The Double Nickel

Just yesterday, as I was meeting with two of my staffers, the subject of my birthday came up and one of my most trusted colleagues asked me how old I would be.

“55,” I answered.

“Wow, that’s a big number,” she responded and almost instantly began backpedaling. “I mean a significant number. You know, a big milestone. An important date.”

We laughed at her quick thinking and her instinctive ability to quickly recast her words when they have been wrongly interpreted. It’s something my whole staff does well, and in public relations – our line of work – it’s an invaluable skill.

But she’s right on both counts. It is a big number in both of those senses.

I don’t know where I thought I’d be when I reached the point of being entitled to the senior menu at my favorite restaurant or discounted coffee at fast food places. But I never would have imagined it to be here – in central Maine, living on a lake, serving as vice president at an elite liberal arts college, heading up a talented and energized group of professionals like my now red-faced friend. Nor could I have imagined nearly twenty years with my beautiful wife, the paths my kids’ lives are taking, and how much I would have come to love a dog … my dog. So I’m looking back today, awed by the circuitous and sometimes sideways path led me here.

But here’s the weird thing. I’m looking forward, as well. I’m thinking about many many more years with my wife, about watching my kids become adult versions of the magnificent creatures they already are. And I’m thinking about all the work left to be done here at Colby, about how great it feels to stoke the creative fire in a group of talented people and watch what happens.

About beaches I’ve yet to visit, and Irish pubs that are waiting for my arrival, and about the short stories and novels I’ve yet to read. And the ones I’ve yet to write.

So given all this, 55 seems an appropriate number. It’s the same coming and going. It looks back just as well as it looks forward.

Lucky me.

(A note: this morning that same staffer reminded me that she said “That’s a big ONE,” not a big “number.” See? I told you she was good.)

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You and 499,999,999 others like this.

A couple of very different stories about Facebook hit the news cycle at about the same time last week, and they both speak to the site’s place in our lives — but in very different ways.

The first story is a pretty straightforward piece of evidence. Facebook has doubled in size in just the last year, and has now surpassed 500 million users, amassing 100 million new users just since February. Mark Zuckerberg, the face behind Facebook, has promised that they will reach 1 billion, and at this rate that seems certain.

But here’s the other curious piece of news. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, conducted by the University of Michigan’s business school, a LOT of those 500 million people aren’t very satisfied. The site placed in the bottom five percent of private sector companies for customer satisfaction.

Put those two stories together for a minute, and let them roll around in your head. What’s that tell you? That Facebook better get its act together or they’ll tumble? Doubtful.

What it says to me is that Facebook has reached some pretty rare heights. They have built a product that is so ubiquitous that they don’t have to care if people are satisfied with it. Sure, they will no doubt continue to make tweaks to “refine” the Facebook experience. But in the end, it’s like we used to say about Ma Bell before the breakup.

They’re the phone company. They don’t care. They don’t have to.

Other service providers have this same status. Take cable television, for example. My guess is that most of you reading this post pay a pretty penny every month for access to hours and hours of programming you don’t watch and wouldn’t be interested in anyway. Bad service? Oh, well. Spotty signal? Bummer. We kicked the cable habit (as well as the TV habit pretty much) about eight years ago and now the thought of actually paying $30, $50, or even $70 dollars a month (how high do YOU go?) to watch TV seems like absolute folly. Yet for most, it’s just not something they would ever consider doing without. Increasingly, it’s the same with web access. We simply feel like we have to have it, and we’ll pony up whatever we need to keep it.

For my part, I’m not sure whether I need Facebook or not. Certainly this blog would have far fewer readers without it. And I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of catching up with some old friends at a high school reunion a few weeks back if I wasn’t a Facebook user. So there are some definite advantages for me. But increasingly, there are times when I log on and find myself wondering exactly what I’m looking for. Or whether or not it’s the best way for me to be spending my time at that moment.

