Money for Nothing (And Your Speech for Free)

We know as well as anyone that speechwriting has been traditionally undervalued in the marketplace, but a new service, brought to our attention by Vital Speeches guru David Murray, has literally taken it to a new low. Speeches4less claims they'll write your entire speech in 5 days and only charge you $5 per 500 words.

art from clipartheaven

David Murray went right to the source, and penned a two-part article (here and here) on the company, explaining why what they're doing isn't just bad for speechwriters, it's bad for everyone. This is a must-read for our friends in the speechwriting community. "Speechwriting isn’t expensive because clients are stupid enough to pay. It’s expensive because it (ostensibly) involves talented writers spending real time getting to know clients who really want to communicate something specific to a particular group of people." Hear, hear!

Babble Bubble Trouble

One of our favorite word-nerd articles of the year was the recent New York Magazine cover story about what was cutely referred to as the “babble bubble”—the explosion of big-think, TED-like conferences and the mass speechifying they have spawned. What was most interesting to us was the big-think questions the piece spawned: Is this bubble likely to pop relatively soon, as writer Benjamin Wallace suggests, a fad to soon fade away? Or are these fabulous confabs looking like an enduring fixture?

To get some expert perspective, we asked some of our speechwriting pros about the implications for our industry, and unsurprisingly, their opinions led in many different directions.

James Buchanan, a business journalist, writer, and editor, is in favor of anything that encourages intellectual rigor and affords us the time to contemplate new ideas. “In the modern digital world, communication and data/information sharing happens so fast that we barely have time to think about the implications of what we hear. TED and others provide a moment of time and clarity where we can hear what others think, they can explain their insights and the implications of those insights, and we can develop our own opinions. As a writer, this can only be of help. Ideas spark books, which spark ideas, which spark books, and on and on.”

On the other hand, Michael Gural-Maiello, an accomplished business writer who writes regularly for Forbes, comes in on the other side of the fence. “The undoing of these people is their unapologetic elitism; look at the pathetic complaints about all of the ‘betas’ being let into the room. I think the saddest observation [in the article] was that the TED Talk has replaced the book as the ultimate ambition for somebody who wants to express themselves. That's certainly evidence that we've lost site of the breadth and scope of human experience. Or maybe it's just easier to talk for 18 minutes than it is to write 300 coherent pages.”

In the middle we have Assaf Kedem, an award-winning speechwriter and communications strategist, who takes a historical view of these conferences. “Confabs have been around for longer than one may realize. Their modern-day version, in some respects, is a reincarnation of the historical town meetings that date back to previous centuries. Today’s ‘fabulous confab’ is more exclusive, glamorous, and intellectually specialized. But whatever form it takes, the essential confab is here to stay so long as there is a marketplace of ideas to be exchanged.”

As the Millions noted yesterday, it’s suddenly fashionable to hate on TED. But hating is still discussing, and as long as we’re doing that, we don’t think the reign of the “babble bubble” is likely to wind down anytime soon.

Guest post: Furious George

BY DAVID MURRAY

This article originally appeared on the Atlantic website

"I never saw myself being like my Dad," Mitt Romney told The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn in 2007. "Now that I'm older, I see a tape of myself giving a speech, I say, 'Holy cow, I'm turning in to my Dad.' I look like him a lot. I talk like him a lot. The things I value are very much the things he valued."

It's a nice sentiment for a son to have.

Described by a reporter for Detroit magazine in 1968 as "a man who says in private what he says in public—and in much the same way," George Romney's pronouncements were as memorable as his son's are forgettable, a fact dramatized by a sampling of some of the old man's early speeches, housed in the National Automotive History Collection at the Detroit Public Library.

In the 1950s and 1960s, at the very height of American automobile dominance, and at a moment when when his American Motors Corporation teetered on the edge of insolvency, Romney was calling out the Big Three automakers for a lack of engineering innovation—"most present-day automobiles are the lineal descendents of the ox-cart," he said—and for pandering to consumers' egos.

"Cars 19 feet long, weighing two tons, are used to run a 118-pound housewife three blocks to the drug store for a two-ounce package of bobby pins and lipstick," Romney told the Motor City Traffic Club of Detroit in a 1955 speech titled, "The Dinosaur in the Driveway."

He showed cartoon illustrations of huge cars bulging through garages comically redesigned, with elastic walls and "bustle style" doors, to contain them.

Then he challenged the audience directly.

"Do you have an inferiority complex that makes you buy much more car and bulk than you need just to make you look successful? Pierre Martineau, research expert of the Chicago Tribune, says the desire to look successful is a top car buying motive. Of course it's true. But why not have others think you're smart as well as successful? And certainly smart car buyers buy today what others are going to think is smart tomorrow.... Satisfying inferiority complexes through buying oversize, overweight cars is becoming obvious and therefore pointless."

