Opinions on change, criticism and clarity

After a 36-year career in the federal government, Harry walked away in 1986 as an expert in his field, the media. But he never stopped writing about the media. I uncovered these 1991 essays in a collection on his computer. They may interest media folks and government communicators, as well as entertain his friends and family. I think he would have liked that.

Change

America will be a great place – if they ever finish it. Comedians used to say that every now and then, and it would invariably get a laugh. Sometimes, driving through almost any city in the country, and seeing all the construction going on in office buildings, apartment houses, shopping malls, new roads, etc., that line comes to mind again. It’s what is called an inverted truism. The truth is, of course, that America will never be finished. We will be building it, building upon it, and rebuilding it forever – and not only its physical structure, but its institutions, its values, its very culture, as well.

Our society is constantly evolving and the pace of change is rapidly increasing. In earlier generations, say fifty or sixty years ago, changes were coming much more slowly and people were able to adjust, to adapt to change, to get used to things for a while before they phased into something else. Not anymore. Changes in our lives and in our environment and society are coming so fast that we are having trouble coping with them. They frighten us. We wish, sometimes, that we could slow down the world for a while, till we catch our breath.

Sixty years ago, in the 1940s, an eighth-grade education was enough to qualify people for most jobs in our society. Fifty and forty years ago, in the 1950s and 1960s, a high-school education was enough. In fact, only about 15 percent of our youth graduated from high school in the immediate post-World War II period and less than 10 percent of them went on to college. But the evolving needs of science and technology have changed all that. Today, most jobs in our society require a college degree in order to earn a living wage with any hope of advancement to positions of responsibility and authority. In fact, a large proportion of the worthwhile jobs require advanced degrees. As a consequence, some 75 to 80 percent of our youth today graduate from high school and some 60 percent of them go on to college. That alone represents a great sea change in American society.

Criticisms

Military public affairs officers, whose business involves dealing with the media on a daily basis, are frequently critical for what reporters regard as the wrong reasons. For example, the media has come under attack for writing about the erosion of benefits for service men and women, such as cutting back on commissary and Base Exchange privileges, or making changes in the retirement system. Not only do articles like that make the recruiting job more difficult, but they are bad for the morale of those who are already in the service, and they discourage people from reenlisting when their tours are up. But surely, reporters respond, the military cannot seriously expect the media to refrain from reporting such developments, simply on the grounds that to do so would have a negative effect on recruitments or reenlistments. Such criticisms are grossly unfair, they charge, since the very nature of the reporter’s job is to purvey the news to the public.

* * *

It is a cliché among meteorologists that there is no such thing as bad weather; there are merely different kinds of weather. The same thing is true of news; there is no such thing as bad news, merely different kinds of news and, in journalism, all the news is fit to print. That’s the simple view, the simplistic view. The truth is that in journalism, as in any other business, someone makes decisions a hundred times a day or more as to what to do and what not to do, what to write and what not to write, what to include and what not to include, etc. And everything that reaches the public through the media is going to impinge on the public consciousness and influence the public behavior. 

Clarity

Here are two examples of how communications can miss the mark. The first is a directive put out by the White House – by one of those bright young presidential aides, no doubt – during World War II:  “Such preparations will be made, as will completely obscure all Federal buildings and non-Federal buildings occupied by the Federal Government during an air raid for any period of time from visibility by reason of internal or external illumination. Such obscuration may be obtained either by blackout construction or by termination of the illumination. This will, of course, require that in building areas in which production must continue during the blackout, construction must be provided that internal illumination may continue. Other area, whether or not occupied by personnel, may be obscured by terminating the illumination.”

When the President saw it he blew his stack, according to some eyewitnesses. Exasperated, he wrote the following correction in the margin: “Tell them that in buildings where they have to keep the work going, to put something across the window. In buildings where they can afford to let the work stop for a while, turn out the lights.” In other words, use plain English!

The second example is about the plumber who wrote to the National Bureau of Standards to tell them how useful hydrochloric acid was for cleaning out clogged drains. The Bureau wrote back: “The efficacy of hydrochloric acid is indisputable, but the corrosive residue is incompatible with metallic permanence.”

The plumber replied that he was happy that the Bureau agreed with him. So the Bureau tried again, writing: “We cannot assume responsibility for the production of toxic and noxious residue with hydrochloric acid, and suggest that you use an alternative procedure.” And again the plumber expressed pleasure that he and the Bureau saw eye to eye.

Finally, a sharp young secretary at the Bureau sent a message that got through: “Don’t use hydrochloric acid,” she wrote, “it eats hell out of the pipes.” 

Copyright 2016, Elaine Blackman

Dad's advice on reading and speeding it up (and why JFK called him on it)

Oddly, the only photo I found of Harry reading a book was to his grand-kids in late 1984. It’s a good one, though, to honor his memory on Father’s Day.

 
Harry Zubkoff was a voracious reader and book collector; he pored through several books a week for pleasure during most of his life. (Where he found time to work, be a family man, and pursue other hobbies remains a mystery.) He filled bookcases and shelves throughout the house, and kept a hefty stack on his bedside table. It wasn’t easy getting him to part with his books each time he moved to a more suitable home.

