Don't Follow Leaders

Looking back, you can usually find the moment of the birth of a new era, whereas, when it happened, it was one day hooked on to the tail of another.

― John Steinbeck

To many observers, Charlottesville feels like the birth of a new era.

But we've known for years―since 1965, to be exact―don't follow leaders.

That was the year credulity died, the year we entered The Age of Suspicion.

Since then, we've experienced The Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Enron, Iraqi WMDs, subprime mortgages, Madoff and, now, Trump.

It's no wonder customers―no matter their ages and demographics―are bred-in-the-bone non-believers.

Yes, you hope they won't deflect your message; but hope's not a strategy.

If they're not already of your tribe, customers discredit your message before they’ve even taken it in.

To capture their attention, you must adjust for mistrust. You must:

• Harmonize your message with customers’ notions of “truth;”
  
  
• Speak authentically; and
  
  
• Achieve artless clarity.

To achieve those three things, you must:

• Get out of the office and talk to customers. Lots of them. Large ones. Small ones. Happy ones. Not-so-happy ones. And don't stop until you have a firm grasp of the "scene" they’ve painted inside their heads. For better or worse, that's the world they inhabit, and the only one they know.
  
  
• Revise the premise of your message to conform to the customers' worldview. When you next tell your story, begin with their "truth." And when you speak, at all costs resist the temptation to challenge that worldview. Customers will dignify your message with a moment of their attention only if your message meshes with their notions of who’s sincere, honest and caring.
  
  
• Tell stories. Customers spot disingenuous organizations a mile away. Your words trigger their BS detectors—even if you’re squeaky clean. They no longer tolerate the expert opinion, the reasoned argument, the manufacturer’s warranty, the “act now” deadline, or the product-claim based on the avoidance of pain. So skip the superlatives, ambiguities, unsupported claims, advertising clichés, jargon, legalisms, fine print, and fear-based sales-talk. Just tell stories. "Once upon a time..."
  
  
• Speak as tersely as possible. If you keep it simple, you’re trustworthy; if you don’t, you’re not. Don't say, "Membership in the association provides professionals the opportunity to pre-register for our annual conference at the member-only rate of $495 instead of the non-member rate of $595.” Say, "Membership saves you $100 on our annual conference.”
  
  
• Include context, to assure you’re understood. Don't say, "We serve more than 100,000 dentists.” Say, "We serve more than 100,000 dentists, two-thirds of all dentists practicing in the US today.”
  
  
• Omit unimportant facts. Don't say, "With more than 300 programmable features, the MLX is a workhorse that directly replaces our SP-88 series.” Say, "The MLX is a powerful new workhorse, with more than 300 programmable features.”
  
  
• Use plain, crisp words and lively figures of speech. Don't say, "Our exhibition is the most comprehensive and efficient way to see the industry’s latest offerings.” Say, "A day at our show gives you a year’s worth of trends, tips and technologies.”
  
  
• Minimize tech- and corporate-speak. Don't say, "Our face-to-face and e-learning opportunities will provide leading-edge techniques to expand your skill set through world-class experts." Say, "Learn the latest techniques from experts in our seminars and Webinars.”
  
  

Thought Leadership: It's Not What You Think

Content marketing agency Grist asked 200 execs to assess thought leadership. Their responses will surprise you:

• 84% say thought leadership adds value to their roles as executives, and 66% say they count on it to stay ahead of trends. Only 36% say they use thought leadership to gauge the expertise of an author; but 40% will contact an author, if they find a piece worthwhile.
  
  
• 46% want thought leadership that offers fresh perspectives; only 26% want content that's action-oriented. 63% say thought leadership fails when it's conventional; and 58%, when it's unoriginal. Only 31% ever read all the thought leadership they uncover; and only 28% say it actually influences their decisions.
  
  
• 63% prefer short (800-word) articles; and 57% prefer short (300- to 500-word ) blog posts. Only 45% will read 1,200-word pieces; and only 28%, 4,000-word pieces. Only 26% will devote attention to videos; and only 25%, to podcasts.

