Observed

New York Times auto writer Lawrence Ulrich sights a Buddhist monastery and sees a connection to how the new BMW 6 Series handles on the winding ocean-side roads of Northern California. Does this willingness to take chances with storytelling suggest anything for the way we handle marketing content for professional service providers?

So, OK, I’ll admit that a journalist covering the auto industry isn’t exactly analogous to someone writing for business readers.  The keyword here, however, is exactly.

Because Lawrence Ulrich has something to offer those of us who order, create and approve content for law firm Web sites, client brochures and such.  As auto writer/critic for The New York Times, Mr. Ulrich takes a technical subject that’s part of everyday life and makes it come alive.

Decide for yourself.  See, for example, whether the wit and intelligence in this piece about BMW’s new 6 Series doesn’t suggest how your looks-and-sounds-the-same-as-everybody-else’s content might acquire some zing and become more engaging.

I could go on and on.  Of all of the things I like about this article, here’s a passage that made me laugh out loud:

With both of those optional onboard systems, along with chunky 20-inch wheels and tires, the 650i felt unflappable along Route 301 near Carmel — almost an affront to the nearby Chuang Yen Monastery, whose Buddhist monks might take one look at the lavish BMW and advise, “Peace comes from within, do not seek it without.”

Yes?

The smart ones -- such as Daniel Boone -- may have kept going west...to Kentucky and beyond. But the tough ones stayed in the mountains. Like the ones who founded Lincoln Memorial University in 1897. Now, the American Bar Association is about to find out just how tough they are down in Harrogate, Tenn.

If you’ve ever been to the lands of the Cumberland Gap, you know or have a pretty good idea that nothing has ever come easy in these parts.  Not roads.  Not coal mining.  Not jobs.  And, if you’ve been following the recent news about Lincoln Memorial University, not accredited law schools.

The tale of LMU’s so-far-thwarted efforts to create an accredited law school says a lot about the state of how and where lawyers are educated in the United States.  It tells us, for example, how the American Bar Association wears the protector’s mantle.

It tells us how the ABA ostensibly uses the law school accreditation process to safeguard the profession’s standards and to protect the public from quacks, charlatans and shysters.

On the other hand, something has to give.  There’s a growing awareness that whatever system we have isn’t working.   That the status quo…

• Unrealistically burdens students with crushing debt
• Often results in graduates with law degrees who lack the basic skills to practice law, and
• Restricts access to basic legal services in some parts of the nation and populations

This last one includes, the promoters of LMU’s Duncan School of Law claim, the people of the Appalachians where Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia meet.

This is despite — or, perhaps, because of — the existence of 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the 50 states.  These include three in Kentucky alone.

Which suggests another issue altogether.  Does a state such as Kentucky really need three large law schools?  If not, is there any chance that my state’s leaders could ever find whatever it takes to unring that bell?

I doubt it.  However, Sydney Beckman, Pete DeBusk and other champions of an accredited Duncan School of Law are headed for their day in court.  Where we’ll see, as my people sometimes say, whether this dog will hunt.

Dakota L. Meyer was there. The Kentucky native was in the middle of the death-defying chaos and carnage of Sept. 8, 2009. Yet, Sargeant Meyer may be the least reliable source of the facts or truth of what happened during the Battle of Ganjgal.

What happened? can be a dangerous question.  For example…

• Criminal defense attorneys depend on their ability to poke holes in our hazy “eyewitness” recollections.
• Polemicist and filmmaker Errol Morris has created a entire genre out of casting doubt on what images really depict.
• Stieg Larsson used interpretation of an old newspaper photo as the key MacGuffin in his crime-solving novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

And, now, there’s Sgt. Dakota L. Meyer, USMC (ret.), and what happened Sept. 8, 2009, near the village of Ganjgal, Afghanistan.  That’s when and where Meyer was a 21-year-old Marine corporal serving as a scout-sniper with Embedded Training Team 2-8.

The clear consensus is that Meyer earned the Medal of Honor that day.  Accounts of what he actually did, however, vary…despite the testimony of several eyewitnesses and the rigorous review and vetting by the Marine Corps and others.

A McClatchy Newspapers correspondent embedded with Meyer’s unit, for example, has agreed that the young Marine richly deserves the Medal of Honor.  Nevertheless, in a Dec. 14, 2011, story based on the reporter’s findings, the paper declared that the official account of Meyer’s actions was “marred by errors and inconsistencies, ascribe actions to Meyer that are unverified or didn’t happen and create precise, almost novelistic detail out of the jumbled and contradictory recollections of the Marines, soldiers and pilots engaged in battle.”

So, once again, I am reminded of the fog of war.  The phrase — coined by 18th-century Prussian soldier and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz and popularized by Robert McNamara in Morris’s 2003 documentary — most likely captures Dakota Meyer’s frame of mind that fateful day…and since.

