Caution: Lane Shifts Ahead

Monday January 08, 2007

Dean Folkerts, faculty, staff, parents and, of course, graduates. I’m so honored that Jean Folkerts invited me to speak to you this morning.

I’m also mindful that Saturday worship services commence at the mother church of college basketball, the Dean E. Smith Center, in less than three hours. So my remarks will be brief. As Henry the Fourth told his fourth wife, “Honey, I won’t keep you long.”

As many of you listened to my introduction, you must have been thinking, “Why is this man speaking? He can’t even hold down a job.” My career has been so variegated that it left my late grandmother hopelessly confused and blissfully ignorant.

When I was a TV news reporter, she could keep up with me nearly every day by watching the evening news. She was confused when I left TV and became a reporter for The Charlotte Observer. She couldn’t understand why I would do that. She thought that being a TV reporter was the equivalent of being a grade B movie star.

But then she began to be very concerned about my well-being when I left the paper for a job in politics, and then in public relations. I’m not sure she ever would have gotten over it if she had discovered before she died that her grandson had, unfortunately, lapsed into lobbying, among other mystifying pursuits.

I tell this story to provide adequate warning to the parents, spouses and loved ones congregated here today: a degree from the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication can, indeed, qualify one of these callow men or women for such a tortured, circuitous career path. That’s the topic for my comments today. Caution: Lane Shifts Ahead.

As graduates of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, you now are supposed to possess the ability to tell a story. All of you — regardless of whether you were in the News/Editorial sequence, or in Public Relations, Visual Communications or Advertising — will be traveling down some stretch of this special road. And surely, over time, with changes in the communications landscape, you will shift lanes. I’m evidence that it can be done. If I can do it, anyone can.

I’d like to spend a few minutes reflecting on the various jobs I’ve been lucky enough to have and on some of the lessons I’ve learned in the process.

I began as a TV news reporter – first at WTVD here in this media market, and then at WBTV in Charlotte. In 1977, one of the stories I covered involved the University of North Carolina system, which was being sued by what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare over the slow pace of desegregation of the 16 campuses.

Every Friday I would trek over from WBTV’s Raleigh bureau to the UNC General Administration, down at the bottom of the hill on Raleigh Road. There the UNC Board of Governors seemed to meet every Friday in closed session.

My cameraman would get a shot of these serious, middle-aged white men in glen-plaid suits, walking into the board room, and then the big oak doors closing. The next shot would be a close-up of the big brass door handle turning, then zoom out to a wide shot of the middle-aged white guys in the glen-plaid suits and highly polished wing tips, very somber, very serious, filing out. They would be followed by the estimable president of the University, the avuncular, the affable, the incomparable William C. Friday.

At that stage of my career, I was Mike-Wallace-in-training, thrusting the microphone in Friday’s face and firing off an accusatory question like: “President Friday, do you mean to stand there with a straight face and deny, that for its 200-year history, the University of North Carolina has engaged in de facto and de jure segregation of the 16-campuses of the university system?”

Seemed like a fair and even-handed question to me.

Bill Friday, being the consummate media-savvy pro, would chuckle, push clear-framed glasses up on his nose and respond: “Now, Ken, I don’t think that was the question you meant to ask. You see, the real question is….” And then he would pose a question. And then he would answer it.

I would be driving back to Raleigh, and at about the Raleigh-Durham Airport, I’d slap myself and say, “He did it again!”

Bill Friday was peerless at answering the question he wanted to answer, and avoiding the question he didn’t.

When I was a reporter for The Charlotte Observer in the 1980s, I covered election campaigns. One candidate who thought he should be in the U.S. Senate was Bill Belk, of the department store Belks. Belk ran for the Democratic nomination just two years after Republican Jesse Helms had defeated Democrat Jim Hunt in North Carolina’s race of the century. Bill had the good fortune to have inherited his family’s money. And the misfortune to have inherited his family’s…political instincts.

I accompanied him on a week-long campaign swing to write a profile. Nothing much happened on Monday, the first day. Then Tuesday, we went down East. Again, nothing of interest. On Wednesday, I’m beginning to think, “This guy is really boring.” And I’m beginning to get concerned about what I’m going to write.

By Thursday noon, I’ve worked myself up into a panic. I’ve been with Bill Belk for three-and-a-half days, and the elevator doesn’t go to the top floor, if you know what I mean.

We left Lumberton, driving toward Greensboro on Highway 211. I’m riding with Belk in his Lincoln Town Car when he pulls it into a convenience store lot to get gas. At the pump, I ask a simple question: “Bill, you’re a Democrat. Who did you vote for in the Helms-Hunt Senate race?”

