Posted: 2009 April 22, Wednesday 17:02
Noteworthy and Quoteworthy
Ahoy, Jurors, Nothing to Worry About
Gerald L. Shargel, a veteran defense attorney on why it will be not be a daunting task for jurors in New York to hear the case against Abduhl Wal-i-Musi, the sole surviving Somali pirate in the Maersk Alabama case: “A terrorism trial is more chilling because a terrorist belongs to an organization that’s hidden in darkness and seemingly strikes at will and is a threat to us all. Unless a prospective juror is planning a cruise to Somalia, I don’t think that anyone in the process is going to feel threatened.”
The Republic of Texas Rises Again
This battle of quotes was prompted by the April 15 tax protests where Texans went a little further than demonstrators in other states and began calling for succession:
Gov. Rick Perry, Texas: “When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pay attention. We’ve got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that?”
Representative Jim Dunnam of Waco, Democratic leader of the Texas House: “Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It’s the ultimate anti-American statement.”
James Bernsen, a former press secretary to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who will oppose Perry in a Republican gubernatorial primary : “He’s just staked his claim to the ‘mad-as-hell constituency,’ just the kind he needs for the primary to pull off a win.”
State Senator Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat: “Texas has become a hotbed of right-wing political activity, but I think even those folks on the far right think this is over the top.” It was also a faulty interpretation of history, according to numerous sources; Texas has no more right to leave the union, than any other state; which is to say, no right whatsoever.
Among the several flags that flew over Texas when it was a republic is the pugnacious, "Come and Take It" banner.
Banking on Profits
After banks began excellent profits in the midst of the worst recession in 50 years, Jack T. Ciesielski, the publisher of an accounting advisory service said, “It’s junk income. They are making more money from being a lousy credit than from extending loans to good credits.”
Lifestyle Choice
Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 51, brother of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and informal advisor to the president on health care matters: “I don’t have a car, don’t have a TV, don’t have a house. I do, however, have four cellphones, so go figure.” Or, rather than go figure, just go and call him.
Not-So-Safety-Net
Ron Pollack, Executive director, Families USA, an advocacy group seeking wider health coverage, speaking of Medicaid, which covers poor children, but -- in most states -- not able-bodied adults: “In 43 states, you can literally be penniless and you’re ineligible for Medicaid, so for these populations the safety net is more holes than webbing.”
Foot in Mouth Quotes and Soundbites:
When Hubris Happens in Vegas, It Stays in Vegas
“This is the sort of project God would build if he had the money.” Anonymous MGM Mirage executive describing the casino firm’s $8.6 billion CityCenter development on the Las Vegas Strip. That bit of hubris was expressed before a sour economy and a tangle of nasty lawsuits stymied the project and sent MGM Mirage careening toward bankruptcy.
Artist's rendering of CityCenter which may turn out to be only a costly mirage for MGM Mirage.
The Fundamentals VI -- The Good Answer Radio Stations
There is an old expression in media training that there are no bad questions, only bad answers. In other words, someone who is on his or her game can use any question to lead to their chosen answer; to take control of the interview situation. Last week I explained how to bridge from a reporter’s agenda to your own agenda. Once you’ve bridged you need to make your answers effective. In fact, even if you are asked a question that invites one of your agenda points and requires no bridging, you need to make your answers compelling. Today, I’ll deal with three steps toward giving effective answers.
First, it’s important you understand that an interview is not a conversation. When you are doing a TV interview, that’s obvious: there’s a bright light shining in your face, a microphone on your lapel and several technicians standing behind the interviewer. The situation is so artificial there’s no mistaking it for a conversation, no matter how chatty the reporter gets. But when a reporter calls on the phone or sits down across the desk from us or buys us lunch (that’ll be the day!), you can sometimes be lulled into a false sense of informality. Don’t be gulled. The reporter is working, not chatting, no matter how informal she gets. You, too, need to be working. And that leads me to my first point: you need to adopt some counter-intuitive behavior in answering a reporter’s questions. As a mnemonic device, I have come up with three west-of-the-Mississippi radio stations to help remember some key counter-intuitive rules of interviews. They are:
KPUF
KISS
KOTJ
KPUF -- Key Point Up Front. In conversations we build to a conclusion. In an interview, we start with our conclusion and then bring up the supporting data. Think about it this way: we need to communicate with the media the way the media communicates with us. A news story begins with a headline, then comes the lead paragraph with the most important information and then the supporting data. Leading off with your key point is especially important if you are doing a live broadcast interview. Audience attention is keenest when you first begin speaking and then flags as you go on. So grab ‘em at the start with your conclusion.
KISS -- Keep it Short and Simple. How short? I advocate the 30/10/3 rules. For instance, if you asked me this question in an interview, “What constitutes an ideal answer in an interview, I would answer: “The ideal answer is no more than 30 words long, spoken in no more than 10 seconds and formulated in no more than three sentences.” That answer is 25 words long, formulated in two sentences and, if spoken, would take me about seven seconds. (The 10-second part is slightly gratuitous. Unless you are President of the Slow Talkers of America you will likely speak most thirty-word answers in about 8 or 9 seconds.) Okay, that takes care of how short, but how simple should that answer be? You should speak at the average grade level of your targeted audience. In this country the average grade level is somewhere between the tenth and eleventh grades. So round it down and realize that for general audience media you are speaking to a 16-year-old. (And I don’t mean the 16-year-old whose science project was a solar-powered robot, but the 16-year-old who plays Game Boy for hours on end.) If you are being interviewed by “Fortune” or the “Wall Street Journal,” you can ratchet up the sophistication level of your answers. How do you know what grade level your answers are? Well, if you write them out in MS Word, there is a tool that enables you to check them against something called the Flesch-Kincaid Scale. Go to the “Tools” section of Word, select “Options,” select the “Spelling & Grammar” tab and select “Show Readability Statistics.” Now run “Spelling & Grammar” from the Tools menu and at the end of the spell and grammar check you’ll get see a box (below) that includes the grade level of your document.
KOTJ -- Knock off the Jargon. I don’t know of any business or discipline that doesn’t have it’s own jargon. There is so much jargon out there that you can have cases of dueling acronyms. Some years ago during a training session for NASA scientists working on the Mars rovers, the acronym EDL came up. EDL, I thought, that’s an edit decision list. (In television, it’s the list of time codes selected to edit together to make a story.) Why would you need an edit decision list to go to Mars? Well, it turns out in NASA-speak EDL is the Entry, Descent and Landing sequence. (And obviously a far more daunting bit of business than an edit decision list, since a television EDL can be corrected while a plunging spacecraft’s EDL cannot be.) If you use jargon you are inviting a print reporter to paraphrase you, you are inviting a broadcast reporter to omit your soundbite and, should the jargon make it past those filters, you are inviting your end user to tune out what you are saying while she searches for the translation of your opaque wording. If, in an interview, you find an acronym or other bit of jargon does pop out of your mouth, just define it and then continue with your answer.
Next week: Polishing those answers to a fine sheen.
