Law And More

Inept Attempt at Reputation Restoration - Hunter Biden's "Beautiful Things"

America is the land of second chances.

That ethos kicked in when that bunch of misfits from the old country came to New England to have another try at acceptance and material prosperity. Along the way those Puritans developed what was to be for centuries the most powerful economy in the world. 

So, it was predictable that the reputation-restoration niche would thrive in America.

O'Dwyer Public Relations published my article on how suspended Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld could rebrand. Every now and then I receive calls from official reputation restoration firms about how I might help their clients. 

However, for every success - such as how Jimmy Carter repositioned and repackaged himself - there is plenty of failure. 

Among the latter could be First Son Hunter Biden. It might have been a mistake for him to use the strategy of publishing a book for redemption, forgiveness and a second chance. That was "Beautiful Things." As Daily Mail reports, in the first week of sales, only 10,638 copies have been sold. Future sales don't seem promising.

What Hunter should have done was something more hands-on activist and noble. Carter threw himself into global good deeds. Hunter could have organized a team and built irrigation facilities where there were none in a desolate part of planet earth. That should have proceeded on a low-profile basis. Then, 18 months later an international journalist stumbles upon the project. 

This inept book tactic, of course, makes Hunter's transformational work more difficult. 

In general, the odds are against salvation through book publishing. Not only does that approach tend to be inefficient. For instance, there is too much of a lag between conception and publication. In addition, social networks, social media and podcasting are where personal branding is made, destroyed, course corrected and reimagined. 

Small changes can trigger big success in your career and your business communications. Swing by for a complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

One for "Dateline" (and James Patterson): William, Harry - Kevin, Randall - Jane Genova, Anne Murga-Ring

The Queen has ordered that Princes William and Harry be separated behind Prince Philip's coffin. Therefore, it doesn't seem like the two brothers have made much progress in resolving the conflicts which have divided them. 

And there is hardly enough research on sibling rivalry to help those who want to help the brothers patch things up. "Dateline" should make it a mission to scout up stories about sibling-based crimes. All that deconstruction of the-husband-did-it has gotten old. And James Patterson owes us a mystery on sibling-on-sibling wrongdoing.

This week on "This Is Us," brothers Kevin and Randall did verbal combat. An added dimension to the shadow over their relationship is race. Kevin is white. Randall, who was adopted, is black. By the end of the episode, some of the tension had been defused. But it's doubtful the two will become close again.

I'm equally pessimisstic about the 18-year fissure with the last of my family members: my sister Anne Murga-Ring. Our last conversation had been November 2003. And the last update I had about her was several months ago through her former husband Victor Murga.

I never met her current husband Scott Ring. That's sad. He had been the publisher of the Jersey Journal, the platform for news in Anne's and my hometown Jersey City, New Jersey. My childhood fantasy had been to write for that newspaper. Instead I went the way of Don Draper on "Mad Men" and looped into marketing communications. 

It's unfortunate that many therapists don't focus on our siblings. The backgrounding is usually done based on parents. However, most of our growing-up is through interactions with those siblings. After parents die, siblings represent the only vestige of what we traditionally consider "family."

With so much social change disrupting American life, our whole notion of family could become undone. Siblings could be acknowledged as a potentially dark force.

Small changes can trigger big success in your career and your business communications. Swing by for a complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Lawyers - Before You Pitch Your Opinion-Editorial to The Washington Post or Publish It on LinkedIn ...

Like every aspect of communications, what is known as the "opinion-editorial" (or op-ed) keeps changing. 

Too often the high-fives that can result from having your op-ed published in establishment media, like The Wall Street Journal. or on an influential social network can wither into layers of regret. The tone, how the issue is argued, the kind of evidence put forth, user-friendliness or call to action can be very wrong. That is, in the court of public opinion,

This is especially the risk during this era of datafication. In this article published in Odwyerpr.com, I explain how datafication is changing every aspect of human existence. That includes what makes communications credible and engaging. 

The classic example of commentary which got stuck in pre-data had been HuffPost. It arrived on the scene in May 2005 - a prestigious new platform for liberal voices. They had their say. For public relations representatives, getting a placement for clients' op-eds in HuffPost was right up there with one in old-line establishment media. 

That was then. Then the mode of presentation seemed to harden into rant. Lots of conviction. Little data. Predictably, its parent Verizon put it out there for sale. Recently, its buyer BuzzFeed gutted staff.

The expectation for data, positioned and packaged to connect, has created a new set of rules for the op-ed genre. Also, post-Trump Administration, there is Passion Fatigue. Strong feeling is ceasing to move the needle on issues. Essentially the culture is exiting the age of 21st century Romanticism to what is beginning to mirror 18th century Englightenment.