So how can you please executives?

• Create thought leadership content that's provocative, original, forward-looking, and issue-oriented. Execs don't need one more post on "10 Ways to Modernize Your [Fill in the Blank]."
  
  
• Avoid not only stale, but fluffy topics; and shun sales-talk. Create content your industry's leading media outlets would reprint.
  
  
• Don't just record (as in videos and podcasts). Write. And write short.

Admit You're a Hack

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative,
original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

— David Ogilvy

Jay Baer, president of Convince & Convert, wants you to believe storytelling is hack work.

"I’m absolutely on board with storytelling as a content marketing device," he says. "But just because you understand story arcs and can riff on Joseph Campbell doesn’t mean you’re now Francis Ford Coppola or William Faulkner. Content marketing is a job, not an art form."

I suspect Baer doesn't know that Faulkner, with over a dozen dependents to support, wasn't above sports writing, travel writing, and movie scriptwriting (he's credited for, among other films, The Big Sleep).

But I get Baer's point: marketing's kind of storytelling ain't art-making; it's hack work.

"I see more and more content marketers straying from this perspective," Baer says, "thinking that they are newfangled hybrid players, straddling the line between fine art and commerce. They are not.

"The only job that content marketing has is to create behaviors among target audiences that benefit the business. Content must prod behavior, or it’s a useless exercise."

Or, as my agency's website says, "“It’s not creative unless it sells."

Demand Gen Demands Focus

Lead gen (scattered) differs from demand gen (focused).

Demand gen identifies your best prospects, hooks them with content, and converts them into buyers.

It takes focus to pull it off, says Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group.

Here's Brenner's formula:

Step 1. Target your prospects and offer them premium content and giveaways through a variety of channels. Test e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, podcasts, free trials, and free apps. Test influencer marketing at this stage, as well. "With every download, sign-up or other customer action, you’ll gain insight and have a better idea of which segments are interested in what and why," Brenner says.

Step 2. Help prospects form an intimate connection with your brand. For this, try Webinars, contests, and events. "This tactic serves to invite the customer into a more committed brand-customer relationship."

Step 3. Now that you’ve identified your best quality leads, customize your marketing communications. "Hopefully, you’ve managed to collect some extra customer info along the way with survey questions and feedback requests to help firmly establish your buyer personas and clearly understand each segment’s pain points," Brenner says.

Step 4. Keep the customized content flowing. "It is the tailored, worthwhile content that will convince your vetted leads to follow you along until a purchase is made." Don't forget the continue testing different offers.

Step 5. Engage and delight your new customers through social media and email. Make sure they know about your new products, promotions, and content. "Meanwhile, your inbound marketing is working on gathering your next pool of prospects, ready to be identified, evaluated, thinned, and segmented."

Concentration is key.

"This approach does require a concentrated, ongoing effort to stay focused on your quality leads and customer retention," Brenner says. "But, as the nurturing process continues, relationships build, bonds thicken, and your pool of the highly qualified swells."

The Return of the Native

At a workshop on ad retargeting I recently attended, a well-seasoned colleague dropped the word "advertorial" in conversation.

My response: "I bet that's something no Millennial's ever heard of."

Before The New Rules of Marketing and PR ushered in the era of "brand journalism," advertorials were a staple of B2B advertisers and publishers.

And they still are—even more so. But today we call them "native ads."

A wolf in sheep's clothing, a native ad is meant to trick the reader.

The term "native" implies the ad has infiltrated the flock.

It says nothing about its clothing—its look and feel.

But that's misleading, says ad salesman Rich Rosenzweig.

An ad isn't "native" just because it's commingled with non-branded content, Rosenweig says. It's native because it disguises itself—and doesn't "interrupt" the reader.

"An ad unit is native only when it matches the look, feel, user path, and quality standards of the editorial content to which it’s adjacent," Rosenzweig says.

