Don’t be so hungry for blog comments that you feed the SPAM monster.

I don’t think that most people are surprised to read statistics that credit SPAM with producing the majority of email traffic worldwide. And if you write a blog that allows comments, you probably have to continually contend with sifting legitimate comments from the SPAM chaff–even if you have anti-SPAM measures in-place.

I’ve never had a problem recognizing SPAM comments, and I thought that SPAM would be easy for anyone to spot. But I’ve recently visited blogs from long-time communication professionals who have inadvertently approved SPAM comments. These are blogs that moderate comments, so I can’t blame this on anyone but the site moderators.

Granted, most SPAM messages aren’t overtly malicious or dangerous; but like weeds, they can detract from the beauty of your blog. Best to deal with them before they spread.

Here is a screenshot of recent SPAM messages that came to this blog. One of them made it through the Akismet spam blocker plugin, but I quickly spotted it as SPAM and sent it to my SPAM folder to await final deletion. The sender names and links alone reveal these as SPAM messages.

Even a quick look at the sender name and return email address are suspicious. When the return email address is a site that clearly promotes a product or service, the SPAM alarm bells should ring loudly!

My hunch is that the comment moderators on my colleagues’ blogs approved the comments without reviewing them closely. Perhaps they were viewing the comments on a smartphone, where the smaller screen prevented them from seeing the sender’s entire return address and link. Or perhaps they were just in a hurry. Either way, their blogs are now part of the SPAM weed-fest.

For some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my career and personal life, and what I should be doing with both.

I have one project that I need to continue with until it is completed. Everything else seems to be less important.

I also have been feeling that it’s time to step aside in the communication field, and not try to stay relevant with the latest generation of communicators entering the field. Many of them most likely don’t see me as being relevant anyway.

I also want to be free to talk about God, and faith, and things that matter to me, but that don’t matter to a lot of people.

Perhaps in a reaction to the tragic sights and sounds related to the Japan earthquake that I’ve seen during the past 24 hours, I made a conscious decision today to NOT be a “citizen journalist” when disaster struck in front of me.

I was driving along a busy back-road, heading home from an appointment, when a black SUV ahead of me spun into the oncoming traffic lane to our left, and struck a vehicle coming the other way. The SUV flipped over on impact and both vehicles skidded to a halt near the shoulder of the road.

I pulled over to the side of the road and immediately dialed 9-1-1. I watched other people scramble to each of the damaged vehicles, checking on the occupants. After providing the location and other details to the 9-1-1- operator, I got out of my Jetta TDI and started to head toward the SUV.

Right then, I noticed another person starting to hold up traffic on the other side of the accident. I decided to do the same on my side of the accident. We took turns alternating between holding up our lane of cars to allow the other person to signal their line of cars to move along the one open lane of traffic.

In a few minutes, I heard the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles and police cars. Once they arrived, I checked that they didn’t need my help, and then left.

As I was walking back to my car, I scanned the accident scene, focusing on the accident victims who were receiving medical treatment. For a brief moment, I thought about taking out my mobile phone and capturing some of the action.

That’s what a “citizen journalist” probably would have done. The images could be sent to the local media, or used on a blog post like this one. I would have received a photo credit, and maybe someone who knows me would tell me that they saw the photo. It’s happened before.

But like I said at the beginning of this post, two things kept me from taking those photos. The first was knowing that the Internet currently is overflowing with images and videos taken by witnesses to the largest earthquake to hit Japan in recorded history. We’ve seen enough death and destruction today, haven’t we?

The second was the momentary eye contact that I made with the middle-aged woman who sat next to the SUV, holding a bandage to her bleeding scalp, as a paramedic worked on her other injuries. She was dazed, and I felt that her expression as our eyes met was communicating something like, “Help, am I going to be okay”?

My journalism training taught me to disassociate myself from an event, so that I could view it with a lessened (I’ll never say complete lack of) personal bias. That would have helped me to snap a photo of the injured woman, even as she looked at me.

