But while the economy is still limping along, people – employed, under employed, or unemployed – should take the opportunity to add resume enhancing work experiences.

Experience still counts when it comes to finding or keeping a job. If you have been lucky enough to stay employed during these dour economic times, you know arranging new experiences to make you a better, more versatile employee is not a priority for management. Most likely your manager and the executives above him or her are too busy fighting to keep the company afloat if business is seriously flagging. Presenting you with a new growth opportunity isn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s to-do list. Nor should it be.

In good times your boss may give you more responsibility, may be even make you the point person on a project. But that still limits you to one project inside your department. In a down cycle the onus is on you to find new challenges and ways to improve and expand your skills. But you already know that.

So how can you get real, hands-on, management experience without already being a manager? If you are serious about broadening your business vistas, building your career, and reinforcing your brand, there are a couple of ways to do it. Understand upfront that you are trading your time and any monetary compensation for exposure to a different, more sophisticated kind of business experience.

The best way to earn serious managerial creditability is to join the board of a high profile community organization. That’s right, volunteer. Many local organizations – charities, community hospitals, private schools, the YMCA, and SPCA – are always seeking new, talented volunteers. So for one meeting a month and a few nights of prep work, you can gain entrée into the world of senior level management.

When you join the board of a local organization, have a clear plan about what you wish to accomplish. Don’t brag, but do find a subtle way to let your employer know about your new, outside adventure. It will show your boss that you are interested in expanding your horizons and are capable of doing more beyond the scope of your job. Also, if you are serving with any distinguished, influential, or well-known people in the community, it doesn’t hurt to discreetly drop a name or two.

Chances are when you join a board you won’t vault right into what you want to tackle. That’s fine. Treat the organization like a buffet and sample as many different committees as possible. The idea is to expand beyond the framework of your current paying job, while picking up information and skills that will make you more valuable and help you stay employed.

Most people concentrate only on the career directly in front of them. Don’t do that. Instead have a blueprint or plan that will help you develop new and diverse skills that will not only make you more valuable to your employer, but eventually allow you to reach the ranks of senior management. If you’re looking for executive or high level management experience, joined the board of your local hospital. It’s non-paying, but monetary reward isn’t your goal. You want to learn and gather skills that would otherwise take years to obtain at work or in graduate school. As a hospital board member you will be exposed to high-level discussions and policy and decision-making.

Next, chose to work on a committee that is completely different from what you do in your real job. Then work at it. The idea is to gain a reputation among other board members, which will probably included CEOs and other influential people, for being a quick study and having sound judgment.

You won’t collect a penny for all the work you do. Instead you will collect connections and be on a first name basis with some of the area’s most influential business leaders. As the commercial says, having the private telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of the community’s biggest business leaders is priceless. How many of your peers do you think can pick up the telephone and asked the former CEO of a national bank or law firm for business advice? I’m guessing none. But you can.

When Mike Kitson and I were writing How To Keep Your Job In A Tough Competitive Market a few years ago, the one tip I thought was sure to grow in importance was Edit Your E-Mail.
E-mail is the twenty-first-century version of the office memo. But there is one really important difference. In the old days the writer had to be involved with the message. Sure, you still have to bang out the e-mail on the keyboard. But that’s where the relationship between the writer and the message part ways. Perhaps you spell check the piece or maybe you just press send and off it instantly goes without a second thought.

In the past few weeks I’ve listened to friends complaining about e-mails they’ve received or colleagues affronted by e-mails they’ve sent. When it comes to business, treat your e-mail messages like top secret documents – say as little as possible. And expect that your e-mail will spread throughout the company like a cold in an airplane.

Most people become defensive when they receive a critical e-mail. Hey, it’s human nature. Do you like being corrected, scolded, or yelled at? Neither do I. But too often our response is to, well, respond – quickly and defensively.

On the page, uh, screen, defensiveness easily transforms into anger, sarcasm, rudeness, name calling, mudslinging, finger pointing, whining, or all of the above. In the memo days you had to type out your furious response. Of course, you were so angry that you hit the wrong keys resulting in a slew of mistakes you had to correct using White Out, which in itself was a tedious process. By the time you finished your reply, re-read it to make sure you corrected all the errors, your anger had pretty much dissipated and you tossed the memo.

