The Right to Free Speech, the Right to Publicity and Dr. Laura

Chances are if you’re reading this, you don’t live under a rock. Which means you already know that recently, conservative radio host Dr. Laura took a call from someone who wanted advice on handling a racist friend of her husband’s. Dr. Laura went on to say the word “nigger” on air 11 times, was summarily bitch-slapped by her employers and the media, and resigned to go do something that allowed her the freedom to say whatever she wants to say. Because as an American, she should have freedom of speech.

Yes, she should. But as I like to tell people whose comments are deleted on news sites and on blogs who say, “What, you don’t believe in freedom of speech?”: The first amendment to the Constitution promises us a right to free speech. It does not guarantee us the right to publicity. Here, look. The language is really simple:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

People have freedom of speech. They don’t have freedom from consequences for their speech. They also don’t have a right to publicity. In fact, the very same amendment allows for a free press – that includes the freedom to summarily fire a personality because she pissed off the advertisers who keep the lights on.

It’s very simple, really. And actually, this post was just an excuse to be able to throw the last two This Week In Blackness episodes up. Because you need to watch them.

Perspective

The other day I wrote one of those why are we all writing the same thing? posts, and Mitch Joel hit me with a dose of reality in comments:

I can’t speak for the other authors, but I didn’t write this book – specifically – for you (and I stated as much before publishing). I wrote Six Pixels of Separation, for those who aren’t deeply engaged in the channel…

Makes sense. If I know this basic stuff, why am I reading books about the basics?

Done.

I’ve been seeing R—’s face a lot. R— skipped town a few years ago but left me with an inscribed copy of Eastern Wisdom that I haven’t touched yet. Maybe it’s time to gain a little more perspective – put down the business basics books and find inspiration where I find it, not worrying about where other people find it.

As for who I’m writing for, I’d like to say I write for me, but I’d be lying. My blog stats say there are more of you reading every week, and the fact that I look at those stats says to me I’m writing for others.

And now, onward.

The Decision: Lebroncalypse, Dan Gilbert and Comic Sans

In case you’ve been living under a rock the past week, LeBron James announced during a televised press conference last week that he would be playing for the Miami Heat next season. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past eight years, LeBron James was such a good basketball player in high school that ESPN televised his team’s games. And then he was selected number one in the ensuing NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, his hometown team.

For those of you who aren’t NBA fans, which I know is most of the readers of this blog, the 2003 NBA Draft might very well be the best one ever. After James went first, Darko Milicic, who turned out to be a bust, was second, followed by Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, who are all household names by now. Four other all-stars were also picked in that draft. So to be the best player chosen in that draft seven years later is saying something.

The general consensus around the sports world, and I’m on the bandwagon, is that James made the right decision for him – playing with Bosh and Wade gives him a reasonable shot at winning a championship, plus he gets to live in Miami – but he could have done it in a much more classy way.

In fact, it would have been hard for him to do it in a less classy way. See, he had six teams courting him (Miami, Cleveland, the Clippers, Chicago, New York and New Jersey), and with the exception of Miami – whom he notified five minutes before announcing his choice publicly – everyone learned about his choice on national TV.

People started burning James’s jersey in Cleveland, and a huge billboard of him came down pretty quickly as well. No, he didn’t owe them signing a contract in a city where the team wasn’t putting a championship-quality supporting cast around him, but maybe he owed the city a little class. Those other teams? Meh. But the city he grew up in and that made him famous? Maybe a little. But whatever. That’s not the fun part of this story.

Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert rifled off an angry letter to Cavs fans. You might notice that, apart from promising a championship before James wins one (1. you don’t promise a championship to your fans anyway, but 2. the Cavs have no championships in their 40 seasons; the Heat have one in their 22, and it was with Wade on the team), Gilbert wrote the letter in Comic Sans font.

This won him a fair bit of mocking. It’s a fun, curved, spacious font that just doesn’t get the angry vibe across, even in all caps. Once the letter came out, the font choice was trending higher on Twitter than James was.

I’m not going to hate on Comic Sans. After all, its creator, Vincent Connare, designed it from comic book lettering, figuring that it would appeal to kids.

It comes down to professionalism. Gilbert had the opportunity to take a more professional route than James did. He chose not too (and got slammed for $100,000 for it). And in making that choice, he opted for a, shall we say, less than appropriate design for his anger. James didn’t sign his contract in crayon (I’m assuming). If you own a limo company aimed at corporate execs and formal occasions, you’re probably not going with a pink-and-purple color scheme, dancing babies and curlique fonts for your website. If you’re trying to get a C-level position at a Microsoft, your email address is probably not RainbowsNBunniesNDrugsOhMy@yahoo.com.

» For fun: Important U.S. documents in Comic Sans
» On James: Never Has Being a Sports Fan Felt So Stupid
» On Personal Branding: What do do when branded employees leave

The Problem of Pledging, the Difficulty of Local

Many of you know about my love for and affiliation with SyracuseFirst. It’s a buy local movement run by local folks with local members. It’s a fantastic idea with a great campaign behind it.

