Everyone recognizes the benefit of steering clear of major media events when making an announcement.

It’s safe to say that January 20 is not the time to roll out a new line of laptop computers.

But there are scenarios when news relevant to your story hitting in roughly the same timeframe works to your advantage.

Take the well-crafted story by BusinessWeek’s Steve Hamm, titled “Making Computers Based on the Human Brain.” The story kicks off with the classic BW anecdote:

When Lloyd Watts was growing up in Kingston, Ont., in the 1970s he had a knack for listening to songs by Billy Joel and Elton John and plunking out the melodies on the family piano. But he wondered, wouldn’t it be great to have a machine that could “listen” to songs and immediately transcribe them into musical notation? Watts never built the gizmo, but his decades-long quest to engineer such a machine has finally resulted in one of the first commercial technologies based on the biology of the brain.

Hamm goes on to explain that a startup venture called Audience has created a chip that’s somewhat sensory.

Here’s the rub: The story also features the Pentagon’s DARPA passing $4.9 mil IBM’s way to fund research on building intelligence into computers and Jeff Hawkins of Palm Pilot fame striving for software that takes on the characteristics of the cerebral cortex.

I’m sure Audience wasn’t thrilled at sharing the stage.

Yet, the serendipity that landed all three vignettes on Hamm’s desk at roughly the same time provided the collective heft that enabled the piece to run in the print edition.

Otherwise, the piece maybe makes the online version. 

The recent BusinessWeek piece titled “BitTorrent’s Bram Coen Isn’t Limited by Asperger’s” got my attention.

The inventor of the technology that brought digital movie sharing into the mainstream let the world know he suffers from Asperger’s syndrome.

The painfully honest profile intersperses good, bad and not-so-pretty elements:

“For Cohen, this has been a fraught journey into the sometimes bewildering world of the office. The social conventions that ease everyday interactions can still elude him. He doesn’t like to shake hands or wear shoes or make small talk. He often plays with a Rubik’s Cube. Sometimes when he is outraged, or more often when he is fatigued, he bursts forth with unwelcome candor. He can be oblivious, lecturing on solar cells or economic theory or euphemisms until someone stops him.”

Obviously, this vignette does not come from Cohen’s official bio, but he calls the overall story a “fairly reasonable portrayal” on his blog - albeit with too much emphasis on the Asperger’s angle.

I give credit to BitTorrent for providing BusinessWeek with no-rules access to Cohen, knowing that unflattering elements would inevitably surface (although the fact that the fired brother didn’t return the reporter’s calls was probably a good thing).

The payoff comes in the form of an honest look at the founder which ultimately humanizes the company.

Would BusinessWeek have devoted so many column inches to retell the story of yet another youngster gifted in mathematics challenging the establishment a la Napster?

There’s no way. But by setting the stage with Asperger’s as well as gaining perspective from those around him, BW gains the type of fodder that makes for good storytelling:

Then there was Bram himself. He could be disruptive. He likes to talk and play with his puzzles. “We have to keep him contained so others can work,” says Navin. “New employees didn’t know they could tell him they had to get back to work.” And his overly blunt but rarely ill-intentioned comments didn’t always go over well. Ivy Hsu, the office manager, was the first person Cohen and Navin hired. One day Cohen said to her: “I don’t understand the point of being detail-oriented. Only the dumb people in this world focus on small details.” Hsu has since learned how to deal with him. “You have to communicate according to the rules he understands,” she says. “You can cut him off, you can walk away. There is no point in sugarcoating things, because if you do, he may miss the whole point.

Obviously, the BusinessWeek reporter also sniffed out some discord between Cohen and the CEO at the time:

The executive BitTorrent hired is Doug Walker, who had led graphics software company Alias Technology in Toronto. He is circumspect when it comes to Cohen but does say: “You’re always going to have an honest conversation with Bram. To me that’s fair, even if you may not always like it.”

I say “CEO at the time,” since the company just named Erick Klinker as the new CEO. 

The rise of the blogosphere has given prominence to the absolute necessity of communicating with authenticity.

The infamous “Cluetrain Manfesto” called out this point long before the blogosphere gained traction:

“Business is being transformed, but not by technology. The Web is simply liberating an atavistic human desire, the longing for connection through talk. That’s the one constant throughout our evolution, from caves to mud huts to open-air bazaars, from city-states to empires, nations, interdependent global powers. We’ve always conversed, connecting to the people of our world in our authentic voices.”

What makes a voice authentic?

I don’t think I’m exactly going out on a limb by saying that it starts by being who you say you are. Conversely, pretending to be someone else in the virtual world is grounds for a public flogging. My favorite “Exhibit A” involved the CEO of Whole Foods posting online comments under the alias “Rahodeb,” trying to drive down the valuation of competitor Wild Oats Market, a toasting still surfacing a year later.

OK, that’s a relatively simple concept.

But how do you grade the authenticity of an individual communicating a story when that story actually comes from someone else?

With the presidential campaign coming down the home stretch, I’ve been thinking about this question.

The candidate deemed “most genuine” by a given voter takes a giant step toward landing the vote. Yet, there’s a cadre of speech writers and political consultants driven by the objective of crafting the words for Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain that will best resonate with the American public.

When Hillary Clinton found her voice after the New Hampshire primary, did she find her voice or the voice of a particular speech writer?

It’s an interesting debate to examine when the quest for “resonance” pushes a candidate out of the authentic quadrant. No doubt those same political consultants have spent millions on focus groups for guidance.

In the business world, the executives who are the strongest communicators are the ones sharing real stories from their personal experiences. They come across as authentic because they are authentic (what a concept).

