Speechwriting blog king admits he doesn't know what message drivers are

At the Speechwriter's Conference I frequently heard two familiar terms that nevertheless rubbed on my brain like a cheese grater.

I'd like to talk about one of the terms today. I'll save the other one for Thursday.

"Message drivers." This term was used by ultra-strategic speechwriters with small glasses and nice nails.

When they talked about message drivers, they seemed less interested in talking about what the message drivers were than in discussing how many of the drivers they had. (Three to five seemed to be the acceptable range.)

At first when I heard the term, I nodded knowingly. Message drivers. Of course. Every communicator is born knowing what message drivers are, right? A "message driver" to a professional communicator is like a "bus driver" to a non-communicator. A familiar part of the everyday lexicon.

But then I tried to define message drivers. And I thought: Well, they're not messages; otherwise, I'd just call them "messages." And they're not communication strategies; because if so, I'd call them "strategies." They're not objectives …

Message drivers: Anybody?

Help a blogger out.

'Thought leadership': another bogus term speechwriters toss around?

In my last post, I really hoped somebody would set me straight on "message drivers."

I'll be honest: I don't think anybody can give me a sufficient definition of the other term that has lately been dancing on my last nerve: "thought leadership."

We all want our CEOs to be "thought leaders."

Which means, as far as I can tell, that we want our CEOs to "seem smart."

And so we try to infuse their speeches with some "thought leadership."

But to be a true "thought leader"預s opposed to a CEO who "sounds smart"妖oesn't one have to have an innovative idea that sincerely inspires "thought followers."

It seems to me "thought leadership" is a term invented by speechwriters溶o doubt speechwriters working for a big PR agency謡ho want to claim that they can turn their clients' CEOs into people recognized as geniuses, far and wide.

But "genius" sounds like too improbable a goal. How about "thought leader"?

I think "thought leader" is similar to the 1990s darling term: "world class."

Companies that wanted to claim they were the best in the world but knew they'd be laughed out of the NYSE for saying so, instead settled for saying they were "world class."

The term was meaningless, and thankfully it has mostly evaporated.

Here's hoping the same happens to "thought leadership."

Death … by PowerPoint

The great speechwriting teacher Jerry Tarver sent this to our mutual pal Charles Francis, for inclusion in Chuck's quotes and anecdotes database, www.ideabank.com

But Tarver could not resist sending it to me, too; and I cannot resist sharing it with you. After recently listening to "a full morning of corporate PowerPoint" last week, Tarver was moved to poetry:

Learn the fate of a speaker named Clive,
Whose PowerPoint ate him alive.
His face was last seen
Being absorbed by the screen,
Where he was entombed in chart five fifty-five.

The best kind of speechwriting job in one of the best states in the union!

This blog isn't the place to share job openings蓉nless those job openings are especially relevant or interesting.

I just got one that struck me as both. First, the reasons and finally, the job opening:

I had a sudden and thorough and delightful acquaintance with university speechwriting and university speechwriters at two separate conferences in Washington, D.C. in February.

One of the conferences was Ragan's Speechwriters Conference, where we had a special session that included four university speechwriters plus one of their clients: Johns Hopkins president William Brody.

I myself was a panelist預long with several university speechwriters預t another conference, this one a gathering of university president's assistants, NAPAHE. (The members and organizers of this association couldn't be nicer; however, their title wouldn't sound like a Native American tribe if they would convert it from the highfalutin National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education to lil' ole National Association for Assistants to College Presidents. NAACP. Oh. Never mind.)

Based on the intellect of the university speechwriters I met and spoke with at both of these conferences, based on the generally cheerful and philosophical mood of all these people (including the president's assistants) and based on the stated happiness of my co-panelists with their work, I have rashly concluded that university speechwriting預t least, anywhere except Colorado University and Harvard擁s the healthiest and best kind of speechwriting there is.

Furthermore, anybody who has been to the state of New Mexico will confirm it is one of the strangest and most beautiful places in the country. The most interesting thing about New Mexico is the night. It is so black that, driving on highway, I once confused a car three miles off with a motorcycle about to hit me head on at 50 yards. I honked and veered off the road. New Mexico: So disorienting it makes a man sheepish.

AND NOW � allow me to share the following job opening for a great speechwriting job in a great state.