Not now. Not with e-mail. Breathing fire you spew it out, do a quick spell check, and push the magic button that sends your emotionally charged, highly inflammable retort wending its way back to the sender (and whoever the sender forwards it to). The war of words has begun and it most likely won’t end pretty for either side.

So what should you do? First, accept that you are going to get and send your share of blood-pressure-raising e-mails. It’s business and everyone is trying to keep their job by protecting their behinds. Develop and have in place a strategy for just such e-mails. For instance, instead of instantaneously sending a snarky reply, save it as a draft. Let it sit for, oh, I don’t know, an hour, a day, a week, you know, however long it takes you to cool off.

When your BP returns to normal and you still want to send it, ask yourself this question: Would you say everything in your e-mail to the person if he was standing in front of you? Ah, that is the moment of truth. Would you really lace into the person using the same language, tone, and attitude face to face? Or do you have a case of byte bravado and virtual muscles?

If your electronic adversary is located in the same building and you still feel justified in unloading on her, get out of your chair and walk over to see her. I’m sure that you’re still going to tell her what you think. After all you wrote it down, didn’t you? Even money says, however, that your argument will be much less profane, and presented in a more professional manner.

If your foe is miles away and you can’t go at it mano-a-mano (or womano-a-womano, or mano-a-womano), try using this marvelous invention to contact him/her. You may have heard of it. It’s called the telephone and it’s not just for texting or getting directions.

By simply punching in a set of numbers associated with that person’s telephone you can actually talk back and forth to each other. It’s wonderful. You get real-time dialogue, meaning you can instantly correct any misunderstandings. Moreover, you get to hear the person’s voice, tone, attitude, and probe his or her reasoning.

One final thought: Since e-mail is commonly used for internal communications, be careful about the conversation you join or are included in. And remember, every internal email message leaves an electronic trail. Don’t get involved in any e-mail exchanges that complain about the company or any of its policies or practices. And never, never make fun of or criticize your boss on e-mail. Having your name associated with any of the above, even if you don’t add a comment, makes you guilty by association.

As the plane leveled off at 35,000 feet my wife broke out the guidebooks and index cards for one last review of her plan. We were winging our way to a long-anticipated family vacation to Walt Disney World and my wife, who is more organized that the Library of Congress, was determined not to waste one minute.

The trip was a dream come true for our daughter Lindsey, who was anxious to meet Mickey, Minnie, Donald and the rest of Uncle Walt’s brood. For my wife, Linda, it posed the ultimate challenge: Planning mankind’s most time-efficient vacation. To her we weren’t vacationing at Disney World; we were executing a swift, surgical strike. I could only hope innocent bystanders wouldn’t get hurt.

After many years of marriage I knew that my wife thrived on order. Every trip, holiday or life event required plans, lists and schedules. So I wasn’t surprised when Linda started configuring our descent on Disney three months in advance. She even managed to co-opt my time oblivious daughter into joining her. Every night, just before Lindsey’s bedtime, wife and daughter studied the Disney World guidebooks plotting their vacation strategy.

My wife had compiled a bibliotheca of Disney books including the official and unofficial guides to Disney; Disney from the adult perspective; Disney from the child’s view; Disney from the view of adults who act like children, and Disney on $20 a day. The last book, I later discovered, was a satire.

Anyone my wife knew who had been to Disney World, no matter how tenuous the connection, was interviewed – say about 75 people. Some even filed written reports. No kidding. If information clashed, she doubled checked statements: “In our initial interview you said to ride Peter Pan’s Magic Flight before seeing the Legend of the Lion King. Most people, however, said to do just the opposite. Would you like to explain your thinking?”

