Writing Boots

To my claim that most leaders do not, in fact, frequently speak or write specifically to change behavior, but rather for softer purposes of making themselves, and thus the institution, better understood and more attractive to important constituencies, Mike wrote:

As Hannibal Lecter put it, “Incidental.”

Why do you think they want the public to have such an understanding?

So the public will buy what they are selling.

That’s why they flattered Janet into blogging her sincerity for Tech.EDU. The people who let her do that believe that the university is pouring money into random blogs because peace and love. Two levels above, there’s a room full of board members who are looking at the bottom line and see Janet as a means to an end: income. Plus it’s a nice thing to do that they can afford because they have income. It is an “extra” that serves a bonus purpose. But it does nothing to dispel Janet’s misapprehension of reality.

It gets worse: Janet’s handlers (and most of America) can afford to believe that the university is just tossing money to the comms department because sunshine.

I say this to every class at [the college where Mike teaches undergrads]—and now I gather you disagree with this: “If you can’t draw a line from what you do to the bottom line, you’re already a dead man walking. The company doesn’t send out comms—it doesn’t even donate to charity—simply because it’s a nice thing to do. They may admire these things greatly—yes, they are wonderful things! But executives do things because it drives profit and if they can afford a two-fer, they take it. Why do you think comms is the first place that gets cut in a pinch? Because many comms people forget that the 10K fun run was made possible first and foremost cos Acme could afford to fund it by selling stuff.”

… It works that way not because people are bastards (though a few are). It works that way because everybody wants to get paid so they can eat, including you and me and Janet. To pretend that CEOs are just wantin’ to get to know ya is to skip right over the Line One of the job description.

(Aren’t you glad this is the last day of this?) I replied:

Yes, after 35 years of observing corporate communications, I do disagree with what you’re saying.

You make my point better than you make yours.

You think they cut comms in a pinch because the communicators “forget” about the original purpose of the 10K fun run? No, they cut comms because they knew all along that the thing was good to do but not essential to the business. And now they have to cut it. And when they get fat again, they’ll bring the fucker back.

I’m glad you tell the kids to be results-oriented. But don’t expect my ass to receive that “dead man walking” shit.

I’ve known thousands of communicators—and I’ve known more of ‘em longer and better in my position than you have in yours—who have worked great and happy long careers without a nickel of generated revenue to show.

The corporate communication measurement pioneer Angela Sinickas—whose landmark manual on communication measurement I edited, way back in 1994—once told me she was once judging a speechwriting category in a prestigious communication awards program. Candidates had to include an element of quantitative measurement with their entry. One entrant wrote, “After the speech, the CEO gave me a dozen roses (12).”

Yep.

Mike:

Oh, yes, I knew that bullet was comin’ my way. I was waiting for it: “I’ve met more corp comms types than you ever will.” Indeed. I agree. I think you don’t need to meet any at all to know how a business works.

You think I’m making your point and I think you’re making mine: “They knew all along that the thing was good to do but not essential to the business. And now they have to cut it. And when they get fat again, they’ll bring the fucker back.” You just wrote word for word my point: they are not essential to the business. And I’ll add: “But down to an individual they imagine they are essential because they don’t understand the simple point I’m making about where income comes from.”

But that’s far removed from AI, though it leads there: If we were worried about what matters, which is income, we’d be insisting that people use AI—oh, wait. Outside of writing, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

But somehow writers (’scuse me, Writers) imagine they are exempt from the money-earning need of the system because … well, that’s where I’d like you to explain why you think corporate comms people are exempt from having to contribute to the bottom line. Seriously, because that’s what you just said, re years of working with no contribution to the bottom line. Really? Their existence must have provided something of value.

Me:

*There are things of value to an institution that can’t be attributed to the bottom line*—this quarter or next or ever. A lot of corporate communication is comprised of stuff like that. Always has been and always will be.

And you know it too, even though you pretend not to. Others pretend not to as well. They include: comms directors trying to justify more budget, communications measurement gurus and people trying to scare college students into being a little tougher-minded. Some of these purposes are well justified.

But you can’t scare me, Bub.

And let’s give Mike the last word:

All I have for you to that is, No.

(Now I shall write more than No. Heh.)

Everything is reflected in the bottom line. That’s why “image” is factored into a sale. So forgive my bluntness but you’re incorrect.

