Write It Right!

What authors can learn from the great copywriters

How often I wish some long-winded, self-indulgent novelists, nonfiction writers, journalists, book reviewers, copywriters and bloggers had started their careers selling stuff through the mail.

Here are some headlines and wrong ledes from The New York Times, Aug. 30, 2009:

Supreme Court to Revisit 'Hillary' Documentary, By Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will cut short its summer break in early September to hear a new argument in a momentous case that could transform the way political campaigns are conducted.
The case, which arises from a minor political documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” seemed an oddity when it was first argued in March. Just six months later, it has turned into a juggernaut with the potential to shatter a century-long understanding about the government's ability to bar corporations from spending money to support political candidates.

I'd vaguely heard of the propaganda film about Hillary Clinton. But not having seen it, I had no idea what Adam Liptak was talking about. Only after 420 words describing court cases and insider Washington D.C. gossip—that Liptak shoved down readers’ throats to prove his bona fides and that he knew a lot of important people—did he deign to inform the unwashed (myself) what in hell he was talking about:

The case involves “Hillary: The Movie,” a mix of advocacy journalism and political commentary that is a relentlessly negative look at Mrs. Clinton's character and career. The documentary was made by a conservative advocacy group called Citizens United, which lost a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission seeking permission to distribute it on a video-on-demand service.

Journalists and authors, please take note of the dictum by freelance direct response copywriter Pat Friesen: “Normally, the best lead paragraph is buried somewhere in the middle of your first draft copy.”

ECONOMIC VIEW: An Echo Chamber of Boom and Bust, By Robert J. Shiller
The global signs of a recovery in economic confidence seem puzzling.
It is a large and diverse world, after all, so why should confidence have rebounded so quickly in so many places? Government stimulus and bailout packages have generally not been big enough to have such a profound effect.
What happened? Economic analysts often turn to indicators like employment, housing starts or retail sales as causes of a recovery, when in fact they are merely symptoms. For a fuller explanation, look beyond the traditional economic links and think of the world economy as driven by social epidemics, contagion of ideas and huge feedback loops that gradually change world views. These social epidemics can travel as swiftly as swine flu: both spread from person to person and can reach every corner of the world in short order.

Huh? Wuzzzat?

Here’s the lede to the next paragraph: “As George Akerlof and I argue in our book, ‘Animal Spirits,’ ...”

I get it. The writer conned the Times to let him do a piece hyping his book.

At the end of this mind-numbing piece is the brief bio of the Robert J. Shiller—professor of economics and finance at Yale and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets L.L.C.

My message to Prof. Shiller and The New York Times: You're upholding the great tradition of indecipherable prose created by academia and reinforcing my favorite 1970s definition of an economist as someone that would marry Linda Lovelace for her money.

I may order “Animal Spirits.” It should be a fine cure for my insomnia.

Clash in Alabama Over Tennessee Coal Ash, By Shaila Dewan
UNIONTOWN, Ala. — Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.
To county leaders, the train's loads, which will total three million cubic yards of coal ash from a massive spill at a power plant in east Tennessee last December, are a tremendous financial windfall. A per-ton “host fee” that the landfill operators pay the county will add more than $3 million to the county's budget of about $4.5 million.
The ash has created more than 30 jobs for local residents in a county where the unemployment rate is 17 percent and a third of all households are below the poverty line. A sign on the door of the landfill's scale house says job applications are no longer being accepted — 1,000 were more than enough.

As I started reading this 1,161-word story about the internecine politics of coal ash disposal, my addled brain kept raising the following questions:

• What's coal ash?
• Where'd it come from?
• How's it stored?
• How'd the great spill occur?
• If coal ash is anything like the ashes in my fireplace or charcoal grill, a spill means the wind would blow it all over the countryside.

After 324 words came the first clue. The coal ash was described as “heavy, mudlike ash.” This raised another question:

• How'd it become mudlike?

Following word 510 is the line: “Most of the problems from coal ash, which contains toxins like arsenic and lead that have contaminated the water supply at more than 60 sites nationwide, come from wet, unlined ponds like the one that ruptured in Tennessee ...”

• Why is presumably dry ash put into wet, unlined ponds?
• Do the ponds occur naturally, or are they dug specifically to hold coal ash?
• How does a pond—presumably below ground level—rupture and spill coal ash?
• What caused the rupture?

Finally, 85 percent of the way through the story—at word 980—came the definition: “the ash, a byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity ...”

No pun intended, but the reader is left with some burning questions.

When I was hired to run Target Marketing magazine, I said to my editors: “We're all experts talking to experts. We must all understand completely everything we write, so completely that we can explain to our grandmothers. If you have a question, bring it to me. If I don't know the answer, I'll help you find it.”

I don't believe New York Times writer Shaila Dewan or her editor really understood what they were writing about. Without a clear description of the underlying problem, I found the entire article to be gibberish—and a waste of my time.