Artless native ads—non-skippable video ads, in particular—backfire, because they interrupt readers.

"Poorly executed native ads wind up tarnishing both the advertiser and the publisher; an unexpected interruption contributes to ad blindness, ad avoidance, and ultimately, ad blocking," Rosenzweig says.

Publishers are more to blame than advertisers, because they've dropped all standards.

"The relationship between branded content and the editorial feed is very much in flux," Rosenwieg says, "with different publishers taking wildly different approaches to how they position one against the other."

If publishers don't adopt a few reader-friendly standards soon, they're likely to drive them all to safer pastures.

Content Marketers: Are You Running a Greasy Spoon?

I don’t have an audience; I have a set of standards.

― Don DeLillo

Content Marketing Digest describes the difference between the work of an SEO consultant and that of a brand journalist as "the difference between a greasy spoon diner with a broken dishwasher and a five-star restaurant."

You not only handicap, but harm, your brand when you make SEO your content marketing goal.

Feeding your tribe Michelin-star morsels should be your goal.

SEO-focused content marketing tarnishes your brand, says content marketer Roman Kowalski, because the consultants who practice it consider content "just a wrapper to contain the backlink." That mindset "leads to the creation of articles that don’t measure up to journalistic standards."

Consultants who focus on SEO are also hoodwinking clients, Kowalski says, by pretending they can still just swipe other brands' content; have a student in India rewrite it; run the keyword-stuffed abomination through Copyscape; and generate Google juice. The days when that tactic worked have passed. Google is wise to it. The best you can hope for from the tactic are for a few backlinks to appear on some bottom-feeder's website. And you'd better pray no client reads your content.

More effective, Kowalski says, is to create original content customers might read―and enjoy. Like case studies, research reports, how-to manuals, insight papers, or opinion pieces.

Most effective is old-fashioned PR―the creation of well-researched pieces that would pass traditional editorial oversight by mainstream and trade media outlets.

"Creating this type of article is far beyond the domain of the SEO consultant," Kowalski says. "It requires the unbiased eye of a trained journalist who also has the mind of a marketer.

"The goal isn’t just to drive traffic―it is to provide useful content and to engage the audience.

"As search engine algorithms grow more sophisticated every year, marketers will have to continuously adjust their strategies to shift from simply capturing eyeballs to capturing mindshare."

Yours Truly

Tonight and every weekday night, Bob Bailey in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account, America's fabulous free-lance insurance investigator...

— Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Serial proved crime pays—and that podcasting deserves every marketer's attention.

One in five Americans listens to a podcast every month, according to Pew Research, and broadcast-quality production has never been easier (or cheaper) since Tascam introduced MiniStudio Creator at The NAB Show last month.

"Time-shifted radio," podcasts attract loyal followers and forge rich connections.

Podcasting on a regular basis (as content marketing expert Mark Schaefer does) is a brilliant way to enrich a blog; and podcasting from live events will amplify any brand's presence.

The podcast-listening experience is unique in social channels: audio is intimate in a way video and images are not.

Content literally lodges in your head—the spot where brands want to be.

Marketers, furthermore, can enhance their podcasts with supplementary content and commentary, and track leads from specific podcasts by including custom URL callouts.

Still not sold? Consider three more facts:

• Podcast listeners spend an average of 4 hours a week listening to podcasts, according to Edison Research;
  
• 70% of podcast listeners are Millennials, according to Nielson; and
  
• Podcast listeners are twice as likely to follow your brand as the average social media user, according to Edison Research.

Superman was a Content Creator

We often forget a significant fact.

When disguised as mild-mannered Clark Kent, the Man of Steel worked as a reporter for the Daily Planet.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to content creator Matthew Grocki for reminding me Superman was a content creator.

The Content Marketer's Dilemma

If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

— Henry Ford

What's a content marketer to do?

Scrape the web for feedback to create content customers search for? Or create content based on your vision of a better future?

We all know the merits of creating content based on web feedback.

