Award Winning Blog - Agitator

Election ’22: Will the “Youth Vote” Matter?

Blue wave? Red wave? Tsunami or mere ripple? With only hours to go before Tuesday’s Mid-Term elections the outcome is anyone’s guess. There are almost as many “answers” as there are pundits prognosticating. One of the major unknowns is the wild card labeled “the Youth Vote.” I say “wild card” because of this group’s historically […]

Learn More November 7, 2022

Giving Research a Bad Name

I’m on record saying most research is garbage in, garbage out. I’ve produced some of it over the years, giving me seasoned perspective. And, at the time, I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. The reason most research sucks is threefold, Poorly designed survey. Survey design is a science. No analysis beyond […]

Learn More November 4, 2022

The Path to Hell is Paved With…Adverbs

So wrote Stephen King in his book, On Writing, further exclaiming he’d shout it from the rooftops. Adverbs aren’t officially a part of our Copy Optimizer Readability or Story Scores but they are a weak part of speech, leading to lifeless, dull writing. The show don’t tell adage is as known as it is ignored. […]

Learn More November 2, 2022

Is Your Charity More Like Edgar Allen Poe or Jules Verne?

Edgar Allan Poe arguably invented the modern detective story and was a key creator of the Symbolism movement in poetry, plus he wrote one of the first science fiction novels in 1838. He died young and penniless. Jules Verne invented nothing though gets credit in some quarters for inventing the sci-fi genre with his 1863 […]

Learn More October 31, 2022

Simple Writing Pays Off (Literally)

I stole this headline from a Harvard Business Review article. The literal in this case is, well, literal. [Sidebar: Are we all going to stand idly by while “literal”, literally becomes synonymous with figurative? My British friends blame Americans and vice versa. I say a pox on both our houses, it’s happening, let’s put out […]

Learn More October 28, 2022

People With Less Free Time Volunteer More?

I’ve always heard the cash or time trope. Hell, I’ve said it. People give of time or treasure depending on which resource they have more of. Makes perfect sense except there’s little evidence beyond the anecdotal to support it. A German research study examines the impact of income and life’s other competing interests on discretionary […]

Learn More October 26, 2022