Writing Boots

Judging from this video, made by Edelman Public Relations for PR Week, it’s essentially the same as the past.

Except, it will be a little more self-serving, somewhat shallower, a wee bit more self-aggrandizing, a dram glibber, a teense more obvious, slightly more phony and simultaneously more cliché-ridden and less intellectually rigorous.

And that is fucking saying something.

 

The "retirement" party last night was at the Billy Goat. The beers weren't cutting the sadness, so I left after three.

I'll just say this: It takes an awfully peculiar sort of person—funny and nutty and witty and wise, not too ambitious, not at all lazy, passionate here, dispassionate there, intellectual and well read but self-deprecating, just this much and this kind of ego—to actually enjoy the inherently absurd job of helping institutions communicate.

And when a person achieves and sustains that kind of profound mutation and makes it look natural—well, he ought to have his job as long as he wants it, if you ask me.

And even as he laughed at the satirically mocked-up, framed Vital Speeches cover his colleagues gave him, even as he read his personal version of FDR's "Day of Infamy" speech, even as he reassured everyone he'd be plenty busy between his knee replacement surgery and his plans to write for the Huffington Post, the guy didn't try to hide his sadness.

I admired that, and I didn't try to hide mine, either.

No one did.

For McMurry's fabulous free publication ContentWise, I'm writing article on change communication don'ts—they outnumber the do's, do they not?—and I'm gathering a list of change-communication cliches to avoid.

Here's what I've got so far.

• "Change is the only constant."

• "change (ˈchānj): to make different in some particular … b: to make radically different … c: to give a different position, course, or direction to …."

• “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

What is my cliché-numbed mind forgetting? Help!