Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications Commencement Address
Download as DOCX, PDF1 like812 views
This is the commencement speech I delivered on May 11th to the 2013 graduates of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Mass Communications.
Ad
More Related Content
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications Commencement Address (20)
Ad
Recently uploaded (20)
Ad
Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications Commencement Address
- 1. Virginia Commonwealth University Commencement Speech May 11, 2013 Thank you, members of the faculty and administration, parents and friends, honored guests and graduates, thank you so much for inviting me to speak today at this wonderful Commencement ceremony. Before we begin, can we please take a moment to honor those who gave support to our graduates? Whether in person or not, the path that brought us here today couldn’t have been done without friends and family. Let’s please give them a round of applause! It was a tumultuous journey to get to Richmond from Detroit. My trip was filled with bad weather, delays and an AC system that was mechanically deficient on the plane. So it’s not surprising that last night after checking into my hotel, I had a bad dream that I posted this very speech to Facebook…and nobody liked it. Nobody even paid attention to it. Talk about anxiety! It got me thinking about the challenges educators face today. I get to present to you for the final hour of your journey, but to be a professor or a TA? They had to fight for your attention for four or five years – all of this while swimming upstream against the waves of social media. The instant accessibility to distraction is a blessing or a curse depending on which side of the podium you’re on. So scanning the audience, I suppose I’ll be able to gage the success of the words I share based on the number of graduates I see looking down at their iPhones. Speaking of, for those who want to follow along via twitter, you can do so using the hashtag #VCUGraduation All jokes aside, in my due diligence, I learned a great deal about VCU. That the VCU School of Mass Communications is one of only about 100 select journalism and mass communication programs accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. That to accredit is to quote ―assure basic standards of excellence,‖ with only about one in four mass communications program earning accreditation.
- 2. What I learned was that VCU School of Mass Communications Students are overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the faculty members and their professional experience that they bring into the classroom. You, graduates of 2013, came to Virginia Commonwealth University prepared to learn. I commend you for that. You earned this right of passage. But it goes without saying that I’m still really nervous. Uncomfortably so, and let’s make one thing perfectly clear. When working for a Fortune 10, you rarely have time to get nervous. I really thought about how to overcome my uneasiness and as such, wrote down and wanted to share three times in my life where the butterflies almost got the best of me. This is the only time I’ve ever told this story, but the first was on stage in front of 10,000 people when my high school choir sang back up to Kenny Rogers. In a brilliant media relations move, Kenny toured the nation using local school chorales on stage. Only one problem: Members of our 15-person ensemble, me included, were stricken down with the stomach flu. I remember Kenny thanking us for getting the crowd swaying back and forth that night. Sadly this had little to do with our encore performance of the ―You Are So Beautiful‖. But to my choir conductor’s chagrin, we persevered. The second time was right here in Richmond. My Ford colleague Scott Monty had asked me to come speak to the Social Media Club of Richmond and at the time my responsibilities at Ford Motor Company revolved around leading our North American digital communications strategy. This so happened to include the management of our social media initiatives – our objectives included outreach to local Social Media Clubs around the nation to share the Ford Story - so this was appropriate. I came prepared with the topic of my presentation being based around Social Purpose, which we defined as the obligation we have to use social media as a means of connecting brands with people in order to establish real emotional relationships.