Harry emailed the essay below to a young correspondent in 2010, at age 88. As in other essays on this blog, he imparts advice through a personal tale. By the way, I shortened this one; I never had the pleasure of editing Harry’s writings until I started this blog. You see, it was always the other way around – I’d go to him for editing tips and creative quips (and thoughts on office politics).


No matter what profession you choose for your life’s career, one of the most important skills you can acquire is reading. Reflect on this for a moment. We learn to read beginning in kindergarten and develop that skill through the early grades of elementary school. Certainly, by the time we’re 8 or 10 years old, normally we have mastered the skill of reading. Right? Wrong!

The trouble is, most people never progress much beyond the basic reading skill they’ve mastered by the time they’ve reached 6^th grade. The average reading speed of a high school student today is 350 to 400 words a minute, with a comprehension quotient of 85 to 90 percent.

I am as ordinary as they come. I have had to wear glasses to read since I was in high school. Near-sighted, but distance and depth perception is okay. I qualify for a commercial pilot’s license, where the vision requirements are stringent, but I need glasses to read a map flight chart. My starting reading speed was about 500 words a minute, slightly better than average, but not extraordinary. 

Take a course or do it yourself
Then I took a speed-reading course offered after hours at the Pentagon. One hour once a week for eight weeks. They measure your speed and test you for comprehension. At the end of the course I was reading 2,000 words a minute with 90 percent comprehension. I took the course two more times, six months apart. By the end of the third time, I was reading 4,000 words a minute. Over the next few years I regressed somewhat and finally settled down to about 3,000 words a minute – still respectable but not outstanding.

You have to force yourself to keep pushing it if you want to go above 3,000. BTW, these speeds are for light reading, like novels or magazine stories. For heavier stuff, like newspaper reports or study materials it goes down even further. No matter how much it slows down, however, it is still faster than the average speed of less than 500.

You don’t have to take the course to increase your speed. Some things you can do yourself, or force yourself to do. I should also mention that I was so enthusiastic about the course and recommended it so highly that they made it available to anyone in the Pentagon during working hours and supervisors could give their employees time off (with pay). I made everyone in my office take the course, some of them twice.

What they do in the course is, with a special camera, take a picture of your eyes as you’re reading. What they found was that everybody has the same bad habit. When you read a line, your eyes go back and scan the same line again. Why that happens, nobody knows. But in effect, you are reading that line twice. As soon as you become conscious of that fact, you can start forcing yourself to stop it. By stopping your eye from going back and scanning the line again, you can save a fraction of a second per line. Force yourself to go on to the next line and the next, etc., without going back to scan twice.

When you have mastered that, you will already have increased your speed considerably. The next step is to try to read a whole line at a time. Stop trying to read each word. You know, as we read we unconsciously mouth each word in our minds. Stop yourself from looking at each word. Stop thinking each word in our minds. Try to take the whole line into your head at once and then go on to the next line. In effect, take a picture of the whole line in your mind and then the next line and so forth till you get through the whole page. After doing this till you can do it without thinking, the next step is to try to take a whole paragraph at once. Now this may sound impossible, but believe me, it can be done.

Just master each step along the way and you’d be surprised at what your mind can do. 

A presidential anecdote
In the early 1960s, after Secretary of Defense McNamara had designated the Air Force as his Executive Agent to do what we had been doing for the Air Force – to do it for the whole Dept. of Defense and all its agencies, we started getting requests from other government agencies to provide copies of our publications for them. The White House was one of those agencies; specifically, the Office of the Press Secretary and the National Security Advisor asked us to send them material pertinent to their interests.

By the summer of 1963, I was sending the Press Secretary several dozen articles a day of special interest to the President, and he, the Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, used to call me once or twice a week to ask for things. So a call from him was not unusual. One day, when I had sent him a really heavy bundle of articles to read, he called and the conversation went like this.

“Harry,” he said, “somebody here wants to talk with you.”

“Okay,” I said, “put him on.”

Next voice I heard: “Harry? This is Jack Kennedy.” As though I didn’t recognize that distinctive voice.

“Yes, Mr. President,” I had enough presence of mind to say.

“These articles you send me,” he said. “Do you read them all yourself?”

“Yes, sir,” I managed.

“Well, I just wondered,” he said. “I read about 4,000 words a minute myself and I have a hard time keeping up with it, along with all the other things I have to read. How fast do you read?”

“Oh,” I said, “I read close to 4,000 a minute, too, Mr. President. Do you want me to cut back on these things?”

“No, no,” he said. “I just want to be sure that you suffer as much as I do. Keep it coming, and thanks.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” I said, but, in truth, I’m not sure if he hadn’t already hung up.

I also recall that at a press conference some reporter asked him how he thought the press was treating him and he replied with that famous smile, “I’m reading more and enjoying it less.” 

This looks like the the early 1960s (notice the skinny tie). 
Could it be the day Harry spoke to JFK about – of all things – speed reading?