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Brooding

I'm feeling conflicted and a little guilty and slightly depressed and I'm going to ramble a bit. I am wondering if other writers ever feel the same way. And for the same reasons.

I just zapped off a column on the new Miracle-Gro. I think they did a good thing in changing the formula. In fact, I have occasionally suggested to my readers that they mix Miracle-Gro 15-30-15 with lawn fertilizer to boost the nitrogen and lower the phosphorus. But I haven't done that often because it involves math and it takes a hundred words every time you do it and besides, the 15-30-15 worked well enough.

The new Miracle-Gro formula is much better for most applications. And I decided a couple of weeks ago to do a column on that. But I'm a data freak. I like volumes of facts, as background, even if most of it will never appear in the column. So I called Miracle-Gro and I emailed Miracle-Gro and I left my phone number and my email address, and I never heard back.

The column I ended up writing was very different from the one I originally envisioned. Yes, I still said that the new Miracle-Gro was better, but the whole tone of the piece was ... well, less enthusiastic about the company itself. Even a sixty-something-year-old can lie on the floor and kick his feet, which is pretty much what I did. I was pissed.

It has gotten me thinking. About two things. First, I never had any problem getting good background information from Ortho or Monsanto or even Miracle-Gro before. But since they went to Scotts, that has stopped. And lord knows I'm industry friendly, so that's not the problem.

But more to the point, for this list, is the attitude I had as a result of my communications, or lack thereof, with Scotts. How much are we influenced by good, responsive PR? As I said, I told my readers that the new Miracle-Gro was good stuff, but it was a whole 'nuther column than I would have written if I had been in a better mood.

Let me emphasize this. I do not either praise or denigrate any product as a result of great PR. As far as the facts are concerned, I tell it as I see it. But I am wondering. How much does a good relationship with someone who represents a company or provider affect the TONE of an article? Or am I doing a Hamlet thing here, and no one else ever bothers thinking about that.



D

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