Boy, that IABC discussion was intense.

How about something a little lighter this Friday afternoon--a story my dad just reminded me of.

One morning he was standing on a balcony on a vacation in Florida, idly watching a young boy walk along the beach.

He heard another boy call out to the boy on the beach, from a balcony below.

"Mike!"

The boy on the beach paused briefly, but then kept walking. The boy on the balcony was undeterred.

"Mike!!!"

The boy on the beach kept walking.

"MIKE!!!!"

Finally the boy on the beach lost his patience. He stopped, turned, and shouted at the boy on the balcony:

"Can't you see I'm some other kid?"

I've been going through a file of mostly wonderful memos my dad wrote in the 1960s when he was creative director of General Motors' ad agency, Campbell-Ewald. Lots of great communication truths in here, some of which will appear in next week's Ragan Report, more of which will appear in the Sept./Oct. issue of the Journal of Employee Communication Management.

As I'll write in the Journal, I'm not so much reading these memos as communing with them. Dad's words are my intellectual womb walls.

But one of these memos brought me up short. It's dated June 21, 1967, and it's addressed to the whole creative staff. It follows:

***

The Loss of a Lady

There was a time not so long ago in this business that, with a few exceptions, women writers were regarded as extravagances, as somewhat expendable specialists who were brought in to write recipes for homemaker ads, give cleaning tips, or otherwise write giggly girltalk. And no one took them very seriously.

I think they might have gone along that way for a long time, if some smart ladies hadn't come into the business and proved to it that, in spite of their sex, they could be every bit as imaginative, versatile, and thus valuable, as their male counterparts. I remembered how surprised some people were around here when Mary Scott first did some outstanding Burroughs advertising, when Margaret Firnschild became the expert on Stran Steel ads. They're still a little amazed when Patty Kemp comes up with some excellent GM or United Delco or WJR ideas.

Certainly no one has contributed more to Campbell-Ewald and to this Vanguard of Versatile Ladies than Carol Muehl. Her ideas, her ads, her new business presentations, her speeches, her films, her dedication, and mostly her contagious commitment to many of the projects to which she has been assigned are beyond my placing a value on as a creative manager. Typical of these was her Teen-age Safety Program, which ... prompted some tough top exeutives to wipe their eyes, and spring to their feet to congratulate Carol not only for the program but also for being the kind of person who would put it together. It also inspired her boss, Fenton Ludtke, to say: "She serves not only as a fine copywriter, but also as a kind of creative conscience."

***

Dad went on to announce that Ms. Muehl had resigned, effective July 1. "She plans to spend some time finishing a book and then perhaps move East or West."

Carol Muehl moved neither East nor West. She stayed in Detroit, finished her novel and married my dad.

A Versatile Lady, indeed--and a feminist who, if I know my mom, must have cringed at the title and the tone of my dad's well-intentioned memo.

We bought a new car last weekend, a Subaru.

My family has a long and happy history with Subaru, so I didn't need the dealer to tell me how great and safe and durable the car was, but he wasted a few thousand words on the subject anyway.

"Best-made cars in the world," he said at least a dozen times.

After we committed to buy the best-made car in the world, the dealer turned us over to the finance guy, whose job it is to hawk various upgrades, like rust-coating (hey, the dealer hadn't said the car is a rust bucket!), and the six-year warrantee.

The finance guy told us we'd better buy the six-year deal because after six years, the Subaru's electrical system typically "shuts down."

We chose to believe the dealer, not the finance guy. Did we make the right move? Check back with us in six years, when we're sticking our legs through holes in the floorboard to bump start the best-made car in the world.

Everyone, drop what you're doing immediately. Stop working, stop reading your book, stop worrying about the Darfur, Russian missiles, Iraq and Iran. And for God sakes, stop thinking.

I just learned during my lunch break in front of MSNBC tht another pretty white girl has turned up missing in the U.S.!

Repeat, MSNBC reports that another pretty white girl has turned up missing.

And let me confirm: She IS pretty, and she IS white, she IS a girl, and she IS in the U.S.

Details as I get them, as soon as I wake up from my nap.

