Writing Boots

My four-and-a-half-year-old daughter Scout asked me if I thought her stuffed dog was “cute.”

I told her I don’t know what that word means.

“It means funny and pretty,” she said.

As good a definition as any, and it helped me think about why I hate the word “cute”: I like my humor funny and my beauty pretty. Mixing them waters each down.

Some words make our language banal, and other words make us less articulate. ("Lazy" comes to mind; calling someone "lazy" is almost always a way to duck out of a deeper explanation of the person’s general unwillingness.)

What words do you wish didn’t exist?

Clifford Teutsch trying to show he understands how reporters must be feeling after the latest memo from the parent company’s suits. He’s trying to be reassuring. He’s trying to clear things up.

He accomplishes the opposite.

***

From: [Hartford Courant executive editor] Teutsch, Clifford
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2008 6:17 PM
To: Courant News Staff

Folks,

Some of you have raised questions regarding today’s communications from Randy and Sam.

I can give you some answers now and more in coming days. We are going to have to make significant newshole and staff reductions. I will give you specific numbers as soon as they are finalized and I can share them. We want you to know what we face. We will be asking for your help in re-inventing the paper. We’ll let you know the process and timetable soon.

Randy said that Tribune newspapers have reviewed the productivity of writers. I was asked to count bylines and look at numbers of stories for people in comparable jobs, i.e. town reporters, sports reporters, investigative reporters. I did that. It’s nothing new for us; we often look at byline counts when we do annual evals. If something jumps out at us from the numbers we explore it further with the writer. There is no hard formula, no right number, no minimum, etc., etc.

For the review that Randy referred to, we didn’t count unsigned briefs or web stories. Some people do far more of this work than others. All of us are smart enough to know that numbers are just one imperfect indicator of productivity. Some stories are much harder to do than others, etc. Also, I hope I don’t need to say we are focused on quality as well as quantity. We will continue to spend weeks and months on stories that are worth it. By the way, as far as the numbers go, Courant writers as a whole were very productive.

I will get you more information as soon as possible. If you have a concern, please talk with me.

Cliff

***

I’m sure they did have a concern, but I doubt they talked to Cliff.

Wal-Mart issued a release last week reporting on its own annual meeting, where CEO Lee Scott said that Wal-Mart has benefited in the marketplace from its recent focus on solving social problems.

Five years ago, Wal-Mart was saying, essentially: "If we take care of our customer by giving low, low prices, everything else will take care of itself. So leave us alone." Now, Wal-Mart is saying it’s going to help take care of social problems its customers face; it’s set ambitious goals to help reform U.S. healthcare and achieve environmental sustainability.

A pretty amazing shift, even considering it was inspired by an unbelievable torrent of bad publicity over the last few years, in which the press portrayed Lee Scott as a robber baron and Wal-Mart as a monopoly. Finally the biggest company in the world is acknowledging that it must consider the effect it has on the societies in which it operates.

But big companies are like big drunks: They over-correct, and they sway dangerously. Get a load of this, from the Wal-Mart press release:

Scott
   also talked about the company’s efforts to help solve some of the toughest challenges facing its customers, such as rising
   energy prices and high out-of-pocket health care costs. He said that American voters who will be the focus of the upcoming
   elections are Wal-Mart shoppers who are concerned about these very issues.

"We see it in our stores every day—working
   men and women living paycheck to paycheck and making more and more difficult decisions," Scott said. "We serve millions of
   customers like this every week in the U.S. We understand them."

The company’s chief executive added: "Regardless of
   who wins the election in November—and what party they are from—we stand ready to work with the new President and the
   next Congress. We believe we can be an effective partner, and leaders who want to get things done will seek Wal-Mart as a
   partner."

Woah, hold on there big fella. Five years ago you wanted to be left alone with your efficient supply chain. Now you’re publicly stating that the road to social reform runs through Wal-Mart?

Needed in America: Someone with a sober vision of how companies large and small should participate in public policy. How they should help, how much they should help—and when they should step off. Has anybody ever seen such a vision articulated? I’d like to see it if you have.