- 3. What I wasn’t counting on was being lead to the stage and seeing my presentation projected on your Richmond Science Center’s 4 story tall IMAX screen. My social purpose quickly changed that night – to stop from hyperventilating and getting through my presentation. I was asked back to Richmond today and I assure you, the first question I had for Bill (Farrar) was, ―No projectors, right?‖ The third and final time was interviewing with my employer, Ford Motor Company who quickly set the tone for what became the most harrowing 8 hours of my life. This included the birth of my two children. See I can say that because my wife is back in Michigan and didn’t accompany me on the trip. Though I’m sure this is going to end up on Youtube – there’s irony in that. Setting the scene: I was a brash, confident marketing executive working in Manhattan. Armed with my resume and a two page handwritten case study that I was asked to bring with me - that I admittedly wrote on the plane to Detroit, I walked into the ballroom of a local hotel for a ―Getting To Know You Pre-Interview Banquet‖ expecting to see the 500 plus candidates who flew in for their respective departmental interviews. I was taken aback to find nothing but a single table surrounded by vast emptiness. Maybe I was in the wrong ballroom I thought. Until I saw others walk in with the same look on their faces. ―Oh no…this is bad.‖ It was like a scene from the Shining. I was horrified when two executives entered the room and took their seats, with the remaining ones filled by my direct competition for the position. What commenced was a rapid fire round table series of questions followed by an emphasis on the following day’s case study presentation, where we were to be judged on our argumentative skills and a need to convince our fellow competitors and a group of Ford employee judges that the solution we outlined to solve the problems of a fictitious automotive company was the correct one. Did I mention
- 4. we had to convince the very people we were pitted against to take your side? The rapid-fire question and answer session didn’t bother me much – I was familiar to the cadence given my clients back in the city. I’d say I was doing fairly well until one of the executives called me ―Chris‖. Chris? Who’s Chris? My name’s Craig. There was a moment of slight embarrassment and a passing joke of ―You can call me any first name you want as long as I get this job!‖ But in reality, a switch flipped in my head. This was game on. Needless to say, I quickly excused myself from dinner, took a deep breath and spent the night rewriting my case study. The following day, it took but 20 minutes to convince the group and judges that the position I took was the correct course of action concluding with the commonly attributed to JFK phrase ―A rising tide lifts all boats!‖ I was later told that the factors that went into my hire were: 1.) How well written my case study response was 2.) The request to retire to my room early so I could edit and revise 3.) The passion and seriousness of which I took the assignment I hope you take something from each of those stories. For example, in the case of Kenny Rogers, you’ve got to know when to hold’em and know when to fold’em. I’ve waited twenty years to say that. Sorry, I know it was horrible. In the case of Kenny Rogers, don’t be afraid to let improvisation lead your way to success when you find yourself singing for your life. Or when speaking in front of the equivalent of a Broadway Billboard in Times Square, when you’re the center of attention, make the most of the opportunity. And finally, in regards to the interview and job I subsequently fought to win, I quote Arthur Ashe when he said, ―One important key to
- 5. success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.‖ And in today’s media environment you always have to be prepared. The paradigm that exists today isn’t going away. With my sincere apologies to the fine faculty at VCU, we’ve gone from Mass Communications to Minimal Communications – Generations who grew up receiving their news from a picture box in their living room may soon be wearing their news as a fashion accessory if Google has their way with Google Glass or as my parents call it ―The Google‖. Generations who listened to carefully crafted editorial copy corrected messaging – are struggling to adapt to a real time society. That’s right, news is spilling across scanning eyeballs literally in real time. The key variable in this change in behavior? Well obviously the Internet. But the Internet is a platform, it doesn’t generate news. It’s for all intents and purposes, a dumb pipe. It’s agnostic to its application. So this goes beyond the Internet. This is actually about people. The Internet has enabled, no empowered communication. Empowered people to share ideas, to exchange critical information, to start revolutions. To build connections and relationships agnostic to geography, race, religion and gender. Think of it like this - Ten years ago the media generated media. Today, in addition to the media developing content, people generate media. And in its current construct, established outlets such as CNN have evolved in a marriage of mainstream media meets citizen journalism. But even CNN’s iReporter, with scale, is miniscule in comparison to the critical mass of the total eyes and ears of the Internet. Look no further than social news site Reddit. According to Quantcast, a website analytics and measurement company, Reddit’s traffic has increased by over 10 million people from April 2012 to April 2013. Today Reddit, whose appropriate tagline is ―The Front Page of the Internet‖ serves user generated news to over 26 million people. In comparison, CNN.com serves to 19 million.