He changed the subject. I followed him into the store to pay. I asked again, “Really, who’d you vote for?” Again, he changed the subject.

We got back into the car and a couple miles down the road, Belk suddenly swerves off the road and slams on the brake. Belk says, “I can’t lie. I voted for Helms.”

Silently, I prayed, “Thank you, Jesus!” I had a story.

We arrived in Greensboro in time for a debate between the Democratic Senate candidates. Afterward, Belk asks me to step outside. He says, “Look, if it comes out that I voted for Helms, I’m finished politically. If you agree not to run that story, I’ll drop out of the race tomorrow.”

I said, “Whoa! I don’t care what you do. I have no agenda.”

Belk bolted. I had to find a ride back to Charlotte from Greensboro that night.

The next morning, Friday, I’m in the newsroom early. I had to write the Bill Belk profile. The only two people in the newsroom are the editor, Rich Oppel, and me. A little after 8 a.m., who else should lope into the newsroom than Bill Belk. He walks straight into the editor’s office.

Belk stores is by far the biggest advertiser in The Observer. If they kill my story, I’ll have to resign. Heck, I might get fired. The phone rings on my desk. Editor Oppel asks me to come in. I feel like a dead man walking.

Belk makes his case why the story shouldn’t run. Rich Oppel tells Bill Belk: “We make dozens of tough decisions every day about what gets into the paper, and what doesn’t. This is not one of them.” And he throws Belk out of the newsroom. It was one of my proudest moments as a journalist.

By the way, Belk finished fifth in a six-person field.

I left The Observer to become executive director of the North Carolina Democratic Party for two years. After leaving politics, I worked at a marketing agency in Chapel Hill and then did some solo public affairs consulting before forming Capstrat in 1994.

Capstrat is the confluence of all my prior experience – as a reporter, a writer, a public speaker, a strategist and as a tough business person.

Today, I work in a firm of about 70 wonderful colleagues. We provide advertising, public relations, interactive communications and government relations. The thread that ties all those disciplines together is “the story.” With these various tools, we help organizations tell their stories to the audiences that matter most.

And all of you graduates today, with the education that you have made for yourself, that’s what you will do in some shape or fashion. Almost certainly, you will change jobs and careers several times. The job you start out with may not even exist by the time you get to retirement. Most of you will shift lanes on this trip.

For example, in my first job, I was a TV news reporter, but also the cameraman for many of my stories. I shot 16 millimeter film, which hasn’t been used widely in newsrooms in at least 25 years.

The new tools that so flummox many of us today – the Web, wikis, blogs, podcasts – some of those will have come and gone by the time you’re my age. So you must take what you’ve learned here and galvanize those lessons with the real-world experience that awaits you.

As I have thought back on my day in 1975, I’ve reflected on the lessons that stood me in good stead. Here are two:

Clear writing is the product of clear thinking. And muddled writing is the product of muddled thinking.

Here at the journalism school, I learned so many lessons about good writing. It’s hard to single out just one. But I will relate to you my simple favorite: limit sentences to no more than18 words. I’ve been away for 31 years, but I still find myself conducting word counts on my sentences. It’s a good inoculation for verbosity.

Finally, I believe it was in Professor Vermont Royster’s seminar that I learned a lesson that I still find myself quoting from time to time, courtesy of Mark Twain. “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

Twain made that comment in 1901, but it may be more applicable today than it was then.

The place that each of us can make the most difference is by carrying out our professional responsibilities ethically and transparently. Practitioners in journalism, public relations, advertising and public affairs have a tremendous responsibility. Our capacity for democracy depends upon our ability to sift through information we get through journalism and marketing, and then make important decisions about self-government.

Trust in the news media is at an all-time low. And before marketers become too smug, our research friends at Yankelovich Partners tell us that nearly 90% of all advertising is judged by consumers as not credible.

Hmmm. Why do citizens feel this way, and what behaviors are they witnessing that stoke this burning distrust?

That’s the topic for another commencement. The only observation I’ll make is that ethical breaches occur most often when people are in a hurry.

They’re in a hurry to get to the top of their business by skipping some steps. They’re in a hurry to beat the competition. Some are intent on achieving their organization’s financial goals for the short term, without considering the implications of their actions for the long term.

Today, I implore you to take the long view. Most of you have many years ahead. You will shift lanes more than once. And an ethical lapse is like lint in Velcro. It’s hard to shake. But a reputation for integrity, honesty and transparency is like a trust fund for you to draw on, no matter what kind of job you pursue.

Graduates, you are entering this new stage of life at a remarkable time. I’m humbled to share this day with you and your families. All the best to you, as you prepare for lane shifts ahead. Drive safely.

Ken Eudy is Chief Executive Officer at Capstrat.