WesHanson.com

Creativity

Talking Big and Thinking Big

Big words, small words, little gray words and florid ones too: I love them all. Not necessarily equally, but each has its place and time.

The common thinking goes, however, that only pretentious or insecure individuals would use what used to be called five dollar words (back when that was a lot, not a latte). I disagree. Golly, what’s wrong with an evocative term like “palimpsest” or “gimlet-eyed” when they are just the right ingredient? (For that matter, what’s wrong with “evocative”?) Instead of rolling his eyes, shouldn’t the reader turn his gaze to a dictionary?

The point of communication is to connect with others, absolutely. The point is not to talk down from your lofty pile of words. Here’s a point of view from an author I greatly respect:

“The person who says “adamantine” when in plain talk he means “immovable” or says “coquette” when we would understand him better if he said “flirt” may have a big vocabulary,” writes David Schwartz in his great book The Magic of Thinking Big. “But does he have a big thinker’s vocabulary? Probably not. People who use difficult, high-sounding words and phrases that most folks have to strain themselves to understand are inclined to be overbearing and stuffed shirts. And stuffed shirts are usually small thinkers.”

Ouch. It’s true that what matters in communication is the effect words have on others, not the size of the vocabulary … but still can’t we luxuriate in the richness of the language? Once in a while, just a little? Broccoli benefits from a little béchamel now and again, right? (Béchamel? Happy to oblige: http://bit.ly/bechamelsauce.)

Make Google Dance Your Tune

There are lots of clever ways to make Google dance a different tune. Here are five examples of less conventional ways to make the world’s dominant search engine bust a move:

1. Limit your search to a particular site without having to rely on that site’s built-in search tool (which may not be up to the task). To search for the subject “ABC” on the website XYZ.com do this: ABC site:XYZ.com.

2. Use Google to correct your spelling. If Google senses you’ve typed in your query incorrectly, it will suggest the correct spelling. You can also get a word’s definition by searching on: define: word I’m interested in defining.

3. For the math-challenged, Google has a calculator. Just enter the equation you seek to solve.

4. Want to know what time it is in Bangkok? Search: time Bangkok

5. In this world of topsy turvey exchange rates, you might need to know how a certain currency converts to yours. Search: 100 dollars in Euros.

Businessweek (Re)Blooms

When Bloomberg LLP purchased hoary old Business Week magazine from McGraw-Hill you could be forgiven for wondering what they were thinking. The multimillion dollar price tag may have been mere pocket change to the maker of ubiquitous and highly lucrative financial data machines. But still, why bother?

After all, Washington Post Co. is jettisoning Newsweek after nearly 50 years of ownership and a recent complete redesign, because it can’t make the property pay.

Now called Bloomberg Businessweek, both the print and electronic versions of the specialty publication have undergone less of a redesign than a re-imagining. And therein lies the promise of its success.

From it’s very name, it’s clear that the reborn media property is part of a new family and new strategy — the new owner  is the brand, and businessweek is its extension.

It’s a larger and more complicated media property now, packed with information packaged all sorts of ways, serving distinct groups from traders to cultural zeitgeistists. There are short, snappy pieces along with narrative features (Meg Whitman on the campaign trail, municipalities deep-sixed by sophisticated financial trades, etc.), investigative pieces (former Lehman CEO Dick Fuld’s perjury, for-profit college scams), and continuation of special areas of expertise (for instance, the importance of design to productivity).

There are lots of moving parts to manage, so Bloomberg’s strength in low-key, by-the-book management will come in handy. In contrast, other recent attempts to reinvent the business magazine such as Conde Nast’s Portfolio failed, in part because of editorial/managerial temperament.

Bloomberg’s challenge (as with whoever ends up owning Newsweek) is less to make print relevant in the electronic age than to revitalize a trusted (and therefore valuable) brand so that it nimbly adopts new technologies to reach varied audiences in varied ways.

Check it: http://www.businessweek.com/http://www.businessweek.com/

Making Content Pay

What do the following have in common — The Wall Street Journal, Consumer Reports, and ESPN?

They are among the news organizations (now called “content creators”) that are successfully charging folks to read their content online. That is, they have walled off their valuable content so that readers have to pay to enter.

Their success in this endeavor is studied with great interest by hundreds of other media outlets starved for funds and perplexed how — in this information-wants-to-be-free era — they will ever get back paying subscribers and the advertisers that go with them.

Will people pay for local news coverage? Mike Klingensmith publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune more than hopes so. He’s planning on it.

“It’s not an inexpensive process to create the proprietary content we create,” he explains, “and we have to be compensated for it in the future. As I believe almost all content providers will have to be.” [See the original interview by David Brauer in full: http://bit.ly/StarTribInterview]

He favors a web-based product that with all-inclusive, as opposed to a la carte, pricing – with free samples available via as many links as possible. Content that is completely free vs. partially free (a sample) might depend on the reader’s location or story source (such as AP or staff).

His team is not just redesigning the news organization’s website, but rebuilding it into a platform, to act as more of a “content tent” that embraces staff-generated news, vendor-generated services and user-generated content.

The content has to display on whatever type of device consumers use. “We’re going to follow our consumers in that regard,” says the man with deep experience in magazine journalism, which is generally more advanced in consumer marketing. “It’s not for us to dictate; it’s for them to tell us.”

Death by PowerPoint

Back when your trusty editor was the publications and communications director at a prominent nonprofit organization, a fellow executive took it upon herself to map out the creation/approval/distribution process she thought should be involved in putting out a newsletter. Up and down, back and forth, in and out it went – the crazy Etch-a-Sketch of lines and arrows was absolutely ludicrous. … Really funny too, when you weren’t despondent over what had become of your career and purpose in life.

And that was just a little nonprofit newsletter. Imagine trying to capture and visually illustrate all the players, procedures and factors to consider in modern military operations … Consider Afghanistan, where the Army is batting an unexpectedly tenacious enemy: PowerPoint presentations.

The New York Times reproduced a U.S. Army diagram (originally publicized by NBC’s intrepid foreign correspondent Richard Engel) showing American strategy in Afghanistan. The purpose of info graphics is to communicate visually, but this think looks like a bowl of spaghetti. Dropped on the floor.

If you want a good laugh, or cry, check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?scp=1&sq=powerpoint&st=cse

When he first saw the info graphic at a PowerPoint presentation in Kabul last summer, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan reportedly said, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

So that’s why this damn thing is taking so long! Hopefully, another way to win the war will emerge that doesn’t depend on tangled intentions and garbled communications.