In the end, I tend to judge technology’s worth to me by its utility, not how engaging or amusing it is. Sometimes, as in the case of my iPod Touch, I am surprised to discover just how quickly a particular technology proves valuable to me, often in ways I might not have expected. But other times — and this is where I am with Facebook — the scales begin to imperceptibly tilt in the opposite direction.

I’m not sure I’ll ever pull the plug on Facebook as I did with cable TV, but I’m not sure I could rule out such a possibility either. In the meantime, you can find me there at www.facebook.com/oneluckyman. Look me up, and tell me why I should remain among the 499,999,999 (and growing) people who “like” it.

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Remembering … again.

Even from the outset, it was no ordinary day. I remember sitting at a stoplight that morning three years ago, on my way to my office on the campus of Virginia Tech, and thinking that I wasn’t sure I had ever seen snow — mid-April snow, no less — being blown horizontally. It didn’t appear to be falling even, just sweeping across the landscape, scouring the newly green earth. Of course, within just a few short hours, other unlikely events would come to pass, events far more significant than a late spring snow. I did not know that then. I wish I did not know that now.

Three years have passed since that time, and today, many are remembering that same morning in their own ways. Some will remember communally, gathering to listen to music, to learn from speakers, to reflect quietly. Thousands will run 3.2 miles in remembrance of the 32 lives lost. There is solace here, to be sure — the solace that comes from sharing grief with others who have felt it. There will be hugs. There will be candles. And there will be tears. As usual, my friends and colleagues from University Relations here at Virginia Tech will be on hand to record those moments and more.

But many of us — and I count myself among that number — will remember that morning privately. Here are some things I remember.

I remember the way that same wind blew for days without ceasing, a bitter wind that made every moment feel urgent and heightened every emotion. A wind so constant that when it finally stopped, it seemed just as loud in its absence.

I remember the swarms of people — the press, the police, university administrators, students, parents, gawkers — descending on the Inn at Virginia Tech like attendees at some grim carnival. Among that number were the parents, colleagues, and friends of those that were lost — dumbstruck with grief, wandering the corridors, marked by blank and impenetrable stares.

I remember the constant hum of the war room, our makeshift communications center in the midst of the crisis. The televisions blaring with constant coverage. The knots of state police, FBI, and university officials, huddled in corners. The phones clattering endlessly as journalists, alumni, ordinary people from around the world called in seeking answers. Those of us whose job was to provide those answers pounded on our laptops, crafting responses, sharing them with those who were cradling phones between chin and shoulder, trying their best to respond to all the questions that came their way, and I remember the frustration that we all felt as we faced the fact that there was so much — so very very much — that we did not know and could not explain.

I remember slipping into a conference room at the inn, seeking out a senior administrator to prepare her for an interview with Oprah. At the moment I stepped in, the president of the university, the superintendent of the state police, representatives of the FBI, and the county coroner were trying to explain to a room full of devastated loved ones why they could not yet claim — could not yet see — the bodies of those they lost, and I remember how I knew that moment would be burned indelibly into my consciousness, that I would never escape its import.

And I remember joining a crowd of Hokies on the Drillfield a week later, as representatives from the Student Government Association  released a single balloon — one at a time — for each life lost.  32 balloons, each climbing skyward so slowly it seemed reluctant to leave the earth.  Thousands of us watched, struck silent by profound grief.

Close your eyes now. Count to 32. Go slowly. Pause after each number, and imagine a life lost for each number you count. Imagine the vacuum that each of those lives left behind.

There. That’s the size of our loss. That’s the scope of our grief.

I carry these and many more memories with me today and every day. I do not want them. I long for the day when I need no longer carry them so close at hand. But today is not that day. Not for me, and not for many of you who are reading this post. We remember. Not because we want to, but because we must.

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Life underground.

Sitting here in my office in my starched shirt and shiny shoes, my head filled with decisions to make and copy to write and staff to manage, it’s pretty easy to forget that I am the grandson of a coal miner. Easy, that is, until I read that rescuers in Montcoal, West Virginia have once again been forced to return to the surface, leaving their colleagues somewhere far, far below.

