Creative Success Depends on Long View
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In this podcast, we feature author Taylor Marsh, who [read more]
Public Speaking: The Next Generation
Considering the brain-rotting influence of text messaging, video games and TV in all its current incarnations, I thought I might have to enter the 5th grade classroom on Career Day riding a unicycle and juggling Persian kitties.
Instead I tried [...]
Talking Journalism in the Math Building
Robert De Niro got lots of attention last May when he told graduates of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts they were screwed.
The verb he used was actually harsher, and followed by the suggestion that they would have done better [...]
Locals Bid Farewell to Hometown Paper
The recent obituary for our hometown paper began: We have made a sincere and earnest effort to keep our free two community newspapers financially viable.
However …
If the words sound familiar, it’s because newspapers have been failing for [...]
Sweating to Get a Workout
Four times a week I slip out of the house and drive to a place where I’d rather not be seen.
I check the rearview en route, though I know it’s silly. No one would be shocked or upset to learn where I go.
Or would they? Outwardly they’d [...]
What Goes in Our 2015 Time Capsule?
What were Paul Revere and Sam Adams thinking 220 years ago when they packed a time capsule that would sit beneath the new Massachusetts State House?
What clues about their state of mind should we take away from the newspapers, coins and other [...]
Family Matters: When The Kids Opt Out Of Xmas
The eyes dim as we get older, but our vision is in some ways stronger, for all that experience helps us see what’s coming, right?
Not always.
How about when the kids decide they want to opt out of the holidays? Too much stress, they say. Too [...]
Censorship: Never Worked, Never Will
A recent study by Pew’s Global Attitudes Project confirms what we might have surmised even without a survey – that emerging and developing nations want freedom on the Internet, and that young folks are especially opposed to censorship.
Pew [...]
Blizzard of Nasty Tweets Prompts Call for Cyber Civility
“Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.”
-British environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy
It began with the threat of a December snowstorm.
Then the student tweets started falling, some crude, some threatening. “Just remember [...]
A Super (Bowl) Lesson In Personal Branding
Back in the day – like maybe five years ago – it took a bit longer for an athlete, celebrity or CEO to wreck his or her reputation.
Heading into this year’s Super Bowl, we’re reminded again of how fast news travels in the digital [...]
Resolve To Reach Your New Year’s Resolutions
I enjoy the gym most when it’s quiet, which is why my favorite month to work out is December.
The treadmills are not only free; they’re nearly free of fingerprints.
Not so in January, when all who’ve pledged to become healthier show up [...]
Five Ways Authors Can Pump Up the Volume
The lure of social media is powerful, particularly for artists, authors and other creative types who’d rather produce than promote.
Technology has made it possible to talk, influence, monitor and interact without leaving the comfort (and security) [...]
Wanted: Leadership In The Nation’s Capital
Heard the joke about the Redskins? Evidently the team, due to the hatred, violence and hostility tied to its name, is dropping the word “Washington.”
That of course would leave only “Redskins,” a name reviled by Native Americans and [...]
A Rudeness Born Of Desperation
Siem Reap, Cambodia
She is perhaps five or six, with dark eyes, straight black hair that touches the back of her neck, and skin the color of teak.
She dances up to the picnic table with a white smile and 10 postcards of the ancient temples at [...]
Detergent Pods: Use With Extreme Caution
For those stuck doing the laundry, they’re great – the most concentrated liquid detergents ever created.
They’re convenient, pre-measured, and easy to use. Each is sealed in a film that dissolves in hot or cold water.
Or – [...]
Family Circle: Accident Or Design?
Michael John Bellomo was the oldest son in a family of eight.
A Brooklyn boy who was six when the Great Depression struck, he would leave high school after 11th grade and become a decorated soldier, printer, husband, and father of seven.
Mike’s [...]
Trayvon Martin: A Florida Footnote
The setting: Fort Meade, Fla., 34 years before Trayvon Martin will be shot dead by George Zimmerman in Sanford, 99 miles northeast of this small Central Florida city that briefly made headlines in the late 1970s.
