Today's Friday video is an encore presentation of a Writing Boots post from 2009. This is the resignation of President Richard Nixon—Aug. 8, 1974, 40 years ago today—from set-up and rehearsal, through the speech itself. As I observed in the original post: Veteran communicators will find as familiar as strange, the incongruity between profound public moment and backstage banality.
The reason your clients and colleagues have been so respectful and deferrential lately
Digging out last week after my vacation, I came across a big news item I'd missed; a communicator posted it on Facebook. Sorry for the late notice.
A worldwide group of communicators finalized "The Stockholm Accord" June 15, a call to action to improve our reputations.
Boy. Nothing'll ever be the same.
McLuhan was exaggerating, fools!
Marshal McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message."
Clearly, McLuhan was talking out of his ass.
(Here is what is true about the medium and the message:
The medium influences, sometimes profoundly, how the message is perceived.
The message can't be separated from the medium that conveys it.
Some types of media and some kinds of messages mix well. Some don't.
Them are some important insights. But, especially for professional communicators, it's important to distinguish medium from message—communication vehicle from communication content.
So next time one of these technobabblers mindlessly says, "The medium is the message," let's retort, "Then why do we have different words for them?")