Vancouver communication consultant and Writing Boots regular Ron Shewchuk interviews Petro Canada communicator Kevin Heinrichs, who edits the oil company's brand new employee magazine, inDepth.

Click on the PDF and see if you don't get a funny feeling in your loins.

"We wanted a tone with the text and layout that would appeal to younger
readers, but not so edgy that it's inaccessible to older readers," Heinrichs tells Shewchuk. "We
treat our magazine as though it is a newsstand magazine that just
happens to cover one company. The same editing discipline and attention
to layout detail apply."

This is pornography for employee communicators.

Sometimes over the last four presidential terms it has seemed that presidents and other politicians get away with their lies. They may. But their country doesn't.

MSNBC's Chuck Todd astutely pointed out that one of the reasons the bailout package just failed is that it was sold by the president and by Congress, neither of whom Americans trust.

Just about every member of Congress in a tight race voted no because they thought they'd be beat up by their constituents, who hate the bill.

Why do they hate the bill? Because they hate the people who are telling them, probably honestly for once, that it's necessary.

"This is a crisis in leadership," Todd pointed out, "and the American public just doesn't trust anybody right now."

When you have a country where nobody trusts anybody, do you have a country at all?