It's shared with us by Kim Herron-Singleton, a recruiter at the University of New Mexico:

The University of New Mexico's Office of the President is seeking applications for a dynamic, experienced speechwriter to join our team. The speechwriter will assist the President by conducting research and composing formal speeches, remarks, persuasive speeches etc. dealing with University and higher education matters. I would really like to locate someone who has had previous experience in composing speeches for executive level officials and working in a high-profile university environment.

Contact: ksingle@unm.edu

Do you know the meaning of 'deconfliction'? You should

I spent most of last week grousing here about dumb and meaningless words speechwriters use.

A note from Georgetown University speechwriter Jan Cook convinced me that there's at least one good new term that came into the business:

In working with a White House speechwriter in connection with an event on the Georgetown campus, she says, she learned a new word: deconfliction."

Definition: "when you compare the speeches of several platform speakers to make sure there is no overlap!"

"I love it!" says Cook, who adds that deconfliction "is a very useful step that eliminates redundancy emanating from the platform."

Every day's a school day.

The luck of the draw: I get to hang around writers

Writers, as we all know, hate no one more than they hate other writers.

Writers, of course, are all competing for the few million bucks the world spends on writing, the several square feet of column inches worth writing for, the couple hundred pounds worthy books that will be published every year.

And in the case of speechwriters, the two dozen熔ops, there went Harry Stonecipher; make it 23幼lients who are actually interested in communicating with their audiences.

Thus, any roomful of writers, however friendly on the surface, is also a gunfight of watchful glances and dirty looks.

Still, I was reminded this week that, for all their threats to say things better, say better things熔r worse, get more attention謡riters are good party companions.

Two days after Stonecipher's departure, for instance, speechwriter pal Dan Danbom e-mailed his writer pals a headline he'd spent a couple of days working on:

Boeing's Boinking Boss
Booted By Board

To which his correspondent Bob Keyser, typically unable to let another writer have the last word, replied:

Boeing's Boinking Boss
Booted By Board
Bides Bye-Bye

The same day, my newest writer friend, Eileen Burmeister, who works in the PR department at a hospital in Oregon, sent me a fresh quote on writing:

"You know what makes a good writer, Mom? First, a sense of humor, then a little bit of sadness. Kind of like Lemony Snicket."
湧athaniel Burmeister, age nine.

Uh oh. Here comes another one.

Atlanta courthouse shooting coverage reminds us:
you can't fake sincerity

On HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night, Mr. Smarty declared that the day's news coverage of the Atlanta courthouse shooting was excessive, and that the cable news networks should have been covering all the other stuff going on in the world.

Okay, Bill: The most action-packed crime in recent memory takes place a few blocks from CNN headquarters and only becomes more adventure-filled as the hours go by … and you expect the cable networks to give equal time to Syria? Not going to happen, dude!

By last night, finally, the story seemed to be winding down. Before turnout out the lights, I turned on CNN to see some mop-up coverage. I picked up Larry King Live about 40 minutes into the show. That always-enraged nutty lawyer woman who fills in for him—I refuse to do the finger-lift that would be necessary to Google her name—was interviewing a number of witnesses and other officials involved in the courthouse shooting story.

Pulling a kind of Reverse Oprah maneuver, this terrible woman was asking questions that were obviously designed to make her cry in the asking! She broke herself up at least twice with her own questions.

Thinking to myself that I'd seen the last of any sincere conversation about this story, I got ready to snap off the set and pull up the covers. Then, I saw a half-hour of straight testimony by Ashley Smith, the woman made a hostage of by the man on the lam, Brian Nichols. Read the transcript.

Unlike Reverse Oprah, Smith told her story with obvious devotion to truth and an intention to communicate reality of the situation, rather than the imagined noble sentiment. Her testimony was incredible—an amazing story, impossible to tune out, stimulating on emotional and intellectual levels.

I found myself reeling in my own admiration for this person, as I'm sure every other watcher did.

It's too much to hope for that Smith won't be immediately interviewed to death by Reverse Oprah and every other kind of Oprah—including Oprah. These Oprahs are able to turn the most honest people into bullshitters and sentimental fools. After all, they turned 9/11 from a traumatic event that all Americans shared into a member of the Hallmark Hall of Famer that many Americans now deny the importance of.

