“Pay Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain”
Okay, so I’m paraphrasing that classic line from The Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls open the curtain in the Wizard’s palace, revealing that the Wizard is none other than a man operating a bunch of bells and whistles, projecting an image on a wall. And it’s a thorough disappointment for Dorothy and her friends. Well, until the man behind the curtain saves the day by demonstrating to the Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow and Dorothy that what they yearn for is closer than they thought.
We recently brought on a new team member. He’s a former business reporter with the Jerusalem Post, and we expect terrific things from him. And in fact, he is already doing a great job, just a couple weeks into his career here.
And he and I haven’t yet spoken about how it feels for him to be on this side of the story, versus the journalist’s side. But I have to think it’s a bit of shell-shock for him. And one could become concerned that maybe someone in his position would be turned off by seeing what we do here, in terms of crafting messages, training spokespeople and writing news releases. I mean, it could be a real cynicism-inducing development in one’s life, no?
But that’s where I believe we can do some seriously good work. If we can conduct ourselves in a way that we are focusing our attention on communicating credible information on behalf of our clients, rather than "spinning" their story to push a less-than-honest agenda, we can demonstrate to this new employee that in fact, we are not "on the other side." We are on the same side.
If we can succeed in doing this, we become a resource to – and not the enemy of – the media. And since that’s why our clients are hiring us in the first place, we may as well follow through, right?
Just like the "Wizard" wound up helping the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin-man without having to be more than he really was …
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