All the information was then distilled and transferred to 5-by-8 index cards. On one side of each card was a copy of a park map. The flip side contained a date, the name of the park and a numerically ordered agenda.
Throughout the planning sessions I lobbied relentlessly against a vacation ruled by timetables and itineraries. I suggested instead a relaxing, get-up-when-you-want, do a couple of hours in the park and then lay by the pool, alternative. We took a vote. I lost. My magnanimous wife conceded synchronized watches. I boycotted the remaining pre-bedtime meetings and began a rigorous training program. I wanted the energy to enjoy Disney World.

When dawn broke over Orlando on our first morning my wife was there to greet it, index cards in hand. Her strategy called for us to rise by 0600, shower and eat by 0700. At breakfast we were briefed about our blitz of Epcot. We were to be deployed at the gate by 0800, even though the place didn’t open until 0900, uh, 9 a.m. We had to be in position early, my wife explained, because reconnaissance revealed that people sprinted for the rides.

Enter a Disney park and you get the feeling that you’re not in Kansas anymore or anywhere on earth for that matter. Three, weeklong, park passes required a dip deep into the wading pool of our family fund. I concluded that Disney has its own economic structure that works like this: Take the cost of anything in your hometown, add the American trade deficit and that’s what you pay in Disney World.

Our breakfast briefing on the second morning began with a reminder of how well the index card system worked at Epcot. Our objective for the next two days was the Magic Kingdom. The cards were laid on the table. Arrival time at the parking lot was 0800. Storm the gates at 0900. Stop at city hall for maps and check parade times. Head to Fantasyland at 0900:05.

Walking past Cinderella’s Castle and already breathless, I suddenly felt the need to stop the madness. Rather than go directly to the Dumbo ride I blurted out, “Why not ride Snow White’s Adventure?” My wife objected, citing her in-depth research, interviews, and satellite recognizance photos showing that it was best to do the Dumbo ride immediately upon entering the park. But there was no line at Snow White’s Adventure, I protested. The Dumbo ride couldn’t possibly get that crowded in a few minutes. Reluctantly, she agreed.

Five minutes later we got in line for Dumbo. It was a reallllly, reallllly, realllllly long line. Neither wife nor daughter said a word. They simply looked at the line and then at me and out came the index cards. At that moment two things were clear: We would soon be back on schedule, and any decision-making influence I had disappeared quicker than a gum wrapper on a Disney sidewalk.

By day’s end I was exhausted. But we had achieved all of our index card goals, including staking out a prime piece of sidewalk two hours before the Main Street Parade. The heat had wilted Lindsey who hitched a ride on my shoulders for the walk back to the car. Lots of people drive to Disney world. Most have rental cars from Ford, General Motors or Chrysler. Consequently it’s important to carefully note where you park. We decided that responsibility belonged to the driver. I forgot. Looking out across acres and acres of parking lot, all I saw was an endless pattern of Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler repeating over and over again. It was like stepping into an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Each parking lot is named after a Disney character and holds about a bazillion cars. Based on when we got there, an attendant told us we were in either Chip and Dale or Pluto. My wife looked like she should be parked in Grumpy and I felt like either Goofy or Dopey. Lindsey was definitely Sleepy.

On the third morning the alarm went off at 6 a.m. but I couldn’t answer the bell. My wife, a nurse practitioner by profession, diagnosed heat exhaustion. There would be no Disney World for me. Lindsey was sad. I wasn’t. I got up around 11 a.m. feeling great. I grabbed my sunglasses, hat and a book and headed for the pool. I found a hammock with plenty of palm tree shade and settled in. I was finally having the vacation I dreamed of.

As I dozed in the swaying hammock I realized that I had stumbled upon the answer to future vacations conflicts – they could follow their lockstep schedule while I stayed behind and relaxed for a day. It was already working. I just hoped they were having as much fun at Disney World as I was in Daddy World.

I’ve been fortunate to experience autumn in different parts of the country, doing different things at different stages of my life. Among my fondest memories is a week spent wilderness backpacking with a hardy band of friends in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The trails laid out before us like the road to Oz, except our Yellow Brick Road was a cushion of leaves dyed by nature into various shades of yellow-gold, rich, spectacular reds, and brilliant oranges.