Yes, place your paid sponsored content on this blog. Affordable rates. Please contact Jane Genova at janegenova374@gmail.com.

 

Job Market Turns Blue - White Means Student-Loan Debt and More Disappointment

"Blue-Collar Jobs Boom as Covid-19 Boosts Housing, E-Commerce Demand. Residential construction, package delivery and warehousing jobs exceed pre-pandemic levels, and some companies can’t find enough workers." - Sarah Chaney Cambon, The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2021.

Finally, there could be shift from the post-war push to put the best and brightest on white-collar career paths.

Even successful young lawyers (usually with an average of $145,500 student loan debt) often wonder if their quality of life would be higher had they trained for a skilled trade. 

Meanwhile recent college graduates, many underemployed, unemployed or not employed in what they majored in, have an average of more than $37,500 student loan debt.

Much of this isn't new.

Way back in 2010 The Economist outed how unmarketable most doctoral degrees are. Actually, it was in the early 1970s that doctoral students in the humanities got hit with that reality. Our pursuit of excellence aka wasting our youth booking it made us unemployable. Non-academic employers rolled their eyes and bluntly asked us why the hell we stayed in school so long. We were The Lost Generation. It took us an average of three to five years to rebrand and land decent-paying white-collar work.

Currently, helicopter parents ask me: Should they invest in getting their offspring into the Ivy League or pull strings and squeeze them into an apprentice program? They look around their upscale suburbs and see so many of their neighbors' children return from college and with graduate degrees and stuck. There is no dream job. Instead there are serious conversations about enrolling in a trade school or a community college. 

Even those who have pivoted from traditional career paths to semiretirement voice regret about having chased white-collar kinds of success. In a Zoom book-discusson meeting here in southwestern Arizona, there was everything from rage at having pulled out all stops to get into an Ivy instead of the school where they could have gotten a sense of self to saddling themselves with their parents' definition of succes. The latter, of course, was a white-collar profession. 

Several of those over-50 whom I coach have actually navigated to blue collar from white collar jobs which went poof. One trained to be licensed in driving long-haul rigs. Another makes more than he had in IT troubleshooting delivering pizza. His secret is letting those scheduling hours know they are always available. Yeah, old-fashioned hustle. 

In one-time blue-collar Jersey City, New Jersey, now gentrified, those I had grown up with who learned trades have no trouble picking up work. Some are near age 80. Hustlers, they will, for example, go to professionals' homes to cut their hair in this time of COVID-angst. The tips are eye-popping. 

Meanwhile Millennials and Gen Z who are white-collars bunking in the $3k a month efficiences in downtown Jersey City frequently carry around ongoing job insecurity. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

 

Success - Should Human Beings Still Be Chasing It (in such a driven way)

Embracing the traditional and rigid model of getting, holding and scaling success lifted our Baby Boomer generation into the middle class - and, yes, beyond. 

The first step - college - was universally available. Unlike now, tuition was peanuts. Part-time jobs were plentiful.

The post-War economy caught fire.  

And, The Pill allowed for limiting the size of families (previously a distraction from chasing success with everything we got). 

But as lawyers, medical doctors, head nurses, public relations experts, information specialists, career military and university professors look back in our 60s and 70s, we are analyzing what the hell that was all about.

For many of us, our careers had peaked. Although more of us are still working, it's more focused on income per se versus Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Last night, on a open Zoom discussion (https://zoom.us/j/99892265318) hosted by Tina Squire, minster at the Sky Island Unitarian Universalist Church, Sierra Vista, Arizona (6 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. mountain time) both Baby Boomers and members of Generation X analyzed success. Among the issues were how perspectives on success might shift with aging and how Millennials as well as their parents currently rate its importance.

According to the book "Excellent Sheep," by Yale professor William Deresiewicz, the chase is still going on. And at a feverish pace, at least in the Ivy League. For success, those students are willing to conform as much as Baby Boomers did during the Eisenhower era. 

But, come on, there is that old cliche: On deathbeds no one regrets not working harder. But that might not be true. Some of the conversations during the Unitarian Zoom meeting indicated disappointment at not having been more successful. Obviously, that whole enchilada - how far our careers had taken us - remains for too many of us unfinished business. In my career coaching of those over-50, a dominant meme is the assumption that they could have been a lot more successful, if only ...

Of course, what factored in our revisiting our professional past were issues such as the role of failure and our own "human frailty." With aging comes a reaching in, noted Rev. Squire. And, you bet, both Baby Boomers and Xers are doing that. Inner life can no longer go uninspected.

