As I’ve often said, communication is part art and part science, and the announcement yesterday that terrorist Osama Bin Laden has been killed offers an important lesson in the science of communication.

The specific science is psychology, and the specific lesson is that a communicator needs to plan beyond the emotion and hoopla which follow a major victory or defeat.

Dead Terrorist Messages
In the hours following the announced death of Osama Bin Laden, news reports and television pundits focused on the immediate reactions to the announcement by officials and the general public—which in the U.S. involved a feeling of relief and outbursts of celebratory chanting by citizens.

It would be easy to get swept up by the excitement, but if you did, you might overlook some important realities. The search for Bin Laden intensified after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but even with a massive outpouring of military and intelligence agency resources, it took a decade to locate and eliminate him. The communication lesson is to keep your eye on the entire situation at-hand, because it continues to evolve.

In the case of the “war on terror,” during the years when we were pursuing Bin Laden, he became less and less involved in the operational side of his al qaeda terrorist organization. So we have removed a figurehead of the organization, but we have not mortally wounded its organization. In fact, in the short-run, we may see increased terrorist activity, as Bin Laden “wannabe’s” attempt to increase their “street cred” among fellow terrorists through new acts of terrorism.

Unless those harsh realities are communicated to, and understood by, the general public, the premature celebrations of Sunday evening and Monday morning may soon turn to anguished cries and disillusionment.

Moby Dick
In 1851, American author Herman Melville published a novel titled, “The Whale,” which we today know as the classic, “Moby Dick.” One of the more commonly discussed of the novel’s many themes is the obsession of Captain Ahab to kill the white whale to revenge the sinking of the captain’s previous ship, and the loss of his leg.

Let’s compare Ahab’s obsession to kill the whale with the desire of two U.S. Presidents to capture or kill Bin Laden. In the case of Captain Ahab, the individual obsession killed the individual. In the case of Presidents Bush and Obama, public opinion has been divided as to whether the investment of millions of dollars and hundreds of lives has been worth the results. Negative public reaction to President Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq helped lead to Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. You might say that Bush’s obsession with Obama (and Saddam Hussein for that matter) led to his eventual political “death.”

If you work as a communicator for someone who is exhibiting tendencies toward obsession over a particular issue or goal, remember these three points:

• Obsession tends to make someone microfocus attention. Keep the big picture firmly in mind.
• People are impatient, so if something is going to take long to accomplish (or remain open-ended for quite some time), explain that clearly at the start, and then regularly as you go along. That might cause some people to spout off, but you will face far less antagonism from the majority of your audience than you would by announcing unrealistic (and unachievable) deadlines.
• Obsession can be a career-killer (or literal killer in the case of Bin Laden and Captain Ahab). Find ways to make your boss understand the current and potential consequences of continuing on a path that won't pay off, or celebrating a victory too soon.

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)!

The laughter and memories were flowing like the kegs of college days long ago. After the celebration of life on Saturday for former Eastern Illinois University journalism professor Dan Thornbugh, a group of EIU journalism graduates and teachers reconvened at Roc’s, a Charleston mainstay of drinking and life-altering conversations.

During a brief lull in the conversation, Tess Norton, a colleague from the Eastern News days in the late 1970s, suddenly exclaimed loudly to me and everyone else in the bar:

“I know who you look like…Rahm Emmanuel!”

Your personal politics aside, would YOU want to be likened to a man whose reputation as a mean-mouthed, political mad-dog proceeds him wherever he claims to live on any given day?

Tess insisted that she only means that my face and hair resemble Rahm’s. I don’t see it; how about you?

Have you ever been likened to someone when that comparison wouldn’t necessarily be considered a compliment? How did you handle it?

Among the solicitations, updates and other items in my personal email inbox on Thursday, one mattered most:

Subject: [Eiujou] D.T. has died

Professor Emeritus Dan Thornburgh, the founder and former chairman of the Eastern Illinois University (EIU) Journalism Department, died at the Odd Fellow-Rebekah Home in Mattoon, Ill., where he had been in hospice care for a few weeks after undergoing surgery for a broken hip.