I'm sure the Oprahs can handle Ashley Smith.

There's an old expression: If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made. That expression was meant to be funny. Remember?

Some of us do, and some of us don't.

All professional communicators should.

Should our tax dollars go toward professional
development for speechwriters?

In his March 14 blog entry, Edelman Public Relations' chief Dick Edelman reacted strongly to a Sunday New York Times piece on how the Bush administration has ushered in "a new age of prepackaged news."

E.g. Armstrong Williams and Ketchum Public Relations, et al.

Edelman expressed his confidence that, "Though Sunday's article did not focus on the PR agency world … more negative coverage will be coming. Why am I so sure of this? In part, because we have allowed our profession to be increasing defined as complicit in a cover-up, as willing shills who let money overwhelm our judgment and moral compass. We are accused of foisting government propaganda on the American people, in direct violation of the law."

He called for PR agencies to disclose: how much the contracts are worth and what the agencies do for that money: "It is possible that this level of transparency will make it less attractive to the US. Government to hire PR agencies. So be it. We cannot allow the impression that we are an outsourcing mechanism that allows freedom from oversight."

Good for Dick Edelman. He's absolutely right.

But this latest ethics crisis notwithstanding and the use of PR agencies aside, I'm often troubled to see government agencies using my tax dollars to sell government programs and ideas … to me. Or worse, to threaten me if I don't comply. (The finger-wagging seatbelt-law ad "Click It or Ticket" brings hot blood through the arteries in my neck.)

Of course, I know that not all government communication is a sales job … that government and political communication must happen … and that it's worth paying a little extra to be sure it happens well.

I'd better feel that way. After all, I edit a newsletter and run a conference that take in government money to make speechwriters at levels of government from the White House to the local school districts better at communicating the ideas of their government clients … to me.

This being my station in life, it is my responsibility and the responsibility of my government-speechwriter customers to make sure we are doing quality work with honest intentions and for a fair price.

And no public disclosure policy will ever measure our integrity in this area.

Only our conscience will.

Writer Eileen Burmeister works in communications for a hospital in the northwestern U.S.; she writes an occasional column, "Cries From the Wilderness," in Speechwriter's Newsletter's sister publication, The Ragan Report.

Thinking her latest effort would resonate with speechwriters, I appropriated it for this blog:

At Your Service
My three-year-old just saw Cinderella for the first time, forever altering life as I've known it. In a wave of the Fairy Godmother's wand I have instantly become my daughter's lackey. Each morning, she descends the stairs in her Cinderella nightgown and directs, "Mommy, I be Cinderella and you be the mice." At this point, I am expected to sing in a high-pitched mousy voice "Cinderelly, Cinderelly…" until my ears hurt and the neighbor's dog is pawing at our screen door.

While performing this ritual with my three-year-old daughter, I was startled by the realization that my job as a communicator is not unlike my job as Cinderella's mice. Simply put, we in the communications business are to make our bosses look and sound good. I am called to be an adoring little mouse on the sidelines, watching him go to the ball in the dress that I made with my own two paws. (Let me clarify that he doesn't really wear dresses. Just keeping with the analogy.)

Recently, I was talking to a coworker who didn't realize that I am responsible for much of what our CEO sends out to employees. She went on and on about how she appreciates all that he says in his letters, how clearly he understands our struggles, and how she loves his sense of humor. It took every fiber in my being not to yell, "He's funny because I make him that way!" But that's not my job. I signed on to write his letters, his press releases and his speeches. If I wanted the glory (and the headaches) he deals with every day, I certainly would have never majored in English.

No, I chose to be a writer because I love to write. So I continue to write, to feel, to understand and to listen to employees. And, when necessary, I can spin a harsh reality into something a little more pleasant. Just like Cinderella's mice.

Still, I'd like to be recognized once in a while. Maybe a little word of appreciation from an admiring reader…a note from the CEO telling me how much he appreciates my work…a Booker Award… But before these delusions of grandeur take hold my daughter comes into the room, looks me dead in the eye and states, "Mommy, you just a simple girl."

Indeed.

Two attacks against our specialty, in one New York Times Book Review!

For speechwriters, reading The New York Times Book Review yesterday was no idle pleasure. The issue contained not one, but two attacks on ghostwriting, practice and principle.

