Do you read me?

As the authors of public affairs materials — fact sheets, news releases, policy papers and more — we are given the assignment of being comprehensive while being clear and concise. Simple is hard.

Professional writers often get caught walking the “readability” tightrope, balancing between being “too complicated” and accused of “dumbing it down.” Keeping the audience in mind always is the best gauge. That always will help in deciding the level of detail and complexity you may get away with in any document.

Of course, there is the Flesch-Kinkaid two-tier scale of readability developed by the military in the 1970s. The Reading Ease score indicates how easy a text is to read. A high score implies an easy text. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade level indicates the grade a person will have to have reached to understand the text. 

The scoring goes something like this: 

•  90.0–100.0: Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student;

•  60.0–70.0; Easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students; and 

•  0.0–30.0: Best understood by university graduates.

The average reading level of Americans is between eighth and ninth grade. 

Somewhere I heard we should be writing for the level of a sixth grader if we want to be understood. That’s 90 points or higher. For good or bad, that doesn’t seem to be happening in the public affairs world, or even journalism.

Here’s my quick, random readability survey of local writers. Using Flesch-Kinkaid, John Canzano of The Oregonian was the most readable:

 • Mayor Sam Adams: An e-letter sent last week about the Education Urban Renewal Area was ranked at Grade level of 14 with a Reading Ease score of 33. 

•  The Oregonian’s lead story May 21 about condors was ranked at Grade level 11 with a Reading Ease score of 46.

•  KGW website’s top story about a murder at a Hillsboro home was ranked at Grade level 10 with a Reading Ease score of 46. 

•  John Canzano, The Oregonian’s sports columnist writing about Twitter hate mail directed at Steve Blake for missing a three-pointer at the buzzer was ranked Grade level 10 with 
a Reading Ease score of 52.

• This Managing Issues blog last week on strike communications was ranked at Grade level 11 with a Reading Ease score of 42.

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E-Books: Faster Than A Streaking Point Guard

Public affairs managers have to be lightning-quick to track what’s being said about their issues in the news and on the Internet. Here’s a new challenge of amazing dimension: From concept to market, what if an enterprising author produced an e-book about your hot-potato issue in just seven days? 

It happened last week with the arrival of a digital book about basketball sensation Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks star almost unknown to fans at the beginning of the month.

"Linsanity: The Improbable Rise of Jeremy Lin, by Alan Goldsher, was turned around in just 72 hours,” a review on CNET reports. The chilling news — Linsanity is one of seven e-books about Lin already on the market, or soon will be.

If you haven’t followed this “Linstant” star — Lin’s name and play inspires endless puns — then you’d be shocked at the opening lines of the book describing the Harvard grad’s meteoric rise. "On February 16, 2012, Forbes magazine reported that New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin had a bigger footprint on the Internet than Barack Obama."

Lincredible!

“The amazing virtue of the [e-book] project is that it collects all the fragments we’ve heard about Lin on the Internet…and puts them into a narrative,” says Jason Allen Ashlock in a CNN interview. He brokered the deal between Goldsher and publisher Vook. “It gives a sense of back story you can’t find on the web.”

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Online Activism Comes of Age

Public affairs managers would drool if they could sign up 4.5 million people on a petition and convince a score of U.S. senators to support their cause in a single day. That's what Google did as part of a web-wide blackout this week to protest federal legislation intended to protect the intellectual property rights of motion picture producers, but which critics see as an assault on Internet freedom.

There were also 2.4 million tweets protesting the Stop Online Piracy (SOPA) and Protect IP (PIPA) legislation. More than 162 million people visited the totally blacked out Wikipedia English-language pages, with 8 million of those using its search tool to find out how to contact their congressional representatives.

As a result, the preliminary vote on PIPA has been postponed as Senate sponsors say they needed to go back to the drawing board. House Speaker John Boehner slowed down committee consideration of SOPA, citing a "lack of consensus."

Not a bad day's work for a form of media many public affairs professionals and lobbyists ignore or disdain.

The New York Times called this effusion of online activism "a political coming-of-age" for digital media.

Chris Dodd — a former U.S. senator, now head of the Motion Pictures Association of America and a chief proponent of both SOPA and PIPA — called it an "abuse of power" by Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Mozilla, BoingBoing and others. In his statement, Dodd said, "It's a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways of information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users…to further their corporate interests." So how is this different than movie theaters airing commercials about the pitfalls of piracy?

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Social Networking and Trade Associations

Have social networking sites for professionals such as LinkedIn made trade associations obsolete? Maybe not.

Even though some trade associations, such as the Pay Telephone Manufacturers Association, may have lost their allure, many continue to attract members who are interested in networking, sharing knowledge and acting in concert. And emerging industries and professions are spurring creation of new associations.

There are an estimated 92,000 trade and professional associations in the United States, according to a story broadcast by NPR last week. "But as the American workplace changes, some trade associations are having trouble adjusting," reports NPR's Linton Weeks. "Many associations – including those for plastics engineers, carpet cleaners and commercial printers – have struggled to survive."

Weeks notes the association of association managers, ASAE, has turned to futurists for survival tips.

"An association must be in the business of providing just-in-time knowledge to its members," suggests Jim Carroll, author of Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.

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Write a Book to Build a Reputation

Presidential candidates write books to generate buzz and build their reputations. You can, too.

Researching and writing a book can seem daunting. It isn't easy, but it isn't impossible either.

Here are four examples from my list of friends and colleagues:

Scott Ferris, who by day is a lobbyist covering a number of western states, has converted his passion for politics into a book about failed presidential candidacies and their lasting legacies. His first book will be published just before the Iowa presidential caucuses next February. He already is at work on book number two.

• Former Oregon Rep. David Edwards left the legislature, sold his successful research business and started a new career as a film producer by writing an original science fiction screenplay and accompanying novella. Filming on his movie starts this summer in Portland. Edwards is working on a series of small novels, including a prequel to his first film, which he hopes will be a commercial success.
• James Hoggan, founder and owner of Hoggan & Associates, a Vancouver, B.C., PR firm, is writing his third book, tentatively titled "Duped," which describes how the public relations industry has betrayed public trust. His first two books dealt with PR best practices and the battle for truth in the climate change debate. Hoggan's writings have shifted the focus of his PR firm to what he calls "thought leadership."

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