As the news spread, my journalism school friends began circulating emails with their reactions to the news, and their memories of D.T. This blog is where I’m most comfortable leaving my thoughts, and I needed a little time to sort through the feelings and to recall some of my experiences with this wonderful man/professor/leader.

In October 1976, I walked for the first time into the office of EIU’s daily student newspaper, the Eastern News. (Its name was changed some years later to the Daily Eastern News.) The newspaper’s editorial, advertising and pre-press production functions were housed at that time in the basement of the Student Services Building.

The newspaper’s faculty advisor, John David Reed, and veteran student editors filled me in over time regarding the history of the EIU Journalism Department. It is not an exaggeration to say that much of what I took for granted as a freshman journalist—the facilities, the faculty, the curriculum, the daily newspaper, even the journalism major and department—derived from the vision and determination of D.T.

The photo of me and D.T. that accompanies this post was taken in April 2009 at the 50th annual journalism student recognition banquet. D.T. was honored that night for his many contributions to the EIU Journalism Department, the university, and the city of Charleston. Speakers included former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar and newspaper publishers, editors and reporters.

It was D.T. who organized the first student recognition banquet 50 years ago, and he was a former Charleston City Council member, served in the local Rotary Club, and was named Charleston “Outstanding Citizen of the Year” in 1971.

Personally, I learned a few important lessons from D.T.; perhaps none as important as his example of being an engaged member of the community. He helped me to understand that a journalist didn’t have to disconnect from the people and organizations around him; in fact, those connections could make a better, more rounded journalist—and a better human being.

D.T. used his understanding of local history, politics and people to bring context to stories and issues. I remember times when he would pull me aside to provide insight into a story I was pursuing. As he spoke, his soft blue eyes, occasionally crackly southern Illinois twang and warm chuckle would mesmerize me. It felt like I was being schooled by a combination of Andy Griffith, my grandfather and Ben Bradlee.

I didn’t get many As in my college coursework. That was partly due to my declining interest in classroom learning, and more likely due to my desire to spend time at the Eastern News office or a local bar like Ike’s, Sporty’s or Roc’s.

But I earned an A in Communication Law, which was taught by D.T. He made the course relevant and challenged us to debate, think and learn. That A is more a testament to D.T.’s teaching style than to my effort.

Before you submit this as proof of D.T.’s case for sainthood, let’s add that D.T. could be stubborn. When his vision for the Journalism Department or the Eastern News differed from someone else’s, sparks could fly. But that passion never led to the kind of gutter-sniping, vitriolic language and insinuations that has marred popular debate in the United States over the past 20 years.

I don’t look back at my time and experiences with D.T. through a rose-colored lens. I use a journalist’s lens, where the pros and cons, facts and half-truths, lies and distortions are sifted, refined and reported with an eye toward truth and accuracy. That’s how D.T. would want it. That’s how he taught it.

This story ends with the death of a good man, a positive contributor to society, and a credit to the journalism profession. But because of D.T., many thousands of important stories will continue to be written in the decades to come.
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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!

I happened to see on Yahoo! that today is World Press Freedom Day.

According to Yahoo!:

World Press Freedom Day (May 3) was created in 1997 to “promote the free flow of information and its activities in the interest of press freedom, media independence, and pluralism” and to raise awareness of the dangers faced by journalists who are harassed, imprisoned, and even killed for telling the truth. Unesco hosts an annual event which serves to remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression—print or the Internet.

Bloggers are included in the list of journalists being celebrated on the Yahoo! site, including:

• Wael Abbas - Egypt–Blogger and human rights activist who blogs at Misr Digital
• Amira Al Hussaini - Bahrain–Journalist, editor, and blogger
• Yoani Sánchez - Cuba–Philologist and blogger known for her critical portrayal of life under the Cuban government

I thought it was interesting and slightly amusing that Wael Abbas was the first journalist listed by Yahoo! under the heading, “Celebrating Journalists.” Yahoo! had shut down two of his Yahoo! email accounts, calling him a “spammer.”

To all of my friends in journalism, today is your day. Write on!