Now try to imagine Mitt Romney delivering a message like that to a hostile crowd.

By 1959 the elder Romney, in the midst of pulling off a great turnaround at AMC, was being celebrated with a cover article in Time and many other articles and awards. He was being drafted to work on important committees in Detroit and statewide. And there were lots of high-profile speaking opportunities, where Romney switched from salesman to provocative statesman. In a speaking style described by his 1960 biographer as having "a certain awkward quality of innocent, unsophisticated sincerity that strikes a friendly chord with listeners," Romney championed candor as a virtue of democracy.

"As far as I am concerned, one of the greatest deficiencies we have in this country is the unwillingness of people to say what they think," he said in his first speech of that busy year, to the Executives Club of Chicago. "Too many people limit their expressions to those things that they think their groups think they ought to say. I believe this is one of the real problems in America. We are too concerned about what it will do to our business, what it will do to us socially or politically, and we are mouthing things we don't really believe, or not saying them at all."

Not George.

"We have corporate executives and white-collar employees," he told a crowd of that very makeup in Chicago, "who have become political eunuchs and who have substituted corporate citizenship and hope of economic advancement for their priceless heritage of independent political action."

In this speech, Romney claimed that the nation was in only the "early stages" of the American Revolution: "We have been too proud of our partially established political freedom. Political freedom for all was not established except as a concept and a goal when our country was founded. Indeed, the idea that the country should be governed by those who owned it was the basis of voter qualification in early elections. It took decades to broaden the right of political consent to include males without property. It took until 1920 to establish voting rights for women. Millions of American citizens are still denied their God-given political rights because of race."

He declared the biggest problem in the United States was too much concentration of power—in government, in unions, and in corporations alike.

"By the labor people I'm considered anti-union; by the big corporations I'm considered anti-big business. That's because any time you raise the question of power in this country, the immediate answer they give to knock you down is that 'you're against bigness and we've got to have bigness because only through bigness can you get efficiency and get all these goods.' That's the stock answer and that seems to satisfy everybody," he said.

"The hard facts are that any power, if it is excessive, is dangerous because somebody is going to abuse that power, sooner or later...."

Romney called for the abolition of cross-industry coalitions of unions and he called for the breakups of some big companies, to reach some minimum number of companies required for each industry to be truly competitive.

"It is all very well to speak smugly of the virtues of competition and assume that all you have to do is applaud it and be in favor of it," he told the business executives at the Economic Club of Chicago. "If we believe in competition, we must give it more than lip-service, and actively seek to keep it vigorous and fight the forces that restrain it."

Romney harped in 1959—and for the rest of his life—on the need to expand what he called "voluntary cooperation," or independent citizens gathering to solve problems. "I believe that participation in politics by unions and corporations as organizations is morally, politically, and economically wrong," Romney said. "We need to create a means by which people can express their concerns about these problems as citizens and consumers ...."

Romney concluded his last speech of 1959 by predicting that the "sixties will be a decade of basic decision" and challenging his listeners to be better human beings: "In the world, we need to decide just how deeply we believe in human brotherhood, and just how much of our comfort and time we are willing to give up in its behalf to help others help themselves, and how much energy and courage we want to put into that effort. I believe America is assigned the great world mission in brotherhood and that its pursuit can gain for us as a people inexpressibly more happiness than the materialism that is threatening to possess our hearts."

Again: It's hard to imagine Mitt making such an appeal.

Of course the father and son, no matter how close and how mutually admiring, had divergent upbringings. The comparatively hardscrabble, farm-raised, self-made father and the prep-schooled auto-industry scion were bound to be two different men. And maybe George was destined to be the more vivid.

But what is a safety-minded son to do?

"Every time I go to a debate, I write my dad's name at the top of the piece of paper on the stand," he said recently, "just reminding myself of his great character, his integrity, the vision he had for America."

Maybe he should take more than George Romney's name to the stage. Maybe he should take a whole speech.


David Murray is editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, a monthly collection of the best speeches in the world. He also blogs about the writing life at Writing Boots.

Book Spotlight: 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean

We're doing another new feature here on the BloGG: book spotlights! Our inaugural title is 10 Steps to Writing a Vital Speech by Fletcher Dean, one of the most seasoned and successful speechwriters in the world. This detailed, comprehensive, definitive guide was published by Vital Speeches of the Day, the most respected brand in the field. It's a fantastically thorough resource, and of course would make a terrific gift for any public speaker or communications pro on your holiday shopping list. 

Gotham Ghostwriters asked Fletcher Dean a few questions about his speechwriting life and his writing process. 
How did you get your start as a speechwriter?

