Update added below

After I turned in my story about Obama and McCain’s speeches on election night, I received an e-mail from Al Gore’s former speechwriter Bob Lehrman. It said:

One thing I wanted to mention. When [Obama] uttered that line about how we’re encouraged to ‘put our hands on the arc of history and bend it once more towards the hope of a better day.’ I was thrilled that a President would want language that precise, poetic and full of nuance—not just history but the ‘arc’ of it, not just bend but ‘bend it once more,’ not just ‘a better day’ but the ‘hope’ of a better day. Amazing.

I couldn’t agree more, although I also couldn’t capture it quite the way Lehrman does. As a writer, it was my favorite line from Obama’s speech. Here’s the full text of that portion:

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

One thing I’d add to Lehrman’s observation is Obama’s use of ambiguity—“all those who have been told for so long to be cynical.” He made sure anyone can fit themselves into that category.

From McCain’s speech I had two favorite lines: “Today, I was a candidate for the highest office in the country I love so much. And tonight, I remain her servant.” And, “I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president.”

I’m not sure John McCain’s oration has ever given me chills, but those lines did last night. All in all a great night for speechwriting.

Update: Ragan's roving video producer Justin Allen put this 1 minute 33 second video together of the Obama rally in Grant Park. Good stuff.

Election Night in Grant Park from Justin Allen on Vimeo.

In 1974, Studs Terkel published the definitive collection of employee profiles, Working. In a perfect world there would be no war and the profiles in your employee publication would read like chapters in this book. For Working, which was first a series of radio segments, Terkel dedicated years to interviewing scores of everyday people about their jobs.

If you haven’t, please read it; and if you have, please revisit it. Consider it a career investment.

Terkel gave a voice to the voiceless, which is in many ways the job of the employee communicator. You writes stories about the people working at your organization—and who else will tell those stories? It's an more important job.

As you know, Terkel died last Friday. His death, though not unexpected, is a blow. Like the passing of Hunter S. Thompson and George Carlin, it’s another brave voice gone silent at a time when we desperately need brave voices to challenge the status quo and help us—and our leaders—navigate these tough times.

There aren’t enough “raconteurs”—as many an obit described him—left in the world.

To read better remembrances of Terkel from Chicago writers who not only knew him much better than me, but in fact knew Studs, head over to my former Ragan colleague David Murray’s blog Writing Boots. And take a few minutes to check out the blog of Andrew Patner, my former employer, who worked with Terkel at WFMT radio in Chicago.

If you want to hear Terkel at work, listen to this short NPR piece featuring old tapes from the Working interviews. And, below, is a wonderful 45-second video of Terkel describing the beauty of an afternoon baseball game for a Ken Burns documentary.

Ask a man on the street which company he despises most and he won’t mention a weapons manufacturer, human rights abuser, reckless mortgage lender or even Wal-Mart.

He will probably say Exxon Mobil.

On Thursday, the oil company posted the biggest quarterly profit in US history as the American economy showed measurable signs of recession. Gross Domestic Product shrank and more companies announced layoffs. And let's not forget it cost a week’s paycheck to fill most gas tanks last summer.

“Shameless greed,” consultant Laura Fitton wrote on Twitter. “Exxon Mobil made its highest profits ever? Nice. Especially as inflated energy prices disproportionately screw the poor.”

Is Exxon Mobil greedy? Of course it is. Exxon Mobil is a for profit company. And just like your (for profit) company, Exxon Mobil wants to earn as much money as possible.

Of course, certain executives and large shareholders are getting incredibly rich. But does anyone expect some brave (or stupid) executive to suggest the C-suite take pay cuts one quarter so people in middle America can save a few cents on their gasoline? Ha!

If those execs are sweating the public scorn then they’ll probably just cool off in their pools filled with gold coins.

I’ve never spoken with a corporate communicator at Exxon Mobil, so I can’t say what the job is like there. But I can imagine that, beyond the gold plated toilets, it’s a challenge.

Morale should be up among your employees, yet so many people despise you for doing well. How do you reconcile those competing interests? Meanwhile, PR pros are charged with going before an angry public to explain that—pop the bubbly!—despite a shrinking economy we’re doing great!