More than five decades ago, back when he was a young man, my father joined a pilgrimage of his peers who left coal country and traveled up Route 23 as it snaked its way north out of the mountains through Pound, Jenkins, Pikeville and on. Many of them ended up in Gary, Indiana, where they traded in a miner’s life for a steel worker’s life. But they never stayed far from home. Not in their hearts anyway. As a kid, I remember making the trip back to Virginia at least three or four times a year, back to where the roads wound through narrow gaps and coal trains and trucks rumbled constantly.

I’ve never been to Montcoal, West Virginia, but that doesn’t mean I’d be a stranger. I’d recognize the tumbledown houses wedged together wherever there is enough room between the creek and the hillside. I’d recognize the coal tipples and rail yards that crowd the narrow two-lane highways. And I think I’d recognize the people — hardscrabble men in work clothes or camouflage, faces and hands creased and darkened by life underground; women on front porches or hanging clothes on a line, many of them heavier than they should be, the older ones in muted floral housedresses; kids everywhere, looking as though they could use a bath or a decent haircut or an outlet for their dreams.

I’m not trying to judge here, for I know firsthand that their lives are far more nuanced than we might imagine. I also know that their lives are inextricably bound to those coal seams miles underground or exposed at the top of decimated ridges above them. The danger, the dirt, the pollution — it is a part of their daily existence in the same way my starched shirts and shiny shoes are a part of mine. But they are not to be pitied. They are to be admired — for their grit, their determination, their bravery.

Of course, one can easily argue that their existence is not a noble one, that the industry that they serve and that supports them is as dark and foreboding as the tunnels they traverse. But it is their life. It is their way. And it is done not just for their own self-interest. It is done so that those of us with a seemingly insatiable appetite for all that coal produces can continue to live our lives as we choose.

So today, as anxious loved ones wait for confirmation of what they no doubt know to be the eventual outcome, I’m thinking of my grandfather, and my uncles, and of all the folks I’ve never met in Montcoal, West Virginia, and I’m offering up a prayer for solace.

I hope you’ll do the same.

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Of Cicero and sentences.

Have you ever read a periodic sentence?

Of all the ways to arrange words, of all the methods of building a sentence, of all the ways craft prose, a periodic sentence may be the most elegant.

There. Now you have.

A periodic sentence is a sentence in which the main clause — the payoff, if you will — is delayed or suspended by a series of parallel clauses or other constructions that come before it. It’s a sentence that takes its time to unfold, often doing so in a pretty dramatic way at the end. Cicero, the Roman orator of the first century BC, is widely considered to be the most accomplished practician of this rhetorical device. I love the way these sentence pull readers along, teasing them with small pieces of the puzzle, getting them more and more engaged, until the meaning becomes clear at the end.

Of course, you could also be far more blunt and simply say:

A periodic sentence is elegant.

And why, you ask, should this matter to you? I’m sure many of my students had the same question when we discussed it in class yesterday. Well, it’s not because I think everyone should be familiar with Cicero and his periodic sentences. But rhythm is a profound element of such sentences, and I think we should all be aware of the rhythm of what we write.

Note that I said aware of the rhythm. Not rhythmic. In the same way, we should be aware of the tone of what we write. The vocabulary we use. The economy of our speech. And more.

The key word here is aware. Too often, we write in the same way we think — unwilling or unable to exert much control. And, if we are diligent, we’ll go back through and revise it some just to make sure we didn’t make any mistakes or that what we are trying to say is clear. That’s fine. But if you really want to be a better writer, there’s more you can do, and it starts with owning up to a particular responsibility.

Good writers understand that their primary purpose is often more than simply creating words. Their purpose is to create a feeling. They understand that it’s not simply the denotative value of their words that matters. The connotative value of what we write matters, too — sometimes even more than the words themselves. And these same writers understand that the creation of a particular connotative value is something to be carefully and consciously constructed.