I didn’t do that this time. Instead, as I was driving home, I said a prayer for the people involved in the accident.

I think I helped them more that way, and the blogosphere won’t miss those photos very much.

Any current or former journalist understands that pursuit of a story might be risky. The level of risk depends on the circumstances surrounding the story and how the journalist must gather facts and quotes.

Although some people see decisions to embed journalists into battles or war zones as being a stunt, in addition to being legitimate journalism, no one can deny that these journalists are taking risks. The recent news of the sexual assault against CBS correspondent Lara Logan drives that home.

This article by Lauren Wolfe of the Committee to Protect Journalists is a must-read if you want to better understand the risks that some journalists take in the course of documenting world events.

Makes me want to spend more than 50 cents on the newspaper that prints those stories. How about you?

My thanks to former EIU journalism colleague Paul Pinderski, who forwarded part of a post, “Predictions for 1993 (1893),” from the entertaining blog, PaleoFuture: The future that never was.”

This particular blog post recalls the March 25, 1893 predictions of four Newark Daily Advocate journalists as to what the world would look like 100 years in the future.

In this post, I’ll comment on some of those predictions. In my next post, I’ll make some predictions of what the world will be like 100 years from now, and invite you to add your predictions to the list.

Here are four of the predictions that I felt inspired to comment on in this post. I’ve emphasized the portion relevant to my comments:

Prediction:
“So called temperance legislation is a temporary aberration of well meaning but narrow minded men and women with whom sentimentality supplants reason, and who actually thinks morals are an affair of legislation. One hundred years hence personal liberty will be more than a phrase. When it is a fact sumptuary laws will be as impossible as witch burning is now.”

My comment: If we would make all drugs, all conduct legal, our nation would eventually resemble Raccoon City from the movie, “Resident Evil.”

Prediction:
If the republic remains politically compact and doesn’t fall apart at the Mississippi river, Canada will be either part of it or an independent sovereignty, and the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico will be the Riviera of the western continent.

My comment: Maybe, if not for a couple of storms we know as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Take likely natural disasters into account when predicting the future, people.

Prediction:
“I guess that there will be great political and social changes in our country before the year 1993, and that these changes will be advantageous to the community at large. I guess that before the next century shall end the functions and powers of our government will be greatly enlarged; that railroads, telegraphs and many other things now held as private spoil will be public property; that law, medicine and theology will be more reasonable than they now are; that the inventions and discoveries will be greater than we have ever yet had, and that the welfare of mankind will be higher than it is in this age of confusion.”

My comment: Sorry, Newark journalists of yore, We’re STILL confused! So much for the theory of evolution–mankind hasn’t changed.

Prediction:
“Every person of fairly good education and of restless mind writes a book. As a rule, it is a superficial book, but it swells the bulk and it indicated the cerebral unrest that is trying to express itself. We have arrived at a condition in which more books are printed than the world can read. This is true not only of books that are not worth reading, but it is true of the books that are. All this I take to be the result of an intellectual affranchisement that is new, and of a dissemination of knowledge instead of concentration of culture. Everybody wants to say something. But it is slowly growing upon the world that everybody has not got something to say. Therefore one may even at this moment detect the causes which will produce reaction. In 100 years there will not be so many books printed, but there will be more said. That seems to me to be inevitable.”

My comment: This was a wise observation that does hold true today. Thank God for bloggers, all of whom have something to say, and who don’t mind saying it (grin)!

Anyone who has seen an episode of “Hoarders” on the Arts and Entertainment channel (A&E) can understand why I wouldn’t want to be considered one, myself.

The people depicted on that cable television series typically are forced to come to grips with the reality that their continual and obsessive acquisition of…stuff…has made their lives unmanageable. The images are disturbing: Men and women of all ages and backgrounds shuffling among piles of material “goods” either purchased, scavaged or accepted over the years as being too valuable to lose.

But in the acqusition of things, these people lose their lives.