• Before explaining why he's afraid of ghosts, essayist Joe Queenan kindly acknowledged there are occasions when ghostwriters are useful—even ideal. To wit: when "one dashing figure, who has the brains but not the leisure to write a book, secures the services of a genius with time on his hands. The nominal author provides relevant facts, figures, and anecdotes … the ghostwriter does the heavy lifting. But nobody ever officially admits that a ghostwriter is involved because that gets up the public's nose."

Most ghosts, on the other hand—Queenan goes after those who co-wrote recent books by Tim Russert, Hillary Clinton and Newt Gingrich—only confuse audiences, who wonder which words were the star's, and which came from the mind of an obscure ghostwriter.

"Cynics may object that ghostwriters perform a valuable civic function by shielding the public from the authentically dimwitted voices of those they channel. To their way of thinking, no one would actually want to read a book written in Charles Barkely's own words; no one would want to read the unedited David Lee Roth; no one could possibly machete all the way through an unghosted Rush Limbaugh book. I disagree."

He has a point, of course. I'm glad, for instance, that Lincoln did not need nor have a speechwriter as he contemplated his routine ceremonial remarks at a battleground. Much of the blandest literature in the world—and little of the very greatest literature—has been written by ghostwriters of one stripe or another.

But what about the everyday, the workday world of corporate and political speeches, business books and op-ed pieces—how would the everyday world benefit or suffer for a lack of ghostwriting help?

There is only one way to clearly contemplate a world without ghostwriters: A general ghostwriter strike, for one year. Who's in?

• More painful yet is a new book called Ghosting, wherein a ghostwriter betrays her client and her former writing specialty. For 15 years, writer Jennie Erdal wrote books, articles and speeches for the Palestinian businessman, publisher and author Naim Attallah.

Over the years, according to Sarah Lyall, who interviewed both Erdal and Atallah for the Book Review, the close collaboration gradually became "complex and fascinating and in many ways absurd." Eventually, it got too weird, and Erdal felt she had to get out. And after she did, she wrote this book largely decrying the whole experience.

"Passing something off as your own when you haven't written it and couldn't in a million years have done it is not honorable behavior," Erdal told Lyall. "Nor is colluding in it for 15 years, especially if you care, as I do, about language. Why give your words away?" (Umm, you mean sell them, right?)

It is easy and proper for us to condem Erdal for making her pile and then, book deal in hand, turning on the client she made it from and insulting the very method by which she made it. But a book deal is only a book deal; life is long and money is short. And so I'm comforted by my hope that someday, Erdal will have to try to get another ghostwriting client. Here's hoping that's every bit of the steep uphill climb that it should be.

But at the same time, we are writers and not lawyers, and we should listen closely and carefully to these broadsides by fellow writers. We should be haunted by what we should be haunted by.

"I did and did not feel responsible for the words on the page," Erdal writes about the experience of ghostwriting. "I did and did not feel that they belonged to me; I did and did not feel that I could defend them in my heart."

Is it advisable to work in a job that requires us to feel and not feel, all at once? It's a question all writers—not just ghostwriters—ought to ask themselves occasionally on a Monday morning.

Do you coach other writers? Here's how not to do it

A freelance speechwriter pal forwarded to me an e-mail he got from an editor of a big-city guidebook to which he was going to contribute.

The editor was giving my man the guidance she gives all her contributors:

• Your text should inspire the reader and give useful information. Pin down the facts and present them clearly. All entries should be clear descriptions of what the places are, the atmosphere, the menu, the architecture, the type of clientele etc. The reader should not have to work hard to know what to expect.

• Keep to a concise style. Sentences should be fairly short and punchy without becoming staccato. Avoid overly complicated sentence structures, including the over-use of qualifying clauses at the start of sentences.

• The voice should also be knowledgeable and opinionated--though not heavy-handed--and text style clear and upbeat. …

• Don't get carried away with complicated metaphors at the expense of saying something useful to the readers. When in doubt, keep it simple, and vet text for vagueness, obtuseness and obscurity. Avoid descriptions/information and empty adjectives (eg fantastic, wonderful, infamous) that raise questions rather than answer the basics of what is it and what's it like? …

You mean, empty adjectives like "punchy" and "staccato" and "concise" and "fairly short" and "clear and upbeat" and "knowledgeable and opinionated--though not heavy-handed"?