Writing Boots readers, Mike and I thank you for following us to this bitter end. And we invite your comment.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn how Mike Long uses AI in and around his writing work, he’ll talk a lot about that in this month’s webinar, Strategic Speechwriting: The Method and the Art, September 29-October 2. And if you’d like to participate in a live conversation on AI and speechwriting, Mike is appearing on an all-conference debate panel on this topic at the 2026 World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association, October 26-29 in D.C.

During the email exchange last week that we’re rehashing here this week, I asked Mike Long why he cared to tell AI skeptics off even though he thinks we’re all doomed dinosaurs anyway:

First, I comment so little anywhere these days because my actions have caught up with my aspiration: I really have stopped caring to change people’s minds. We are entrenched in a culture that believes “what I feel” somehow changes how reality operates. If people can’t agree on objective reality, they can’t debate. …

For instance, when I wrote below that the purpose of professional comms is to communicate (actually, to effect change by this communication), I was stating a fact. One can argue otherwise forever but it’s still objectively correct at the end of every single day. Yet here’s Tech.EDU, where Queen Reason is alleged to keep an apartment, talking about authenticity and “lived experience”—well, if the purpose of the blogs they offer is to get to know somebody’s daily hot take, then sure, forbid AI—and dictionaries and phone calls. (Hell, let’s forbid people from preparing for job interviews. Authenticity!) 

But if the goal of the blog is, like the site it lives on, to give people a favorable impression of Tech.EDU so they might apply, then asking Janet to barf up whatever crosses her mind—with any support she likes but God forbid she use electronic support—is a hill to die on … if your goal is to let Janet rattle.

Then we zip across town to Speech Land: If Jimmy the speechwriter needs info on how a plumber fixes a leak or how an attorney files an objection in a civil trial, AI is a faster and more accurate source than anything else, including asking a plumber or an attorney (who relies not on broad research but on their own experience alone, I must add). Will the plumber or the attorney give you a more colorful, edge-filled answer? Almost always. But that’s not how it was getting done before AI; it’s disingenuous to insist we “go back” to what never was, now.

I could go on and on in other directions but I think the bottom line is this: Writers’ objections to AI (aside from concern about losing their line of work, and that’s a different discussion) are ironic because for all our vaunted claims on first principles, I have not met many (any?) writers who begin this inquiry from the ultimate first principle: We write professionally so others will understand, be persuaded, and act. AI helps us do that. If we write so someone can get to know us—a fine thing, that—then you can make the anti-AI case, though it’ll be hard to do it without indicting thesauruses and experts, too.

In the pro comms world, the people who read or hear what we write would not have wondered how we wrote it (did they use AI?) unless someone prompted them to ask—this is curiosity masquerading as ethics. They have no legitimate interest in how we did it any more than I care how the electrician wires my house or the therapist fixes my outlook. 

I replied:

I disagree with your entire premise—the FACT you cite—about the purpose of most professional communication.

The motto of my company is, “Professional leadership communication to promote greater social understanding.”

Except for pure marketing and sales writing, that’s what most corporate communication is—and certainly it’s what most leadership communication is.

Generally, CEOs and university presidents don’t give speeches or write blog posts to get people to do stuff “with their arms and legs,” as you colorfully put it in your speechwriting teaching.

They give speeches mostly so that customers, employees and relevant other members of the public understand what kind of people they are. They do this by getting across the various ways they personally are brilliant, relatable, charming and magnetic. [And, I should have added in the hot moment, but didn’t, something like: “And by articulating their point of view and purpose, as they want the world to know it.”]

That is what we do for a living. When we say we’re trying to change behavior, that’s to hornswoggle the Board of Regents to spring for a new speechwriter. But Janet IS trying to give people a favorable impression of Tech.EDU so they might apply (even if they would otherwise be intimidated by the terrifying, cold image we all have of that place).

I think you know all that, and I think your basing you whole argument on it is disingenuous. And anyway, I’m not the Board of Regents.

In your teaching about communication, you talk a lot about how people come to their opinions by how they feel, and then they backfill with evidence and argument, to justify.

You seem to exempt yourself from that bovine approach.

I think your argument here is one of the most powerful examples I’ve seen of it.

Look, Mike. I believe you love to use AI. When you talk about it it’s like you’re telling me about a new friend. Where has he been all your life?!?

