Unjournalism

Actual headline from MySpace news release: “MySpace Reduces Staff by Nearly 30%”

Actual sub-head from same release: “Return to Start-Up Culture a Focus for Company Moving Forward”

“Return to start-up culture”? What does that mean? Well, beyond the fact that a few hundred people will lose their jobs, it means the folks responsible for this news release are either a bit delusional or not afraid of being laughed at. It couldn’t be easier to see right through this transparent bullshit.

No sane person believes MySpace wanted to can 30 percent of its staff. That MySpace actually thought it was desireable. Sure, you can put a little polish on that turd of a headline, but trying to turn into elective good news screams “BS.” Do you really think someone within the company decided, “Hey, this growth looks nice and all, but we’re a little bloated. What do you say we axe a third of you people to get back to our roots? Who’s with me?”

This writing is what critics of public relations professionals’ work refer to as “spin.” The fact that some PR pros seem to get away with over-the-line stuff like this reflects poorly on all of us. If you ever have a chance, do your best to stop this crap in its tracks.

Tags: writing by Mike Keliher
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My last name is pretty unique. It’s a variation of the more common Kelleher or even Kelliher. It’s rather easy to track online mentions of me as well as my relatives with a simple set of recurring searches and a Google Alert for “keliher.” There’s almost no pollution from irrelevant results.

Until recently.

In January 2007, a woman by the name of Margaret Anderson Kelliher was named speaker of the house in the Minnesota state legislature. I’m not related to her, and we don’t even have the same last name (she has two Ls, I have one). But all sorts of people, even respected journalists at the local smart-news shop MinnPost.com, misspell her last name, causing my Google Alerts more pollution.

I noticed a whole new wave of “where’s your editor?” writing during the Republican National Convention. At first, several people claimed they were looking forward to “the convention in Minneapolis” — but it was in St. Paul, the capitol city that is dwarfed by Minneapolis, the larger of the Twin Cities. More often, though, another error popped up.

The convention was hosted at the Xcel Energy Center. It’s the home of the Minnesota Wild and named after a local utility company.

But many journalists assumed it was the Excel Energy Center — even some journalists right here in the Twin Cities (gasp!).

Committing either of these errors — “Keliher” instead of “Kelliher” or “Excel Energy Center” instead of “Xcel Energy Center” — would have resulted in a serious scolding from any of my journalism professors. Maybe a letter to the editor is warranted…

Photo courtesy of scbluedevil on Flickr (edited by me)

Tags: journalism, writing by Mike Keliher
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The Web is full of perfectly justfied rants about the sub-par quality of much of the writing done by PR people, particularly in news releases. A popular target — for good reason — are those executive quotes that were probably never uttered by an executive in the first place.

Example:

“We’re excited to partner with These Folks,” said Jane Doe, CEO of Boring Corp. “This synergy will allow us to leverage our extensive resources in generating industry-leading levels of boredom among our key constituencies.”

But excuse me for a minute while I unnecessarily pick on a big dog. Mike Arrington welcomes a new member (with an impressive resume) to his team and kicks the post off with a nice little bit of PR-ish BS.

We’ve charged her with leveraging our brand, syndicating our content and helping us drive revenue.

Sweet! I guess it’s not really all that bad, but any time I see the word “leveraging,” I vomit a little in my mouth, and the phrase “leveraging our brand” is like vomit times three.

And when Mike mentioned the new hire on Twitter, his message was reminiscent of those generic executive quotes:

I am so excited about Sarah Ross joining our team

I suppose I’m being overly critical and picking a fight where one is certainly not needed. I just found it funny that even the biggest and best of the new-media entities falls back to some seriously old-school PR-isms every once in a while.

(Don’t take this criticism to heavily. I really enjoy Mike’s work, and god knows TechCrunch is a successful blog, to put it mildly.)

Tags: public relations, writing by Mike Keliher
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In the newest installment of my ongoing series, I’m picking on the Los Angeles Times.

In a story about “the case of Douglas R. Dowie, the former public relations executive convicted of fraud against the city of Los Angeles and sentenced last week to 3 1/2 years in federal prison,” the subheadline reads:

“About to be imprisoned, ex-PR chief Dowie has a screenplay optioned. It’s a City Hall tale, natch.”

Damn it! I hate that “word.” Now, I know “natch” is in the dictionary, but that doesn’t make it a word (see “ain’t“). More importantly, even if one grants “natch” its undue wordness, actually using it in a written work is the linguistic equivalent of putting orange juice in Crown Royal whisky — which I actually saw a bartender do recently. (What bartender doesn’t know that “I’ll have a Crown and an orange juice” means that I’m ordering two drinks?) That is to say, DON’T DO IT.

Now, I’m well aware that the article’s writer is not even the person who actually wrote “natch” in the subhead. Chances are, that was an editor at the paper. Still, I hope people will start to think twice before pissing off some lonely guy in his basement who has a blog on which he writes about inane things like the use of the “word” natch. Ooh, zing!

Remember, kids: Friends don’t let friends pronounce measure as “may-zher,” nor do those same friends let their amigos use the “word” natch. If your friend insists on saying “natch,” you should just cave in and let them drive home drunk, too.

Note to my readers (both of you): I have modified this post after speaking with the specific person at the Times who I was picking on in the original version of the post. Although I stated I had no qualm with the story’s writer personally — she wasn’t even the person who wrote the word; other people write headlines — the Google search results for her name looked bad. She was bothered by some of the things I wrote, and realizing there was no reason to put up a fight or to truly piss anyone off, I backed off and changed the post.

Two points, though: I’m sure the original version of this post will leave on for eternity, so revising it is probably futile. At least I tried. Second, I won’t back off my quest against the “word” natch. I might be persuaded to feel bad for a person (especially a reporter — I am a PR guy, after all), but I have no mercy for “natch”!

Tags: writing by Mike Keliher
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