Yes, yes, yes, there is a school of thought, especially among tech entrepreneurs, that professional life is nothing but an experiment. Most of those experiments don't pan out.

However, the tough nut to crack, at all stages of a career, is to accept that reality. Lawyers try strategies and tactics for both litigation and transactional work. The world, from the leadership in law firms to the media, watch. Failure isn't a private matter. Failure usually entails contracting with a top public relations agency for reputation restoration.

Likely the questioning by Baby Boomers and Generation X might have no influence on the value the next generations in America put on success. When some of us finally broke free we created the Generation Gap. That model continues to dominate. The different generations operate in silos.

Actually, unlike Baby Boomers, Millennials are a highly fragmented bunch. Some, reports INC., are impatient for traditional kinds of success. Among them are the majority of law-firm associates who are convinced they will be promoted to partner.

On the other hand, observes The Guardian, there are the Millennials who demand meaning from professional life. That is more important to them than the size of the paycheck. For that reason, in mission statements employers are hammering purpose. The buzzword "vocation" is back. In his LinkedIn posts digital marketing expert Paul Chaney explores how work can be sacred. His musings are influential. 

All generations are welcome to join the Unitarian discussions, usually based on a particular book (but, no, you don't have to read it), on Wednesday evenings.

At 10:00 a.m. (mountain time) there are a Zoom meditation sessions and discussions https://zoom.us/j/97417456265

My takeaway from circling back to my experiences as a careerist is that more failure came from following supposed expert advice on success than was necessary. Had I trusted my intuition I likely would have had more success and on my own terms. Success can be a beautiful journey. The financial security which sets in with aging can give us the courage to experiment in very different ways. And not default into regret.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

A Woman Scorned or Dad The Pedophile or Both - HBO's "Allen v. Farrow" Brings All That Back to Court of Public Opinion

Judge Elliott Wilk put it this way: We will never know what happened on August 4, 1992.

But, Mia Farrow, the woman scorned, wants us to believe that she captured what did transpire between the lover Woody Allen who ditched her and their adopted daughter Dylan. He migrated to courting and marrying Mia's and Andre Previn's adopted daughter Soon-Yi.

That video is shown during the HBO documentary "Allen v. Farrow," a four-part documentary kicking off  Sunday, February 21st at 9:00 P.M. Here is a trailer.

On Yahoo, Marlow Stern weighs in that, overall, the series, which showcases myriad documents and testimony, doesn't position and package Allen in a positive light. Other reviewers agree: The documentary is damning for Allen.

If the audience is not skeptical - such as wondering if Mia coached Dylan for the video - Allen could be declared a downright pedophile in the court of public opinion. No more questions posed. That could finish off his career in the U.S. Over in Europe, which tends to be more sophisticated about these kinds of ambiguous sagas, his brand has held up.

However, despite all the publicity, especially in the form of articles, there are also the simple questions: Who cares enough to sit for the four-part series and who isn't wary of Saint Mia?

That the supposed presentation of fact takes place in the form of a documentary no longer is accepted as useful data. Recently, CBS presented a documentary about the disappearance of Connecticut mother Jennifer Dulos. Instead of interviewing myriad experts in law, psychology, real estate and FBI-type profiling, the focus was on family and friends of those in the loop. Of course, they would be very supportive of the late Fotis Dulos, Michelle Troconis and Jennifer Dulos. Yeah, a head-scratcher: What the hell was that all about?

Those who understand how media operates might also scratch their heads when viewing "Allen v. Farrow," if they actually tune in. What the hell is that all about, after all these years? If Allen is some kind of bad guy, he has already been punished and where it hurts - in his career in the U.S. If Mia was right about her hunches about Allen's inappropriate behavior with Dylan why didn't she kick him, right then, out of their lives? Instead she took the goodies attached to their relationship and let him stay. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

 

God Save Us from Institutions (recalling Dewey LeBoeuf)

Gleefully right-leaning media centers like the New York Post have been covering turmoil at The New York Times.

Today, there is an opinion-editorial exclusive in the Post by fired Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson. Thankfully, her tone and content are not embittered. But what irks is that she positions and packages the Times as an institution - and a necessary one. Oh really?

How many times has that supposed institution been discussed in terms of its death or being taken over by a foundation? Even before it passed from the media scene it would likely have been already replaced by another establishment media player or a startup. 

Some recall that when Newsweek was beginning to wobble, the leadership was out there championing it as, you got it, an institution. Eventually the fall was complete. It currently exists as another yesterday player, with a pitiful market value.