Sometimes, your purpose may be best suited by short direct sentences. Sometimes it might be better to build complex, rhythmic sentences. Most of the time, you’re better off using a combination of these and other kinds of sentences. The same is true, as mentioned above, for vocabulary, tone, directness — you name it. Good writers begin with a desired end in mind, and control the many variables at their disposal with that end in mind.

That, as I tried to convince my students, is a pretty awesome responsibility, and being able to shoulder such a responsibility is what will set your work apart from the work of others who are less attentive.

Seriously. It will.

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My apostrophe problem.

Jason Dorsey, the Gen Y guy, thinks I have a problem. Okay, maybe not me personally. But still…

Dorsey delivered the keynote address for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) conference I attended as a presenter last week. Widely known and recognized for his insight into his generation, he’s a dynamic young man, and quite a speaker (though you’ll need a pretty high tolerance for his stand-up comedian schtick).

For the better part of 90 minutes, Jason poked some gentle fun at many of the differences between his generation and others, often by asking those of us in the audience to acknowledge our … ahem … anachronisms. There was a lot of hand raising and even more nervous tittering as people confessed to their outdated habits. Things like having a land line in your home. Offering up physical landmarks when trying to direct someone. And — here’s where it got personal — using apostrophes in your text messages. I raised my hand at that one, along with scores of others.

“Awwww,” Dorsey gushed, “that’s so cute.”

Okay, I’ll admit it right up front. I’m not real big on being patronized. So the whole tone of his message already had me a bit on edge. Maybe I’m just not sure of my obligation to accommodate the tastes and habits of a younger and less-experienced generation in the workplace. Maybe some small part of me is fearful that the pace of change in more than I’m able to keep up with. Or maybe my reaction was just a part of my natural transformation into a grumpy old man.

But as someone who has made a living for more than two decades by using language deliberately and carefully, the notion that doing so should be looked upon as a quaint and outmoded practice just doesn’t strike me as sound thinking. To be fair, Dorsey wasn’t suggesting that punctuation doesn’t matter. He himself has authored a few books, and while I haven’t read them, I feel pretty confident that they are, in fact, punctuated. And he may well be right that apostrophes aren’t exactly necessary in text messages. After all, meaning can be translated without punctuation fairly easily, right? Let me put it this way:

i cld totally disregard grammar & usage in my posts, and youd still gt the message i wanted 2 get 2 you. wouldnt u? any writer can string words & symbols 2gether to convey meaning in tht way.

Here’s the deal, as least to my way of thinking. Language — and the way we use it — does more than simply convey meaning. It connotes something about the writer, as well. If I wrote all my posts as I did in the above example, you might reasonably draw some conclusions about the kind of person I am, for when we write,  readers make judgments about us and our message based on more than just our words. Their judgments are equally informed by the way we use our words. I understand that, for some, the use of capitalization and punctuation in text messages is a sure sign of a dinosaur at work. But at least it’s a careful, literate dinosaur.

Old habits die hard, and as a writer, it’s been my long-standing habit to choose my words and the way I structure them with both their denotative and connotative values in mind.  So if I’m reluctant to set aside the conventions of standard usage — even in a text message — does that make me old-fashioned? If I take that extra half-second to insert an apostrophe or capitalize a proper noun in my messages, does that make me cute — like some doddering old grandpa who has trouble figuring out how to save a contact on his cell phone?

Does all this mean I have an apostrophe problem?

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Is no news good news?

If news happens, and there is no one there to report it, is it still news?

Sadly, this isn’t just some variation on the old metaphysical riddle about a tree and an empty forest. It’s becoming an increasingly real — maybe even troubling — question.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press, the 163 year-old granddaddy of independent news organizations, started letting people go. How many have been laid off is a bit unclear, and even their own account does not go beyond saying “an undisclosed number.”

Here in my part of the world, those layoffs mean that the AP’s Roanoke bureau — one reporter really — is no longer staffed, and may well be on the way to closing its doors. This comes on the heels of similar layoffs and cuts throughout our region, cuts replicated in communities across the country. Some of our media outlets now require reporters to take regular furlough days, as if news just doesn’t happen on those days.