Edgar Allan Poe said telling the truth about oneself is all anyone has to do to write a great American novel. Ah, he added, but there’s the trick.

I’ve never been ambitious enough as a writer to lay myself—and, as many writers do, family and friends—entirely bare. My dear ones mean more to me than my work, and so does my image as a good guy.

But lately I’ve been working on a list of: Things I won't share until I'm dead.

That list inspired this blog of random confessions, which I hope inspires you to add your list of difficult truths, however edited:

• Most people who quote _________ in conversation are assholes who have no moral compass and who cling like drunks to lampposts to literary quotes that have infinite wiggle-room.

• I love my own writing, and when my stories and columns come out in print, I put myself in the place of my reader and I marvel at the cleverness of this David Murray.

• In my life, at least twenty times a day—and 200 times at a communication conference—I nod at something someone says that I don’t understand or at a reference I don’t get. In most cases, I do this not to appear smarter than I am, but to keep the conversation moving so that my time to talk will come quicker.

• I’m a big blowhard on politics, but the only single issue I am absolutely, one hundred percent sure about (there’s a lot of stuff that’s 98 percent) is that cancer patients ought to be allowed to smoke marijuana.

• I don’t expect people to do favors for me, but when they do I, I sometimes have to remind myself to appear more surprised than I actually am.

• I have a lot of friends in the corporate communication business, but it is not entirely without its complete fucking assholes. __________ is a fucking asshole, and so is _________ . (So are ___________, __________, __________ and _________.)

• I drive a strange convertible truck, just so that strangers will look at me and wish they were my friend, and so my friends will look at me and be glad they’re friends with somebody so unselfconscious. I’m 38.

This weekend I make my annual return to Ottawa, Ill., site of my favorite golf course in the world, and the place where I wrote my best magazine story, back in 2003.

To report this piece, I worked at the golf course for two weeks and lived in a Super 8 motel--a very lonely experience, especially since I didn't have a contract from Chicago Magazine, just a bit of verbal encouragement from the editor.

That the piece got published was a relief. That it was published almost exactly as I wrote it--the squarehead copyeditors didn't even mess with the sentence, "Pine Hills is a bowl of golf"--made it such a pleasure.

And it makes going back to this place every year to play in this tournament an inspiration to me.

Shades of Grayers, what's your proudest and happiest professional experience? And how do you draw on it in hopes of equalling it?

The Associated Press reports that CEOs' salaries are "skyrocketing."

Half of the Fortune 500 bosses make more than $8.3 million a year "and some make much, much more," according to the AP.

Employee communicators have neither the power nor the platform to change this equation, and many don't have the desire.

But even the most enthusastic capitalists among communicators should be searching for, demanding or inventing a rationale for these salaries: A rationale better than, "the board made me take the money," or "we can't get a decent CEO for less than $15 million."

Because CEO compensation plays a big part in setting the context for all the other internal communications we do. A CEO and a communicator who can discuss such matters openly--or at the very least acknowledge them in a meaningful way--have removed a little cotton from employees' ears.

And as for those CEOs--read, most of them--who say nothng on these issues despite the fact that the mainstream media is discussing them all the time? They're resigning themselves to having every thinking employee suspecting that the company is run by a greedy, thoughtless pig.

An experience I had yesterday refreshed my appreciation for media relations people in charge of brokering the relationship between executives and reporters.

A couple months back for a magazine story I interviewed a retail bigwig who has built a private golf course. He wanted the story to be about the golf course; the magazine--not being a golf magazine--wanted the story to be about him. I told him it would be about both. He reluctantly agreed, mostly at the urging of his golf course manager, who needs to build membership and wanted the publicity.

It was about both, but it opened and closed with the personal angle: Why would a guy (who doesn't even love golf all that much) build his own golf course?

Everybody loved the piece, from the editor to the manager of the golf course. But the bigwig, not so much.

He called yesterday to tell me there was too much about him, not enough about the course. I reminded him that in our interview he regaled me about his business career in great detail, and I wondered aloud why he thought I wouldn't use that information for the story.

He didn't answer that question but he said, "If I had a chance to approve this story--and you never get that--it would never have appeared."

