupid, annoying, and useless. And according to an analysis by Christopher Penn of Shift Communications, they don’t work. I spent 20 years as an analyst at Forrester Research. During that time, I received 10,000 press releases. I estimate that about 200 had even the tiniest amount of…
David Ortiz, “Big Papi,” played his final game last night. The warmth I feel about this player has no limits. Why? How did I come to admire a black man from the Dominican Republic with a heavy Spanish accent? What could I possibly have in common with this man? And why is Ortiz so popular with so…
More than half of last night’s debate was about character. It feels like this whole campaign has been about character. It’s time to stop wallowing in that and face the country’s real problems, the problems nobody talks about, which go way beyond who’s running and what they did 10 and 20 years ago. In any campaign, here’s what…