HeadlineUpdate

New Jersey New Jersey New Jersey!**Updated Again**

    I know it's a slow news week, but there's slow and then there's glacial, as the New York Times proves with this follow-up to the story I commented on below.  Although is it still a follow-up if the second story makes no reference to the news lede of the first?  Which in this case, was that the state of New Jersey  paid taxpayer dollars to a "branding consultant" to invent a new state slogan, found the suggestion "We'll Win You Over" somewheat defensive, and opened it up to the public.  I just love it when the inner workings of the spin machinery get opened up to the public. 

     As predicted, the public has weighed in with lots of Soprano jokes as the state whittled 8000 submissions to a final five, including, I kid you not, "New Jersey:  Expect the  Unexpected"  and new Jersey, "The Best Kept Secret." Now, I love the Garden State, and thrilled last night to hear a reference to my home town of West Orange, NJ on the episode from Season 5 I was watching, but I kind of wish they'd hired a different branding consultant, rather than open this whole thing up.  The risk is what New York Magazine's Competition once defined as a "murkyism"  -- a saying that sounds profound, but is really quite empty. My favorite was Mort Sahl's album title, "The Future Lies Ahead."  Readers are invited to submit their favorites, real or imagined.

Posted 11.02.05 When people ask me where I grew up,  I do this thing where I put my hand over my mouth and mumble while I take my hand away, "Nuh Grzy" and everybody laughs.  But except for the brief period in the mid 70s when the state received some reflectled glory from Bruce Springsteen (someone actually said to me, "wow, you're from New Jersey?") the Garden State has never had the right profile.

    Now comes the news that after hiring an expensive branding consultant the state of New Jersey is turning to vox populi.  It was thought the consultant's $260,000 result:  "New Jersey:  We'll Win You Over" was a bit defensive, so acting governor Dick Codey is opening it up to the people. 

    Getting inside people's heads and finding what advertising genius Tony Schwarz calls "the responsive chord" is hard. Some tools of market research are valuable, others can be a crutch for advertisers looking for "proof" that their ideas will work. 

    Branding consultant Tracey Riese says, "New Jersey has confused their slogan with their brand. A great brand stands for something that matters to the customer. A good slogan embodies that. "I love New York" was "magic", in Alan Siegal's words, not because it was a brilliant slogan, but because New York is a great brand that resonates with meaning."

    I wish them well, as a natal New Jerseyan and professional marketer.  But no one will ever be able to top the contribution by the legendary WMCA newsboys, who recorded the anthemic "Raucous in Secaucus" back in the 1970s.  I think I remember most of the words...if you know any I've missed please fill in the gaps...and wish the state of New Jersey well in its search for a slogan.  Stay tuned...

Doug Bandow, Armstrong Williams and me

   Today's papers update two of my favorite long-running stories; the Jack Abramoff follies and the pay for play opinion writers' racket.  Business Week has a scoop which has already led to the resignation of columnist Doug Bandow from the Cato Institute and the suspension of Bandow's column.  Read an excerpt from a Bandow column extolling the virtues of that favorite Abramoff client, the Choctaw Indians.  Apparently Bandow got $1000-$2000 every time he wrote an "opinion" column plugging an Abramoff client. I'm thrilled to read this and not just because I love this scandal so much.

    I've been thinking about marketing my skills as an op-ed writer to clients and now I know what to charge.

R.I.P. Eugene McCarthy

    I was twelve in 1968 and just starting my fanatical obsession with politics.  My parents were for McCarthy, my best friend's family for Kennedy.  I watched every minute of the Chicago convention and saw Mayor Daley say to Abe Ribicoff (readers who caught the "fnord" reference in a previous post will want to see what happened when I googled that) what Dick Cheney would much later say to Patrick Leahy.  The events of 1968 put politics in an urgent spotlight that never faded for me. I read all the books, sang the songs, learned about some new heros. I didn't realize it then, but my political consciousness was kick-started by Eugene McCarthy. 

    I appreciated this obit in the New York Times, and this recollection of McCarthy's wit,though it doesn't include my personal favorite:  "Reporters are like birds on a telephone wire. One flies off, they all fly off. One flies back, they all fly back."

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    Apart from the occasional outburst from Dick (what about that heart condition, fatso?) Cheney and that wacko Congresswoman from Cincinnati, actual invective is rarely hurled on Capitol Hill. 
    But across the pond, in the mother of all Parliaments, they show us Yankee cousins how to really play hardball.  Be sure to watch the video on this BBC story about a left-wing M.P.'s "Tory cocaine jibe," and read this or any political sketch by Guardian columnists Simon Hoggart and John O'Farrell.(Breaking news: O'Farrell says this is his last column for the Guardian.  Guess he's fed up with them too...)  (Even more reason why you should read his funny, touching book about coming of age as a left winger during the Thatcher years.)
    Meanwhile, we have the great Kinky Friedman, who summed up the rigors of being Texas governor here and needs your support there.

    A long time ago, for the wise and important media watchdog FAIR, I invented a media bias detector that helped decode the evening news.  Today, I'm passing along a new tool to pry inside the spin machine.  It's called "x-ray the e-mail" and here's how it works.
    If a newsmaker or source's quote is reported to have come from an "email interview or comment" immediately put down your newspaper and find an alternative view.  As this article from the American Journalism Review should point out even more firmly, allowing sources to answer interview questions via e-mail opens the door to more spin and packaged news.

"Mike Foley, a former executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times who now teaches at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Mass Communications, says he is constantly fighting students on the e-mail issue. When they rely too heavily on e-mails in their assignments, "I jump up and down and scream at them not to use it," he says.
To Foley, dependence on e-mail is the ultimate sign of laziness. "There's something to be said for the old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. E-mail requires no shoe leather... It's easy, like quoting from a press release, and then your stories are sterile and boring, neither of which compels me to read them."
Unreliability is the drawback that he most fervently drives home to his students. "You don't know who you're talking to," he says. "It could be the CEO, the public relations VP, the secretary, a clerk — it could be the janitor who just happened to be in there cleaning up."