Now this is a smart guy. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. But he's been living too long in a world where he gets to control everything, and where the whole purpose of everything is to make a dollar.

He's forgotten that other people have other purposes and values--good storytelling, for instance--and that sometimes other people get their way.

My phone call with this guy was no skin off my nose. But I really do feel bad for the golf course manager, who was tremendously helpful to me and in thanks, probably got the brunt of this: I told you I didn't want to do this Goddamned story ....

I wonder if there are any media trainers out there who, in addition to their tactical tips, give a decent lecture on the fact that interviews can be controlled but stories can't—and shouldn't—be directed by CEOs.

Driving down to that golf tournament last week I was telling my pal, a sincere engineer whose sense of communication is slightly less developed than mine--though more developed than my sense of engineering--about e-mail, and the art of "the strategic no-reply."

This move can be employed only by those of us who regularly get back to people right away. Once in a while, we conscientious types can make an incredibly powerful reply to an e-mail that's dumb or irrelevant or silly or petty, by not replying at all.

I explained this to my pal, and told him a few situations where a "no-reply" works well:

• A colleague sends you some thinly veiled nasty gossip.

• Your favorite uncle sends you a racist joke.

• Your boss cc's on something about a project you'd rather die than be involved in.

• Your mother-in-law sends you a smarmy picture of kittens.

• A subordinate sends you an e-mail asking you something you've already told him is inappropriate for you two to discuss.

In these cases, a no-reply sends the strong message: I don't want to hear about this. In fact, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear about this.

It only works for the most responsive among us--but it's a perk we ought to use.

POSTSCRIPT: The day after the tournament, my friend e-mailed to say he'd won some closest-to-the-pin prize, despite the fact that he finished 68th out of 76 golfers. (I tied for 63rd, and was in no mood to celebrate anything.)

"I rock!" he wrote.

I did not e-mail him back.

"Okay, I get the no-e-mail," he wrote back four hours later, obviously writhing in self-doubt but understanding my lesson well.

The IABC International Conference is in New Orleans, June 23-27, and as usual, I'm covering the show for The Ragan Report.

My coverage usually includes a State of the IABC article, much of which is based on an interview with IABC's paid president, and the outgoing and incoming volunteer chairs.

I like to canvas IABCers and other interested parties before I arrive at the conference, to make sure I ask questions that are on their minds--not just the ones that are on mine.

Shades-of-Gray mates, what would you ask if you had an hour in a hotel suite with Julie Freeman, Glenda Holmes and Todd Hattori?

My three-year-old daughter Scout does not like bugs. Who does?

Still, I excoriated her yesterday when, walking down the sidewalk, she purposely stepped on a bug.

"You do not kill bugs for no reason!" I bellowed, and when she offered to apologize to the bug, I said, "No, it's too late. The bug is dead!"

I felt at once that I'd been too harsh--and, with my "for no reason" clause (built in to avoid charges of hypocrisy related to my own murder of a moth that was driving me batty in the bathroom last week), too light.

Nobody seems to know how to explain to employees why the CEO makes $15 kagillion. But does anybody know how to explain to a three-year-old that the kings of the animal kingdom should be discerning in the squashing of bugs?

Reading Robert Stone's fine memoir Remembering the Sixties, I came across a hilarious story about his attempt to write, to the satisfaction of the editors of a tabloid magazine for which he was writing, a purely ficticious account of a well-known Cassanova who fails in bed.

Young Stone's first draft was rejected when one of the editors shouted at him to "put some pizzazz in it!"

The second draft got spiked, too. "Kid, Jeezus Christ. That ain't it!"

"I was playing Cupid for these damned perverted defunct conceits," Stone writes, "an organ grinder's monkey with a typewriter. I was flashing horrid cupids, grotesque putti with tattoos and crossbows. I was working for ... the Inside Scoop and I'd be doing it for the rest of my worthless dime-a-line life.

"But I finished the stupid thing. Every phrase, I knew, was precisely what she wanted. I waited, trembling with anger, for her crone's voice to croon fatuous approval. It had been an act of immolation. I felt as though I had shoved my own pen down my throat. But it was as required."

