I saw this article and could not help commenting on it...The title, "Mayor Coleman wings it for State of the City speech" is a horrible misrepresentation of the facts that are presented in the article and it shows an incredible lack of appreciation for what goes into a public speech that connects with an audience.
When someone delivers an important speech from minimal notes it either means one of two things.
The opinion of the article's author seems to be that the Mayor did NOT prepare and he infers that the Mayor doesn't know much about public speaking since "winging a speech" rarely works. People who do not speak in public are prone to "winging it" and I would have to guess that a Mayor has at least a little experience speaking in public.
More experienced speakers know their subject and have prepared enough that they don't need a script to get in the way of their connection with the audience.
Isn't this what we want from our politicians?
How often do we see a Mayor who knows enough about what is going on in the city to deliver his state of the city speech with minimal notes and obviously cares enough to relate to his audience on a personal basis.
In this cynical political world... THAT IS NEWS !
Perhaps the author should attend Toastmasters and learn about what really goes into public speaking ... or the editor should do a better job of making sure that headlines match the content instead of relying on a quip from the Mayor's staff!
What do you think? Please leave your comments below.
1 comment:
I teach all of my students that the ultimate speechmastery is the ability to speak with out notes.
Look at some of the scenes actors deliver with out a teleprompter.
More importantly, it is a way of connecting with the audience as the speech is more likely to be coming from the heart rather than the head.
Perhaps the journalist forgot what good reporting is verses editorial writing.Subjective verses objective writing.
But then, we tend to condemn to being rotten that fruit we cannot reach.
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