When I talk to people about creating stories I always ask. “What is your goal?” What are the headlines you want to see? What do you want to happen? What STOPS that from happening?
Who are your allies? Who is fighting you?

I worked with two brilliant journalists who have since died. One was a trade press editor. He said there are three stories in the trade press, X vs Y, Poised to explode and Too soon to tell.

He also worked with me when I coached executives to talk to the press. He told them he could tell when they were lying. He used a quote from Emerson,

“Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The former financial journalist said you always have to know, “Who is making money and who is losing money.” And, when she couldn’t get the real story because the subject was hiding it, to motivate her to get the story her editor said, “We don’t run puff pieces, not getting the story hurts YOU. Think of it like this, ‘This person is taking food out of the mouths of your babies.’ so dig in and get the real story.

First, I’m an activist. I want my stories to have an impact. To change people’s thinking, to get them to take an action. I’m not just here to “Document the atrocities.” h/t Atrios

The other day I was explaining to people online how I worked with Color of Change and Angelo Carusone to cost NewsCorp millions of dollars in revenue and got Glenn Beck off of Fox News.

Showing that Glenn Beck was a liability, and not an asset to institutional investors my the strategy, the goal was for them to see how Beck got in the way of News Corps’ quarterly earnings goals. The big investors would then make the behind the scenes calls to pressure Murdoch to get rid of the money losing Glenn Beck.

Color of Change and Angelo appealed to the corporations to “not taint their brands” with Beck’s race baiting, but NewsCorp hid the loss of money, because they didn’t have to disclose it. So I orchestrated a story that allowed the loss of ad revenue be told. This is me during a financial conference call:

I didn’t have the leverage to convince Murdoch to fire Glenn Beck, so I wrote the top investors in NewsCorp. Are you pressuring NewsCorp to wring more money out of Glenn Beck? If not, why not?

I’m rather proud of the letter, because it worked. I got institutional investors to take action, in America when shareholders talk, CEOs listen.

So when I talk now about getting all the pieces of a story, and understanding how they can work for difference audiences and how to get people who don’t want to talk, to do what you want and to prepare for the reactions of the people who want to retaliate, I know what I’m talking about.

I have been teaching others how to do this for years. I’ve adapted my strategies, as have the others. I try to never underestimate their intelligence and viciousness. I also have learned that there ways to get people to be “accidently allies” so they accomplish their goals AND so they don’t become the target of someone’s ire.

I always think people say about me, “What do you know, you’re just a goofy blogger” So I point to strategies that I, Color of Change and Angelo Carusone used to cost NewsCorp millions of dollars in revenue and push Glenn Beck off of Fox News. Or how Richard Myers and my friends at Daily Kos cost Rush Limbaugh’s distributors 100’s of millions of dollars in ad revenue and got him pushed off powerful AM radio stations in major markets. Rush was no longer a cash cow, just a cow.

But I know that in a world where someone like Musk can tell advertisers to go F them selves, lose billions in value for a company and STILL keep going, we need to adapt. When we have a world where people are threatened and attacked for simply telling the truth, we need to adapt. And we HAVE been adapting.
One thing I also remember is that there are lot of smart people on our side. How we help them can range from getting to the right person, to preparing for backlash, to reminding us to care for each other.