What is sad and could do in the Times is that there are those working at that media center who continue to believe society requires its existence to ensure truth and the unmasking for wrongdoing and wrongdoers.

Apple has been able to reimagine itself over and over again and that has been the reason it could scale, including in its stock price. Those pivots were as a business, not as an institution. 

The New York Times is also a business. It struggles in a glutted space for eyeballs and advertisers. And that is the story it should be telling both internally to the troops who are squabbling among themselves and to readers and advertisers. 

So are law firms, no matter how amazing was the PPP during 2020. Remember the grandiosity with which Dewey LeBoeuf positioned and packaged itself.

The same brutal realism about being a small part and perhaps a very temporary one in the business world applies to individual careers. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Rescuing Your Adult Children from Peter Pan Syndrome: Lawyers Have to Redefine "Success," and 5 Other Recommendations

"Ironically, as Millennials (and Gen Z) are better educated than any other generation, they can’t even get full-time employment in their chosen profession or career." - Patrick Ow, Thrive Global, October 5, 2019.  

That grim observation was made before COVID-19 triggered a lot more unemployment among all generations. But Millennials an Generation Z are the most vulnerable because they haven't had the luxury of time to build up a financial reserve, get down cold how the work world really operates and to acquire resilience.

So, it's no surprise that too many are taking refuge in what has been called the "Peter Pan Syndrome." Essentially that represents the mindset and behaviors of an adult who refuses to "grow up."

One sign of that is the adult who already has the BA or BS degree and even an advanced one. Yet, he or she decides the "smart" thing to do is invest in a graduate degree. There is a refusal to leave the identity of a protected class: student. They can wind up piling on one more unmarketable degree. 

Another sign: Despite the walls they hit in their job search, they are nowhere near a decision to leave their envisioned career path. 

And, what's obvious is that it's quite easy to bunk again under their roof of mom or dad (so many parents are divorced.)

If joblessness continues, the way they see the world and present themselves for work may harden into a permanent Peter Pan identity. There could be no looping out. Employers could pick up right away that this individual isn't manageable. They have been without work too long.

But there is hope. Parents frequently request consultations with me about how to nudge their offspring into adulthood. Here are my six recommendations:

• Make their lifestyle less comfortable. Charge rent, add on required chores. 

 

• As with reporting for unemployment compensation, mandate daily documentation of a job search. Yes, ask questions such as "How did you apply and what would you have done differently." Where are you applying tomorrow?

 

• Have that difficult conversation about reskilling. For instance, training to be a long-distance truck driver can be free. Some businesses offer that option to those pledging to remain working with the organization two years. Community colleges provide low-cost certificate programs. Also, they can work for free to learn a trade. The lines between white collar and blue collar are blurring. Work has become work. End of that story.

 

• Encourage them to get the hang of meditation, which has been proven to change the channel in their heads. The internet is filled with free training. Here's free instruction from American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron.

 

• Provide a stipend for them to be professionally coached about how to find, hold and scale to better work. Jane Genova arranges sliding scale fees.

 

• Lower your own expectations about what "success" means. Your own success might be blocking them from even getting into the game.

If you have the courage to repeat an age-old truth, share with your offspring the adage: Nothing gets you a job like a job. That leaves them with the takeaway to grab a job, just about any job, and then go on from there.

 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

 

Friendship - So Elusive for the Over-40 Lawyer

As a career-coach, over and over again I hear from my clients: They are lonely. Those include seasoned lawyers. 

They ask advice on how they can loop into the kinds of close friendships they had had in high school, college and even law school.

So, I researched why it is universally difficult to establish intimate relationships as we age. As The New York Times article hammers, that kind of bonding requires three things:

Proximity - As in college, there usually must be a large pool of people you can try out developing relationships with. Yet, our world shrinks as we get older. 

Repeated Unplanned encounters - Life can harden into routine and preventing too much newness. Yes, we settle in our ways. And build our systems to keep it that way.

Setting that allows you to shake off your wariness and confide - However, a history of disappointments and betrayals in relationships make us wary of being open. Instead, we get down the persona which makes us appear to be open. But we really have become closed systems. By age 40, you probably have set up a relational moat around your lives, stocked it with alligators, and kept the drawbridge down most of the time. 

After the research and giving clients some tips about how to increase the odds of developing at least one close friend, I was able to connect the dots on my own traumatic encounter with former college acquaintance Kathleen Huebner. We hadn't been in touch since the 1970s, when we were both pursuing our careers in  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

My mistake: I was engaged in magical thinking that I could transform that little bit of a relationship from decades ago into a platform for what authentic friendship can offer. Like my clients, I was experiencing the need to bond. Work was no longer enough. 