In some ways, of course, this shift is almost invisible, since most solid local reporting has long gone the way of the dodo bird. In its place, we get slick “Seven On Your Side” and “Health Team Twelve” features, complete with dramatic theme music and not a whole lot of news value. Or worse, the “man on the street” stories, where solid and aggressive reporting is replaced by lurking in public thoroughfares and asking passersby what they think about a current hot topic. On the print side, we’re sure to see more and more wire service stories, though perhaps not from the AP.

I can’t blame media outlets for taking this route. With profits — particularly in the newspaper business — in a freefall, how could you not gravitate toward this kind of coverage, coverage that is easily produced and packaged as time and budgets dictate?

But who’s going to be doing the reporting? Brace yourself, because it may be you.

Okay, maybe not you, but someone like you … or me for that matter.

To my mind, one of the incredible things about the evolution of the web has been how it has transformed from a relatively static place where we went to seek information to a place where we increasingly seek and provide information. We build web sites, we blog, we tweet. We make our voices heard. And sometimes — the Hudson River plane crash being the prime example — we report the news, long before traditional media are anywhere near the story.

Of course this model isn’t necessarily very reliable … yet. It leaves way too much room for error, for bias, even for malice, I suppose. But surely the demand for solid credible real-time reporting will, at some point, give birth to a new model of journalism, one that is both profitable and built around current events, contemporary technologies, and communal interests.

Hope so anyway. I’d like a chance to blow the dust off my press pass from days gone by.

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The tip, that I gave my students, was a good one.

Okay, class — raise your hand if you noticed the unnecessary commas in the headline. Good for you. If you did notice, maybe it’s because you know all about the difference between that and which and how one signals a restrictive clause and the other a non-restrictive clause and how those two things need to be punctuated differently. Or maybe you didn’t know all that. Maybe you just know that it doesn’t look right.

We had just finished up this discussion like this in the advanced media writing class I’m teaching at Virginia Tech when a young woman (apparently with an unusually high tolerance for grammar and usage issues) asked me to explain the difference between who and whom.

“Well,” I began, “you have to understand the difference between subject and object.”

No sooner had I started than I sensed — more than heard — a collective groan. A quick glance around the room confirmed that, unlike the eager questioner, most of my students had already had their fill of language mechanics. Who, whom — more like whatever, they seemed to be thinking.

“Can any of you explain this? When do you use who and when do you use whom?”

Not one hand went up. Not one word was spoken. In fact, the silence was so deep that I could make out the conversation of a couple of students walking down the hall outside the classroom. Apparently, someone named Troy was, like,  totally supposed to BE somewhere and he had, you know, like blown it off completely. Dude.

In that silent classroom, it became apparent to me that these students saw the task of writing in a very different way than I do. For them, it was all about prescriptive rules and how well you knew them, and those rules sometimes backed you into a corner, limiting your options. It’s either who or whom, and you have to make a choice, and if you don’t know which one it is, you’re, like, well … totally screwed.

I lowered my voice, so they would listen more closely.

“Can I let you in on a little secret? Something that professional writers do all the time?”

Maybe they didn’t actually lean forward, but it seemed like it.

“If you find yourself in a predicament like this, and you don’t quite know what’s the right way … write around it. Build another sentence that says the same thing in another way, a way that doesn’t put you at risk of making an embarrassing mistake.”

From the back of the room, a few students tittered nervously. Others exchanged glances, trying to gauge which way the please-the-teacher wind was blowing.

“I’m not kidding,” I told them, but I’m not sure they believed me. “You’re writers,” I told them, “or at least you want to be. Learn to use language and mechanics to suit your needs. It’s what writers do.”

It was nearly 5:15, and we wrapped up class by reviewing the AP Stylebook rules for who and whom: Who is the pronoun used for references to human beings and to animals with a name. It is grammatically the subject (never the object) of a sentence, clause or phrase …

I hope that some of them learned a lesson that day, but I can’t say for sure. They just zipped up their backpacks, shrugged into their Hokies sweatshirts, and skittered out of the door. It was late, and I’m sure they had to, like, totally be somewhere.