[Insert audible sob here] And now I realize that I am ONE OF THEM!

No, my house isn’t cluttered by mountains of overflowing Hefty bags filled with clothes and other items. It…it’s…my computers. In fact, it’s every computer I touch that can link me to my web-based email providers. Yes, I am a hoarder of…emails! [Insert wail of self-disgust here].

I’ve finally hit bottom, and I’m ready to ask for help.

I’ll need the help because, like the people featured on Hoarders, I have a lot to clean out. We’ll have to start with my main personal email account, commakazi2@yahoo.com. As this screen capture shows, I have more than 27,700 emails in my inbox–nearly 23,000 of which have never been read!

Just as in the cable show, I can give you many excuses why I haven’t disposed of those emails–some of which go back to the early 1990s. “I’ll get to that email tomorrow.” “I’ll need that one someday.” “Oh, that has good information in it.” “If Yahoo! didn’t want me to have this many emails, they would limit my mailbox size.”

It is so easy to justify avoiding the delete button. But now I realize that I have been in email denial, and it is overwhelming me!

The signs of unmanageability are too large to ignore. The questions from colleagues why I haven’t returned their urgent emails–which are buried among the solicitations for fitness clubs, pharmaceutical offers and just about anything imaginable from Ragan Communications. The feeling of helplessness when my SPAM folder is actually more enticing than my inbox, because it contains far less content to review. The way my hands shake as I type in my email login and password “just one more time” and expect the inbox to be empty of new mail.

There you have it. I’ve come clean.

Except for that stash of 8,000 emails that I have hidden in my Comcast email account, and the growing pile in the gmail account, and the hundreds in my work email account.

HELP!!!

CAUTION: This post contains a word that many people find offensive. Because the point of this post is to examine society’s contradictory and confusing attitudes toward the word, I’ve decided to use the word—and to warn you that you will see the word throughout the post.

It’s the “n” word. Nigger. The abbreviated version appears in most recent news articles about a decision by a publishing company to reissue two Mark Twain literary classics and to replace every instance of “nigger” with “slave.”

This Publishers Weekly Online news article uses the word nigger and explains why Mark Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to combine versions of “Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in a volume that replaces the “n” word with the word “slave.”

The announcement already is causing debate among purists who decry changing Mark Twain’s writing, and “social purists” who find the word nigger offensive. According to the Publishers Weekly article, some teachers want to include Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in their classes, but are concerned about offending students and parents because of the “n” word.

I’ve rarely used the word nigger as a racial epithet—I WANT to say that I’ve never used it that way, but I probably have, at some point in my life. My current view of it was molded in the early 1980s while watching the movie, “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip.” Until then, I had laughed and laughed at Pryor’s comedy–which had included a seemingly endless supply of expletives and epithets, including “nigger.”

But I was deeply moved as Pryor talked about a trip he took to Africa in 1979. He said that he was changed after seeing millions of Africans, any of whom could have been his relative or neighbor if it had been in the United States, living as “regular people.” They weren’t “niggers”; they were people, he said. Pryor swore he would never again use the word “nigger” in his stand-up comedy routines, and I also vowed that day never to use the word as a racial epithet.

But that doesn’t mean that I, or you for that matter, should be conflicted or contradictory over whether the word should remain in our literature, music, or everyday conversations.

An interesting point that I learned while researching this post. In 1998, Pryor won the first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Wikipedia quotes former Kennedy Center President Lawrence J. Wilker as saying:

“ Richard Pryor was selected as the first recipient of the new Mark Twain Prize because as a stand-up comic, writer, and actor, he struck a chord, and a nerve, with America, forcing it to look at large social questions of race and the more tragicomic aspects of the human condition. Though uncompromising in his wit, Pryor, like Twain, projects a generosity of spirit that unites us. They were both trenchant social critics who spoke the truth, however outrageous.

Pryor forced us to look at the social question of race. Twain forced us to look at the social question of race.

What about rappers?

