Tiger takes center stage tomorrow to publicly share his mea culpa.

Every pundit and his brother has weighed in with a view. The local NBC affiliate was in our office today to interview our crisis guru John Radewagen.

So I’ll keep my view brief.

The statement on Tiger’s Web site doesn’t lead me to believe that tomorrow will have a happy ending:

Tiger Woods will be speaking to a small group of friends, colleagues and close associates at 11:00 a.m. EST on Friday at the TPC Sawgrass Clubhouse in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Tiger plans to discuss his past and his future, and he plans to apologize for his behavior.

It sounds like he’s hanging out with the guys over beers.

I also think it’s the wrong move to not field questions after he speaks.

Yes, I understand as articulated on his Web site that “Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between him and his wife.” By not fielding questions he hopes to control the tawdry side of this ”little” crisis.

His quandary is that the more he strives to control tomorrow, the less likely he’s going to come across as sincere and truly apologetic.

Because a Q&A session forces Tiger to be Tiger.

You can’t script questions.

There is one move Tiger could make that would absolutely show remorse.

If he shared that he continues to need more time to focus on his family and, as a result, won’t be playing in the Master’s this year.

That would show the man’s serious about rehab.

There’s nothing more precious to Mr. Woods than winning more major titles than Jack Nicklaus.

If he was willing to give up a shot at the next major, the making of “Tiger, The Sequel” could begin.

Alexandre Bilodeau winning Canada’s first gold medal in the men’s freestyle moguls on Sunday got me thinking.

Every Olympics reveals terrific human interest stories such as Bilodeau and his inspiration coming from his disabled older brother. You certainly don’t need a media kit to write up Team U.S.A.’s historic beat-down of the Russian hockey team at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

But these high-drama moments don’t occur on a daily basis, which begs the question:

How is the Vancouver Organizing Committee, affectionately dubbed VANOC, facilitating storytelling at the games beyond the athletes?

For answers, I took a look at the media centre on the official Winter Olympics Web site and was greeted with the words:

These resources help tell the story of the 2010 Winter Olympic games.

Encouraged, I pulled up the “Quick Facts about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games” (under media kits)  expecting compelling information, anecdotes and perhaps an obscure tidbit or two. Instead, nine pedistarian facts came to the fore:

17 days of Olympic Games events

10 days of Paralympic Games events

5,500 Olympic Games athletes and officials (projected)

1,350 Paralympic Games athletes and officials (projected)

80+ countries participating in Olympic Winter Games

40+ countries participating in Paralympic Winter Games

10,000 media representatives

3 billion worldwide television viewers

75 million visits worldwide to vancouver2010.com (projected)

Of all the documents in the media centre, the one with the most promise proved to be the backgrounder on ice making, which started:

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games will see the world’s best winter athletes compete on the coolest fields of play: ice. Making great competition ice is not an easy task. It requires the world’s top ice makers, known as ice meisters, as well as state-of-the-art ice making equipment and a dedicated team of specialists whose job is to maintain perfect surfaces for figure skaters, speed skaters, short track speed skaters, curlers, wheelchair curlers, sliders, ice hockey and ice sledge hockey players.

I had no idea the temperature of the ice varies depending on the competition.

For example, figure skating ice is the softest of the Olympic ice surfaces at −3° C which helps skaters dig in for jumps and spins. In contrast, speed skating ice can be as cold as −9° C since it’s all about speed as opposed to grip.

Good stuff.

I also liked the concept of ice meisters. The backgrounder goes on to identify the ice meister for speed skating, the ice meister for curling, etc.

With that said, they could have humanized the story by sharing how each of these ice meisters came by their gifts. Perhaps one was a prodigy, complaining about the density of ice cubes in his or her soda pop at a young age.

In spite of this deliverable, the vast majority of content in the media centre is a tad dry.

VANOC did work out an arrangement with the AFP news service to feed stories to the site under the News section (not technically part of the media centre). This means for every drab release on how to clear security or the revenue generated from Olympic swag, we also get stories such as “Women Lugers Bemoan Abnormal Child’s Start:”

I shared half of my list of favorite posts from a cruise through the past yesterday.

Here’s the remaining five.

6) Iron Reporter: Wall Street Journal Versus NY Times On A Russian Train

I came up with the Iron Reporter concept for scrutinizing how two different reporters cover the same topic. In this case, my investigative reporting instincts dug up a tweet that possibly explains why Paul Glader from the Journal didn’t fair well against his compadre from The New York Times:

7) Power Of Contrast Comes Through In McDonald’s Story

Given the countless meals at McDonald’s during my youth, this was a disconcerting walk down nostalgia lane:

I can’t believe they’re doing away with the fiberglass seats. It was almost a rite of passage for every kid to misbehave in McDonald’s, inevitably fall off the chair and get conked on the head as a reminder from the karma gods to listen to their mom.

8) Borrowing From Crocodile Dundee, “Now That’s An Anecdote”

Media coverage on the Bilski intellectual property case before the Supreme Court spiked in November, allowing me to make my own case for anecdotes (like the Piggly Wiggly patent) and do some original reporting on the side:

I found Mr. Saunders’ Patent No. 1242872 and couldn’t help but notice the filing date of October 21, 1916 and the issue date of October 1917.

It’s comforting to know that even back then, the U.S. Patent Office moved at its own pace.

I love the language in the actual patent:

The object of my said invention is to provide a store equipment by which the customer will be enabled to serve himself and in so doing, will be required to review the entire assortment of goods carried in stock, conveniently and attractively displayed and after selecting the list of goods desired, will be required to pass a checking and paying station at which the goods select may be billed, packaged and settled for before retiring from the store, thus relieving the store of a large proportion of the usual incidental expenses, or overhead charges required to operate it, all as well be herinafter more fully described and claimed.