Imagine a young reporter, New [...]
Journalism Degree: Priceless
Had my mother known that zoologists would be able to pay back their student loans faster than journalists, I might be wearing a beige Safari hat and managing the Reptile House today.
The kids would have liked that growing up, getting to feed [...]
Digital Detox? Just Put The Phone Away!
Want to ruin a nice walk, dinner out, or scenic drive with your significant other?
Pull out the phone, tablet or laptop. We know it, and yet we do it anyway, all the time and in nearly every situation. We are on the verge of being alone even [...]
Podcast: Choices In The Dark
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Former journalist, Steve Piacente, spent years writing about the deals public figures cut behind closed doors and ethics is a key part of the communications class he teaches at American University in Washington, D.C.
Now, it’s [...]
Mark Sanford’s Tricky Path To Redemption
Ike Washington is a made up character but Mark Sanford – U.S. Congressman Mark Sanford – has a story that is stranger than fiction.
Yet the two are connected. Both commit a grievous wrong that begins in secret and ends in disgrace. Discovered, [...]
Seinfeld Defies Comedy Expiration Date
What makes Seinfeld funny?
Most of us look at the silliness of modern life – satellite technology that we use for help changing tires, the overuse of e-mail and texting, airport faucets that dribble out water – and shrug.
Not Jerry. Such [...]
Mike Tyson’s “Undisputed Truth”
As much as you want to root for Mike Tyson – to hope that he’s done with drugs, violence, and public spectacles, the future is far from certain and his “truth” is not undisputed.
Tyson’s one-man show, which just hit Washington, D.C., [...]
Social Media Success Linked To Basic Communications Skills
Social media isn’t new, but it’s probably a lot older than you’d imagine.
Think ancient drawings etched in rock and shared cave to cave. Think Flinterest.
The challenge for communications professionals who remember TV before 1,200 channels [...]
Rutgers Players Didn’t Need Bullying
Look no further than the earnest face of Louisville guard Kevin Ware to learn the real lesson of the Rutgers basketball fiasco.
Ware, you’ll (painfully) remember, is the player who crashed to the ground with a compound fracture so gruesome, [...]
March Madness Lessons Transcend Basketball
Want to learn how to speak in public, turn negative to positive, or handle an aggressive reporter?
Watch a few of the savvier March Madness coaches.
Want to meet a spectacular athlete whose most impressive gift will never show up in the stat [...]
Alzheimer’s: Relentless, Costly, Incurable
This year 450,000 Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease will die.*
A number that large is hard to understand, so let’s cut it to, say 40. That’s roughly the number of people I saw a few months ago when I visited the wing of the south [...]
Spectacular Social Media Blunders & The Lessons Learned
Remember the days when getting angry meant writing a letter, putting it in a drawer, re-reading it next morning, and only then deciding whether to send it?
Well they’re gone, same as rabbit ear antennas, carbon paper and eight tracks. Social [...]
Yahoo, Best Buy Pull Plug On Telework
Want to be a reporter but hate the idea of a noisy newsroom?
Get in, get known, and get yourself assigned to a bureau. That’s how I worked it for years, first covering North Tampa, the state legislature and finally Washington for the Tampa [...]
Models, Comics And Hamburgers: Look Past The Packaging
A friend of mine is in consumer packaging.
That is, his firm helps companies sell more stuff by bringing their products to market in snazzy boxes and cartons.
He says people are drawn to things you’d expect: eye-grabbing packaging that’s [...]
DC’s Homeless Find Creative Shelter At Miriam’s Kitchen
It’s the hands that you notice first.
Hands that spend much more time outside than in, and which are chapped and a little raw, not what you’d want to begin expressing yourself with paint and palette.
Inside the church basement, most grab [...]
Choose Some News That Doesn’t Fit
Where do you get your news, and why?
Do you like the ease of TV, the speed of online sites, or the feel of a newspaper in your hands? Maybe you like the slant your outlet puts on the news because it matches your own values.
I spent 25 years [...]
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