But just because you love him doesn’t mean Janet at Tech.EDU—or David Murray, at Writing Boots—would be better off using him in their daily work … or even that we ought to love him too.

And finally. I’ve heard AI enthusiasm from you and many other communicators for long enough now that I’m about to ask for receipts. You say it makes you far more productive and gets you more clients.

Where’s the yacht?

You say it makes you more creative and your writing richer and better.

Where’s The Great Gatsby?

Maybe it’s coming.

But until it comes, you know what to do with your tech stack.

Join us for tomorrow’s exciting conclusion, where Mike brings Hannibal Lecter into this.

I’ve known Mike Long for two decades and worked with him for most of that time. He’s taught speechwriting courses for the Professional Speechwriters Association while hammering away at his own prolific writing that has included two big-selling books in the last few years, The Molecule of More, which he co-wrote, and Taming the Molecule of More, which he wrote solo. We’ve broken bread and drank together and laughed a lot. We’ve agreed wholeheartedly on a lot of things and agreed to disagree on a lot of others.

This is Mike.

But only occasionally have we gone at it like we went at it one morning last week, when Mike emailed me in response to a blog post where I’d quoted a policy I liked on AI writing, from the bloggers at the Admissions office at a prestigious research university we’ll call Tech.EDU:

“Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all blogs on the Tech.EDU Admissions website are written without the use of generative AI/language models. We view the blogs as a relationship between our bloggers and you, our human readers. The bloggers show our respect for that relationship by writing in their own voice and sharing their own perspective, without being filtered or rearticulated by generative AI, so that you can get to know some Tech.EDU students for real, and share a little bit in their subjective and lived experience.”

What was the matter with that?

“If this paragraph were cow manure, one could fertilize all of America’s crops for the next century,” Mike wrote, zeroing in on “[A]ll blogs on the Tech.EDU Admissions website are written without the use of generative AI/language models. … The bloggers show our respect for that relationship by writing in their own voice….”

Wrote Mike:

Replace “without the use of generative AI” with the words below and the jagoff faux-respect pose comes clear: “All blogs are written without the use of … research. Asking around. Making a few calls. Checking with Cindy in accounting. Reading a book. Asking an expert. Asking a rando. Thinking before you write.

You get it. “Writing their own voice and sharing their own perspective” is a Tech.EDU-way of saying “without trying to add clarity and information beyond the four walls of their own head.” But wait! All those other things—research, etc—are peachy. Even asking for an editor to take a look is cool. But not asking … a machine that sorts and collects information much like a person does.

What’s the point of professional communication? To communicate clearly. There are lots of tools that help us do that. But Luddites Unlimited are scared of this one new tool.

As David Byrne put it, “Same as it ever was.”

Busy but game on a Thursday morning, I flashed back and started a conversation not at first meant for any other eyes but Mike’s—and thus referencing a lot of comments he’s made over the last few years as an ebullient-bordering-on-truculent AI enthusiast. Truc-bullient, let’s call him. I wrote:

Yeah, I don’t know how to contend with this, Mike. We differ in our thinking on this and I don’t know how to reconcile it.

The very idea of even asking AI to help me out with the name of a character in a novel I’m writing drains the life and reason out of writing for me.

When I was a journalist working on a story, “asking around” and “making a few calls” and “asking a rando” and even “reading a book” always gave me more energy and excited me more than researching on the Internet, which often drained me of curiosity and interest, even when the results were fruitful. 

And I daresay the stories I wrote that leaned heavily on the first kinds of sources were probably far more compelling than the stories that leaned heavily on the latter. 

So leaning on AI—which adds a whole layer of synthetic aggregation—I know you love it and find it stimulating.

But then, you like asking AI what you should be interested in on a drive from D.C. to Huntsville. I want to find that shit by accident and [consulting with AI] bleaches the interest from the trip.

We’re both humanists, I know. But with different instincts. And I guarantee you mine are as spiritually felt as yours.

And finally, this is the first letter to the editor you’ve sent me in a while. And I’m happy to have it. But why do you care so much about the Tech.EDU Admissions people (and my endorsement of their standards)? It sounds like you think they’re going to be bulldozed like calculator-resistors from the 1950s. Why not just wait until they’re (we’re) plowed under by you AI enthusiasts and your inevitable correctness?

(Hey, maybe I could publish a version of this exchange.)

With Mike’s permission, that’s just what I’ll do—tomorrow and Thursday, on Writing Boots.