Apparently, English teachers back in 1917 were a bit more tolerant of run-together sentences.

9) A Mass Comms Curriculum Alone Short-sheets Tomorrow’s PR Pro

Social media extraordinaire Steven Farnsworth gave me a pulpit to address the future of PR skills, which I also posted in Ishmael’s Corner:

One of my favorite modern artists is Chuck Close who takes portraits to a different level. His painting and photography talent serve as only the starting point for his pieces.

Close has immersed himself in the printing process ranging from carving linoleum blocks to applying acid to his etching plates. Geometry – the use of a grid to break the face down into incremental units – and even topology also come to play in his art.

This collision of creativity and science produces stunning results not possible with only the “arts.”

10) The New York Times Interpretation Of An Enterprise Computing Story

It’s not easy to crack the mainstream media with an enterprise computing story. You need that fresh wrinkle to make for an entertaining read:

The story explains how the University of Minnesota took proceeds from licensing the “code” to Honeycrisp apples to help pay for a $6 million supercomputer.

Can you imagine the university’s computer scientists going door to door selling chocolate bars to raise this kind of dough? No way could they equal the windfall from the apple IP.

That’s a wrap. Now back to 2010.

I cruised back through my 2009 posts, flagging my personal favorites.

Here’s half the list:

1) AIG Jumps Into Fray with Its Side of the Story

This was my first time getting in touch with my inner smart-ass self:

The power of empathy championed by Oprah and her ilk is not lost on Mr. Liddy. His op-ed kicks off:

The government rescue of American International Group (AIG) and other financial firms has produced a palpable wave of anger on the part of Americans and a rising public demand for accountability from corporate and government leaders. The anger is understandable, and I share it.

Is he saying that he shares our anger or he shares an understanding that we’re angry? I’m not sure. Still, right move to jump on the anger bandwagon.

2) Conversing Like A Real Human Being

One of my soapboxes and the following perspective from Dick Costello (now COO at Twitter) absolutely nails the issue:

People like it when companies have personalities. It makes us feel like there are actual people on the other side of the communication. It’s fun to be the customer of a company with a personality. This seems totally obvious, and yet you too rarely see companies with distinct personalities really grab your attention in the marketplace. Why is this? It’s actually hard to remove personality and character from communications. So, instead of saying that companies don’t take the time to have personalities, it’s probably more accurate to state that companies don’t allow themselves to show their personalities.

3) Making Sure The Cobbler’s Kids Don’t Go Without Shoes

By applying the same storytelling principles to our own brand-building, we’ve enjoyed attention from a range of media properties, including an op-ed in BusinessWeek. I got a kick out of the following line even if the only positive feedback came from my mom (”You never liked carp. I remember when we took you to Lake Mead and …”):

If we learned anything from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) last year—never a good sign when an acronym rhymes with carp—it’s that pumping large sums of money into the banks by itself is not the answer to the credit crunch.

4) The David-Against-Goliath Story Never Goes Out Of Style

Malcom Gladwell has taken non-fiction storytelling to a new level. This post examines one of his New Yorker pieces:

He frames the story with a subplot that anyone can relate to: a youth sports team, in this case a 12-year-old girls basketball team coached by the CEO of software company TIBCO, that demonstrates effort and smarts trumping expertise. Think Bad News Bears in pigtails (although it’s tough to visualize TIBCO CEO Vivek Ranadivé playing Morris Buttermaker instead of Walter Matthau).

5) A Modern Pipeline Story Comes To Life In The Wall Street Journal

Storytelling in the business media benefits from quantification. The numbers add up to one mega project:

Last leg of the pipeline cost $6.7B

Created 10,000 jobs

Used 1.4M tons of steal

Welded 110,814 sections of 42-inch pipe

Negotiated with 6,530 landowners for rights of way

Side note: Can you imagine? I can’t even get my neighbors to trim their avocado tree hanging over our front yard.

Worked 27 million man-hours

I’ll share the remaining five tomorrow.

The movie business provides a window into how people like their stories.

The path for movies can take many forms, but they end on a positive note 99 percent of the time.

That’s the way we like it.

Shrek gets the princess (albeit, with a revised look).

Michael Oher goes on to play offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens.

Indiana Jones solves the riddle.

Even in a depressing ending like “Cool Hand Luke,” Paul Newman is there to soften the blow.

Turning to business stories, 2009 will go down as “The Year of the Downer.” The financial carnage has consumed the media in a way that makes coverage of the dot-com meltdown look like amateur hour.

Yet, the niche media property Tonic, which only covers good news like “Ingredients for Peace: The Cookbook” (you too can bake chicken like Desmond Tutu), has seen its readership significantly increase amidst the wreckage.

People still want heroes, obstacles overcome and happy endings.

With this in mind, I believe 2010 will find business media properties more open than ever to positive stories. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of reporters and bloggers don’t find satisfaction in writing for the umpteenth time about another foreclosure in Bakersfield.

Now, that doesn’t mean rev. 3.554 of a product offering or your CEO bowling to raise money for charity will end up in a national daily.

But legitimate business stories, those that build drama articulating the difference between what was and what is, use numbers, and bring anecdotes to the fore have a better chance of getting a listen next year.

The psychological component for business storytelling - now there’s a phrase in which an acronym doesn’t quite work - is what I expect to be a factor in 2010.

Quantifying this, I’ve created what I’m calling the “Cautiously Optimistic Index.” Using the Factiva U.S. database, I’ve captured the number of articles that mention the phrase “cautiously optimistic” cut by month.

Aside from a dip in September - perhaps the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse caused a pang of temporary heartburn - you can see an almost 3X rise since the start of the year.

This bodes well for a positive environment in 2010.

I know, I know, not exactly scientific. But if you want science, go talk to Wall Street.