After the Polar Vortex of 2014, another increase in rent coming and sky-high auto insurance, I got it that it would be smart to uproot from the New York Metro area. After all, my two businesses were increasing virtual. Go somewhere warm and and where a decent standard of living would be lower cost. To wrap my head around that massive initiative I had to figure out how to do in an exotic, adventurous way.

So, southwestern Arizona it was.

I had ruled out Florida where my estranged sister Anne Murga-Ring had relocated. Only for about 90 seconds did I have the illusion that we could repair the broken parts of sibling relationships.

The Carolinas seemed too tame.

Mexico and Ecuador would require too much of an adjustment.

Other classmates from college, perhaps also lonely, had somehow looped me onto their Facebook pages. There I found out that Huebner resided in AZ. I assumed that I had struck gold. I would have a friend when my dog and I arrived in Tucson, AZ. 

Wrong. Tragically so.

From the get-go, when I treated Huebner to lunch at her retirement community in Oro Valley, AZ, it was an interactional disaster.

I experienced the conversations as puzzling. Alienating.

My gut (psychics tell me that I am psychic) flagged me: There is something very wrong with this picture. 

Within about 30 days of our first encounter during that doomed lunch I had taken this step. For Memorial Day weekend, my nemesis had sent me one of those cute e-cards. My response: Bug off, positioned and packaged as the language of civility.

Since then I have embraced that the odds are against circling back to the warm and fuzzy stuff of your youth when so many seemed to care deeply about our well-being: parents, siblings, teachers, classmates and even employers at our part-time jobs. However, I can move the dial closer to re-creating those kinds of bonds by:

Being out there more, even in COVID times

Changing my routines

Taking the leap into trust.

"At our age" the level of support we receive tends to lessen. But it can still be created and nurtured. Currently, I have several on my social network whom I can reach out to during the best and worst of times. That took blowing up my assumptions about how friendship should be. Actually, what a friendship is about keeps mutating for all generations, not only the Ok, Boomer.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Fox - Maybe Even Rupert Murdoch Can't Save This Conservative Cable Network (but meanwhile, law firm media staff can pitch for placements)

"On Inauguration Day, when CNN led with an average of 7.9 million viewers and MSNBC brought in 5.3 million––with a respective 10 million and 6.5 million viewers tuning in for Biden’s address––Fox News lagged behind with an average of 2.2 million viewers in the same five-hour block." - Caleb Ecarma, Vanity Fair, February 3, 2021.

Right now, in terms of ratings, Fox is in third place. But, the scary part is that more shoes could drop. In the post-Trump era of a boring White House, myriad media outlets are expecting significant falloffs in ratings. That's already happening at CNN, which is currently the number-one network. However, Fox could get hit harder than most. 

As Vanity Fair reports, given this negative development for Fox, the co-founder Rupert Murdoch has stepped in and taken more control. He's trying out adjustments in programming. There were also layoffs. 

But, that might be too little too late. One reason why things soured for Fox had been that after it alienated Donald Trump, he directed his large number of followers to far-right media outlets Newsmax and OAN. Recently Fox has pivoted from conservative to more far-right.

However, the Fox fare might not be able to compete with the juicy conspiracy theories of Newsmax. Those are lots of fun. And isn't media currently more about entertainment than providing information and analysis?

The 90-year-old one-time media tycoon Murdoch, even with the assistance of his son Lachlan, might not have what it takes in 2021 to be the number-one winner in this post-Trump media environment. Time might have caught up with him. 

The implications are massive.

For instance, the careers of on-air personalities like Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs could travel a downward trajectory. Restoration reputation might not be magical in their cases. The damage might be too severe and there could be no suitable opening in the imploding world of top media outlets. Manhattan public relations player Bob Dilenschneider had represented Dobbs in the court of public opinion. If he still does that now for Dobbs, has he enough fresh strategies and tactics to hold off the Barbarians? 

As for media-relations staff in law firms, the present disruption at Fox means that there could be emerging opportunities for pitching. There is that old adage: Where there is turmoil, that's where you want to move in. When framed right, those outreaches to Fox - as well as other media outlets - could result in placements. 

Such placements will be necessary for law firms to tell their stories about the high 2020 PPP. If those apologias for the 11% average increase in the profits of the top 50 law firms in 2020 aren't effective, BigLaw is a target for attack from diverse constituencies.

The raw reality about the PPP is this: That was achieved at at time when so much of American business was suffering and individuals were on the brink of homelessness. BigLaw branding could have a tough time in 2021.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)