It’s Friday! It’s Friday!

Last summer I went to the IABC Conference that took place in San Diego, California. For those of you that might not know what the IABC Conference stands for – it is the International Association of Business Communicators. The keynote address was by Jonah Leher. I had recently read one of his books and enjoyed it, while also being very intrigued by his keynote address.

A few months Jonah released his next book: Imagine and I checked it out from the library. Once I received it and tried to start reading it, I was turned off. For the most part, the pages I read served to debunk the idea that brainstorming and creativity are effective ways to come up with new ideas. So I stopped reading and decided his new book was not one I was going to finish. Then tonight I came across this NPR article about the Bob Dylan quotes Jonah made up. What has come of our world? With all the information on the Internet, why would you ever even think about lying or fibbing about quotes, data, experience, etc? It does not make any sense to me!

It also opens up a lot of questions for me. What makes authors knowingly lie or make up content? Have folks not remembered the James Frey drama? Why is honesty and integrity such a hard thing to follow through on? How can we continue to trust authors and writers if we constantly have to wonder if they are telling the truth or not? It is interesting to me that the content of his book made me return it to the library and move on with my life. And…now they are pulling his book for inaccuracies.

Reminder to all writers: TELL THE TRUTH. Otherwise, you lose all respect and credibility.