Another fall was spent a little farther west, just outside Chicago. I saw an old man on the beach in Evanston. He was standing in the elongating, ebbing sunlight looking out at Lake Michigan. Overhead a honking chorus of geese caught his attention. He followed it as the birds swooping around gathering itself into a V formation. As they glided away and their complaining faded away on the afternoon breeze the old man turned and started walking. “When the geese fly,” he said to no one in particular, “winter’s not far behind.”

Most of my fall reveries are of Philadelphia. In my youth I wiled away many an autumn afternoon along the River Drives watching the scullers slide silently along the Schuylkill River. I remember feeling that as the days age toward winter the city felt more alive, the store windows looked brighter. People moved with a purpose, as if the briskness of the air had revived and renewed them.

May be I’m fond of fall because it is the start of ice hockey, not to mention the season of my birth. Or perhaps it heralds what lies ahead. Fall, after all, is the gateway to the holidays, starting with Halloween, when neighborhoods crawl with witches, ghosts, goblins, and the current superhero.

But now, as I look out my window to the grand maple and oak trees that graces our property, it occurs to me that there is one aspect of fall that I don’t like. And I’m going outside right now to rake them into a nice, neat pile.

My wife Linda, in Denver, Colorado attending a medical conference, was on the other end. A plane had just hit one of the World Trade Center towers, she said.

I turned on CNN. The screen filled with a picture of smoke billowing from the wounded structure into the bright, crisp, blue morning sky. My first thought was that a private airplane had accidentally crashed into the building. It had to be a small plane because there was no plausible reason for a passenger jet to fly that low that close to downtown Manhattan.

The pilot had to see the monolith on the bank of the Hudson River, I told my wife. The only reasonable answer was that the pilot was incapacitated and the out-of-control airplane rammed into the building. No sooner had I finished my logical explanation when the second jetliner came swooping over the river and, banking left, plunged into the other tower. She screamed, “Oh my God, oh my God.’’ It clearly wasn’t an accident.

Within the hour news broke about American Flight 77 ripping into the Pentagon. America was under attack.

In 2001 I was freelancing for People magazine. I often covered stories in and around Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So I wasn’t surprised when later that morning People’s New York bureau chief called asking me to track down a rumor about a passenger jet going down in central Pennsylvania.

I’ve always considered myself, first and foremost, a writer. But an important, breaking news story always summons up the reporter in me – finding sources, tracking down leads, getting information. I have covered plenty of big stories in my career. But none was more important, historic, or difficult.

Getting anyone on the telephone was nearly impossible. When I finally got through to the Pennsylvania State Police the officer said that a passenger jet was believed to have crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I didn’t know the town but I went to undergraduate school in Western Pennsylvania so I had a good idea where it was – in the middle of nowhere. To be more exact, it’s in Somerset County, about 75 miles east of Pittsburgh.

I called the local police department and the dispatcher said that police and fire departments were responding to an area two miles outside the borough. Using People’s incredible resources, I got the phone numbers of the surrounding residents. I don’t know how close to the actual site the people I talked were. The few I got on the telephone said that they heard a low flying jet followed by an explosion and fireball. No one I talked to was sure where the plane had come down, only that it was close by. I filed the little I had. A few hours later my bureau chief called asking me to come to New York as soon as possible.

I got to New York early on Saturday, September 15th. Except for the few people getting off trains and the police and National Guardsmen in full combat gear, Penn Station was quiet. Outside the scene was surreal. Almost no one was on the street. There wasn’t even a line for a cab, something I had never encountered in my regular visits to the city.

The Avenue of the Americas, usually a continuous strip of traffic, was empty. After getting through beefed up security, I walked into the bureau’s office high atop the Time Life Building. People were busy but the mood was muted. Everyone looked more than tired. They look drained.

I sat down on the sofa across from the bureau chief. Her desk was a blizzard of newspapers, some opened with stories circled and others stacked in an attempt to get organized. Still others were scattered on the floor. A television on the credenza behind her was on with the sound down.