This doesn’t mean that the PR function has no role in the process.

Executives in the technology industry often come from engineering orientations where science rules the day. PR can play a valuable role in helping the executive sort through his or her perspectives, opinions and stories, identifying the right content for a given situation.

Often, executives and even companies don’t recognize communications “gold.”

I always think back to sourcing sessions I conducted with HP when they were still in the disk drive business and had invented what would at the time be the world’s smallest disk drive called Kitty Hawk. As I was signing out at the end of the day, the product manager mentioned that the engineering team had been sequestered offsite in a portable trailer. 

Eleven engineers essentially living together in a portable trailer for the better part of a year. How could there not be some good stories around such an arrangement? And indeed, this became a sidebar in BusinessWeek.

At a more basic level, there are times when PR adds tremendous value by simply coaching an executive to open up and share his or her personal stories.

Revisiting the wonderful USA Today profile on the Graspr CEO, Theresa Phillips was kind enough to spend a few minutes with me on the phone. She said her natural inclination was to keep the story focused on the company. It turns out that the company’s PR firm, Consort Partners, was instrumental in helping Phillips understand the benefit of opening up and connecting her personal story to Graspr.  

Without this contrast - or perhaps I should say without this “authentic contrast” - it’s fair to say that the story wouldn’t have appeared in USA Today.

The concept of reader engagement championed in the blogosphere is now making the rounds in the traditional publishing world.

BusinessWeek serves as a good exhibit A.

MediaShift captured changes afoot at BW in a far-reaching post that included an interview with the big cheese himself, EIC John Byrne.

On the topic of reader engagement Byrne shared:

“We have had a very rigourous, very lively reader involvement on the site for a long time. In any given month, roughly 15,000 people participate in conversations on our site, but they are largely hidden from view. You have to either go into a blog and see how people are responding, or you have to go into a forum to see how people are exchanging views, or go to the end of a story to see the comments on it. We want to elevate those conversations and make them more apparent to everyone that these conversations are occurring …

“This is about elevating our conversation and giving credence to the rhetoric that everyone has, that the web is a dialogue and not a lecture. The truth is that very few people are delivering on it, having reporters actively engage with readers or elevating comments and saying, ‘This is as important as any story we have, any video we have, any audio we have.’”

Byrne went on to say:

“Time spent [on the BW Web site] is not as important to me as making a contribution to the site. I look at it as input and output. In any given month, we probably publish 800 to 1,000 stories on the site and get 15,000 comments in. So that’s about a 15-to-1 ratio and I want to triple that by the end of the year. So for every story we put out, I’d like to have 45 contributions from our readers.”

If BW inspires readers to pontificate with posted comments, no one can argue the virtues that come with such engagement.

So far I’m with you, Mr. Byrne.

But here’s where things go off track.

BusinessWeek is now looking to its readership to generate genuine editorial content as part of its engagement mantra.

Under the banner, “What’s Your problem? You’ve got workplace issues. Together, we’ll find answers,” the book is looking to readers to contribute essays, photos and even videos about the challenges that come with coping in today’s workplace.

Can the average Joe write compelling content?

Can people who don’t write for a living storytell in a way that captivates?

I’d say not likely.

And if you’re a grizzled reporter – or even an ungrizzled reporter – how do you feel about the arrival of amateur hour?

I’m guessing mixed feeling to say the least.

It will be interesting to see how this workplace content comes together starting August 14.

In the meantime, Mr. Byrne’s July 11 blog post hypes a new milestone at BusinessWeek: A column by an everyday reader cracked the top five most-read stories.

Ironically, the post didn’t generate one reader comment (as I put this view to rest), so reaching utopia in the form of a 45:1 ratio of user comments to story just took a hit.

Take a look at the following opening paragraph in a recent Economist article:

“The porters at Trinity College, Cambridge, were puzzled by the faded, handwritten letter. They did not recognise the addressee’s name, and opened the envelope. Inside was a note which appeared to suggest a meeting; perhaps even a date. But that meeting probably never took place. The letter had been posted in March 1950 – and had been lost in the mail for 56 years.”

It sounds like another round of postal service bashing. After all, 56 years to deliver a letter takes “slowness” to a new level. Instead, the mini story kicks off a piece on a new technology that uses the satellite-based
Global Positioning System.

The opening paragraph in a recent story in BusinessWeek goes even further:

“It’s an ordinary day on Pete Ferrell’s 7,000-acre ranch in the Flint Hills of southeastern Kansas. Meaning, it’s really windy. When he drives his silver Toyota Tundra out of the canyon where the ranch buildings nestle, the truck rocks from the gusts. Up on top of a ridge, surrounded by a sweeping vista of low hills, rippling grass, and towering wind turbines that make you feel like a mouse scampering underfoot, Ferrell carefully navigates into a spot where the wind won’t damage the doors when they’re opened. Then he points to an old-style windmill, used for pumping water, which was erected by his father decades earlier when the ranch was in the throes of a drought. “That’s the windmill that saved us in the ’30s,” he explains, his voice growing husky with emotion.”

This is the type of stage setting you’d expect in fiction complete with the “voice growing husky with emotion.” Triggers an image of Lauren Bacall on the big screen.

Today’s business and trade journalists – including those from the technology sphere – are increasingly charged with bringing an entertainment dimension to their writing.

Yet, it can be a revealing exercise for a company to step back and examine the content being developed to crack these targets particularly the all-too-elusive business media.

Facts and figures. Check.

Product features and benefits. Check.

But the elements that constitute good storytelling are often MIA.