Study upon study shows customers begin their "buying journey" by Googling familiar keywords... prefer those brands whose content they find... and find that content because it's stuffed with those keywords and conforms to their notions of a "buyer's guide."

And we all know the pitfalls of creating content based on a vision.

That kind of content isn't stuffed with all the keywords customers know and doesn't otherwise meet their expectations of a "buyer's guide." So they never find it; or, if they do, don't click on it. Like the tree that falls in the empty forest, content based on a vision makes no sound.

How do you create content?

Crap Content Portends Crap Customer Care

A friend once told me he paid a call on a prospect while battling a sudden-onset flu. My friend was ushered into the executive's office and promptly threw up on the man's desk. Not surprisingly, he didn't close the sale.

When you publish crap content—ungrammatical, tortuous and jargon-heavy—you kill sales, just as surely as my friend did.

Crap content portends crap customer care.

Need proof? Then consider the following, courtesy of the crap-content creators behind United Airlines' blog, Hub:

Top 5 things to know about the United Polaris experience

We're very excited about our brand new international premium cabin service—United Polaris first and business class—which offers comfort and relaxation for restful sleep in the sky. To make sure you know what to expect with United Polaris travel, see below for a few key reminders. You can learn more at united.com/Polaris.

1. Service


2. Lounge


3. Seat


4. Amenities


5. Cabin names


What makes this crap content?

• Prolixity. Why does the blogger use superlatives to excess? He's not "excited," but "very excited." The service isn't "new," but "brand new." It doesn't provide "comfort," but "comfort and relaxation." The blogger doesn't offer "reminders," but "key reminders."
  
  
• Jargon. The blogger packs the 180-word post with jargon like "long haul," "roll out" and "soft-launched."
  
  
• Nonsense. Planes fly, but since when do "seats take flight?" What the hell are "sleep-focused amenities?" And who really cares that United has renamed its first-class cabins?

Crap-content creators like United's will say: Who cares? It's only marketing content: here today, gone tomorrow. Their indifference reflects the brand's values to a T.

They'd be well served to take the advice of critic Alexander Woolcott:

I count it a high honor to belong to a profession in which the good men write every paragraph, every sentence, every line, as lovingly as any Addison or Steele, and do so in full regard that by tomorrow it will have been burned, or used, if at all, to line a shelf.

Content Marketers: Don't Take It Anymore

Content marketers: Don't be a one-hit wonder.

By repurposing your most popular piece, you can enjoy a string of hits, says Emily King on ContentMarketingInstitute.com.

Copywriters at King's B2B agency transformed "The Seven Types of B2B Copywriter," an article in the firm's newsletter, into 10 additional pieces over two years.

"We realized that this message had legs, after seeing good click-through rates," King says.

"We decided that it would be a shame to limit that message’s audience to the select (read tiny) bunch of discerning B2B marketing professionals who subscribed to our newsletter. We had to take the message wider."

By "atomizing" the article, King's agency stretched the shelf-life of the original piece, and reached audiences who prefer their content delivered through platforms other than an e- newsletter.

As a result, her agency's revenue increased 28%.

From the article, King's copywriters created:

• A blog post (a simple cut-and-paste job)
• A podcast (featuring an outside journalist)
• A board game (Funnel! The Content Marketing Strategy Game)
• A conference presentation (The 7 Types of B2B Copywriter)
• A second podcast (featuring highlights of the presentation and a slide deck)
• A second blog post (recounting the development of the board game)
• A third podcast (featuring interviews with the game creators)
• A quiz (allowing B2B copywriters to identify their types)
• An infographic (depicting the 7 types of copywriter)
• A third blog post (namely, the King wrote for ContentMarketingInstitute.com)

Chunking the original article worked, King says. "Each new effort not only garnered new interest in our idea and our business, but also brought a new audience to our related content pieces."

Try it yourself.

You don't have to be a one-hit wonder anymore.

