Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Do you comment on big mainstream media websites? If so, stop it.

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I started quite a firestorm about four years ago when I observed in a magazine I edited that there was a blogger who I read religiously despite the fact that he was "pretty much a nobody" in the communication business.

I meant for people to focus on the reasons that I read this guy regularly despite his lack of status and readership reach. Instead, predictably enough, everyone focused on the term "nobody," and I was nibbled half to death by a dozen or more bloggers, who saw themselves as aggrieved "nobodies" too, standing up for the trufula trees.

I tried to dismiss what ensued as a tempest in a teapot, but when you're in the teapot, it feels like a hell of a storm.

And now I try to think of the thing as a kind of online accident that couldn't happen today because bloggers are more reconciled to their niche status. Besides, I'm writing on a blog, so if you're a nobody, I'm a nobody too!

But it was last week when I read a story in The New York Times about anonymous online commenters. And I waited until this week to say what I think about it: I that people who comment on online stories are all anonymous, or might as well be. Anonymous, and utterly unheard. An online commenter to a big-media online story is—dare I say it again?!—a nobody.

For any comment to make any impact in the comments section of an online article, the commenter has to have some agreed-upon status among the rest of the readership. At a niche blog, that's easy: Commenters at Writing Boots, for example, have automatic status simply because they read Writing Boots, which means we all see them as fellow travelers. Many of them have further status because they are professional communicators. And then I and the other Writing Boots readers confer yet more status upon commenters when we acknowledge their posts and engage them in further conversation, the content of which is an essential part of the experience of the blog. And then we slowly get to know one another, as regulars, and it's "I wonder what Kristen's take is going to be," or "uh oh, wait until Robert sees this."

By utter contrast, think of hundreds and hundreds of people who comment on articles in The New York Times: They are not members of any particular community; all they have in common with one another is that they are readers of the English language. Unless they identify themselves as real experts on the subject they are discussing (in hopes that people will believe that the dean of the Harvard Business School is wasting his time commenting on NYTimes.com), they have no status there either. They are not even writers of published letters to the editor, who get credibility because an editor chose their opinion out of hundreds of others. Almost never does the writer of the original article acknowledge readers' comments. And because there are so many commenters, there is no familiarity; everyone is a stranger to everyone else.

It seems cruel to say: But the thousands and thousands and maybe millions of habitual commenters on articles on mainstream media websites are deluded believers that their opinion counts for anything more than one, added to a comment count.

Try to imagine hearing someone say, "You know, I changed my thinking on healthcare after I read a comment in a discussion of a newspaper article. It came from a fellow named 'tooldude,' and he said something I'll never forget …."

Never happen. I don't care if tooldude wrote like Oscar Wilde: Nobody would ever remember a thing he wrote, and he'd be better off shouting at the TV news, because then at least then his wife and kids would hear him.

Friday Happy Hour Video: Why the editor thanked Bill for his attack, why you should too

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The critique we read this week wasn't the only one Bill Sweetland sent out. Some recipients of his critiques have complained about the rough treatment they received.

They have a point. He asks a lot.

And really, when people enter their publication into an awards program, they probably do not expect to be greeted with a resounding and overwhelming rebuke. But when they get over their shock, they ought to thank Bill for giving them something more useful than a perfunctory pat on the back. (And in any case, as my mother would say, "Fuck them if they can't take a joke.")

But as for the critique we've been reading this week: Months later, Bill received an e-mail from the impaled editor, who said offhandedly, "You may remember it from the critique you provided after we entered the magazine in the 2010 Ragan Recognition Awards. Your feedback was very helpful, and we’ve been addressing most of your suggestions."

Bill—who only appears not to care how the recipients of his critiques feel about them—got a big lift out of that. In fact, he sent the critique to me so I could see for myself "how I threw [the editor's] publication on the floor, shot it, and danced on its tattered remains, and he STILL pulled an act of incredible magnanimity and humility on my arrogant asshole self."

Not magnanimity, I think, but rather appreciation of not being coddled as poor a downtrodden corporate communicator with a hopeless handicap and a pathetic need for validation, but rather confronted as a real, honest-to-goodness working communicator who can bear to look at the vast distance from the real to the ideal, and set his course in the proper direction, and start flying, against the wind.

Bill Sweetland, on your headlines: ‘They are not very good’

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The sweetHPIM4020 A final question Bill Sweetland needed to answer to complete his critque of the slick corporate magazine was about the writing, and the headlines. He had already talked a lot about the writing. So:

Let me say a few words about your headlines: They are not very good.

Look at the headlines in the Spring 2009 issue, starting from the front of the magazine:

Voices for change

A fresh approach to learning

Looking to the future (Groan! The staple of editors at a loss for words)

From the CEO

Fit for life

My life

Good deeds

Shortcuts

You can do better than this. In truth, many of your headlines are lifeless because there is literally nothing in the story worth a real headline, for example, the three stories about learning and strategy, “Voices for change,” “A fresh approach to learning,” and “Looking at the future.” The solution: Write a story in which you include some fresh fact or idea that begs for a snappy, short, readable headline.

And then Bill wound up the critique with a barrage of good questions, a bevy of difficult truths and host of hard-to-digest bits of advice.

What are the chances you could persuade executives to allow you to do more with the publication? Could you get an executive-employee dialogue going in the publication about company issues? Could you do stories on company topics? More stories about individual employees, stories that inspire their fellow workers to think more about their jobs? Is the phrase “social media” mere foul language to your bosses?

There is no substitute for good-quality, long, thoughtful stories about your huge corporation and all of its departments, its “silos,” its business initiatives and processes, its flawed structures and workflows, its misunderstandings and business triumphs, its departmental jealousies and remedies for this, its industry, its competition, its plans for expansion, its long-term goals or strategy. Every part of the subjects I’ve just mentioned is just as exciting as, or more exciting than, stories about what individual employees do with their free time. I know that that will be hard for you to believe, but give it a chance.

Stay away from general stories that lack a male or female hero. Concentrate on making the company better by writing about it as a business, and cut back drastically on the stories about employees having interesting fun, and, for that matter, stop writing so much about workers doing good for their communities. And don’t forget always that your job is to make your gigantic corporation explicable to and understandable by your own employees. That is far more important to employees than making them feel good about themselves or making them proud of the charity work they do, and in the end, such an attitude is far less condescending.

Tune in tomorrow when I share the editor's response to Bill's broadside—and a good argument for the usefulness of the unreasonable critic.