We’ve alluded in the past to Edward Tufte’s screed against The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. To summarize, he argues that PowerPoint forces presenters to dumb down their arguments to bullet points, eliminating logical structure in favor of lists where everything carries the same weight, and to severely limit the amount of information the audience receives through any one chart or graph.

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint was written in 2003. Last week The Wall Street Journal brought us news that Tufte’s criticisms have caught on—with a few. For example, T.X. Hammes argues in the Armed Forces Journal that PowerPoint has undermined the military’s whole decision-making culture: Read the rest of this entry »

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The writer, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Business Publications Editors (ASBPE), contributes frequently to the ASBPE blog on techniques for improving editorial quality. This post is abridged with his permission.

Given the staff cutbacks that face almost every type of publications enterprise, it has become more important than ever for publications managers to assess their staffs’ productivity. Here is a basic approach to the task.

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We’ve written in the past about the PR value of publishing a book and about strategies for doing so. In that spirit we bring you this post from Britta Alexander, President of EAT MEDIA. The post originally appeared, in a longer form, on the EAT MEDIA blog.

As a former literary agent, friends and family are constantly asking me advice on how to get their book published. And since I end up giving out the same information over and over again, I thought I’d share a recent email I sent to a friend. Chris emailed me because his friends have a b-to-b title they’d like to shop around. Read the rest of this entry »

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Since great swaths of the World Wide Web were developed by freelance geeks, it should come as no surprise that a robust community of writers and techies have devoted page upon page to maximizing their productivity and applying the lessons learned to their—and your—entire lives.

The productivity genre offers publishing managers numerous “hacks” that can improve productivity online or off. The king of the hill, offering more than a dozen posts daily and a good view of the rest of the field, is Lifehacker, part of Nick Denton’s Gawker blog empire. It’s heavy on free downloads for users of Windows, Mac, or Linux operating systems, as well as cross-platform and Web-based solutions that improve workflow with e-mail, websurfing, blogging, and document-sharing. Its editors have created their own open source programs to add to Google’s application suite (e.g., “Better Gmail”).

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This following is excerpted with the author’s permission from a post that appeared recently on the MailerMailer blog.

The economic forecast for 2009 looks dismal. Given the jitters of the market, reviewing your forecasts more frequently throughout 2009 will serve you well. Use this timetable as a guideline for the next six months.

1. January: Prepare your annual forecast. If your market segment is too unpredictable, forecast through June. Prepare monthly targets in line with your forecast.

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Lots of readers of The Wall Street Journal e-mailed Monday’s interesting and timely piece about the “new class of worker,” the Nearly Autonomous, Not in the Office, doing Business in their Own Time Staff—nanobots, for short.

It’s an especially hot topic among publications managers. Increasingly, staff members want to telecommute to save gas and time, share childrearing responsibilities, and focus less on office politics and more on the task at hand. Not all senior managers are eager to manage nanobots. The usual sticking point: measuring productivity of the worker you seldom see.

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My colleagues and I are fans of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit outgrowth of the St. Petersburg (FL) Times that is devoted to improving the craft of journalism. So it’s in the spirit of collegiality that I’m responding to Joe Grimm, who writes “Ask the Recruiter” for Poynter Online.

A reader asked: Read the rest of this entry »

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What better time to introduce a new product or service than when people really care about value? Like now, for instance.

This is the point that Andrew Razeghi makes in his article “Innovating Through Recession.” Razeghi, who teaches at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, asserts that innovations are not only more necessary and valuable during a downturn, but also easier and cheaper to manage than at other times. Some notable examples:

• In February 1930, just months after the great stock market crash, Henry Luce launched Fortune magazine. Over the next seven years, subscribers rose from 30,000 to 460,000. Fortune succeeded, Razeghi says, because it “made a uniquely important contribution to its customers’ lives” with articles they could find nowhere else.
• Miracle Whip, introduced by Kraft at the 1933 World’s Fair, gave consumers a scintillating alternative to mayonnaise at a time when limited family income often meant tedious meals.
• Applying the same basic principle to women’s cosmetics, Charles Revson and his colleagues introduced a glossy line of nail polish in shades never seen before.

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Some people find negotiating more painful than sitting in the dentist’s chair—and crave Novocaine or even general anesthesia for them both. But don’t shirk either one when its time arrives.

Unlike, say, buying a car, dealing with freelancers isn’t a zero-sum game. In fact, collegially and openly discussing rates, tasks, schedules, workflow, and other project aspects prevents potential conflicts and creates pleasant long-term working relationships.

Focusing frankly on real goals and constraints removes emotion from negotiations, letting you and the freelancer mutually accommodate reasonable requests. And showing respect for freelancers makes you a favored client, earning “above and beyond” effort when it’s truly needed. For example, don’t make freelancers play “20 Questions” to determine basics such as where work will be performed, whether travel time or meetings are involved, if research will be compensated, and the sort of editing required (proof, copy, substantive, etc.). Don’t be manipulative, either—for example, promising future work in exchange for a lowered rate.

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Ever wonder why your freelancers are hypersensitive to changes in explicit agreements about payment, deadlines, or, really, anything? There’s a good reason for their mistrust. Too many companies try to take advantage of them.

It happened to me recently. I was solicited to write for a nationwide Web site. There were several red flags, the reddest of which was that during the recruiting/vetting process—during which I spoke to at least five people of increasing seniority in the organization—nobody would show me a contract. That’s only available after the whole startup process, when you’re ready to post your first item, when you can read it and click OK.

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