Here’s my advice, and it applies internally and externally. Declare that it’s not un-American to earn record profits. Then explain that if profits stagnated then Exxon Mobil would lay off employees, and the shareholders, many of whom are wage earners, would see their investments take a hit. What good does that do the economy?

And if you don't like it, drive less.

Barack Obama’s informercial last night reminded me of a simpler time in politics—1992—when Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot built his third-party presidential bid on 30-minute informercials.

Remembers these? I was 12, and Perot fascinated me.

He used small charts to show the massive growth of US debt and pointed at those charts with a voodoo stick. Yes! A voodoo stick that a woman on the campaign trail supposedly gave him.

Those infomercials weren’t nearly as well-produced as Obama’s, which John McCain said were paid for with “broken promises,” but Perot’s campiness will live on forever—thanks to YouTube.

The US election’s “October surprise”—Sarah Palin’s $150,000 closet—provided corporate communicators with a unique career path.

As reporters poured over McCain-Palin financial disclosures they discovered that one high paid campaign staffer is Amy Strozzi, a “communications consultant.” She earned $13,200 in September and $22,800 from October 1 through 15.

How does a communicator rake in more than many top staffers? She multitasks, says The Washington Post.

“Strozzi … is listed as doing ‘communications consulting’ work,” Post reporter Mary Ann Akers wrote. “But two sources close to the campaign tell [me] Strozzi is Palin's make-up artist.”

There you go. Want a raise in today’s dire economy? Start doing your boss’s makeup. Or, if you are already a makeup artist, get into communications. Apparently it's lucrative.

Ever wonder what corporate communications was in 1962? It’s not that different from today.

Just look at the season two finale of Mad Men, the critically acclaimed TV show about Madison Avenue advertising men in the early ‘60s. The show depicts jaw-dropping sexual harassment, workplace drinking and smoking (before noon!) and—yes—even corporate communications.

In this episode, the characters, who work at Sterling Cooper ad agency, endure two anxious weeks where the Cuban missile crisis—the end of world—coincides with the company’s merger with a larger British agency—the end of the employees’ worlds.

Only a select few know about the merger so when management starts auditing every department at Sterling Cooper the rank and file employees grow worried. And when they’re not worrying about their jobs, attention shifts to the imminent threat of nuclear war.

Without solid information about the missile crisis and the merger, fear goes unchecked and anxiety runs rampant. At the time, newspapers, radio and TV covered the missile crisis, but not to the dizzying extent media would today. If the Cuban missile crisis occurred now cable networks would have boats of pundits floating alongside the Russian warships.

The media landscape has changed immensely since 1962; however, at certain organizations internal communications remains largely the same.

Fast forward 40-years to another fictitious ad agency, this one in Joshua Ferris’s darkly humorous novel And Then We Came to the End. The novel details the summer of 2001 at a Chicago ad agency. Dot coms are busting, ad revenue is withering and agencies started firing employees en masse.

As in Mad Men, anxiety reaches a fever pitch thanks to the company’s non-existent internal communications.

Although Mad Men and And Then We Came to the End depict fictitious ad agencies, the story for countless employees remains the same during today’s economic crisis. They are uncertain of their jobs; management isn’t communicating; anxiety starts breeding.

Ragan.com has carried stories about companies communicating well during this financial crisis; unfortunately, there are certainly many more organizations failing to communicate.

Have you ever charged the media just to see your executive at a public event?

Seems like a silly idea, right? One that might lead to negative press coverage. Well it’s exactly what the Obama campaign is doing and so far the negative PR is minimal.

For his election night party in Chicago’s Grant Park, Barack Obama is asking media outlets to cough up at least $880 to simply view him and $935 for access to the coveted “file center,” where reporters have the best chance to find and speak with Obama officials.

Media outlets that don’t pay receive access to a “bike racked press area with standing room only,” explained a memo from the Obama campaign.

The memo added, “Please note that the General Media Area is outdoors, unassigned and may have obstructed views. General Media Area credentials do not include access to riser positions, satellite truck parking or the press filing center.”

Lynn Sweet, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times reporter covering the Obama campaign, called this move by Obama officials an outrage.