During the days I was in New York I reported several stories, including one about a guiding eye dog who, amid the chaos, calmly walked his blind master down countless flights of stairs to safety. But the story I found overwhelming was my first assignment at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

People were flocking to the Javits Center at 34th Street and 12th Avenue to volunteer their help. Others were donating blood. But many had gravitated to the area in hope of finding out about missing loved ones.

As I walked down 34th Street toward the center, pictures of people started appearing on building walls. There were a few at first, but the density increased with each new block. The closer I got to the center, the more the buildings were papered with photos of missing people until the walls on both sides of the street, from sidewalk to eight feet high, became a collage of faces. The bottom of each picture had the same question – “Have you seen …’’ – followed by a phone number to call.

The immediate area around the convention center was clogged with people wandering the sidewalks and street, clutching photos and stopping strangers to ask if they knew this person or that one. Press or police credentials were magnetic, attracting people desperate for any information. I can’t recall how many anguished red eyes I looked into that morning. And each time I had to say that I could not help them because I simply didn’t know anything.

Standing in the middle of the crowd I call my wife, who was home with our daughter. I needed to hear her voice and know that my little part of the world was safe. She asked if I was okay. I was, but I was feeling something I had never experienced before and couldn’t explain. Certainly it was partly emotional. But it was also physical, as if grief, sadness, and misery were weighing on me.

There are two other moments I remember from reporting in New York. One came as I left the Time Life Building to grab some dinner. Standing in the middle of the Avenue of the Americas, I saw nothing for blocks upon blocks upon blocks and remember thinking what a great place to play a game of touch football.

The other thing was how friendly and helpful everyone was. People were pulling together, overlooking the trivial stuff. And strangers said hello, truly had to be a first in New York. It just makes me wonder where all that good feeling has gone.

Anyway, as I was about to enter the advanced, trance-like state of musing (this requires a sturdy, adjustable chair, a wide window ledge to rest your feet, closed eyes and an empty head), I realized that, regardless of what my Type A friends think, musing is an essential part of the creative process. It’s the writer feeling around in the dark for the switch that turns on inspiration.

My earliest musing memories date back to grade school, where the good Catholic nuns practiced the motivational arts developed during the Spanish Inquisition. Whenever Sister Mary Inflictsomepain would ask me a question that I couldn’t answer, I would stand up, clasp my hands behind my back, shift all my weight to one leg, cock my head to the side and look up at the ceiling groping for the switch. By the way, the next time you need an answer from someone who uses similar body language, just walk away. Finding the switch can take awhile.

Sitting staring out a window is the classic musing position. But there are methods of musing that actually produce tangible byproducts. For instance, some musers prime their creative pumps by cleaning their office, re-grouting the bathroom tile or practicing the flossing technique fastidiously demonstrated by their dental hygienist. There are those who channel surf daytime television talk shows — “Next on Jerry Springer, women who date their brother’s girlfriend’s sisters.” There’s a whole lot of groping in the dark going on there.

It took years (and countless hours writing on the blackboard, “the answer is not on the ceiling’’) before I understood that musing is to inspiration what stretching is to building muscle – a warm up or preparation. You can stretch until you’re as flexible as Gumby, but unless you lift some weight you won’t add one fiber of muscle. So too, you can muse away the day but if it’s not a springboard for creative work or ideas, then you might just as well have been watching reruns of Cop Rock.

Making the transition from productive musing to a creative idea requires discipline. That’s right, discipline. (A note to all you Type A personalities — you know who you are. Just because we’re not hyperactive and making everyone around us bananas doesn’t mean we’re not working. Writers think about and see the world differently from most people. Our job is curoristy. We turn objects on different angles and view the world differently than most people. Coming up with new ideas or a fresh take on an old idea requires a lot of energy and, (dare I say it again? I dare), discipline.

For a writer it means chaining him or herself to a desk every day, churning out a minimum number of words, and ignoring the possibility of having their poetic license suspended for using too many adjectives in a simple sentence zone.

There are several ways to jump from musing to an idea to writing a story. Start by investing in a pocket size digital recorder. Then make a habit of carrying it everywhere. The great American writer Nathanial Hawthorne used the precursor to the digital recorder - a pencil and notebook. He always carried one to capture ideas. He also sat on park benches or in cafes and listen to people talk so he could write more convincing dialogue.

