Jennifer Howard

I've spent a lot of time, probably too much, complaining about flaks who don't do their jobs well--or, depending on your point of view, who do it too well. In the spirit of fair play, I asked myself what journalists do that probably drives publicists crazy. Here's what I came up with. Feel free to add your own in the comments. (P.S. I have been guilty of all of these except #8.)

1. We don't return your phone calls.

2. We don't answer your emails.

3. We don't answer your follow-up phone calls and emails about the previous phone calls and emails.

4. We suggest, sometimes politely, that you look at our publication before you pitch us again.

5. We say we love your pitch and you never hear from us again.

6. You don't hear from us for weeks and then you get six urgent voicemail messages and emails from us saying WE NEED CONTACT INFO RIGHT AWAY PLEASE ASAP WHY HAVEN'T I HEARD FROM YOU????

7. We ask for an exclusive.

8. We break an embargo. (I've never done this but some journalists do.)

9. We don't tell the story the way you want us to.

10. We don't let you see the story ahead of time. [N.B. This is an absolute rule.]

11. We get something wrong.

12. We get something right and it's not flattering to the company or cause or person you represent.

13. We won't run a correction or "clarification" you ask for.

14. We don't appreciate how hard it is to do what you do.

If you live in Washington and/or write about higher education, you swim in a sea of acronyms. Because I like making lists, I made a list of the acronyms that float through my brain on a regular basis. (This isn’t all of them, just the ones I can think of late on a Thursday night.) Is it possible to live an acronym-free life? How many short strings of letters can our brains handle? This is, maybe, a serious question. AAA AAP AAUP AAUP ACLS ACRL ARL AHA AHR CLIR CNI DH DPLA FRPAA GBS JAH LOC MLA NARA OA OCR… Read more...

The world is full of useful things: paper clips, staplers, the computer I’m typing this on. But human inventiveness has only taken us so far. Here’s a short list of items that would make my life, and perhaps yours, a whole lot better. 1. Self-folding laundry. My husband promises me he’s working on this but the R&D has been stalled for years. 2. A collapsible bike helmet that’s just as safe as the regular kind but would fit inside a purse or computer bag. 3. A Lovey Locator: a microchip or other tracking device that could be implanted in a… Read more...

What does our email say about how we spend our days? Last December, the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard, who blogs for TLS, posted a recap of a day’s worth of email from her inbox. The summary gives you a sense of what Beard called “a Don’s (real) life” and what she’s asked to think about over the course of a more or less regular day. Now it may or may not be interesting to read somebody else’s email. Doubtless you have plenty of your own to get through. But as Dan Cohen said when we were discussing it on Twitter,… Read more...

This is the sixth post in a conversation that Mark Athitakis and I have been having on our blogs about Henry Adams’ 1880 novel, “Democracy.” See Mark’s previous post, “Media Circuses and New Monuments,” here. Mark, I take some comfort from your comment that Adams does have a soft spot for the city and just has to cross the river (or go for a canter along Rock Creek) to find it. I say “some comfort,” because by the end of the book, it feels like he can’t wait to put Washington behind him. You can sense Adams’ relief as well… Read more...

This is the fourth post in a cross-blog conversation Mark Athitakis and I are having about Henry Adams’ novel “Democracy.” See Mark’s most recent post, “Skepticism Versus Cynicism,” here. Mark, So it’s as I feared, and Adams is a hard case. To quote you, “there’s no silver lining he can’t find a storm cloud in,” especially hanging over Washington. Or even over pastoral Mount Vernon, where Mrs. Lee and some of her admirers and hangers-on go on a picnic-pilgrimage. Rather than being refreshed or purified by their pilgrimage to the home of the father of our country, though, the party… Read more...