TIP OF THE DAY:
When is a yawn a good thing? When you think of it as a vocal exercise. It’s the first vocal behavior exercise I give my clients and my students at the U of MN.
A yawn relaxes you, steadies your voice box, and cools your brain.
So yawn away…just be careful about timing.
Minneapolis television is losing a strong journalist today. Her name is Jamie Reese. She’s my friend and a reporter at Fox 9 Twin Cities. For family reasons she’s leaving town to move to the East Coast. She’s not sure if she’ll stay in TV or try something new. No matter what she chooses I wish her well.
Jamie’s departure makes me think about when I decided to leave TV news nearly three years ago to move home and start my business. On many levels, I will always be a TV journalist at heart. It influences everything I do as a trainer and consultant. But my new adventure has taught me a lot about myself, my former trade, and the business world around me. At the end of the day, I wouldn’t change a thing.
I do hope this current world of TV news changes for the better though. Many things influencing the biz have made it a different place than when Jamie and I got into it more than a decade ago. Cheers to Jamie. Her friends and colleagues in Minneapolis will miss her. But as she focuses on her new adventure, I hope TV news and its fellow media outlets focus on the role of the press painstakingly outlined in the US Constitution. Be sure to watch Jamie’s final Minneapolis live shot tonight at 9.
As promised, I’ll rate the rest of the speakers at the political conventions. When I last wrote, Barack Obama had not spoken yet. So I will include his numbers here.
First, let’s take a look at the key speakers during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week:
Fred Thompson = 5.5
Joe Lieberman = 6.5
Rudy Guiliani = 7
Sarah Palin = 9
John McCain = 8.5
Most of the heavy hitters given keynote spots during the RNC start with what I call a handicap of high expectation. Unfortunately, many of them let us down. Fred Thompson didn’t even act his way through a good speech. I expected so much more from him. Joe Lieberman was a bit flat. Nothing awful, nothing great. For me, the bar was set high for Rudy Guiliani. But I was let down that he was a lot more angry than I expected. He’s good at doing tough” but seems a bit ill-suited for “angry.”
Sarah Palin gets the highest marks of all RNC speakers. She was authentic, funny, and confident. My only problem with her is her vocal behavior. To really seem presidential, she’s got some tone and pitch issues to tweak. I could help her, if she asked. John McCain did not get a 10, but his score was good. This was a speech during which he seemed quite presidential. He toned down the “angry” and seemed sincere and patriotic. He understood the audience in the room with him, and he had thought through what he believed the TV audience needed to hear and see. He gets a plus, plus for audience analysis.
Back to Barack Obama, who did not get rated prior to now. He gets an 8. As much as I tried to just focus on this talk, I admit I sat down thinking he was going to deliver a 10. Because he wasn’t as outstanding as he usually is, his score was good but not as high as you’d expect. If he were to ask me, I’d say moving forward, try to sound less like you’re giving a speech and more like you’re just talking with us.