It was entirely unplanned. I was an English major who turned to journalism to make a living, then I traded that for a better-paying job in corporate America doing mostly internal communications work. They thought I was a good writer and offered me a chance to do speechwriting, a position I hadn't even known existed in the company. Obviously, that was a career-changer for me, and I’ve never really looked back. I've been speechwriting for almost twenty years.

Do you have a favorite speech you've written? 

One of my favorites was written for Earnie Deavenport, the former CEO of Eastman Chemical Company and true Southern gentleman. He was scheduled to give a speech in New York almost exactly a year after 9/11, just blocks away from Ground Zero. For many attendees, this was their first time in New York since 9/11, so terrorism was front and center in their thoughts. We used that mind-set to our advantage, crafting a speech titled “Terrorism Is Not Our Greatest Threat.” It captured attention from the very beginning because it begged the question: if not terrorism, what is our greatest threat? This was a rare case where the first words I wrote of the speech were the title.

Putting the mechanics of the speech aside, what makes up your routine when you sit down to write? 

I divide my process into several steps. Sometimes they overlap, but I make sure to hit all of these at some point and in this order: 

• Learn as much as possible about the audience and its concerns. 
• Learn as much as possible about the topic. 
• Discover the common problem or concern. 
• Determine what we want the audience to do or believe about that problem.

Once I've accomplished all of that, I begin to craft some key messages and put that into a format that engages the audience. Then I write. Then I edit. And re-edit and re-edit and re-edit some more. I edit more than I write. Sometimes I think the job should be called “speech editor” instead of “speechwriter.”

Your book is very comprehensive, but can you suggest any other resources for speechwriters or aspiring speechwriters?

The Internet has not only revolutionized the way speechwriters do their jobs but also the way they interact with and learn from one another. There are several good blogs out there—from Jeff Porro, Nick Morgan, and Vital Speeches, just to name a few—that showcase real writers doing real work. There are many, many more, and the Internet is facilitating the development of a real community of speechwriters. That’s the easy way to learn about the profession. Then think seriously about some training. I started going to the Ragan Speechwriters Conference years ago and highly recommended it. (Full disclosure: I’m speaking there again in 2012.) There are also some good speechwriting coaches out there, like Joan Detz in Philadelphia and Wendy Cherwinski in Ottawa. Finally, though it may seem cliché, you learn by doing. There is no better way to learn to write than by sitting down and writing.

Around the Word

In defense of adverbs: Though Stephen King said, "The road to hell is paved in adverbs," one writer is coming to the much-maligned part of speech's defense. Atlantic writer Lily Rothaman argues that many famously, fantastically memorable phrases would be duds without adverbs -- would we "give a damn" about Rhett and Scarlett without "frankly"? Where do you weigh in on the adverb debate?

NYPL woes: The New York Public Library has been a vital resource for scholars, writers, and readers in NYC for over 100 years. But with budgets tightening and a large renovation planned, the library is in an unprecedented state of upheaval. Check out the Nation's in-depth article on the changes at America's largest library.

So-so sentences: Is "so" the new "um"? That's the question the Chronicle of Higher Education's Lingua Franca blog is asking, after the New York Times pointed out a pattern of starting sentences with "so" earlier this year. Microsoft employees take credit for starting the "so" phenomenon, but its been picked up by everyone from politicians to NPR (a chronic offender). What do you think about this connector-turned-sentence starter? Is "so" so over?

For the policy wonk who has everything: The gift-giving season is upon us, and you might be debating which books to put on your shopping list. The Guardian has compiled several different lists of the best books to give in 2011, but our favorite is the list of political books. From manifestos to biographies to political thrillers, you're sure to find something on this list for the current events connoisseur in your life.

Gerson Speech-Critiques Obama

By Dan Gerstein

Michael Gerson's latest Washington Post column this week critiquing President Obama's rhetorical performance in his first year in office is a must-read for speech groupies and political followers alike.  The former Bush speechwriter (and Gotham friend) gives a particularly thoughtful voice to an increasingly common complaint about the Speechifier-in-Chief — that Obama's speeches as president have not been nearly as inspiring or effective as his campaign oratory.  More important, although it was not Gerson's intent, his analysis also explains why the Obama speech mythology and the Olympian expectations it created were both unfair to him and unsustainable in office.

Gerson uses that myth as the peg for his argument, noting early on that New York Magazine had set up Obama as "our national oratorical superhero — a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR)." He goes on to write that Obama's rhetoric as president, by comparison, has been workman-like, unmemorable, and unmoving, pointing to two of Obama's highest profile addresses (his inaugural and his fall Afghanistan speech) as examples.  Even worse, Gerson says, Obama's cool-headed, intellectual style has too often come off as simultaneously too academic and arrogant, even veering "toward messianism."