Shoshana is a business columnist. Needless to say, establishing relationships with writers and reporters is likely to result in press for you.
In this case, I liked Shoshana's writing and the topics she reports on, and I wanted her to know who we are and what we do. She may need a quote for a future story, and she won't call us unless she knows we exist. Notice how I sandwiched a tutorial about us between compliments. What writer wouldn't take a call after a friendly note like this?
Shoshana,
"Small Insults, Heavy Toll" made good treadmill reading. I liked your style of pointing out problems and inconsistencies without whining.
I can't help noticing the hundreds of ways our culture is killing us. My anti-spam program says that of 112,935 e-mails received, only 8,335—.07% were valid. The rest were junk.
Ellen Goodman had a nice piece in The Boston Globe, "How cell phones make strangers disappear." The idea is, we're so busy talking on our cell phones we don't strike up relationships with those standing three feet from us. She says, "We never have to be exclusively where we are." Then we wonder why we're so darn lonely.
At my company, we're embroiled in the career mess helping executives and professionals reposition themselves at work, an increasingly difficult task given super-fast change and toxic corporate cultures.
Speaking of "Transaction Starvation" and HMOs, one of our specialties is transitioning the 60,000 MDs who want out of clinical medicine into non-clinical jobs. Who's going to care for us as we age?
I enjoyed your writing and website immensely, and look forward to learning more about you and your ideas.
Nice writing!
:B