PRatronizer Alert: Have Info for ArnoldIT? Proceed with Caution
July 4, 2013
I am not a journalist. My academic training is in medieval poetry in Latin. I was lucky to get out of high school, college, and a couple of graduate programs. Few people embraced my interest in indexing medieval Latin manuscripts. Among those who made the most fun of my interests were those in journalism school, electrical engineers, and people studying to be middle school teachers.
In graduate school, the mathematics majors found my work interesting and offered grudging respect because one of my relatives was Vladimir Ivanovich Arnold, a co-worker with that so-so math guy, the long distance hiker Andrey Kolmogorov.
I have, therefore, some deep seated skepticism about “real” journalists, folks who carry around soldering irons, and the aforementioned middle school teachers.
Last week I received a semi-snarky email about one of my articles. The person writing me shall remain nameless. I have assembled some thoughts designed to address his question, “Why did you not mention [company A] and [company B] in your article about desktop search. I think this was a for fee column which appeared in KMWorld, but I can’t be sure. My team and I produce a number of “articles” every day, and I am not a librarian, another group granted an exemption from my anti journalist, anti EE, and anti middle school stance.
Let me highlight the points which are important to me. I understand that you, gentle reader, probably do not have much interest. But this is my blog and I am not a journalist.
First, each of my for fee columns which run in four different publications focus on something “sort of” connected to search, online, analytics, knowledge management (whatever that means), and the even more indefinable content processing. I write about topics which my team suggests might be interesting to people younger and smarter than I. In short, PR people stay away. I pay professionals to identify topics for me. I don’t need help from you. I don’t need the PR attitude which I call “PRantronizing.” Is this clear enough? Do not spam me with crazy “news” releases. Do not call me and pretend we are pals. When a call came in yesterday, I was in a meeting with a law librarian. I put the call on the speaker phone and told the caller to know whom she buzzes before she pretends we are pals. The PRatronizer was annoyed. The law librarian said, “None of us on your team are that friendly to you. Heck, I don’t think you are my friend after four years of daily work.” My reaction, “That’s why you are sitting here with me and the PRatronizer is dealing with a firm, ‘Get lost.’”
Second, I try to balance factual information with my own views. I write to avoid legal accusations of various sorts by folks who have to pay for their law school education and bar exam(s). Do you get the absolute bottom-line view I hold of most of the subjects I address? No way, José. I am too old to deal with people who find my opinion sufficient grounds to send me legalese. I am going to be 70 years old and I do my best to provide information within the boundaries of common sense. I get nastygrams, but not too many considering the volume of for fee content 48 articles a year and the hundreds of stories a month we produce for those who buy our content service.
Third, I have to stick within space allocations. We know that long write ups don’t get read. The for fee outfits just tell me 500 words. I, therefore, write to the “hole” the editor wants to fill. Sometimes my editors for whom I have written for decades fix up my draft. One — Marydee Ojala, one of the best online researchers and editors I know — writes great headlines and sticks them on my works of ineptitude. Want an example? I wrote something originally called “Online Education: A Phase Change.” She crafted Gadzooks! It’s MOOCs. Good but not as good as her benchmark headline she used for one of her own articles, “The Finns Again Wake.” I get paid for outputs. The publications do what they need to do with my outputs. Usually a month or three will elapse between the time I ship the article and when it appears in print and/or online. When some of my work appears, I don’t remember writing the article. I am getting old or did I mention that? See. I am forgetful.
Fourth, I depend on eight or nine people to tell me what is a potential topic for a for fee column or a blog post. This month I will be writing about the Hadoop ecosystem, Amazon as an enterprise search vending machine, a catch up on IBM Watson who is now at Wimbledon after laying off 3,000 people a few weeks ago, and what search systems a person needs to use now that Google has abandoned precision and recall as measures of relevance. I don’t need inputs on these topics because PRatronizer don’t know anything about these subjects. Other consultants, in my experience, are usually recyclers so I steer clear of those who offer information for free or on a fee basis. Most of my work is available without charge, so I don’t want over the transom inputs. Did I say this already? Forgetful, aren’t I?
Fifth, I make an effort to approach most topics in a way that is different from the received wisdom that passes for search and content processing information. I don’t want to say the same old thing. I don’t want traffic. I don’t want inputs. I do want to go about capturing my ideas and presenting them because I find the activity more thrilling than playing shuffleboard or golf at the senior citizens’ club. I don’t need to know about the next big thing in search. I use my automated Overflight system for that. I rely on people whom I pay to look at info flows. I do original research, so I can tell a person in an instant how many search and content processing vendors use five social media tools to market their services and 67 that use one or none. Who else has this information? We looked. We could not find it. We then compiled the data using a set of 150 vendors. How much time does a PRatronizer expect me to allocate to someone who wants to talk about another long shot search engine. I have better things to do with my time such as selling it.
Here is straight talk from a retired person who does a handful of columns and pumps out a stream of free blog content. Write your own columns for publishers interested in search? Do a search podcast? Start a search blog?
Don’t look to me for a free lunch.
Stephen E. Arnold
Sponsored by Xenky, the portal to ArnoldIT”
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