“This is an outrageous pay to play plan that caters to national elite outlets with deep pockets,” she said on her Sun-Times blog Oct. 21. “A general media area will be created where a reporter could watch for free, but the set-up is separate, unequal and clearly second class when it comes to getting top access to campaign people.”

(The Obama campaign memo is included in Sweet’s blog post.)

Reporters covering political campaigns typically pay every out-of-pocket cost: transportation, lodging, food, communication fees. At events, like party conventions, media outlets usually pay for their phone line.

The story of Obama’s election night has gained little traction in the media. An Associated Press story appeared Oct. 22, but failed to gather buzz. The AP article, basically a follow-up to Sweet’s blog and a Crain’s Chicago Business story, gave Obama spokespeople a chance to spin this potential PR problem.

“There is no fee to cover our Election Night event. News organizations will be able to cover our event without charge, with full access to our campaign advisers,” Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told the AP in a statement.

Greg Hinz, of Crain’s Chicago Business, gave a less cheerful assessment of “full coverage.” He wrote, “[An Obama spokesman] said that since the file tent will be located in the middle of the general media area, reporters will be able to stop and question any senior aides who are traveling to the file tent.”

Forget plumbers, seems like the Obama campaign is ignoring Joe the small town reporter. I wonder when—or if—that approach to media relations will backfire.

Stock markets around the world took a steep dive this morning as major corporations posted huge quarterly losses all week. If that news is grating on your nerves then rest assured there is a glimmer of hope.

It comes from a recent Wall Street Journal story about the downturn's effect on salaries.

“According to Watson Wyatt's study, employers are responding to the economic downturn by increasing communication on benefits and pay ...”

Employers will presumably need communicators for this task. So prepare now for the day your boss asks you to send out that HR-themed message. (Quick pitch: There are daily articles on Ragan.com on this or similar topics.)

And then take it one step further. If you're communicating benefits and pay, expand the message to help build trust between senior leaders and employees. The biggest question on employees’ minds won't be “Are my salary and benefits safe”—that's number two—but “Is my job safe?”

Convince executives to answer that question honestly. Employees will appreciate it; executives will appreciate the communicator’s advice and work.

Only one entity can bring China to its knees—and that’s Wal-Mart.

This week, top executives from Wal-Mart are in Beijing for the company’s first global supply chain summit, according to The Wall Street Journal. At the summit, Wal-Mart brass will establish energy-efficiency requirements for all Chinese suppliers and then take those requirements to all other suppliers in 2010.

Suppliers are howling in protest because the bad economy has battered China’s manufacturing sector and Wal-Mart’s mandates are reportedly a huge upfront cost. But Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer by revenue, is pushing forward.

There is something remarkably unsustainable about a chain of retail stores that sell junk—food and otherwise—bound for the dumpster. Meanwhile, its actual stores swallow enormous swaths of land and burn huge amounts of power. Its trucks crisscross the world night and day.

But based on influence, Wal-Mart is easily the world’s greenest company.

Sure you could rattle off dozens of companies with plans for zero carbon emissions, even some meeting those goals right now. But a company with 20 employees and little influence—even if that company takes sulfur and uses it to somehow restore the polar ice caps—is less effective than Wal-Mart.

By applying pressure to its countless suppliers worldwide, Wal-Mart can set the agenda for sustainability faster than any government or nonprofit. Basically, Wal-Mart has created a domino effect—one fueled by money. And that, more than any social conscious, will drive any green business revolution.

Of course, someone must shoulder the high cost of doing business that sustainability requires (at least upfront). If those costs are handed down to the consumer then we’ll see if the engine that fuels Wal-Mart—the customer—really wants its big box retailer to lead the green revolution.

And later we'll worry about the wasteful lifestyles Wal-Mart encourages and sustains.

The economy is reeling. Presidential politics grow uglier by the day. The world is—as usual—going to hell in a handbasket. But don't fret; it could be worse.

In honor of the approaching Halloween holiday take a look at these highly effective public service announcements from 1970s Great Britain. Forget the stock market, I'm never going near another creek again.

Imagine if this was your company's safety video—or, stranger still, an external marketing video.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for pointing it out.)