This week's story in the Baltimore City Paper does a great job of detailing the demise of a once-venerable local newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, but it doesn't have the depth or the space to go into why daily newspapers are in such trouble. While locally, Sun employees blame management (old management, new management), it seems clear to those of us on the Old Media Deathwatch that the problems are far deeper and more complex than just news cannibalization, The Interwebs, and poor decisions at the top. The fundamental problem, it seems to us, is one of complete and fundamental misunderstanding.

This is a misunderstanding not of business, or of reporting and journalism, or of formats and delivery, but a misunderstanding, at base, of why people read newspapers (or anything else) in the first place. For a media that depends on advertising, it seems newspapers have engaged in very little research about what people actually want; instead, they go off on their own tangents (like the Sun's pathetic attempt to reach "the kids" with the horrifying "b" free daily).

This article does the best job I've seen so far of outlining Old Media's inability to grasp the realities of a world in which the old adage "information wants to be free" has actually come to pass. Like record execs, who believe they're actually selling shiny disks in plastic boxes, the newspapers have long believed they're selling papers, magazines, web sites, or--to be charitable--"reportage". But since the dawn of the paper, what people read for is information--sure, it's better when it's well-researched and written, but essentially people just want to know what the heck is going on in the world around them, regardless of how it's packaged.

There is content; there are consumers of content; and there are advertisers who want to reach the consumers of content. It is that simple, and all the bells and whistles matter very little. The newspapers could have survived this by merging their old and new media empires, making no distinction between "web content" and "paper content", and focusing more and more on local news--leaving the AP to worry about the big stuff (which is essentially what's happened anyway, except that now local news is dead too, except for the TV stations, blogs, and community networks on the Web). The problem is, they never figured this out because they never asked. For all the paradigm-shifting rhetoric they spewed over the years, they couldn't see the forest for the trees, and their tragic death (and the news hole it leaves behind in a town like Baltimore) are the tragic result.

Labels: Baltimore, Old Media Deathwatch

I came across this study while doing some research for a branding project that we're working on and I haven't been able to stop laughing since! It turns out that the intrepid researchers in Ohio State's Department of Optometry have just discovered scientific proof that people who wear glasses are seen as smarter by people who don't wear glasses. Wow! Amazing! Who wouldda' thunk? Just consider this:

On average, two thirds of the participating children said they thought that kids wearing glasses looked smarter than kids not wearing glasses. And 57 percent of the participants said they thought kids with glasses appeared to be more honest. Both kids with and without glasses thought other kids wearing glasses looked smarter.

Good news for we four-eyed nerds, I guess! Unfortunately the study did not report results about how likely kids with glasses were to be beaten up by bullies or targeted for wedgies. Hopefully there will be a follow-up study in the future.

As promised, here are the 10 tips that we hope will help anyone looking for a new job not to look like a moron:

1. Read the job posting. Read it again. This isn't that hard. Just read the damn job posting and follow the requests you read there. Cover letter? Resume? Portfolio? If it says that you need those you do. No excuses. Showing that you at least read the job posting shows that you're minimally interested in the job.
2. Know where you're applying. This is another easy one. Find out about the company you're applying to. Are they primarily interested in CPG (consumer packaged goods) advertising? Do they work with non-profits? Do they believe that running around naked while juggling live chickens makes them more creative? Chances are if you spend more than 5 minutes with their web site, you'll find out. Make sure that your contact and your coverletter with them show that you know what you're getting into.
3. Acknowledge the contact person listed in the ad. Putting "Dear ," in your cover letter is a one-way ticket to the trashcan. I know it doesn't seem like much but acknowledging the person who actually posted the ad shows that 1) you care about what you're applying for; 2) you know how to show a modicum of respect; and 3) you aren't just sending out form letters to every job posing you see. It might just be another listing to you but to us it matters a lot AND we have to spend the time looking at what you send. If you don't care about us, why should we care about you?
4. Spellcheck! Come on...how hard is it to pay attention to the dotted red lines under the words that you wrote? In this day and age there's really no excuse for misspelled words. Allowing spelling typos to come through in your resume or cover letter shows that you really just don't give a poo (and that you can't handle the bare essentials of technology). Come on. Just use spellcheck. It ain't that hard.
5. Don't use MS Word "resume" templates. We know what they look like. You're not being "creative" by using the pre-designed templates that come with Word. You're being a sheep and we don't want sheep. If you don't have the design chops to put a little bit of your skill behind the most important document you're sending us, why should we believe that you'd do any different for clients?
6. Write a cover letter that shows that you know the bare facts about the job and the company where you're applying. First of all, "form" cover letters look like form cover letters. We know that you're just filling in the blanks. Give us a little credit, huh? And if you decide to write a custom cover letter, at least mention that you've seen our work or know what we do. You could be the greatest designer or IA in the world, but if you don't show that you can learn the bare essentials about us, you suck. Period.
7. If you're sending an email, use a subject line that makes sense. We've gotten cover letters/resumes from people who used "potato" as their subject line. Huh? What tha...? We get a lot of email. If you use a stupid subject line because you think you'll get noticed, we'll probably think it’s spam. It doesn't make you look creative. It makes you look like a dork.
8. Don't have a stupid free email account screen name. This is a biggie. While it might be cool as an undergrad, having an email address like hottiemcsnottie324@gmail.com isn't exactly going to make us think that you're someone who'd be mature enough to handle the work we're going to give you. Grow up. Use your name (or something close to it). Cute only goes so far. And it ends with when you try to get a job.
9. Don't beg, wheedle, or stalk people. Please. We don't want to be your Facebook friend (unless we hire you). We don't like pleading phone calls. We don't want emails that beg us for an interview. If you've been told "no thank you" then accept it and move on. Anything else smacks of desperation and if you're desperate we have to wonder why. It probably ain't good.
10. Don't lie. We'll find you out. Do you think we don't call references? Do you think we don't check out your URLs? Do you think that we're not going to try to get to the bottom of your statement that you "lead the team that redesigned Amazon.com?" One way or another the truth will out. If you lie in your cover letter or resume, we will discover the truth at some point. And then where will you be? Besides, either you've done the work or you haven't. If you haven't then you're probably not qualified. We'll know.

