I’m not the first person to be in this position, nor is this my first time to be here - staring at a blank windows document, pondering what the heck to write about. Normally, when blog post time comes around, I’ve been mulling over an idea, or inspiration…
The Associated Press Stylebook is the bible of rules for writing news. My sophomore year of college, I took an entire classes dedicated to learning the ins and outs of this book. Back then, I had no idea how useful this training would be. Even though I have…
With my recent job promotion, I took on many new duties at our firm. One of those is editing. I am responsible for editing every piece of news or marketing collateral that our team produces – and let me tell you, our team produces a lot. Through…
With less than 30 days of the New Year under our belts, everyone is still going strong when it comes to keeping their New Year’s resolutions. Gyms are more crowded, grocery carts are filled with more fruits and vegetables and fewer chips and cookies, and that extra “splurge”…
During the holidays, I used some of my spare time to catch up on reading anything I could get my hands on – articles, periodicals, books, etc. Of everything I read, an article in the New Republic was probably the most interesting, telling and, possibly the most, alarming…
When we do media and ambassador training for clients and organizations, there is one area that I discuss with them as more important than all others when trying to communicate a message to a listener – noise. And, there are two types of noise to be mindful of…
One of my favorite commercial series on television right now is for AT&T. You’ve probably seen the ads, which show a guy sitting down with a group of children. They’ve determined that faster is better, better is better and, recently…newer is better. On that one, I’m going to…
There are more than a quarter of a million words in the English language, according to Oxford Dictionaries. Our main vernacular is made up of words and phrases that lexicographers decide should be included in the dictionary. These words can be a blessing or a curse. They can…
We’ve all seen it. The email that comes through that goes something like this: NoReply@InsertCompanyNameHere.com. Way to make a person feel important, right? Well, this happened to me recently, and I took it personally because it was from a local nonprofit I support. We have a family membership…
During some weeks, my colleagues and I may send out a dozen or more news releases for our clients to local media. There’s no doubt reporters in Memphis get hundreds or even thousands of emails, some relevant and some not. Part of our job is to help reporters…