Goodly Predicts Corporate Magazines Will Make a Comeback

WASHINGTON, DC, October 2, 2017—Corporate magazines will make a roaring comeback in 2017, according to a prediction by Goodly.

The blog bases its prediction on an unflagging belief marketing obeys the law of eternal recurrence.

“Corporate America is on the verge of once more of embracing the print magazine," says Bob James, owner and chief storyteller.

Although entire in-house departments and outside design studios were dedicated to their production during much of the 20th century, corporate magazines fell from grace in the late 1980s.

"The time is right for their inevitable comeback," James says. "The universe can only stand so much digitalization before it lashes out in ink and paper."

In October's edition of Chief Content Officer, Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, likens the brand-building power of print magazines to live events.

"We are in the experiences business," Pulizzi says. "We create those experiences through valuable, consistent content. While most of your competitors are focusing on digital experiences only, savvy brands see the opportunities offline."

Pulizzi notes that winning brands Red Bull, LEGO, Dell and Marriott all have splashy corporate magazines.

About Goodly

With 1,500 pageviews a week and climbing, Goodly is devoted to helping professionals express ideas precisely. Guest posts are welcome.

–30–

Road Rage

Travelogues are all the rage among itchy-footed Millennials, so travel marketers are heading there.

Brett Tollman says his company, The Travel Corporation, will turn to travelogues to break from the pack of tour operators.

The company will rely also on social media influencers to tell those tales.

All told, the company hopes to romance 16.2 million Millennials in 2016.

To that end, one of its brands, Contiki Travel, rolled out Roadtrip 2016 on YouTube in May.

Although peers remain the top source of recommendations, Tollman thinks meandering Millennials will start to shop for destinations based on branded mobile channels—provided the storytelling there is good.

The travelogues on those channels, if compelling, will not only pique Millennials' interest, but build loyalty to the sponsoring tour operators.

Napoleon's Newspaper

A century before Edward Bernays fathered PR, Napoleon fathered his own media channel, the Courrier de l'Armée d'Italie.

The Courrier was no ordinary rag.

Printed on expensive paper, it was handsomely designed, featuring well-laid-out articles and a summary of each issue's content in a box just below the masthead. To ensure that content was top-drawer, Napoleon hired none other than Robespierre's protégé, the accomplished journalist Marc-Antoine Jullien, as editor-in-chief.

But despite giving readers wide-ranging reportage—plus a steady stream of poems, op-eds, and letters to the editor—the Courrier remained Napoleon's mouthpiece, boosting the general's pet ideas, while shredding detractors', day in and out.

No wallflower, Napoleon contributed signed articles, too; not only military proclamations, speeches and orders of the day, but tales of French politics that painted dark pictures of conspiracies, led by pampered minorities bent on destroying good republicans everywhere ("they do not act alone; they have their auxiliaries in every department, their constituents, their agents, their writers, their armed forces, their hired assassins..." he once wrote).

The Courrier was so effective a propaganda tool, it ensured the success of the 1799 coup that made Napoleon emperor.

Sound familiar?

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Imagine what Napoleon might have done with Facebook!

HAT TIP: Thanks to history buff Ann Ramsey for leading me to this story.

The Top 10 Worst Marketing Problems and How to Fix Every One of Them!

Clickbait, "just another name for language editors have always used to try to get readers to pay attention," has a long and checkered history, says renowned editor Terry McDonell.

Ever since Joseph Pulitzer moved to outsell William Randolph Hearst, clickbait has assured editors fat readerships—and the fat bonuses traditionally tied to newsstand sales.

"If you were good at writing smart, selling cover lines, it was like a gift," McDonell says. "Some of the best editors I worked with were lousy at it, in the way some people can’t tell a joke."

But if you lacked the comedian's gift, you could turn to tabloid tricks like "Garden of Eden Found!” and “Hillary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby.”

Today's hacks use slightly—but only slightly—different gimmicks.

