Over on The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan points to this lecture by Rupert Murdoch about the future of newspapers. Andrew calls out the money quote, but here’s the part of the money quote that matters most:

“We are moving from news papers to news brands.”

Bingo.

Newspapers aren’t going away, they’re evolving. There will always be news. It may not be thrown into the bushes every morning by a kid on a bike, but there will always be news. Smart journalists and commentators and publishers and marketers will evolve, too.

Takeaway for marketers: Evolve or die.

When I was at ad:tech last week, I picked up a copy of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott. David gets it, as demonstrated by the rules themselves — a pithy distillation of much of what’s been going on in marketing and P.R. over the past decade:

• Marketing is more than advertising.
• P.R. is more than just a mainstream media audience.
• You are what you publish.
• People want authenticity, not spin.
• People want participation, not propaganda.
• Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it.
• Marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of vast numbers of underserved audiences via the Web.
• P.R. is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the Web.
• Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. It’s about your organization winning business.
• The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media.
• Companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content.
• Blogs, podcasts, e-books, news releases and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate.
• On the Web, the lines between P.R. and marketing have blurred.

Takeaway for marketers: This may not be a seminal book like The Cluetrain Manifesto, but it’s a coupla hundred pages of solid and practical advice. Add it to your business book library. And follow the rules — they’ll put you ahead of the pack, because so many others still don’t get it.

The International Herald Tribune writes that a report of online security will be released tomorrow, noting that “attackers bent on shutting down large Web sites — even the operators that run the backbone of the Internet — are arming themselves with what are effectively vast digital fire hoses capable of overwhelming the world’s largest networks.”

Takeaway for marketers: Time to think twice about your information security and backup procedures. You may not be able to prevent an attack, but you should be in a position to minimize the damage should one occur.

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about how an email from the Web Marketing Association included far too many hideous misspellings.

Here’s another similar situation that crossed my screen recently.

GoogleLady.com seems to be a pretty good site. You’re likely to wind up there sooner or later if you’re Googling for AdWords tips, because GoogleLady has posted a free e-book: The AdWords Quality Guide. It’s suitable for beginners and it’s packed with tips on how to get the most out of AdWords.

Here’s the thing: How can anyone trust GoogleLady’s tips for writing ads when GoogleLady can barely spell? The contents page spells beginners with two g’s and one n. The question asked on the contents page lacks a question mark. Sentences seem like they got chewed up by Babel Fish: “31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips.” (By the way, that’s the one place on the contents page where “AdWords” was written correctly, i.e. with the capital W. The other 12 places on the page, it’s written “Adwords.”

There’s probably a lot of good information in this 47-page guide, but the sloppiness undercuts any authority it would otherwise have.

What’s really troubling is that a lot of people probably don’t care. When basic standards of consistency, spelling and style don’t matter, though, what’s next to slide?

Takeaway for marketers: Don’t head down that slippery slope. Spelling counts. Good writing is just one component to making you look professional, but bad writing alone can make you look foolish.

“Conversational, not corporate” is a mantra I invoke often when talking about the best way to connect with customers and potential customers. That means dropping the buzzwords and communicating like a real person, whether it’s on a Web site, in an ad or in email.

Yesterday, I received a remarkable example of a conversational email. Quick preface: This is not a political blog, so this should not be taken as an endorsement of one point of view over another. I am on more lists than I can count. I get email from both the Obama and McCain campaigns.

With that caveat out of the way, here’s one of the most conversational emails you’ll see this year, presented in its entirety without any editing. I’m guessing it got the job done and then some.

Dear MoveOn member,

Can you volunteer for Obama this weekend?

Hint: the answer is “Yes.”

Have plans? Cancel them. Can’t cancel? Postpone. If you got sick, you’d find some way to reschedule your other stuff. And this is way more important than illness. This is the, uh, FUTURE OF THE WORLD—and it could come down to 25 people in Ambler.

You know how to click a mouse, right? Sure! You clicked on this email. Perfect. So all you have to do is click this link:

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=1

Seriously, this is game time. This race could be much, much tighter than people realize. The Obama campaign is telling its staff to work like they’re 20 points behind. If you sit this one out because you think it’s a lock, and then we lose . . . um, wow.

So . . . why haven’t you clicked yet? Does the idea of volunteering make your stomach clench into a knot? No problem. Take a deep breath. What we’re talking about here is walking around on a Saturday morning in Ambler, holding a clipboard. There are about 100,000 things that are more scary than that. And if McCain wins, a lot of those things will happen.

Maybe it’s the going-outside part that makes you nervous. Idea: Call your two best friends and ask them to go with you. They can defend you if you’re, I don’t know, attacked by squirrels. See, now there’s nothing to be afraid of! Click the link. It’s right there. Just click it. Click, click, click.

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=2

Hey, did you just click that link? No? Oops! You must have kept reading instead of clicking it. Maybe you missed it. Here it is again, twice:

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=3

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=4

Listen. I promise: On the other side of that link is just a sign-up form for volunteering. No viruses, nothing to fear. It’s the safest, happiest web page you’ll ever visit. Also, it’s the page where you can sign up to rescue the country and the planet. How awesome will it be to visit a page like that?!1

Okay. You’re ready. You’re going to click. I can feel it. Yeah! Click!

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=5

And again!

http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=6

That was great. Thanks! Thanks for all you do.2

–Adam

1.ǝɯosǝʍɐ ɹǝdns ǝq p1noʍ ʇɐɥʇ :ɹǝʍsuɐ

2If you’re reading this, you might not have caught the link to the volunteer signup page. No worries! Here it is: http://pol.moveon.org/obama/volunteer/?office_id=310&id=14567-4616795-kkTJXWx&t=7

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 4.2 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Takeaway for marketers: Be conversational. Every fiber of your business being may be telling you otherwise, but fight the inclination to pepper your copy with too many buzzwords and too much formality.