Oh, I have felt this way before. I felt it more often when I was a young writer than I do now--partly because I have managed to avoid many truly ridiculous clients and partly because I have learned that one hack job will not destroy my soul.

You?

Recently a couple guys who had helped form a communications consortium quit to pursue other interests, ahem.

They'd formed the consortium—which was dedicated to new media marketing and all the transparent beauty new media promises--less than two years ago. Now they're gone.

What happened? Who knows? On their blogs, they said they'd had a ball, but there were just too many other opportunities they wanted to pursue outside the interests of the consortium.

Hmmm, okay. In the comments on the blogs, they and their suddenly former partners made it sound like the divorce was a wedding:

CONSORTIUM MEMBER #1: It has been a LOT of fun and I look forward to our paths crossing again soon. Safe travels.

CONSORTIUM MEMBER #2: Like _______ said, it’s been a real pleasure, and will hopefully continue to be, mate. Good luck with new projects and don’t be a stranger to the CONSORTIUM offices.

DEPARTING PARTNER: It has been a genuine pleasure working with you two. I’ve learned some new things from both of you that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Good things, I hasten to add. ...

CONSORTIUM PARTNER #3: I look forward to many exciting collaborative efforts in the near future!

DEPARTING PARTNER: Me too ...

CONOSORTIUM PARTNER #3 It’s all about the heart.

DEPARTING PARTNER: That’s where home is!

***

I chuckle at these new media gurus, but only for their goofiness. I don't quarrel with their refusal to be what they themselves might call "radically transparent" about whatever it was really happened behind the scenes.

Radical transparency, in the context of a competitive economy, is children's talk—like the pop psychology notions from the 1970s that encouraged everyone to be totally open with their emotions all the time.

People understand that they should only share their emotions with people they'd be willing to share their money with--and only in the same amounts.

Similarly, we understand the opposite: The only people you should talk to about your money are the people you're willing to talk to about your soul.

And in this world, that ain't everybody.

If we could all ditch this silly ideal of transparency, perhaps communicators could come up with a sensible policy of translucency, and ask ourselves and our organizations:

• What do we want to shout to the world?

• What do we want to share only if asked?

• What won't we share even if asked?

We should try to answer these questions in a spirit of transparency--the notion that the more open and honest and genuine we are, the stronger will be our bond with our publics--but with the self-knowledge that says some meetings have to be held behind closed doors.

Let's trade in radical transparency for practical translucency. Our management—and our publics—will thank us.

I'd like to add one more thing to our good conversation about transparency and translucency.

While I don't expect corporations to proactively podcast their dirty laundry, I do believe they should be as accountable and legally transparent to the public as government.

Not that it's easy to get information out of the government; but the Freedom of Information Act is a beautiful thing, and when, as a reporter or a citizen, one becomes aware of the existence of documents that can light up the dark, FOIA allows that citizen to get those documents.

I believe FOIA should apply to corporations, too--especially big corporations like airlines, insurance companies, giant retailers, drug companies--whose existence affects all our lives.

Many will surely object on grounds that this introduces government bureaucracy into corporate life--as they've argued that Sarbanes-Oxley is unduly onerous--but who can argue that citizens shouldn't have the right to know what's happening in corporations that deeply affect, not to say dominate, our modern lives?

There'll be no live-blogging of the IABC show; actually, there'll be no blogging at all while I'm there.

When I'm covering a conference, I'm covering a conference. It's intense. I've got three days to pick up dozens of tips and salient moments to share with Ragan Report readers. I've got to ascertain the mood of the attendees for one RR story, to interview IABC leaders for another, to make witty and wise observations about conference speakers for a column, and to wash it all down with gin. And this year, I'm speaking too.

But being the service-oriented fellow that I am, I have created what I'll call a "crystal blog." Starting Sunday, here's what will be happening at IABC:

• Communicators will be warily walking by booths in the Exhibit Hall, keeping eight feet between themselves and the exhibitors, who they seem to regard as pickpockets. They’ll be smiling politely, but generally using body language that implores the exhibitor: “Please, don’t eat me.”