"If you want a clickbait mantra to use this afternoon," McDonell says, "it helps to think like a behavioral scientist and not forget about the pull of upworthy motivation, information gaps, exclaimated questions (?!), pre-programmed cute-seekers, listicles and, of course, why everything works better if you include odd numbers."

But while clickbait builds readerships, it doesn't build trust; in fact, it diminishes it. That's why it's bad for your brand.

Trust comes from standing for something—from owning a viewpoint and covering a subject avidly, reliably and without compromise. And trust is prerequisite to any purchase.

As content marketing expert Tom Webster says, "When you continue to write "20 Ways to Write 15 Great Lists of 10," you're not standing for something other than traffic."

POSTSCRIPT: I initially considered headlining this post "Crap Content is Destroying the Ozone!" But headlines that start with "The Top 10" anything attract more eyeballs.

Without Wallander, We Don't Care

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

Robert McKee 

Henning Mankell, the creator of Wallander, said his crime novels—like your company's products—took root in an idea.

Returning to his native Sweden from a stay in Africa in the spring of 1990, Mankell noticed racism had taken a stranglehold on the nation.

"It soon dawned on me that the natural path to follow was to write a crime novel," Mankell said. "This was obvious because in my world racist acts are criminal outrages."

Writers like Mankell understand: while ideas alone don't compel audiences, stories do.

But what makes a story a story? How do you tell one? 

You have to find a hero. Forget about Citizens United v. FEC. Corporations aren't people. Your story can't be about your damn company. It has to offer us a flesh-and-blood hero who struggles to overcome a cruel world. Without Wallendar, we don't care.

You have to create suspense. Page-turners, plays, movies and TV shows grip audiences because of suspense. The setup teases and you want to know, What happens next? No tease, no story. Right away, you have to put Wallander in a mysterious jam.

You have to appeal to emotions. Most facts are unmemorable. And most people aren't fact-minded. Stories tug at emotions. Fear. Uncertainty. Confusion. Ambition. Greed. Admiration. Wonder. The soft stuff.

You have to personify. An idea like "racism" is intangible, difficult to understand, and not especially gripping. Not so Wallander combatting victimizers of people on the margins. Convert ideas into characters and storylines.

You have to paint pictures. "Show, don't tell." Lightly sketch each scenario as your story unfolds and let your audience connect the dots. Don't feel compelled to lecture. You're a storyteller, not a preacher or teacher.

You have to find a niche. Long-term success comes when you find a niche you can own. Wallander tapped the popular niche known as "Nordic Noir." Every novel in Mankell's series is propelled by a backdrop where mean streets are walked by morose Swedes who themselves are neither mean, nor tarnished, nor afraid. You can tell stories—endlessly—when you find a niche that appeals to your audience.

Hey, Content Marketer: Soles Worn Out?

Companies don't run to ex-journalists for content because they write fine sentences.

They run to them because journalists live and breath stories.

I pity content marketers who lack skills in "shoe–leather reporting." They're at a continuous loss for brand stories to tell.

I pity their customers even more. They're subjected to the crap those marketers publish.

Shoe-leather reporting is the journalist's age-old means of unearthing good stories. It requires:

• Leaving the desk to mingle with the hoi polo;

• Burning time dogging leads (many of whom will prove useless); and 

• Embracing a bottomless form of inquisitiveness—the reason it's said, "Journalism is a vocation, not a job."

For content marketers without those skills, content marketing's just a job.

In ASJA Word, freelance writer Johanna Knapschaefer depicts her way of plying shoe-leather skills. Knapschaefer likes to:

• Befriend fellow business travelers, pick their brains, and follow up afterwards

• Get into the field to meet practitioners and follow the leads they provide

• Read and clip religiously from sources both inside and outside her specialty; and

• Reformulate story ideas and pitch them, again and again, with new story angles

How about you? 

Planted at your desk and in conference rooms all day? 

Or are your soles worn out?

FOOTNOTE: In case you missed it, by all means read David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Try walking to a local independent bookseller to get your copy.

Too Much Marketing, Too Little Storytelling

Mania for narrative persuasion has sanctified storytelling.