- 6. Reddit, Twitter – they offer access to information that previously took hours to produce in seconds. Imagine if these channels existed while your grandparents were teenagers. This was a huge ―what if‖ to me; something I thought worth exploring in preparation for today. Fortunately, I discovered author James Widner’s World War II timeline leading up to the reporting of one of America’s greatest tragedies. Yet how ―instant‖ was the news of almost 70 years prior? I preface that before you all bare with me while I try to detail his research and keep your attention through this ceremony, I did my homework – to stand before me today, it was a requirement that all of you take History 103 and 104, Survey of American History. You also were required to take the History of Advertising – so think of this as a final refresher before going out into the world as graduates! Okay here we go. Let’s do this! In the 40’s, radio was the mass medium and it was a channel in transition. The impeding war was the catalyst for the industry we know today as broadcast journalism. We’ll be focusing on four main radio networks: NBC Red Network, NBC Blue Network, WOR, and CBS. As history tells us, the bombing of Pearl Harbor took place on a lazy Sunday morning on December 7, 1941. Eyewitness reports claim the air raid alarm went off at 7:58 am local Hawaiin time, 1:58 pm Eastern Standard Time. Meanwhile that afternoon, the east coast was listening to a football game, yes football, between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers that had an approximate 2:00 PM EST kickoff. At approximately, 2:26 PM WOR broke into the game with the surprise bulletin about an attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor. 28 minutes after the first alert went off in Hawaii. WOR’s competitor, the NBC Red network was wrapping up its broadcast of the music program - Sammy Kaye's Sunday Serenade where it broke the start of the following program, the Round Table, with its first bulletin on the Pearl Harbor bombing at 2:29 pm.
- 7. At the same time, NBC Blue Network interrupted its Great Plays broadcast of "The Inspector General" with the same bulletin. Over at CBS, where the only regularly scheduled news broadcast on Sundays was about to begin, things were in disarray as the wire service news poured in about the bombing. The 2:30 P.M. program was The World Today. Normally, this program would have gone on the air to report current world events. But this day, they began almost immediately with the bulletin by announcer John Daly of Pearl Harbor being bombed. CBS continued with additional commentary on the impact of this event. But NBC Blue returned its regular programming. That’s right – it kept to its regularly scheduled programming. At 2:38 P.M. NBC Red offered another bulletin that Manila was being bombed (which later proved to be false). The Round Table moderator mentioning that Burma was being bombed followed this at 2:52 P.M. again, false. At CBS at 2:33 P.M., Washington D.C.-based newsman Albert Warner speculated on what possible steps FDR would take given that the Japanese envoys were meeting with Secretary of State Cordell Hull as the bombing was taking place but hold the phone! At 2:39, Warner interrupts his own analysis with a bulletin that the Japanese are bombing Manila – sensing a pattern here? Probably surprising today, but not then, as CBS did, NBC Red went back to regularly scheduled broadcasting as at 3:00 pm after a quick summary of current events, ―Chats About Dogs‖ airs. Could you imagine? The first time we have been attacked on American soil since the Civil War and we decide to stick with the 1940’s equivalent of Caesar Milan the Dog Whisperer? Call it a hypothesis but perhaps the rigidity of programming wouldn’t allow us to do an about face. Radio was still nascent and while the wire services were readily available to provide updates as quickly as possible, maybe the audience wasn’t prepared for this sudden invasiveness of change in format. Fast forward to today. In contrast to the heartbreak that took place just a few weeks ago, as initial reports streamed out of Boston about an explosion at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, mainstream news – this time cable news - was chastised for being far behind on
- 8. the story. While reports on Twitter streamed out almost instantly, all three cable news networks seemed totally unaware of what happened. Both Fox and CNN broke into their programs to report the news more than 10 minutes after the first reports on Twitter. Ten minutes. This is the world you’re entering, graduates. A world where ten minutes may have been the equivalent of 10 years. Yet where were the eyes of the Nation? If not the world? I had a friend of mine, Will Bottinick, who’s the Director of Social Insights at Converseon, a social media consultancy, conduct research on my behalf. In the hour prior to the tragedy, there were approximately 15,000 unique English speaking public records on social media referencing the Boston Marathon. Between 2:50 pm and 3:00 pm? Over 515,000. Those 10 minutes lead to instant scale and global awareness of what took place. With the pure global pervasiveness of a social media based communications platform – 140 characters and all – you could conclude that this was news you simply couldn’t avoid. Regardless of whether you’re going to buy and plan media, go into journalism, or public relations, you need to be prepared to deal with a media world that is more fragmented than it is whole. You must be prepared to go further to tell the story. Going Further. This is our mantra at Ford – going well beyond some fancy tagline born in the basement of an ad agency. To us, it signified that we were no longer turning around an industry but in contrast, moving ahead. As part of our everyday business, Ford and its employees, dealers and suppliers are always pushing harder, going further—that good is not good enough. Individually and collectively, we at Ford Go Further in everything we do, so that our customers can go further in their lives. In my department – Communications – we push ourselves daily to share our stories with key stakeholders, the public, suppliers and partners. It’s a true labor of love.