It’s not my favorite music genre—by a long shot. But I have a teenaged son who has fought for years to be able to load explicit rap songs on his iPod. It used to only take one utterance of the word nigger on a song for me to make him delete the song, or at least stop playing it in my presence. But what I prevented when he was 15 is not as easy to avoid now that he is 17. Anyway, I think he gets perverse satisfaction out of making his dad squirm. I know that I did when I was his age.

I know a guy who has recorded rap songs. I downloaded his latest project onto my iPod and gave it a listen. Along with the usual themes of sex, violence and drugs, the lyrics were coated with liberal doses of the word nigger. I wondered why a black artist would want to use this derogatory word…so I asked him.

I probably sounded like the 50-something white suburbanite that I’ve become:

I don’t understand something, and I want your honest opinion.

I read today that a book publisher is changing Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, to replace the “n-word”—as they call it—with the word, “slave.” Why don’t you and other rappers consider the word offensive, and something not to avoid in songs and conversation?

I'm 1/2 Irish, 1/2 German. I don't call myself a "Mick Kraut" (or McKraut). Perpetuating the 'n' word doesn't remove the sting, does it?

When he didn’t respond immediately, I started to worry that I had breeched some secret racial social barrier that was supposed to keep us from talking about this sensitive topic. Keep white people from understanding some deep pain—or its antidote—that is only shared among black people.

It turned out that he was only waiting for break time to respond. Silly me!

Good question,

As far as changing the book I would have to disagree, the N word is as much a part of our culture as the book…

Hip hop is a form of art and expression there for there are no boundaries… when I was a kid my grandpa and uncles would use that word as a term of endearment like “yea son this willy right here… he my N-word” so I wasn’t raised on the word being bad, only if u use it in a offensive or challenging way dose the word become a problem for most people…

And its funny but the “ER” rule is always in effect, what that means is “it’s not what u say its how u say it.” Like my BFF would say “im a ni##a not a ni##er lol

“Nigger,” “Nigga,” “Slave.”

Words have their specific meanings, and a remarkable author like Samuel Clemens (a.k.a., Mark Twain) knew the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle differences.

What was good enough for Mark Twain is good enough for me. If my teenaged son can hear a rapper singing about his “nigga posse,” my son should be able to read the word “nigger” in “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer.” I don’t want to offend people, and if anyone in my son’s class would object to the word, use it as a way to link the past with the present. Talk about what it meant to be a “nigger” in the late 1800s. Talk about why people think it’s acceptable or not acceptable to use the word today. That would be educational.

I believe that Mark Twain, if he were still alive, probably would be heartened that we understood what he was trying to say…and to some degree, what he was trying to stop.

Anyone who has ever worked in an organization knows about the “grapevine”—the informal rumor-mill where fact and speculation mix together to breed various strains of truth, half-truths and outright misconceptions.

Strategic, open communications can reduce the grapevine’s activity and influence. This is even more apparent, and important, as companies and their stakeholders (including employees) engage more in the range of communication channels powered by social media tools and platforms such as blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Companies today are looking to join in the conversations occurring within and outside of the company walls. Those conversations can change and move rapidly, which makes it more difficult for company “spokespersons” (either formally designated or ad hoc) to be a trusted participant if they haven’t spent time engaging with others.

Some of the bigger challenges occur in times of change, when information may be less available or less readily shared, and the unknown can seem more apparent and more ominous. Does that describe the situation at Hewlett-Packard, following the sudden resignation on Friday of Mark Hurd, HP’s chairman, chief executive officer and president? (Read more in my previous post.)

A few HP executives have been quoted in articles appearing online. For example, in the U.K., a Guardian newspaper’s online article quoted HP’s general counsel Michael Holston as stating that Hurd engaged in a “systematic pattern” of submitting falsified financial reports to hide a “close personal relationship” with a former HP contractor.

The official HP blog, Data Central, on Saturday offered scant information other than a retread of the corporate statement published on Friday. It stated that “Comments are closed for this post and will not be published.”