The point is who knows when that rush of inspiration will wash over you? It could be as your tooling down the Expressway, the radio cranked up and you and Lady Gaga are belting out Just Dance (Disclaimer: I’ve used Just Dance in an attempt to make the example relevant to younger writers. I personally have never heard the song and would be more inclined to something from the Classic Rock genre). When an idea hits, pull out the recorder and left fly your idea into the built-in microphone.

Another way to preserve an idea is to keep a note book and pen on your night table in case inspiration strikes as you lull between consciousness and sleep. I’ve done that for years and it has paid off on several occasions. True, I rarely use verbatim what I’ve jotted down in my semi-conscious state, but the idea is like a precious stone that needs polishing and shaping to shine. You can substitute a digital recorder for the notebook and pen but make sure you explain its purpose to your significant other.

Another way to keep your creative juices flowing is by staying informed. Read everything – newspapers, consumer magazines, industry newsletters, and blogs, (especially this one). The information they convey tell you who is doing what and why they are doing it that way.

And don’t discard an idea just because it doesn’t seem to work immediately. It can take months to figure out how an idea fits or where it’s leading. File it for future reference. It may be a piece to a bigger puzzle.

Finally, your most valuable resource is people. Talk to as many as you can. Most don’t bite and one of them may say something interesting that sparks an idea. You especially want to engage the guy looking out the window with his feet propped up on the ledge. He’s probably lousy with creative ideas. That is, unless, of course, when you talk to him he stares at the ceiling.

So on a wonderful spring morning, the kind that poets lay waste to entire forests trying to capture on paper, I found myself sitting behind a trio of aluminum folding tables bracing for the throng of yard sale enthusiasts about to trample my front lawn.

My wife had been planning our yard sale since, oh, she was 12. Planning is in her nature. She’s AAA – not the auto club, the personality type. She organizes everything, right down to REM sleep. She finalizes the Christmas dinner menu in July.

I’m a type C minus personality, which, according to my wife (who must know because she’s in the medical profession) shows visible signs of life only during televised sporting events and — take my word for it, there is one other time.

The perfect spring day was the heavenly signal my wife had been waiting for all miserable winter. While I was out snow shoveling my back into spasms, she was inside mentally cataloging every item we own. The coming of spring meant it was time to sell our junk.

Watching the yard sale mavens examine my Three Stooges coffee mug collection, I remembered the deal my wife and I made when we got married: I would move out of the city and she wouldn’t make me do anything suburban, except mow the lawn, which, thanks to a lawn service, hasn’t turned out to be a problem.

But she never mentioned yard sales. And if she got me on yard sales, what other diabolical suburban things was she cooking up – joining the block party committee, or, God forbid, taking ballroom dancing lessons?

Besides never aspiring to a career in retail, I’m not sure why I loathe yard sales. The best I can figure is that it goes back to growing up in the city. In my row house neighborhood a yard sale meant the price of concrete had been reduced.

The whole idea of a yard sale collides with city instincts. From conception city dwellers are genetically programmed to protect our belongings from strangers, not encourage them to traipse all over our property and openly rummage through things. Put a table of yard sale stuff out on a city sidewalk and people would just naturally help themselves. They’d laugh in your face if you asked them to pay for it. After all, they’re doing you a favor getting rid of your trash.

Before meeting my wife I had never even heard about yard sales. She was born and raised in a small town where yard sales were right up there with mom, country and apple pie. Of course, tipping over sleeping cows also passed for a wild Friday night.

Being a devotee of yard sales, my wife understood that a successful sale hinged on having the right mix of junk, eh, collectables. She followed two simple rules in making her selections:
1 – Had we used the item during the last 48 hours?
2 – Did it belong to me before we met?

In no time our lawn looked like an outdoor episode of Hoarders. For yard sale aficionados it was a visual pheromone sparking a primordial urge beyond their control. They swarmed to our front lawn like bees to honey, like flies to …, never mind.

