A New Year’s Wish

New Year’s Resolutions are untrustworthy things. If we were going to be thinner, more considerate and speak Spanish, we’d have done it by now.

Offering Resolutions for other people is more fun – you can all definitely improve.

Asking around, the New Year wish from hacks to flaks is simple: Stop sending us so many emails.

Here is an OOO note from one hack:

“If you are asking if I…
a) have received your press release

b) am interested in your press release

c) am going to use your press release

…then please be advised. I probably have it, but do not give running commentaries. I’d be here all day answering and never get any work done.”

If you’re a flak you might be wondering why this chap has to be rude. Hacks think it is bang on. For one thing, the pointless emails make it harder to get to the ones we might actually want.

So how about this, we’ll promise to read what you send, if you stop sending the same email again and again, in that “whistling this back to the top of your inbox” way.

It’s annoying and it has the opposite effect to the one you intend. It might be frustrating that your hard work went nowhere, but perhaps it just wasn’t going to the right people in the first place.

For hacks, how about this: Since Covid too many of us, myself definitely included, have gotten used to the idea that you can do the job perfectly adequately from your home desk with Netflix on in the background.

Why make new contacts, when the old ones work just fine?

I think this should be the year when the hack trade gets back out there again and burns some shoe leather.

And everyone under 35 should be under orders to make phone calls rather than send messages on social media.