When I was younger I cared much more about the "good to the organization" than I do now. I would write schlock when asked to because I desperately believed in being a good team player and sacrificing my personal pride for the greater good. Jane-on-a-cross.

Well, so much for that. What did it get me? Decades of kicks in the ass. And as the years have passed, I've learned what REALLY provides the "greater good" for an organization--and it's spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. So I'm unwilling to prostitute myself these days.

Needless to say, I've had to learn new personal spending habits--but I'm now the kind of person I would trust with something important.

When I was younger I cared much more about the "good to the organization" than I do now. I would write schlock when asked to because I desperately believed in being a good team player and sacrificing my personal pride for the greater good. Jane-on-a-cross.

Well, so much for that. What did it get me? Decades of kicks in the ass. And as the years have passed, I've learned what REALLY provides the "greater good" for an organization--and it's spelled h-o-n-e-s-t-y. So I'm unwilling to prostitute myself these days.

Needless to say, I've had to learn new personal spending habits--but I'm now the kind of person I would trust with something important.

Jane, give me an example of the types of "schlock" you're thinking of. I think there's a lot of space between ridiculous stuff that makes us feel we're choking, and great organizatinal journalism, and I'm trying to think about what that TERRIBLE stuff really is.

My only internal schlock detector is: I feel terribly BORED when I'm writing, because I know the truth ain't coming out of my hands. This only happens to me about once a year. When it comes in conjunction with an editor who's DEMANDING that the schlock be perfect in some way--that's Writer Hell.

I hear ya about an editor who demands that the schlock be perfect. Without that editor, we could just get it over with ASAP, cut out our soul, and move on; with the editor, we must wallow in it interminably.

Here are some examples from my former lives:

Internal schlock:

(government agency) Legislated pay raises are coming up. The percentage is minuscule, the mathematical equations are Byzantine, and as usual we're going to pick and choose which job description "must-dos" we'll actually enforce with pay, but let's write a nice general newsletter article for employees, skirting the details and telling them their supervisors will answer any questions they have. I must write this after having witnessed the top execs forbidding supervisors to discuss any details with any employee.

(corporation) Let's write a memo to employees and support it with a newsletter article, all about our new health program dreamed up by the deputy director. The program includes after-work exercise classes, stress reduction seminars (best unspoken stress-reduction suggestion: lose the deputy director), siccing "teams" on each to compete for total weight loss (oh, yeah, just the ticket for stress reduction)--all that crap. I must write this with the full knowledge that no exec and no one above the level of supervisor plan to participate.

PR schlock:

(government agency) We're having a news conference on an issue that rates a news release at best, and it's my job to get media coverage and get them to the event. At the news conference, to share in the glory of this refurbished stretch of highway, the DOT director, the Highway Patrol commander, the governor, and someone from our Congressional delegation will be present. So obviously each of them will require a juicy "quote" in the news release ("quotes" which I must make up out of thin air and submit to them for their approval and sleep-inducing wordsmithing). I try to talk The Boys out of a news conference, and a black mark goes next to my name in their little book: what a lazyass I must be! Then I try to talk them out of having four quotes from four different people--I try to talk the out of having any quotes at all--and, well, it isn't pretty.

How about when you work for a company who participates in those "best company to work for" surveys and your company has been on the list in the past involving much fanfare: newsletter articles, banners in the lobby and employee events (with the requisite grocery store cake whose icing will put you into an immediate diabetic coma should you be fool enough to let it near your mouth) to celebrate.

Except for the first time one year you don't make the list. Then the communicator is required to write a message to employees that announces the completion of this year's survey, but doesn't actually give any details or reasons why we didn't make the list, or even actually say "We didn't make the list".

Instead said communicator is mandated to write corporate-speak about how "every year offers us the opportunity for new learnings about employee satisfaction" and "while this year's results were not ideal we are confident next year's will be back where we want them." I swear I gritted my teeth so hard during the approval process I'm surprised I still HAVE molars!

I don't miss that job! This was the same organization who put a Director who was responsible for IT-type technical systems in charge of Communications - need I say anymore???

Just one more writer forced into prostitution under the learned tutelage of a eunuch.

I'm almost--ALMOST--sorry I started this thread. Jane, Kristen, that stuff makes me so mad.

And, it reminds me of my worst experience in this area. As a consultant, I once tried helped launch a new publication for a company whose top management was filled with true dumb fucks. (They wanted employees to become "ambassadors" for the company, so they demanded we call the employee publication "The Ambassador.")

I wrote a cover story about an incredibly boring strategy the company was rolling out. The editor loved it. But he passed it on to his boss, who hated it so much he was truly enraged at me. He saw my efforts to breathe some life into the strategy as a sign that I wasn't taking the strategy seriously enough.

Then the little bitch of a manager turned on me and told me I'd really messed the job up.

I wish I could say I quit. In reality, I almost cried. I fold up like a tent when I realize I'm fighting an institution of cowards. I don't fight, either strategically or stubbornly. I completely wimp out.

So I've got to make sure I don't work for too many of these creeps.

Writing internal newsletter for a national company that had just done an employee satisfaction survey showing that while most employees felt pretty good about the company there were some very clear issues. Article states that the survey shows the company to still be an employer of choice but identifies the challenges -- all well-known despite the "confidential" nature of the survey; we all talked about how we answered -- and details the ways the company really was in good faith addressing the challenges.

"Very smart" Harvard-educated EVP of Marketing nixes any reference to challenges in the article explaining to the well-meaning but obviously naive author (me) that "the people don't want to hear there are problems. They want to see that everything in under control and the executive leadership is in charge."

Author tries unsuccessfully to explain that the whitewash will say more about an executive leadership either with its head in the sand or hiding something; either way, more negative message than an executive leadership that heard and is earnest about acting. Author strikes his name from the byline before publishing, and polishes the resume to find a better workplace (the EVP in question was assuming more direct control of my area shortly).

Schlock detector: the executive starting with the phrase, "Mike, the people want..."

Yep, that's a good schlock detector, Mike. As the great Larry Ragan used to say, "The editor who thinks his interests are different from those of the employees is in more trouble than he knows."

Same goes for execs.

Speaking of schlock (not this article, but the one it refers to):

http://www.slate.com/id/2168707