But merely mentioning your company's name less in your copy doesn't make you J.K. Rowling.

Most marketers are storyteller manqués.

"There’s just too much marketing the old way, and too little storytelling," says journalist-turned-marketer Tomas Kellner.

Storytelling takes an understanding of story arc.

Story arcs deliver "the pleasure of pity," said the 18th century playwright and philosopher Friedrich Schiller.

We're led to pity when we learn about other people's suffering. But for the listener to feel pity, the storyteller must:

• Provide vivid details. Because suffering told can't equal suffering witnessed, to provoke pity the storyteller's details must be vivid.

• Make the characters accessible. To feel pity, the listener must experience a resemblance between herself and the sufferer, Schiller says. "Where this resemblance is lacking, pity is impossible."

• Provide tons of details. To work, the story must be complete, Schiller says. No important detail can be left out. "We must have unrolled before us, without a single link omitted, the whole chain of determinations."

• Draw the story out. The suffering must be durable. The listener wants to flee suffering, but shouldn't be allowed to do so too soon.

Storytelling isn't designed to teach, Schiller says. That's what history lessons are for. Storytelling is meant "to move us, and to charm our souls."

Literary agent Julian Friedmann tells it well:

Make the audience feel pity for a character. Then make the audience experience increasing amounts of fear for the character, as you put the character through increasingly worse circumstances. Finally, release the audience from the tension of anticipating the terrible things that are going to happen to that character, and the audience feels great.

Outdated

Fifteen years ago, there were two flacks for every reporter. Today there are five.

"As the PR field flourishes, journalists are becoming a vanishing breed," says Mike Rosenberg in Ragan.com.

Searches on job sites for "reporter" and related keywords yield ads for openings "that have nothing to do directly with producing the news," Rosenberg says.

For every one opening for a reporter, a search yields 10 for candidates with journalism backgrounds or degrees willing to try PR.

It should come as no surprise—especially to acolytes of David Meerman Scott—brands are skirting the news industry to tell their own stories.

If you're not alarmed, fathom this: newspaper reporters are becoming extinct.

According to the American Society of News Editors, the number of staff reporters has dropped 40 percent in eight years.

As every flack knows, newspapers are the starting point for the original coverage picked up by all the other media outlets.

"The drop in newspaper reporters means the amount of real news out there has taken a wallop," Rosenberg says.

The gap in original coverage means more "earned" and sponsored placements make their way to audiences. 

In other words: less news, more propaganda.

Rosenberg recently tweeted the stats.

David Simon, former Baltimore Sun reporter and creator of the HBO series "The Wire," retweeted Rosenberg's message, adding, "This is how a republic dies. Not with a bang, but a reprinted press release."

Punctuation Power

Novelist Cormac McCarthy once told Oprah, "If you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate."

McCarthy rations his use of “weird little marks" strictly.

“I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.”

McCarthy adopted his unusual technique while in college, where a professor asked him to Americanize the punctuation of the a bunch of 18th century essayists for a planned anthology.

Before the 20th century, most writers overused punctuation when writing for publication (though not in private letters and journals).

Contemporary punctuation is clean—and easily mastered. Strunk and White, in fact, cover the basics in just four "elementary rules."

But effective punctuation means more than avoiding "weird little marks."

Copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis says punctuation is vital to credibility.

He believes there's a "psychology of punctuation" every writer should heed:

• Question marks are "interactive," involving readers automatically

• Quotation marks around a term say you appreciate its novelty—and help readers accept the unfamiliar

• Decimal places in a price ($49.99) lower the perceived value of the product

• An exclamation point doesn't make a true statement any more true; and two or more signal that your excitement is phony

• Colons have force: they push readers onward

• An asterisk suggests you're lying

• A dash is stronger than an ellipsis

• Commas clarify a series, making the "Oxford comma" is a must

HAT TIP: Video producer Ann Ramsey brought McCarthy's interview to my attention.