Words can shape perceptions, but facts are factsI was persuaded to use the phrase “climate change” about a decade ago, when a presenter at a conference I was organizing said she preferred it to “global warming,” a term then still common. She argued, and I agreed, that...

Food has a language all its own As a writer, when I think of communications I most often think of the written word. I might think, too, of photographs, videos, speeches and Twitter feeds. What I never think about is food. Yet there is a whole world of food...

Where’s the beef? In no danger from Biden’s climate plan If you get your information from Fox News or other right wing sites, you might be stocking up on hamburger and steaks about now. You’re preparing for President Biden’s coming ban on beef. Of course, you’ll be...

Don’t suffocate inside your COVID bubble My husband and I recently gathered with friends for a socially distant dinner on their back porch. These occasions, routine in our pre-COVID lives, have become rare since March. And as we sat down for drinks before dinner, I...

Looking for truth in all the wrong places Labor Day once marked the beginning of the political season, eight weeks prior to Election Day  in November. It was when vacations ended, the kids returned to school, business picked up and Americans started paying attention...

Get the best out of brainstorming  One of the best things my partner and I do is brainstorm together. We put some music on, get coffee brewing and go to work. One of us stands at the whiteboard, the other takes notes on a computer and we start shooting out ideas....

As Facebook executives themselves admit, a disinformation campaign flourished on the social media platform ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign, with abundant lies from trolls both foreign and domestic Some of the lies were planted by Russians and other foreign...

Just Write! I am a writing procrastinator. Just ask my husband and business partner, who was one of my first newspaper editors. I used to rewrite a story’s lead over and over again before moving to the next paragraph. And if that second paragraph didn’t fit with the...

Always spell-check your spell checkerA few years back, I had the privilege of interviewing a veteran who had overcome a severe case of PTSD following his military service in Iraq.This father of five had suffered greatly, both as a driver of a Bradley fighting vehicle...

We walk our dog Izzy each afternoon down near the beach not far from our house. We greet other dog walkers almost every day, but most of the time, we keep Izzy from bounding up to the other dog because you just don’t know how dogs will react to one another when they...

Nearly 40 years ago, President Jimmy Carter and Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan would meet in their only televised debate prior to the 1980 election.It took place during the final week of the campaign while 52 American diplomats and private citizens...

If you ever need a reminder of the power of perspective, make a journey to Magnetic Hill in New Brunswick.In case you’ve never heard of it, Magnetic Hill is a naturally occurring, outdoor optical illusion. The hill makes you believe you are going up when you are in...

By now, most of America knows that Cape Cod, the arm-shaped peninsula extending off eastern Massachusetts into the Atlantic Ocean, has a Gray Seal problem. Perhaps 50,000 of the slug-shaped animals, which can be over 8 feet long and weigh more than 500 pounds, summer...

Say what you mean. It’s easy advice to give, but not so easy to follow. So often, we want to equivocate and hedge. Maybe we just feel more comfortable couching our assertions in phrases like “it might be said” or “it is believed.” Or we would rather remain vague by...

A few years ago, we did some work with a Florida public institution that was raising millions of dollars to create a center that would be home to researchers and policy analysts studying the effects of the state’s population boom and climate change on Florida’s...

From your office decor to your corporate logo to your customer service policies, everything adds or detracts value from your brand — the overall impression you leave in the marketplace. Target for decades has been looking to change its image from a low-end discounter...

Like most big issues, the news about changing attitudes toward climate change has been overshadowed in the United States by coverage of the Mueller investigation, of accusations of Russian meddling in our elections and of the #MeToo movement. But that doesn’t mean...

We are in a time of changing norms, and leaders of all types should consider what that means for them and their careers. In recent years, revelations of unsavory past behavior have swept away the jobs and reputations of leaders in technology,...

A client complained recently that a news story in which she appeared had gotten her title wrong. It wasn’t a big deal, she said, and she wasn’t inclined to call the newspaper to request a correction because she didn’t want to upset the reporter. We encouraged her to...

The term had been around for a while. First described in the middle of the 19th century, it was named by scientists who were studying the upper atmosphere around the North and South poles in 1952. But most of us, at least in the Eastern one-third of the United States,...

Barbara was born in southwest Nova Scotia, and we spend a few weeks each summer in the 150-year-old family home that was built astride the tidal Abrams River for a family of fishermen/farmers who worked the cold North Atlantic a few miles south. To get there, we...

Whether you love him or hate him, know that Donald Trump is president because he has an instinctive feel for what messages are likely to move people at a given time. He was an early adherent to the “birther” movement that tried to convince Americans that Barack Obama...

We love to read. Long-form journalism, novels, non-fiction tomes and, as one wag once said, “5,000-word stories on roofing shingles in the New Yorker.” We will read almost anything. But when it comes to conveying a load of complex information in a way that will make a...