One of SyracuseFirst’s primary campaigns is to get people to pledge a 10% shift from national to local. That is, if you go to Starbucks every workday (about 20 times a month), go to a local place 10% of the time – that means twice a month you’re going across the street to Freedom of Espresso or downstairs to Funk N Waffles instead. If you eat at Applebees or Olive Garden, try something locally owned that’s similarly priced with similar fare, like Pastabilities or the Dark Horse Tavern.

In the city of Syracuse, that would lead to a $10 million boost to the local economy, as locally owned businesses are more likely to buy supplies from other local shops, get their marketing materials printed locally, etc., whereas Starbucks and Olive Garden have national food distributors and get their materials printed from wherever corporate wants them to.

But a pledge doesn’t do the local economy any good. You have to actually follow through on your pledge. That’s the hard part.

I was followed recently on Twitter by a user called @Syracuse_NY, which urged its followers to buy local – by, of course, signing a pledge.

Now here’s the weird thing. My Local Pledge is a national thing (you’ll notice there’s nothing denoting the site as having anything to do with Syracuse) started by a Burbank, California-based for-profit marketing agency called CitySites. You can get all sorts of “local” member benefits by becoming a sponsor and paying them a $95 sponsorship fee, or you can become an affiliate and earn money every time someone signs up as a sponsor through your link.

Somehow, that doesn’t sound oh-so-local to me. How much of my $95 sponsorship goes to my community? I’m guessing none. That’s not to say it’s a bad investment, it just doesn’t sound genuine to me. And would I love the affiliate money? Sure. But could I sell it in good conscience? No way. I feel much better giving SyracuseFirst $100 as a business or $30 as an individual, knowing that everything they do is here in the community.

Transparency in design decisions

What strikes me about this video is not that the default position for tabs in Firefox 4 will be at the top of the browser (a decision I like a lot, by the way; I’ll start using the toolbars I like more often, since the tabs won’t get lost in the toolbars). Instead, what strikes me is that Mozilla is not only open about how they came to the decision (and how to change the default setting), they go very in-depth into the decision-making process.

That’s awesome.

Convention and relationships

I come back to Chris Brogan’s piece about conventions frequently. Brogan’s punchline is:

New marketing is more like: find people who make more sense. Start relationships with them before selling them. Learn more about them. Make the offer if it makes sense.

This isn’t anything new. If you’ve touched your toe in on social media blogging, you’ve said this. I’ve you’ve ever advised people on using a social media tool, you’ve said this.

But are you doing it? Whether your social marketing is mediated or not – that is, whether you’re looking for the sale in a face-to-face or an online environment – are you closing the sale before you’ve learned enough about the person to discover that you sell pipes but they need doors?

Sure, you do pipes, but if you knew someone who did doors, you could be selling their products to this new customer instead. And if you help the customer out when she needs doors, she’ll remember you when she needs pipes.

True story.

On motivation

Take the 11 minutes to watch this video. It comes to me from Dan Lovell via Anna Tarkov.

Motivation’s a funny thing. I’ve been blogging on and off for almost 10 years now, and have seen very little money for it. You know why that’s OK with me? Because it’s fun and challenging. I can write about whatever I want, whenever I want, and on it’s helped me meet and connect with some really smart people. That video above explains it all.

Happy Memorial Day

I’m honoring the sacrifice of our soldiers the good old-fashioned way today: something dead warmed by charcoal fire, a steamer pot full of something in a shell, and good friends on the back yard deck.

I’m also going to re-hash something I post frequently: American flag etiquette. We see it broken all the time, even by people who honestly do love our country. They hang flags off their houses all day every day – you’re supposed to have a special light to fly it at night, and an exemption to fly it in the rain. We see athletes with flags on their uniforms frequently. That’s also a no-no.

Here’s something I wrote last year for syracuse.com.

Putting roller derby in the context of life

I wrote an entry a few days ago on the Assault City vs Roc City roller derby bout on May 15. It elicited such a warm response from Crazy Diamond, who handles Assault City’s PR, that I asked if I could post it here. These are her words, unedited. —JS

I work in a nearly all-male environment and it’s great to be involved with something that is for women, by women and about women. Sometimes I am in awe when I think about our team and what we have managed to do both on and off the track in a little more than two years. We all use our particular skills to benefit the team. I’m in marketing for my day job, so I do PR and media. Our treasurer is a bookkeeper by day. Everyone brings something to the table. Male involvement is limited to support roles, such as refs and non skating officials. This is not be construed at all that we are man-haters or anything like that. The dynamic when it’s just women is simply different. Our husbands, boyfriends, whomever – who we refer to as our “widows,” are our biggest fans. We cannot do what we do without their support because derby is such a big time commitment. And our widows all get an unofficial derby name too!