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Finally, a profitable newspaper.

Unless you happen to live in Holmes, western Tuscarawas, southeast Wayne and northern Coshocton counties of Ohio or you’re an exceptionally well-read Amish person, odds are you’ve probably never heard of The Budget. Based in Sugarcreek, Ohio, it’s a paper that really gets its audience — big time.

The Budget isn’t fretting much over what to do about online content like other, bigger papers do. Why? Because they’ve simply decided to offer less.

Visit their website and you’ll see a pretty interesting collection of small-town local stories — how the Bulldogs nipped the Pirates on a go-ahead FG,  a local church ministry that crafts prayer shawls, progress on the new roadside signs welcoming folks to Sugarcreek.

What you won’t see is national news. Why? Well, it’s certainly not because they don’t offer it. It’s because … well, let me let them explain it. This is from their website:

“Out of respect for our 116-year relationship with our Amish and Mennonite writers, readers and friends, the National Edition remains available only in its printed format.”

You see, The Budget has a 116-year relationship with a core audience that shuns technology, and they intend to remain important and loyal to that core audience.

The result? You can only get the national edition through the mail, like 20,000 folks or so do. And because the paper comes to that audience in the way they want it, The Budget — despite its dated and costly production process — remains profitable. In fact, according to this Associated Press story, they may even be adding editorial staff

Clearly, the factors surrounding The Budget’s decision are unique to them. But I’m convinced that there’s something here that we should all be mindful of. Maybe — just maybe — if we know our audiences well enough and do all we can to meet their expectations, we’ll find the courage to move in the direction we need to, whether that seems like the “right’ way or not.

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My personafessional life.

Is it just me, or is anybody else feeling the boundaries of their personal and professional lives becoming more porous? My friends are my colleagues, my colleagues are my contacts, my contacts are my peers, my peers are my friends, and so on and so on. Smarter folks (like Julien Smith and Chris Brogan) call this the blending of social constructs, but no matter what you call it, I think it’s critical if you want to get anything out of social media.

Okay, scratch that — maybe not anything. After all, I suppose some folks find value in simply staying connected in these new ways. It’s kind of fun to know what my cousins in Atlanta are up to, and what my old high school friend did over the Fourth of July weekend. Either of those would certainly fall under the category of anything. But I like to get a bit more out of it, frankly.

Take Twitter, for example. I don’t follow a ton of people, but those I do follow are pretty interesting folks. All day long they are cluing me in to websites I should check out, pointing me to some new trend in my business or my profession in general, or guiding me to a pertinent news story. These folks aren’t selling anything. They are simply giving me a small 140 character window into what they are thinking at that moment, and since many of us are in similar businesses or professions, I often find these tiny windows surprisingly illuminating. Perhaps that’s because, like most folks, I tend to build my networks around similar interests, and so those networks are often rich with pertinent information.

True, my network sometimes tells me things that may not be so illuminating — at least not in a professional way (though I do reap great benefit from my friend Laura’s irrepressible optimism). Some of the folks I follow on Twitter, like comedian Tim Siedell, are simply good for a laugh at random moments throughout the day. And some of my Twitter feeds are straight up news. (For my money, there’s no better way to get on-the-spot news.)

But here’s what intrigues me — it all seems to add up somehow. This blended stream of incoming information seems to create something unlike anything else I’ve known. If it were all professional all the time, I’d process it with some corner of my brain that holds the “you-have-to-read-this-because-it’s-good-for-you” reflex. If it were all personal all the time, I’d process it with my “well-that’s-interesting-but-probably-not-particularly-useful” reflex. And in either case, I’d be missing out on something.

Also — lurkers, take note —  it’s worth pointing out that until you jump in, you quite likely won’t understand how this confluence works. That’s another matter I’ve been giving some thought to, and will be doing a presentation on at the fall College Communicators Association conference.

So thanks to all of you, my personafessional friends/colleagues/contacts/peers. Keep me posted.

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