- 9. I’m simply estimating but in a single year, we’ve produced and placed approximately 200 written stories on topics that range from our innovations in using soy foam in our seats to announcing the 50th anniversary of the iconic Ford Mustang. We’ve developed at least 50 video essays highlighting a range of topics from how to use Pandora through SYNC – our in-vehicle hands free voice activation technology to Electric Vehicle public charging etiquette. And have developed infographics sharing tidbits of information from Our F-Series Super Duty truck dominance to quantifying the recyclable materials in our all-new Ford Escape to highlighting our most unique engineering occupations at Ford, bringing my colleagues to life in the form of comic book superheroes. Trust me when I tell you that our ergonomics engineer Mike Kolich needed some adjusting to our referring to him as Dr. Derriere! He was a great sport about it! When I mention the media volume of materials we produce, it’s not a strategy of all news for all people. We use segmentation and qualitative judgments to determine who we share our stories with. Similar to all of you determining whether you put your Aunt Evelyn in a limited profile on Facebook – you want to share stories of interest with her and save the ones about post-finals Bar Night for your fellow collegiate friends. We know which stories resonate with each specific audience we craft them for. Where there’s commonality however is not what but how we perform our jobs on a daily basis. Using our mantra of Go Further to tell stories using the tools of tomorrow – from text, to imagery to video. We push ourselves to innovate every day in the workplace. But our tools of tomorrow you use in your daily lives. You, graduates, are living in a time where the personal channels you choose to communicate with overlap in a communicative venn that intersects both your professional and personal lives. Facebook in the workplace is an every day norm, as is twitter. Instagram photo galleries? You tell stories every day, just through different platforms. Culturally the impact technology has had on our ability to both communicate without barriers and blur the lines of mass and interpersonal communication is unfounded. We’re charting new
- 10. territory by the second, and you’re living through it! For generations prior we ask how does it work? For you though, it’s almost instinctive. I think that’s pretty awesome. As I look at all of you in front of me, I think back to the nervousness I felt prior to uttering a single word. All of you will have the opportunity to do great things in your lives. I could be speaking to the next great reporter at The Gray Lady. Or the next David Ogilvy. Or maybe I’m speaking to the next Paull Young. That might be an unfamiliar name to many of you. Paull Young is a friend of mine. He grew up on a drought stricken farm in Australia and moved to New York in 2007. He followed his passions, leaving a successful position as a social media executive to join charity: water – a non profit whose mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Through his creativity and enthusiasm, Paull has delivered a number of award winning programs to help bring even more awareness to the organization he works for. In doing so, every day he helps the one in nine people in our world gain access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can't imagine going 12 hours without: clean drinking water. Regardless of the aspirations you may have – whether it’s in journalism, public relations or advertising - after leaving this ceremony today, I ask but one thing of all of you: Don’t focus on what you can achieve, but on how much you love achieving it. Find your passion and don’t let it go, even in the face of adversity. When you hear no, try harder, Go Further. Embrace the hard roads to victory. This, Virginia Commonwealth University class of 2013 will be the secret to your success. Congratulations to all of you and your accomplishments. Thank you.