Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Aussie prime minister refuses to say “billion”

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My faithful and funny Australian communication correspondent and golf mate Rodney Gray—I can't mention him without boasting that he and I once played together on a course outside Sydney that was teeming with kangaroos—has a gem for us.

Newish Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and his treasurer are being forced these days to talk a lot about a national budget deficit projected to be $300 billion.

Kevin-rudd-wayne-swan-2009-2-3-0-33-48 Except, Gray says and the Australian Associated Press confirms, they won't say "billion," because if they say only "300," their political opponents can't make ads quoting them as saying "$300 billion."

    Mr. Rudd said debt would peak at "around about 200, our gross debt at about 300" in 2013-14.
    Asked to explain 200 or 300 of what, Mr. Rudd responded: "These are billion figures."
    Journalists had to add the "billion" in parentheses.

Australian journalist Annabel Crabb reacted, "I don't know if I've ever seen anything so awfully, skin-crawlingly, knuckle-bitingly embarrassing …."

Bootsters, I bet you have. Let's hear it.

Local investigative TV reporter shows why he never made it in print

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Andy Shaw was a good enough local TV news political reporter for so many years in Chicago that some of us media watchers idly wondered: Why wouldn't this guy want to work for a newspaper? But then he retired in January and, as with all TV news people, we all forgot about him immediately.

Now, Shaw has been named as the new head of the Better Government Association—in Chicago, a busy job indeed. And today Shaw trumpets his own appointment, on the Huffington Post. And he does so with a series of clichés so thick that his prose parodies itself:

For more than 25 years, as the main political reporter at ABC 7 in Chicago, I asked politicians … the tough questions about how they … spent your hard-earned tax dollars. I held their feet to the fire. And now, after a short break to recharge my batteries, I'm back on the case. … So let's get it on! So it's with a deep sense of responsibility and a keen knowledge of history that I become its new executive director, the keeper of an idealistic flame … The BGA speaks truth to power–no small claim in these shark-infested political waters--and never wavers from its mission …  That mission is more important than ever today. Because even though the BGA's flame still burns brightly, 86 years later, the challenge is as daunting as it was back then. … The BGA … keeps proposing reforms that entrenched political power-brokers, the guardians of the "business as usual" status quo, keep watering down or ignoring altogether. … The timing is perfect on this, the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham's visionary plan to preserve Chicago's lakefront. Burnham, who admonished us to "make no small plans" because "they have no magic to stir one's blood."

Well, at least we don't have to waste any more spare energy wondering why Andy's print career never went anywhere.