The concept of the fog of war helps explain the difficulty we humans have in discerning either facts or truth, especially under stressful circumstances.  And always will.

Even though it’s Christmas Eve, there’s no need to get all Trinitarian on you.

Nevertheless, I’ve found the third member of my Holy Trinity of writers at The New York Times, my principal source of news and of seemingly never-ending writers delight. Before I confess my crush on essayist-critic Ginia Bellafante, let me tell you about the other two.

A part of me wants to be Bill Cunningham when I grow up.  I mean, wouldn’t you like to spend your days riding around Manhattan on your bicycle or attending swanky parties, taking pictures of the beautiful people and writing all of it up once a week or so?  Then again, I’ve seen the bio-mentary of Mr. Cunningham.  Which is when another part of me kicks in…the part that isn’t fond of the idea of spending most of my adult life alone, riding my bicycle around Manhattan taking picture of the beautiful people.

While it’s a close call, Gail Collins gets the nod over Maureen Dowd.  Both write like dreams, can snark with the best of them, and lean way far to the left.  Ms. Collins, however, hails from just up the river from me, in Cincinnati, and got her start as a reporter in Northern Kentucky.  Maybe she represents the hope that I might actually amount to something…someday.

Ginia Bellafante

I could (and do) read Frank Rich, Frank Bruni, Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristol, Roger Cohen, Matt Bai and other NYT writers just about every day.  Yet, there’s just something about Ginia Bellafante that I simply adore.  Maybe it’s her beat — New York City — which showed up about three months ago in a column entitled Big City.    In it and elsewhere, Ms. Bellafante shows that she has the perfect eye and ear for a Gotham where Gatsby meets Bonfire.

Maybe it’s her pen.  Which often reminds me of Hunter Thompson’s weird and wild rantings…without the Bourbon and mushrooms.  To wit, a paragraph from her Dec. 16, 2011, piece about the wedding of Jacqueline Schmidt and David Friedlander, a pair of mid-30s New Yorkers who wanted their union to be “about the world of creativity and social purpose that they inhabit.”  The venue was the PowerHouse Arena, “a loft-like store for arty bibliophiles” in the city’s Dumbo district.

Ms. Schmidt, who once served as the creative director of Moomah, the children’s cafe in Tribeca that caters to parents in denial about some of the distasteful aesthetics of child-rearing, made the cards in her favored style of heavy stock, neutral paper and quaint typefaces. Through her company, Screech Owl Design, Ms. Schmidt makes beautiful, twee paper products that would seem to demand an existence inside a Miranda July snow globe. Synergistically, PowerHouse is among the many places where Ms. Schmidt’s work is sold.

See what it mean?

OK, granted, you’re probably not writing for fans of Fergie or will.i.am.  Work with me anyway, because I see a connection between the digital freneticism of the Black Eyed Peas and your visitors’ non-linear distractability.

If your goal is to get read (much less, remembered), keep your content short.  Probably under 250 words for anything you might consider a page — such as a bio, practice group description, About Us…or, this blog post.

The Nielsen Effect is why.  As in Jakob Nielsen, a Danish software engineer considered to be one of the foremost user experience gurus.

Nielsen and others have found, for starters, that we read online content 25 percent slower than we read the same content in hard copy.  As Nielsen characterizes this and other Web visitor behaviors,

“[U]sers are selfish, lazy and ruthless.”

Here’s a still-timely 2008 Michael Agger post that explains this and more…including the average user’s unwillingness to scroll.

Distractable

We’re addicted to Anything But This.  I check Facebook, listen to BEP on YouTube, look out the window, tweet something…etc., blah.  You?  It’s not in the DSM (yet), but some psychologists label it Fear of Missing Out.

And, my sense is that it’s in our DNA.  That we survived on the ocean or in the jungle or on the savannah or prairie by being hyper-alert and hyper-vigilant.

In other words, we didn’t have the luxury of The Long.  So, Keep It Short.

Newt Gingrich's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination seems undeterred by his campaign to sell his books. He and wife Calista often drive their handlers crazy by spending time signing books instead of stumping for votes. Or, are those the same things?

Doesn’t it make perfect sense that 2011 holiday book sales are strong…despite the growing popularity of electronic reading; or, perhaps, because of it?  Or, despite the loss of bankrupt Borders’s 650 stores from the retail mix?

Books — real books — are tangible.  All the better to put under the Christmas tree or hand to someone special as a gift.

And, to show that you care. Really care.

Retailers and publishers report, by the way, that sales of non-fiction titles are the strongest sector in their industry.  In addition, big, expensive books seem to be a niche unaffected by the recession or worries about online competition.