From Tolstoy to Twitter…short form reporting.

Where have all the words gone…long time passing.

My apologies to Bob Dylan, but in listening recently to his anthem to the Sixties, I was reminded how differently we communicate today than when I began in the PR business. No, not quite in the era of the famous Russian novelist, but yes, in the same days Dylan was still acoustic. And contrary to many of my generation, I’m thinking in general, it’s a good thing. I agree it would be hard to imagine “War and Peace” rendered down to 160 characters (letters not people), and not nearly as enjoyable for a long winter read. Some things do continue to be best communicated in the long form as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs.

But when it comes to reporting breaking news, and breaking it fast to a global audience, even if in 140 characters, news organizations have new competition from the general citizenry as reported in Sunday’s NY Times coverage of the attacks in Mumbai. “At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word “Mumbai” in it was being posted onto Twitter, a short-message service that has evolved from an oddity to a full-fledged news platform in just two years.”

It’s not just the news organizations that need to fear being replaced by Joe and Jane average citizen with a cell phone and a quick dexterity, it’s also the PR practitioners that feed them. We’d better learn to not only understand the new technology of communication, but the new short form reporting it demands of us. Communicating shorter doesn’t have to mean ‘pigeon or license plate English.’ It means being more concise and succinct while still being literate. It might be as simple as sparing us all the gratuitousness and jargon; and just telling something straight and honestly. No, not eliminating entirely that which makes the English language so beautiful in its description and imagery, but to simply cut out the superfluous and proselytizing…to inform and not to sell. One of my favorite scenes in the movie, “A River Runs Through It” is where the father in teaching his son to write, admonishes him to halve in length the essay he is proudly shown…then to halve it yet again until it is its most succinct and powerful in its impact.

But perhaps the best example of a communication where less is more is the Gettysburg Address. President Lincoln was actually not the featured speaker on that cold November day; and asked only to say a few words prior to a gentleman named Edward Everett giving the main speech. Lincoln spoke for approximately two minutes and said exactly 238 words. Everett spoke for two hours and rambled off thirty-nine thousand words…enough said…truly, enough said.

The lesson of short form reporting and choosing one’s words carefully could never be more important than in this time of a shrinking economy and the shrinking number of traditional news outlets along side the proliferation of online outlets where brevity is at a premium. And while I disagree that “what are you doing now?” is reason enough to take someone’s valuable time, it’s obvious these new communication tools are now being used in far more important journalistic ways as well. If all business and world leaders currently communicating the mundane on Twitter can convince their PR departments and themselves to be as succinct and honest in communicating to the general public as the general public is in communication with each other, what a powerful impact it might have…maybe not for the ages, but at least for the passing.