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Letters to the Editor -
***************************** ** Letter No. 1 ** Dear Readers, Heads-up! The 178-page DAC'04 Trip Report is up on DeepChip now. I would like to thank the 368 engineers who made this EDA user survey possible. And as usual, I welcome your reactions/gripes/praise/corrections to any part of the report. Thanks, John Cooley ***************************** ** Letter No. 2 ** Peggy, I've been pondering your thoughts on ghost written pieces from last week. I both agree and disagree with you, and I was trying to figure out why. I've spent most of my career in public relations writing words that other people say. The ghost in the machine. I know they're their words, but they're mine too. The turn of phrase, the alliteration, the illustrative metaphor, the tempo of a speech. When some great celebrity has a book ghostwritten, they usually do the true author the courtesy of recognition, why not here? But then I thought, aren't we all in the intellectual property business? When an engineer pours his creativity into great code that goes into a product, his personal authorship vanishes into the vast impersonal sea of corporate IP. Why should I be any different? As the individual engineer's creativity and ownership of his work must be subservient to the greater architect of the product, should not my words be subservient to the greater architect, the corporation? Isn't ownership of my intellectual creation the reason they pay my salary? Or shouldn't my words at least be subservient to the one I write for who must approve my words as an adequate expression of his or her intent? If the executive is the crafter of the vision, and I merely code it (brilliantly or otherwise), whose work is it? Theirs or mine? Surely, as only the translator of the executive's visions into words, Why should I claim more ownership than an engineer? But then I thought, wait a moment. The engineer's individual contribution may vanish, but it vanishes into a product that no executive would stand up and say "Yes, this is my product. I made it myself." Ghostwritten articles, on the other hand, the executive and the publications conspire to do exactly that. They are positioned as the personal words of wisdom from a particular person. Maybe it isn't the same after all. I don't know. I do know, however, that I'll keep saying "800 word op-ed? No problem!" What a way to earn a living, eh? Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 3 ** Peggy, Again, you've done a nice job making an (original) point in your "Executive Privilege" piece. There are very few things that Mr. Bush says that I tend to agree with, but you've exposed one in your article that touched a nerve... being original is hard work! It is, but maybe being original in "high-tech publishing" is not so important. Excluding ones-and-zeros articles (that are probably either individually original, or a composite of team group-speak), executives communicate in the narrow confines of agenda. Your jaded VP of Marketing was expressing a "view from the top", and at that altitude she is probably right. Back in November or December, Charlie Rose did three nights of panels out of the Google Silicon Valley Campus. Each night he had in groups of about five, the leading technology CEOs from Google, Yahoo, Cisco, HP, Genentech, Intel, Xilinx, etc, etc, etc, etc. I looked forward to some good discussion... there wasn't any. No matter what the issue, each expressed themselves around their company, their mission, their product, their glory. They spoke in connected tag lines, repeating them over and over. The originality here came from the spin doctors who originally articulated the executives' corporate agenda. From then on it's the party line. Last year we went to see Karen Hughes, Bush's speech-writer/marketing-lady, at a local speakers series. Nothing could deviate her from the party line... even during Q&A she was campaigning. Now I'm sounding jaded! There is, though, in the early days of a company's origin, people who have original thoughts, who have ideals and noble goals, who talk of them, who write about them.... then they get VC funding, and the pre-adolescent becomes a teenager, and the rest is reality. Again, good food for thought. Regards, Bill Hoolhorst ***************************** ** Letter No. 4 ** Peggy, My thoughts on "Executive Privilege". [After I finished my PhD,] I had an opportunity in [my first] position to write or help write (I really don't remember now) a speech for the Executive Vice President. It was a form of writing that I hadn't encountered before. He was perfectly capable of writing his own speech. I had the impression that it was kind of like hiring somebody to clean your house, because you don't want to be bothered with that kind of work. I have to admit, I can see why people have their speeches written, but I don't get the point of having other people write articles for you. It's just different, and I can't put my finger on it. I guess a speech is something that is written and then presented, whereas an article is just - written. So why bother ghostwriting one? I read an article on Salon.com recently about how President Eisenhower was not an articulate extemporaneous speaker, but he edited his speeches (written by somebody else) to a fair-thee-well with a set of thought-through principles about what he was saying and how it was being said. The principles covered both grammar and content, and they showed examples of his marked-up pages. So, he had [at least] one thing in common with President Bush. Regards, Anon ***************************** ** Letter No. 5 ** Peggy, That was an interesting perspective you received at ISD. I'm pretty sure it didn't come from any of my clients. Everything contributed by VitalCom clients was pretty much authored by whoever was chosen by the client company. Some articles are more heavily edited than others, some contain some perspective that we supply in our interplay with the client, but the basic concepts and "voice" of the author is something we always try to retain. As a young journalist, I had a chance to rub elbows with some great writers, one of them Charles McCabe of the San Francisco Chronicle. Charles never took verbatim notes and never wrote down quotes. But invariably he was told by subjects he interviewed that he never misquoted anyone. He told me the job of the journalist is to maintain the true content of the idea, not get the exact wording. That lesson has served me well in my current professional incarnation. If a client wants us to write the article for them, we record and interview with him on the subject, transcribe it and then put it into an intelligible article. The fact that we are the ones who do the typing is not a creative act, but one of editing. The subject of the interview was still the source of the content. It becomes creative only when we, as editors, decide to expound on the subject beyond what the client expects. And that is a dangerous thing to do. If a client writes the article originally, we apply our knowledge of what the publication is looking for and make it fit the format. Again, that is editing, not creation. The goal is still to present the client's content accurately. I have a feeling that is probably what was closer to the truth of what that CEO was telling you. At least I hope so. If the CEO had no real input into the creative process, then he is a CEO with no control of his organization. Regards, Lou Covey
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