For many PR agency folks, this picture will remind them of the team editing process behind press releases and bylined articles. This image was tucked away as slide 16 of a Huffington Post photo slideshow about health care reform’s journey to passage. The caption: President Barack Obama and Jon Favreau, head speechwriter, edit a speech on health care in the Oval Office, Sept. 9, 2009, in preparation for the President’s address to a joint session of Congress.

As a writer, this image displays the art of effective copyediting. I was thrilled to see a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at the presidential speech writing process. On a related note, collectors can actually own an early draft of a presidential speech, such as this one, which retails for $3,800.

Planning a speech?  Here are some resources on effective speech writing:

1. How to Write an Effective Speech (Universities in Europe)
2. 18 Paths to Pathos: How to Connect with Your Audience (Six Minutes)
3. How Obama Writes His Speeches (TIME)
4. How to Make Speeches Like Barack Obama (eHow)

During a recent trip to Boston, my wife and I stumbled upon this sign for available commercial real estate space. Witty. Creative. Clever.

UPDATE: My apologies to all those with inbound links to the old toddand.com content. I attempted to salvage all of it in order to maintain active links but apparently my backups weren’t being executed as intended. And my hosting company only saves three days of back-up, so it’s already too late for a complete restore. Lesson learned. I’ll try to make it up with higher quality content in the next three years. By the way, in my efforts to save old content, I went through a reinstall of WordPress on my server and lost the four or five comments left on the original version of this post. Long week.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I’m officially calling this the Great Back-up Crash of 2009 and have become the posterchild for understanding the importance of double-checking your database back-ups. Still planning for 2010. In the meantime, I’ve updated my “about” page to include my short blogging tale.

ONE MORE UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter, Vikrant, and Shannon Whitley (@swhitley), I was able to retrieve 700+ blog posts. The solution was importing the archived Atom2 RSS feed from Google Reader. Unfortunately, the restoration didn’t include images, so the blog may look a bit different. I’ll be working on that over the next several weeks.

Perhaps what thrilled me the most about this book was its style. To me, Burns was masterful at marrying the story-telling flair of David McCullough with the newspaper history acumen of Mott, Emery and others. More so, I enjoyed learning several fun facts and exciting stories about many of the newspaper titles I see for sale at rarenewspapers.com or even hold in my own collection.

The Boston Gazette, according to Burns’ C-SPAN presentation on his book, is the most influential newspaper this country has ever known. He says the Gazette got us into the Revolutionary War, sped up the course of the war and may have even determined the outcome of the war. A good chunk of Infamous Scribblers is dedicated to supporting this thesis.

“Almost certainly the war would not have ended with an American victory in a period of seven years – from first shot to signed treaty – had not the newspapers constantly reminded the colonists of the cause they shared, thereby inspiring the valor of soldiers, and the patience and support of civilians,” Burns said.

He points out that newspapers were the only form of media at the time and served as the great unifier of our nation during a time when America “needed unity as much as we needed ammunition.”

On 18th century journalism: “As a rule, newspaper publishers of the time did not chase after interviews or hustle to the scenes of events with their juices flowing and pen fingers twitching. For the most part, they were denizens of the print shop, preferring that the news be spoken in their ears or slipped under their doors – that it be delivered to them, in other words, as spices were delivered to the grocer or bolts of clothes to the tailor.”

On reporting and publishing during the Revolutionary War: “The Revolutionary War was not an easy one to cover. For one thing, once the fighting started there was more news than ever but no more shipments of ink or type or spare parts for the presses coming into American ports. There were no more shipments of paper either, and, as for the quantities still available or smuggled into the colonies from a friend in the motherland or a trader in another European nation, there were higher priorities for it than journalism.”

Click here to read the entire blog post about the must-read book on American journalism history (includes a great video presentation by the author).

The term rag linen, as used in the web address raglinen.ning.com, has significant meaning in newspaper history. Prior to 1870, newspapers were printed on very durable rag linen paper, which was made from the linen in clothes and ship sails. So newspapers from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars are actually in better condition than last week’s New York Times, which is probably already yellow and brittle because it was printed on wood pulp.

The durability of rag linen newspapers from the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s makes them an excellent collectible and primary source of historic research. After all, these are history’s first drafts. Follow the Historic Newspapers Network on Twitter @raglinen

Tanner Woodford, a visual communication design student at Arizona State University, chronicled every brand, logo, identity and symbol that he interacted with throughout the day to develop his brand clock, titled Interaction. I bought a poster copy to hang in my office and emailed him with a question: “Why are some logos faded/washed out while others are bold/brilliant? Was that to reflect a different interaction or observation with that brand?”

His response: “You’re actually the first person to ask me about that. You are correct. The fully bright logos are the ones I interacted with directly. The faded logos are the ones I observed, but did not directly interact with. For example, a bright logo would be my shirt, hat, personal computer, etc. A faded logo would be my friend’s water bottle, an identity on a billboard I’m passing, etc.”

It’s pretty clear that Tanner used a Moleskine for keeping track of the brands.

Please read Charlie Moran’s detailed Ad Age blog post about the Power 150 upgrade and feel free to comment. Because we crave your feedback, anyone who comments on this blog post, Charlie’s post, our Facebook group or sends me a related comment via Twitter @toddand before Sunday at noon (Chicago time) will be entered in a raffle to win Power 150 prizes (t-shirts and pens). I’ll update this post with the winners then.

Most of your questions about why PostRank was added and it’s impact on the list can likely be addressed by reading Charlie’s explanation. Questions about the new metric will probably best be answered by PostRank’s “How It Works” page, but I’ve highlighted a graphic below from the PostRank website that lists several examples of engagement data sources that are included in PostRank. Bottom line, we’re hoping this new metric helps keep the Power 150 relevant and useful. More new features are in the works so stay tuned.

UPDATE: I picked two winners for Power 150 t-shirts and pens. The two winners are David Mullen and Jim Murphy. Thanks to all those who commented.