• Also in the Exhibit Hall, communicators who have come from around the world to be together for one time in a year, will be lined up three deep at banks of wireless laptops, grimly and silently checking their e-mail and checking one another’s blogs.

• Monday morning, a hotel cleaning woman will be in the suite where the Canadian IABCers held their reception last night. She will try to figure out how to get the set of foam moose antlers off the chandelier.

• Everybody will cry at the general sessions. IABC goes for the inspirational stuff at its general sessions, and a session at IABC that does not involve crying is considered a failure. Or at least it would be, if such a session ever occurred. On the evaluation forms for general sessions, IABC asks attenders to rate the amount of crying they did on a scale from one to five. One being, “Misted up a few times.” Five being, “Mascara all down front of blouse.”

• Communicators will ponder the imponderable: Will I really use this IABC tote bag at home? Would it be wasteful to leave it in the hotel room?

• Two or more IABCers will enjoy their annual extramarital affair. They will notice that for some reason the attendant guilt and worry are milder this year in New Orleans than a couple of years ago, when the conference was held in Washington, D.C.

• Brad Whitworth, Wilma Mathews, Angela Sinickas and Shel Holtz will be invisible, because they are surrounded by dozens of brain-pickers. Meanwhile, Charles Pizzo will lead a merry mob of Culinary Pranksters from one insanely good restaurant to the next. And somewhere, Lou Williams will be dancing.

• And a Ragan Report writer will be quietly demanding of himself: “I’m going to be in bed at 12:00 tonight, no matter what.” But so swept up will he be in the human specter of this great gathering of communicators—that’s what he’ll tell himself, anyway—that he’ll close the hotel bar.

Back at you next week in whatever shape I find myself.

I saw this on the Golf Channel three days ago and didn't believe what I'd seen. I saw it last night, and I still couldn't believe it. Now I found it on the Internet.

If you wanted to do a satire on the silliness and contrived stupidity of corporate charity schemes, I think this is how you'd do it.

Yet, this is no satire.

Go here and scroll down to the bottom for the video.

Back from IABC show in New Orleans. Writing coverage today for MyRagan.com (to be posted Monday if not sooner) and The Ragan Report (July 9).

One session I won't cover in my supernaturally objective coverage of the conference: a session on the ethics of doctoring photographs. I was a panelist, along with freelance photog Keith Philpott and Halliburton advertising chief Donna Collum.

Per instructions from session organizer Suzanne Salvo (who had to drop out due to a client conflict), Keith and especially Donna were supposed to argue that it's okay to change photographs electronically. I was supposed to argue, from a more journalistic point of view, that it's not.

As it turned out, Keith moderated, Donna argued, and I--somewhat to my surprise--fairly shrieked my way through the session, at various points hearing myself:

• Declare that a Time Magazine cover showing the darkened face of O.J. Simpson "makes me sick," and more or less calling Time editors racists.

• Flatly tell Donna that not only did I object on ethical grounds to her electronic touch-up of an executive in a Halliburton ad, but that I thought the pre-touched photograph was better. (The ad hadn't gone to print yet; and when the audience agreed that she shouldn't cover up a scar on his forehead, she said she'd put it back.)

• Go on to screech about how photographic touch-ups were "a symptom and a partial cause" of the corporate attempt to drive the humanity out of people, to make us all feel bad for having scars, for being imperfect, for being human at all!

There was more, which I'd be happy to bore you with if I remembered it. But I was in a blind rage for much of the session--at one point I interrupted myself to declare, "My God am I angry!"--which came as a surprise to me but seemed to stimulate the crowd, which might have stuck around just to see if I was going to get up and start throwing chairs.

The lesson here: One does not know how strongly one feels about a particular issue until, after three days (and nights) in America's strangest city, one gets up in front of a large audience and opens one's yap.

... and we all realize we've once again over-promised and under-delivered to our colleagues, our friends and our family, may we all be comforted by a bit of doggerel from the great Ken Kesey:

"Of offering more than I can deliver, I have a bad habit, it is true. But I have to offer more than what I can deliver to be able to deliver what I do."