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.

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.

Another question the Ragan Recognition Awards posed had to do with design. The editor of the gorgeous employee magazine must have thought he at least had Bill Sweetland here. Not so fast.

I am only telling you what you already know when I say that your magazine is put together beautifully. But mere elegance and good taste and restraint can wear on the nerves intolerably, unless there is also an abundance of ideas, passion for work, solid content, and even a deep tinge of convention-upsetting, mold-breaking content to boot in the printed words. Beware of looking too good! I mean this.

Passion for the company's work! That is what is missing in your design as well as in your news articles, Mr. R., and until you get this in the publication you will be spinning your wheels, no matter how much praise you get from Senior VPs who don’t know any better telling you that your magazine must feature the “human side of our employees.” Until you concentrate on the idea or ideas you want to get across to employees about the business they’re in, your magazine will lack that idiosyncrasy, that spark that sets it apart from the standard corporate print offering.

Tomorrow, Sweetland turns to the headlines. Duck.