Let’s hope that the communications internally at HP were much more transparent. After all, Hurd was not universally loved within HP for his tough business decisions that led to thousands of job cuts over the years. How will HP’s communications staff manage this time of change?

That was exactly the topic of a session led by HP communicators Robin Andrews and Desiree Sylvester in 2005. It was titled, “Keeping employees focused and engaged in times of change,” and it was delivered on the day before Hurd accepted the IABC EXCEL Award at the IABC International Conference in Washington, D.C.

Much of what Robin and Desiree shared in that presentation could hold true today, such as the “communication challenges”:

• Balance focus on delivering day-to-day business vs. change
• Manage leaks in the media
• Everything said internally was expected to be shared externally—very difficult to give employees additional or advance information

Check out the presentation and then let’s see what surfaces from HP’s employees. Will they feel like their feelings and opinions have been heard?

Another more minor observation. I had noticed that on Friday, the day of the Hurd resignation announcement, the HP site was not completely updated. Although the press release was posted under HP’s News Releases section, the company leader page still indicated that Hurd was in charge.

On Saturday, the site was updated to indicate that Cathie Lesjak
was named interim chief executive officer and would remain chief financial officer.

I first met Mark Hurd at the 2005 IABC International Conference in Washington, D.C. He had just joined Hewlett-Packard as its CEO and president, after a successful stint in a similar role at NCR. In fact, Hurd was being honored as the recipient of IABC’s EXCEL Award for his support, encouragement and practice of exemplary communication.

It saddened me to read the news article on Friday under the headline, “HP CEO Hurd resigns after sexual-harassment probe.” To be clear, an investigation by HP’s outside legal counsel and its General Counsel’s Office, overseen by the HP Board determined that no violation of HP’s sexual harassment policy occurred. However, it did find that Hurd violated HP’s Standards of Business Conduct. Read the official statement on the HP website.

As I reviewed some notes I took during Hurd’s address at the 2005 conference, the irony of some of his comments and statements jumped out.

• He had begun his remarks, following a warm applause by the audience, with the comment, "As CEO, you aren't used to hearing people say nice things about you."
• Hurd later told the audience that the term "fired" originated from an incident that involved two early leaders at NCR. Quick summary: NCR head John Patterson allegedly punctuated the termination of Thomas John Watson, Sr. by having Watson's desk taken outside and set ablaze. Hence, the phrase "fired."

I’ve since found many references to the origin of the phrase, “fired,” that don’t point to NCR. It may be another example of Hurd’s misunderstanding of information—like HP’s Standards of Business Conduct.

Two other Hurd comments from his 2005 EXCEL Award address stood out to me today:


• The CEO can't replace the relationship of front-line employees with their immediate supervisors, he said. "The CEO can provide a context [to] try to bring clarity."
• Hurd later said that as he would "promote, demote, recognize and reward people, I tell 30,000 people what I value."


As a highly visible CEO, Hurd has sent a message to his employees with his misconduct, and I hope that it doesn’t erase the good that he did for HP. I also hope he uses this as a lesson in what to value most as a business leader and champion of communication excellence.

What context and clarity can Hurd’s interim successor, Cathie Lesjak, bring to company employees? In my next post, I’ll look back at a presentation on employee communications made at that same 2005 IABC International Conference by HP communicators, and then compare that with what has been communicated in the past couple of days following Hurd’s resignation.

UPDATE 5/14/2010: Follow the Twitter conversation with the hashtag #braudtalk

I’m hosting Gerard Braud‘s Friday Free Media Training Teleseminar. The fun begins at 11 a.m. CDT. Sign up here

This series of teleseminars is helping to raise awareness of his new book, Don't Talk to the Media.

Braud’s tour and communication “lessons learned” about Hurricane Katrina were one of the highlights for me when I attended the 2007 IABC International (now World) Conference in New Orleans. He is savvy, experienced and very entertaining.

Join us and bring your questions!