Emails that put sand in my Vaseline
IN a typical week, I receive somewhere between 400 and 500 emails in my “official” inbox — the address I include at the end of every one of these columns — about two-thirds of which is news or normal business, with the remainder being various “pitches” sent by or on behalf of businesses and groups hoping to score some free publicity for their products, services, or causes. The standards that have to be met in order to earn more than a cursory look before the communication is discarded are necessarily rather severe, so only a few are compelling enough to warrant further attention.
I have an entire seminar, designed for public relations and corporate communications people, that explains what those standards are, but the short version is that unless what you have to announce has some tangible impact on broader public interest and policy, your carefully crafted, enthusiastic email is an exercise in futility. I can give you the number to our advertising department if you like, otherwise consider saving yourself a little time and miss me with that.
There is another way to get my attention, however, and that is to send something so annoying, alarming or ridiculous that I cannot help but react to it. That is rare, and even rarer still to occur twice in one week, which is what happened last week.
The more alarming email came from an unidentified sender with the address naiaexposed@yahoo. com and was signed “Concerned NAIA stakeholders.” Attached to the email was a two-page PDF document spelling out a number of disturbing allegations about the bidding for the rehabilitation and operation of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, an initiative that seems to be slowly moving forward after a couple of false starts in recent years.
If any of the allegations are true, they would be clear signs of a shocking level of corruption and collusion among the government and private-sector entities involved, but whether or not the claims are valid is rendered completely irrelevant by the rather insulting, patch-hunkie manner of their presentation.
First of all, there is no such thing as an “anonymous source,” and to assume (or hope) that any conscientious reporter or opinion writer would be so reckless as to publicly repeat information from a source he or she cannot identify is the insulting part. Journalists have a legally protected obligation to protect a source if necessary, but they also have an obligation to ensure that what they are publishing is true — which they cannot do if they do not know the source of it. Sending information in secret, so to speak, is manipulative at best.
Second, if a so-called concerned stakeholder wishes for his or her allegations to have credibility, then present the supporting evidence for it. Enough information was provided in the document attached to the email that most of it could probably be independently checked, but again, that’s manipulative; the source, in this case, is trying to get somebody (I assume the email was sent to a lot of media people) to tell a story the source wants to tell but is expecting somebody else to do extra, unnecessary work to gather information the source supposedly already has.
The information as presented, as far as I’m concerned, at best only rises to the level of gossip, and the diffident, somewhat underhanded manner in which it was presented raises suspicions that it may actually be slander with an ulterior motive. Is it possible that the “concerned NAIA stakeholders” are an embittered party whose own bid for the airport project was rejected? They might be insulted by that speculation, but there is nothing in what they have presented and the way they have presented it that even discourages the speculation, let alone definitely refutes it.
It is a sad indictment of the media environment in this country, and the public perception of it, that not only is it considered appropriate by many to handle what might be critical information in this way, but that it will probably work. There are enough gossipmongers in this town that someone will bite, and that is unfortunate. At best, it will only erode press credibility just a bit more, and at worst, it may allow possible serious malfeasance to be regarded unseriously enough to escape any real consequences. ***
The second annoying email of the week was from a UK-based PR firm working for Hyperloop TT, a rival of the now-defunct Hyperloop One, whose grave I danced on — not without more than a little glee — a couple of weeks ago (“Hyperloop finally demonstrates its full potential,” January 16). The message was a press release announcing a joint venture between Hyperloop TT and two
Italian firms “that could lead to the construction of the world’s first commercial hyperloop system in Italy,” and it was sent to me because, the correspondent said, “I noticed you’d covered stories about hyperloops in the past.”
Oh, for crying out loud. Obviously, you didn’t read them, or else you would have known that I’m about the last person who is going to be inclined to entertain your vaporware pitch about a technology that is likely impossible and would certainly be inefficient, too energy-intensive, too costly and completely unnecessary even if it is possible. I would have canned this digital litter immediately, except that the actual proposed project is too comical not to mention.
What the press release was announcing, specifically, was the start of a feasibility study on a “prototype” hyperloop system, “valued at 800 million euros,” that would connect the Italian cities of Padua and Venice-Mestre. “The project, named Hyper Transfer, will connect Venice and Padua in less than 15 minutes,” the email explained.
I have a pretty good sense of direction and a grasp of geography, and I seem to remember Venice and Padua being fairly close to one another. I also seem to recall Italy having an excellent passenger rail system, as do many countries in Europe. So, would this hypothetical hyperloop actually be a significant transportation upgrade?
Well, no. If you look it up on Google Maps, this is what it will tell you:
In other words, using the existing train system, the journey between Venice and Padua takes 16 minutes, just a minute slower than the imagined hyperloop. A little farther down the page, some helpful additional information notes that there are 95 trains per day, with one departing in either direction about every eight minutes.
Keep those emails coming, folks. Some of them are truly sublime.