My wife spoke their tongue like a native. I was never good with foreign languages. Plus I don’t like talking to strangers, especially those with the wide-eyed, wild look of a serious shopper let loose in a house of bargains. So mostly I just stood there acting like I’d never seen any of this stuff before. Sometimes I’d mustered a big, dumb smile, which convinced a few people to buy things to help my wife pay for my future long-term care.

I artfully dodged a couple of close encounters with buyers.

Buyer: “Do you know …?”
Me: (Vacant stare followed by loopy smile.)
Buyer: “Never mind.”

I was forced into the retail breach when an older woman lugging $10 worth of gimcrack, gewgaws and baubles – enabling her to furnish a small, if somewhat tacky, house – cornered me between a table and a tree. With nowhere to run, I turned to face her. The assault began.

Was the Curly Joe mug missing from the Three Stooges collection and did we have the accompanying Shemp coasters? I parried her thrust with my best, “sorry, not my table,” look. Undaunted, she pressed on asking if the fondue set had all its forks. I didn’t even know we had a fondue set.

Frantically trying to fend her off I ran through the alphabet of incompetent and befuddled expressions at my command. I started with the D’s – dumb, dense, dull, dimwit. When I reached vapid, she was saying she couldn’t possibly pay one dollar for the 12 corn-cob shaped corn holders. The best she could do was maybe, maybe fifty cents.

Seeing my facial fireworks my wife stepped in and got seventy five cents for the corn holders. Exhausted I needed to sit down. I headed for my favorite lawn chair just as a woman in a broad-brimmed sunhat snatched it up and toddled off. It sold for three dollars.

For decades Murdoch has been buying up media outlets across the globe and spreading his gutter-level brand of journalism like some kind of Johnny Rotten Appleseed. His style of journalism, which relies on sensationalism, innuendo, and information massaged to fit an agenda, has degraded the profession. 

Murdoch has always played by his own rules. He uses his media empire to reward politicians he likes and ruthlessly crush anyone who opposes his social and political agenda. Ethics, morals, and fairness apparently aren’t part of his lexicon. And facts, well, why let facts get in the way of becoming a media baron.

But when a news organization plays fast and loose with facts, it leaves its readers, listeners, and viewers lost. They don’t know who or what to trust. Yes, there is bias in journalism. But Murdoch media formula goes beyond bias. 

Reporters and editors are human (it’s a scientific fact that you can look up) and humans have likes and dislike. Still, I can say that 99.9 percent of the reporters I know are honest, hardworking people who do their best to keep personal bias out of stories. Their job, they would tell you, is to report the facts. To wit, a recent report said people are having a hard time sorting through the debt ceiling debate mainly because journalists are doing such a good job of telling both sides of the story.  

There have been rogue journalists who have fabricated quotes, intentionally misinformed people, or plagiarized, all of which are journalistic mortal sins punishable by banishment from the profession (signing a lucrative book contract is not covered by the ban but should be). The difference between those people and the cell-phone hacking charges leveled against the reporters and editors at the News of the World and other News Corporation newspapers is that one is an individual act, the other institutional.

And that is what so worrisome about the reach of Murdoch’s media holdings. It doesn’t matter to him if the reporters and editors at News of the World broke the rules of journalism, not to mention the laws of a nation. Those weren’t, after all, his rules.

The only thing that matters to Murdoch is his money/influence formula. He could care less about the bond of trust with the reader. And facts – forget about it.

So where does this leave us? Look to our current political environment for the answer. By manipulating, ignoring, or groundlessly attacking facts you coarsen public discourse. Civility suffers and people become polarized, which makes it easier to dismiss anything that doesn’t fit into your belief system. Ludicrous or clearly wrong statements – death panels in the Healthcare Reform Act, the president is a Muslim – are allow to gain traction as fact. Try challenging or correcting those statements and you’re shouted down, called names, or physically threatened. If you are part of the media you disparaged as part of the “lame stream media.’’

