Rob’s blog
How to wind up “Pursuing Other Interests” and “Spending More Time With Your Family”
Early in my career, someone told me, "Don't put anything on paper that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the morning paper." Make that on paper or on videotape. The San Francisco 49ers' PR honcho is now Exploring Exciting New Career Options after putting...
Taking our ball and going home
Never get into a pissing match with people who buy ink by the barrel, the saying goes. In other words, you can't win an argument with the media because, well, they're the media, and they get to frame the argument. But maybe there's another option: ignoring them -- at...
The broadcast journalist’s new tool: Skype
CBC Radio is wonderfully, fantastically open to freelancers. But one of the harder aspects of working with them is their understandable reluctance to use phone interview clips. Little wonder: phone conversations sound awful, and nearly always have some irritating...
Taking blogging to the next level
So you've been reading blogs for a while. You get a lot out of it, but you can't shake the nagging feeling that there has to be more to it than this. Surely you ought to be able to read blogs more easily, filter content more effectively, and maybe even start blogging...
No comment
Andrew Coyne has shut down the comments section of his blog: I don't like to be in the censorship business, or picking and choosing which comments to allow and which to reject, and I don't have the time to monitor hundreds of comments every day. I hesitated to do...
Know your audience
Previously, we talked about how speakers (or their staff) need to negotiate a reasonable speaking time with their hosts. It's part of going into every speaking engagement with your own agenda: a clear idea of what you want to accomplish, and the circumstances you need...
It isn’t an invitation. It’s a bargaining position.
Entertainment mogul David Geffen once gave Lynda Obst a key piece of advice: never go into a meeting without an agenda. He didn't mean a schedule. He meant that, before you walk into a meeting, you should know what you want to achieve It's good advice for anyone...
Now here’s an iPod ad Apple isn’t going to run anytime soon.
Unless, of course, there's a hidden market of speech geeks like moi. Jason Kottke offers 50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod, including this one: American Rhetoric has made available audio versions of many famous political speeches, including MLK's "I Have a Dream" and...
Want to change your default WordPress category?
Say you have a bunch of categories, and you'd like the one that's checked by default whenever you launch a new post to be something other than your catch-all category. (For example, if you'd like it to be somethat that doesn't get swamped by posts from a deleted...
PR 101
Don't do this: Ashley MacIsaac now says he doesn't support Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, which is what he told The Chronicle-Herald on Monday. The Cape Breton fiddler called the paper at the first of the week to say he had decided to throw his political support...
“He talked exactly what I wanted to hear.”
Dammit, they've found out: this is exactly how we write political speeches.
There’s no business like show business… unless it’s politics
Hot on the heels of our discussions over what great political candidates stand-up comics would make (triggered by a post by John Rogers)... ...Mike Nichols suggests the story-telling skills of film and theatre are desperately needed in politics, too: In directing a...
Why, yes — I’d LOVE to speak at your event
Public speaking and speechwriting: the essential guides
Looking for advice on public speaking, speechwriting and leadership communications? Here are some of my most comprehensive posts, on topics that people ask me about most often.