Bonus tip: If you're a freelancer or small businessperson who sees a job posting and thinks to themselves "Huh! They could probably use what I do! I'll send them some information about my company" don't.

One of the most important lessons about business I ever learned happened one morning in my friend Dan's kitchen when I was 17. We were hanging around on a Saturday morning, doing what high school kids do, when his dad came in and plunked down a pile of about 40 envelopes on the kitchen island.

"Want to help me hire my new secretary?" he asked with a wry grin.

Dan's dad was a very successful business consultant who had applied his degree in counseling with his MBA to carve out a niche consulting with family businesses. It was a brilliant idea because he could tackle both the family dynamics part of the problem and the business issues the family was facing. He had written a book about his work and because he was the only published author I knew at the time, I thought he was a really cool guy.

"Sure!" I said, feeling proud to be asked to help in this important task.

"OK! Here's what you do:"

"If the envelope has a hand-written address, throw it out."
"If the envelope has any errors on it, throw it out."
"If the envelope's OK, open it up. If there's no cover letter, throw it out."
"Next, check the resume. If there are any typos or it's sloppy, throw it out."

Sounded easy enough. Soon I had reduced the pile of envelopes from a hefty forty to a more manageable pile of about four neatly-printed cover letter/resume combos. I handed them over to my friend's dad.

"Thanks!" he said, "I'll take it from here."

I remember just sitting there and chuckling to myself in disbelief. I'd reduced the applicant pool down to the top 10 percent without even having looked at a single piece of job experience or checked a single qualification! Me, a 17 year-old high school student! I was blown away and I never forgot the lesson.

Look: if you're applying for a job you'd better have an understanding of what that job's about and how you're going to demonstrate from the very first contact how you're qualified for that job. My friend's dad was hiring a secretary and basic secretarial skills such as neatness, good spelling, and knowing proper form were the absolute basic requirements of the job. Those qualities were supposed to be a given. All the other stuff -- job qualifications, prior experience, computer experience, education -- mattered only after the applicants showed they could do the basics of the job by appropriately creating and packaging their resumes.

I never forgot this, but it seems to me that based on the "applications" I've seen recently while we've been trying to hire for two senior positions, it's a lesson that a lot of other people never learned.

It's not really all the important what the positions are (let's just say they're both creative management jobs that pay very well) , but both of them had a few simple stipulations:

1. Include a portfolio;
2. Include a cover letter that demonstrates you understand our company;
3. Pay some modicum of attention to the prerequisites for the job;
4. Being detail oriented is a must.

That's it. The basics. You'd think it'd be easy.

You'd be wrong.

We got resumes without portfolios. We got resumes without cover letters. We got resumes from people who obviously didn't have the slightest idea what we did. We got resumes from people who lacked the basic experience we were looking for. We got emails with psychedelically-creative (and incomprehensible). We got resumes rife with typos and cover letters that were basically form letters. We even got one angry email from a guy who swore that he'd spoken to "Janet" and "Janet" had assured him that he met the criteria. We don't employ anyone named Janet.

On one hand it made it easy to quickly cull out the bad applicants. On the other hand it made me sad. Why? Because some of the ones that made it into the trash can may have actually been nice people. They may have actually had incredible portfolios. But we'll never know because they blew it by not being able to do a few simple things.

I'd hate for this to happen to anyone else. The frustrating thing is that the basic stuff anyone needs to do to at least get considered for a job aren't all that hard. Heck, the things that'll get you in the door are easy enough that even a retarded monkey could handle them. We ain't talkin' brain surgery here. All we're talking about is demonstrating that you can handle the basics of any job in business and that you've shown your potential employer a little respect by understanding what they're looking for and not wasting their time. Simple stuff, but stuff that so many people seem to be incapable of handling.

That's the lesson I've learned. Tomorrow I'll share my Top 15 Tips To Getting A Creative Job That Even A Cognitively Challenged Monkey Could Follow.