Bill Carey Event @ Hofstra

On Monday, Bill Carey came to speak at our Lawrence Herbert School of Communication here at Hofstra. Carey has many years of experience in news and he’s even starting up a company called “ThinkTV” where they try and make news as honest and as sound as possible. As young college students, we were obviously intrigued by what he had to say. He told us something I had been told a little bit for awhile now, and that is to master writing. In his own words, “If you master writing, you’ll have a leg up in the world.” He then tried to get our opinions on the logo for ThinkTV but said that if you have an opinion, just tell me the reasoning behind it. He applies the same logic to writing ideas, saying “If it sucks, tell them why it sucks and how to fix it.” He also showed us the opening to an episode of “The West Wing”, an old show about the President on NBC. It shows the intricacies of writing and how adverbs or adjectives can not spice up writing. The NASA head of PR in the show gives a bad script to the President and when the Pres hands it to his own PR guy, he uses new strong verbs to give the address to the people more life. In Carey’s own words, this is the way to spice up rhetoric, your audience won’t feel it with adjectives. “Good writing comes from strong verbs, not adverbs or adjectives.” Carey then shared his contact information with all of us if we had any questions about the industry or if we needed any advice which I personally thought was a big move on his part, and made the event feel more personal, like he was actually there to help us.