Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

“Sheer Exhaustion,” Lake Magazine

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The Sail La Vie was heeled over so far to port that I was standing upright on the side of the boat, grasping the big steering wheel as much to stay aboard the thrusting 31-footer as to hold it, with most of my might, at due north. It was a few minutes after midnight on Tuesday, July 22, the third night of the Race to Mackinac. • It was also the 100th running of the race – my first time in any sailing race, and only my second stint on a sailing crew of any kind. • As the rain began to pelt down, and the wind, unbelievably, continued to increase, death didn’t cross my mind, but only because death was an answer, and I only had time for one question: “How did I get here?”

Click here for full article (and photos by the marvelous Bruce Bever).

The Ryder Cup runneth over with easily earned tears

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I love golf, and I love America, so I should love the Ryder Cup above all things.

Then why does it strike me as alternately scary (do we need to be accentuating the "USA vs. the world" notion?) … sentimental (these guys are either pumping their fists in a victorious rage or crying their eyes out) … and pointless (our country club brats have more character than your country club brats).

No, I don't like the Ryder Cup. I think it's a platform for otherwise selfish, self-seeking professional golfers to feel they're doing something important for their "country."

Sorry, boys. I don't buy it.

Yawn. Stretch. Fart. Gee, what do I want to read this morning?

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I exchanged e-mails a couple of months ago with Sam Zell, the iconoclastic owner of the Chicago Tribune. I had written him to quite cheekily suggest that I might write some really interesting pieces, the likes of which his quaking and conservative editors would never commission me to write.

Sam and I would shove these articles down the editors' throats, to show them the kind of journalistic spirit he was looking for to save the paper.

Zell replied to say he trusted the editors to "give readers what they want," and I thanked him for writing and dismissed him as just a rich version of the familiar fool who hides behind a notion he knows is not true: that readers wake up in the morning knowing just what they want to read in their newspaper (if only they would tell us, and we could give it to them!).

It's nonsense, most recently and hilariously revealed when a client of mine polled readers on their educational needs. The survey yielded a few good ideas for seminars–ideas immediately called into question by the answers we got to another question, on what kinds of speakers they'd like to hear:

Jack Welch. Bob Costas. Condi Rice. Bill Walsh.

Walsh is dead, and we have just as good a chance of getting him to speak as any of the others.

Other suggestions included the likes of William Horton, Barbara Wallraff, Bryan Garner, Jared Spool, JoAnn Hackos, and of course the inimitable Taz Tally.

As soon as I figure out who any of these people are, I'll get back to you.

Communicators, repeat after me (as I repeat, once again, after the late Larry Ragan): Knowing what readers want is your job, not your readers'.