My friend rewarded this editor for her rhetorical hypocrisy by gently pointing out in a return e-mail that "your guidelines suggest that you have a strong idea of what you don't want to do, but not what you do want to do."

He ran from this project without looking over his shoulder.

His pet peeve, and mine: Editors who use adjectives to tell us that they
want us to show, not tell.

Writers: What kinds of editors do you loathe?

And finally, my speechwriter would like to thank …

In his attack on ghostwriting in The New York Times Book Review last Sunday, writer Joe Queenan revealed a new practice, apparently invented by Donald Trump's latest ghostwriter, who helped him with his latest bestseller, Trump: Think Like a Billionaire.

After Trump's own acknowledgements in the book, ghostwriter Meredith McIver takes space to thank "her family, her friends, her minions, the Trump Organization and even Tassos of Patmos."

Imagine this trend catching on. Now, imagine it spreading to speechwriting.

The speaker opens by thanking the introducer for that fine introduction. Thanks the forum for the invitation. Thanks the speechwriter for writing the speech. And, on behalf of the speechwriter, thanks everyone who helped the speechwriter pull the speech together. And finally, the speaker thanks the audience for listening.

Step back, curtain down.

Why do you write speeches?
Why do you want to stop?

At the Speechwriters Conference in D.C. in February, I opened the show by asking how many of the 250 folks in the audience were attending their first Speechwriter's Conference.

About three-quarters of the hands went up.

Later, in a session devoted mostly to veteran speechwriters, someone asked how many in the room expected to be writing speeches within five years. I'd say less than a fifth of the hands went up.

This very morning, I'm writing a piece for Ragan's Corporate Writer & Editor magazine, trying to tell communication generalists everything they need to know about why and whether to add speechwriting to their skill set.

Speechwriter's Slant readers, I hope to get your input for the story: Why are so many people trying to get into speechwriting預nd why are so many speechwriters trying to get out?

Please feel free to respond here or privately, by e-mailing me. In either case, please specify if I have permission to use your name and affiliation in my article.

My deadline is � today.

Hack-check: A self-test for professional writers

In my last post, I referenced Ragan's Corporate Writer & Editor magazine. I write a regular column in that magazine, and my April effort includes a self-quiz that I've adapted for speechwriters. It strikes me as just as useful for speechwriters as for any other corporate or political writer.

Here's the premise:

Writing in the busy-bee world of workaday business and political organizations is a hazard to serious writers who promised ourselves in college we would always take seriously the words we wrote. We would always devote ourselves to the truth. We would never become that which we'd been taught by our English or journalism professors to despise: a hack.

And so every once in a while預nd preferably more often than that謡e must do what I call a "hack-check." Answer the following questions as honestly as you can, true or false:

1. You often wonder what's the point of doing a second read when the spell-check will do it for you.

2. You'd rather make the PR VP's artificial deadline with a pedestrian speech draft than miss it in order to turn in something much better.

3. You take tremendous pride in always meeting the speaker's expectations to the letter.

4. When worrying over a phrase or a word-choice, the question has occurred to you: "Who cares?"

5. You can't remember the last time you stood up for an idea or a passage in a speech.

6. When you try to work on a serious writing project, you find yourself racing through it as if it's another bullshit ceremonial talk.

7. The first filter you use to decide whether to write a speech or farm it out to a freelancer, "How easy is it?"

8. When you read a great speech by another speechwriter, you think bitter thoughts. For instance, "I could write like that, too, if I was a selfish drunk."

9. When you read the old pro's quote, "I'm better than writers who are faster than me, and faster than the writers who are better than me," you are filled with admiration.

10. Everything you write these days seems to wind up as some kind of numbered list or some kind of bogus "quiz."

Here's the answer key:

If you've answered none of these questions "true," you are either a big fat liar, or you are not making any kind of a living as a writer. If you have answered every one of these questions "true," you have become a hack, and your only recourse is to be the very best hack you can be.

And if you're somewhere in between, you're in just the tenuous territory every corporate writer finds him- or herself in葉he financially safe but intellectually dangerous place where, if we're lucky and careful, we'll spend the rest of our careers.