I can’t place all the blame for the sad state of things at Murdoch’s feet. He’s had plenty of help from sycophants, politicians currying favor, law enforcement authorities on the take, and the journalism profession. Still, a crisis will reveal a lot about the quality of a person and their character. Murdoch performed down to expectations.

When asked by a committee member if he would take responsibility for the cell-phone hacking scandal, Murdoch tersely said, no. Rather, he said, it was the people he trusted and the people they trusted who should be held accountable. This from a man who is legendary for micro managing the company and renown for telephoning his editors regularly to ask about what stories they were working on.

This is the man who would have his newspapers and television news networks set the tone and tenor for our society.

What a prince. 

As the summer wears, many of my friends’ children who graduated college in the Spring are still searching for work. Given the slow economic recovery, no one should be that surprised. But the common refrain I am hearing from friends is how terribly unprepared these young adults are when it comes to conducting a job search.

Look, I certainly wasn’t well prepared for job hunting when I graduated. But realistically, how many jobs were there for a liberal arts major with a degree in 18^th and 19^th British Literature whose goal was to become a working poet? I did publish three poems in a national poetry publication. The payment – free copies of the magazine – clearly illustrated for me the “starving’’ part of “starving artist.’’ It also persuaded me to try another form of writing where the paper I received could be exchanged for essentials like food, rent, and a gin and tonic or two.

My case aside, many baby boomers were the first generation in their families to attend college. We came from blue collar, working class homes. And while our parents were proud and supportive, they didn’t have the resources, knowledge, experience, or connections to help us with the post-college job search. Consequently, many of us were no better prepared to conquer the world than our kids are today.

But our children should not be just job-ready. They should be job-search skilled. For one, many have well educated parents, even if that education isn‘t formal. At no time in our history has there been so much information so readily available. People from all walks of life know how to access that information.

Moreover, colleges and universities have to do a better job of teaching students the art of the job hunt. When you pay $20,000 to $40,000 a year in tuition and board, I think it’s reasonable to expect more from a university than a token online job site.

So, how can we help our progeny get up to speed? It would certainly help if they would listen to advice without rolling their eyes or otherwise expressing their utter indifference to our suggestions. Yeah, I know, I didn’t want to hear it either when I was that age. Nevertheless, let me suggest a few things that I learned while researching How To Keep Your Job In A Tough Competitive Market – 101 Strategies You Can Use Today, which I co-authored with Mike Kitson.

I know the title doesn’t appear to address the topic. But trust me, many of the tips in the book speak directly to the issue. In fact, while promoting the book, Mike, a very successful executive coach, and I often told whoever was doing the interview that the book was a great tool for getting, as well as keeping.

Let’s start with a tip so obvious that people may not think to mention it to a first time job-seeker – dress to impress. The days of sliding into your favorite jeans and tee-shirt everyday, no matter the occasion, ended when you shook hands with the dean and accepted your diploma.

How well, or not so well, you appear does influence the way people perceive you, which, of course when you are asking for a job is rather important. And whether fair or not, some people – especially the person with the job – will judge you, at least in part, on how you present yourself.

I’m not suggesting that you blow your graduation gift money on a fashion runway wardrobe, or look like you stepped off the pages of GQ magazine. Just make sure you’re in line with the industry’s uniform. Once you get the job, dress like the other people in your position, but with just a tad more class.

Remember, from the time you land an interview, to the time you’re hired, you have to think, act, and present yourself like a professional. Like it or not, perception is reality.

Welcome to Words Count, my occasional blog about, well, pretty much anything and everything. I have
spent a career writing for newspapers, national and regional consumer magazines, as well as trade
publications focused on human resource and business issues. I have co-authored, written and published
books about finding and keeping a job, and forward thinking business philosophies. You can expect to find
those subjects discussed here on a regular basis. That said, on any given day I may write about my life as
a freelance writer, the state of journalism, or something in the news. I may discuss sports, ice hockey in
particular, a new restaurant in Philadelphia, a story I’m working on, or even a lighter, fun piece. Like I said,
Words Count will cover whatever catches my fancy on a particular day. My hope is that, from time-to -time,
it also catches yours.