“Clarity is not the prize in writing, nor is it always the principal mark of a good style…clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one.”
– Strunk and White, ‘The Elements of Style’
…where the aim is not communication but grandstanding: talking over reporters, recycling mindless messaging, delivering disinformation, replacing content with clichés.
The difference is not just style. It’s standards. Civility over chaos, brains trumping bullshit, information over idiocy.
How refreshing it is to watch the Artemis II press conference, where the astronauts listen to each question, consider it, align as a team on who should answer, and then respond directly, respectfully—and sincerely.
This favorably compares with too many gonzo press conferences on Earth today…
All of a sudden, the upstart new player is outperforming the legacy incumbent at format-native communication.
The propaganda war isn't even close right now. Who would have thought that Iran, of all regimes, would be winning a global AI battle of memes against some of the same people who pioneered their popular use in politics?
Public relations advice: Right now would be a GREAT time to make some horrible, damning, embarrassing disclosure. Nobody will see it or remember it.
Refreshing leadership candor that contrasts favorably with those too timid to communicate the truth of the situation.
Completely unconcerned when people take his worthless rhetorical checks to the bank of reality, where they invariably bounce.
Notorious for rug pulls on people and his word meaning absolutely nothing.
So maybe not “almost never seen.”
Even today, executive colleagues of a certain seniority inside the company know he will say anything to anybody to be liked and to get what he wants.
Offers jobs to everyone and their uncle, including — and this has been going on for years — offering the same job to multiple people.
He is compulsive liar infamous for dishonesty internally who calls for truth externally. Overly obsessed with his personal popularity coupled with an insatiable desire to be well regarded by all.
“Almost never seen?” Really?
I once worked at a PR agency headquartered in New York where the global CEO engages in these exact same Altman behaviors.
“[Altman]’s unconstrained by truth. He has two traits that are almost never seen in the same person. The first is a strong desire to please people, to be liked in any given interaction. The second is almost a sociopathic lack of concern for the consequences that may come from deceiving someone.”
…and a reminder of why we need more of it in a free and open society; and,
3.
The New Yorker remains an excellent magazine well worth the subscription price.
Three reactions having read this excellent but alarming piece last night:
1.
A dishonest and sociopathic oligarch like Altman should not have so much power over the world’s AI future;
2.
This article is what investigative journalism looks like…
Naive reporters in 2023 believed Altman's circle gifted them the inside story on the OpenAI crisis. However, they just repeated the framing and language of Altman's public relations team, describing the nonprofit board members as crazy Effective Altruism cultists.
Non-paywall link:
archive.ph/hOYMn
"True honesty, the kind that actually helps people grow and improves relationships, requires something the 'brutally honest' crowd often lacks: empathy."
Too many leaders say to their stakeholders that they're going to be "brutally honest" before communicating what is often deceptive and manipulative information.
This is narrative engineering, a key component of corporate reputation management. Place the two concepts in parallel often enough, and distinctions begin to blur as the desired new image emerges.
This recent PR pattern recognition research points to a familiar tactic in corporate messaging design: the deliberate marrying of a relatively popular subject (renewables) with a more controversial one (fossil fuels) through adjacency and proximity.
Mount Hood, Oregon
“This week I got my first PR pitch from an account that self-identified as an AI agent. Correspondence was at the very least clunky, and at most, reckless. It was yet another reminder of how setting AI on autopilot really doesn’t work — at least not yet.”
— Rachyl Jones, Semafor
The lights of San Diego across the bay
Mount St. Helens, Washington
Morning’s first light over the Rockies in British Columbia
Looks like a fine day for flying
Today I did a quick hit for CTV National News, commenting on Air Canada’s leadership communication concerning its recent tragic crash at La Guardia airport in New York.
"By making everything a daily story instead of telling a broader one about this guy being out of his mind & a danger to us all, journalists show they’re still worried about coming across as partisan. They’d rather write down what he says & assume people can figure it out. But obviously many can't."
I hiked all the way up here from downtown
The same mechanism that disrupts an audience’s attention is being used to deliver messages into these same distracted minds.
5/5
PR pros have learned to program electronic notifications as communications delivery systems: timing alerts, embedding messages, optimizing the angle for open rates, etc. But we haven’t reckoned with what notifications do to the mind before messages are even read.
4/5