Through derby, I’m meeting women I wouldn’t otherwise in my daily life. We’re a pretty eclectic bunch, but we all count each other as derby sisters. And despite what often happens when you get a bunch of women (especially strong, driven women) together, we don’t have a lot of drama. The environment is very supportive and I feel like I have a whole network of people I could rely on if I was in a bad way somehow. People on the team have found each other jobs, attended each other’s weddings, thrown baby showers, whatever. We’ve helped each other through divorces, moves, all kinds of stuff. The support is on and off the track. It extends to other teams as well. If a derby girl visits from out of town, we get an email or call asking if she can attend a practice. High-powered teams hold clinics to assist newer skaters in their development. People send money or gifts when a player is injured.

And thank you for bringing up the role of women in sports and all the shit, as you put it, that’s out there. There are a handful of men’s derby leagues, but it’s almost exclusively a women’s sport. There aren’t many you can say this about. No worries about the men getting top billing. People seem more fascinated by women playing derby than men. However, many people don’t take it seriously as a sport or mistakenly assume it’s fake, and the derby of yesterday perpetuates this myth. You’ve been there – you’ve seen how physical and athletic it is and you know it’s not fake. We train really hard and I would challenge any nay-sayer to get through a practice with us. I consider myself an athlete and want to be regarded as such. Yet I’ve done press and been told ON THE RADIO that my derby name sounds like a stripper name and I feel that mentality marginalizes us as athletes. (The derby name provides anonymity to otherwise normal people; I would be inhibited if my real name was in programs and on the websites and airwaves. There are fans with screws loose out there.) Yes, we wear fishnets and cute outfits; that’s just derby style. But you can be strong and sexy at the same time; be an athlete and feminine; look hot while kicking some ass. If you don’t care about looking hot, then just go kick some ass and that’s totally fine and really more important at the end of the day anyway.

We are evolving into a force that rivals most other local semi-pro sports teams, in my opinion, in terms of our reach, organziation, and economic impact. We rent facilities, have partners/sponsors, sell team merchandise, spend money locally to promote and put on our events, etc. And we do this for fun, not for money or as jobs. All funds go back to the team for development or to charity. Being able to help the community in which we live through our charitable works is just the icing on the cake of all of this. Our next bout benefits the Galisano Children’s Hospital.

Sorry to drone on… Obviously, I have strong feelings for this sport and I work tirelessly to promote it and my team. I’m just glad to see someone pick up on the things that are the best and most unique elements of derby, rather than just another simplistic piece about being a housewife by day and derby girl by night, as though we all live some kind of Clark Kent/Superman existence.

Sorting out 140conf

Yep, that’s my to-do list. Thanks, Jeff Pulver.

My Twitter friends are aware of this, but I spent a couple of days this past week in New York City for the 140 Character Conference (140conf). I didn’t tweet much from the conference – only those things that really inspired me – instead, I took good old-fashioned notes on good old-fashioned paper. [Full Twitter coverage is here.] That photo above is me organizing my notes before jumping on the train back up to Syracuse. The piece of paper with all the scribbling? That’s my to-do list.

Here’s the deal with 140conf. It happens in four or five cities each year (well, this is the second year). It’s the concept of Jeff Pulver, who is more or less responsible for making Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology widespread (if you’re reading this, you’re aware of VOIP, even if you’ve never heard of it – it’s what Vonage uses, and if you’re using Time Warner Cable or another cable service for your telephone, you’re using VOIP).

Unlike academic or industry conferences where you have either a person who speaks for 45 minutes or a panel that runs for an hour, this is bang-bang stuff. Most individuals had 10 minutes; a few had 15. Panels lasted 20 minutes. In all, there were about 150 people speaking in two days. The audience already understands the tools and understands why you’d use them; there’s no need to do that part of it.

There will be much blogging about the current and future of things in the coming weeks, but I wanted to get started by mentioning some of the people I met and some of the things I have on my list to check out. Supposedly videos of all the presentations are over here, but I’m having trouble loading them. Hopefully I’ll be able to get them up on the screen as I go to blog them.

Anyhow, I met Evan Blackford, who is a super-nice and creative guy. We had a mediocre Middle Eastern lunch (Effy’s does a nice coffee, though – definitely went back the second morning). I met Cecily Kellogg of Uppercase Woman, who seems to be a lot of fun in addition to being insightful. I’ll be checking out and reviewing her blog.

I met David Hendricks and Eric Oldfield of an emerging advertising system called LiveIntent, as well as Andy Oterson, co-founder of eatbytweet, something I will definitely be looking at in the coming week.

I also met Melinda Emerson, a small business coach who runs a weekly Twitter chat – some of you will know her as @SmallBizLady.

I had lunch with a bunch of Gen Y rockstars, including, among others, David Spinks of Scribnia and #u30pro, Sarah Cooley of Postling, and musician Peter Marinari.

I also got to spend some time with old friends in the city, including one who recently started a new production house called Omega Darling.

Coming up on the blog will most definitely be items about Epic Change, Twitter and education, comments, news and more. I also owe Jeffrey Hayzlett (Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak) a donation to the American Heart Association in exchange for the copy of The Mirror Test.