Try as I might to keep from getting hooked on "Mad Men," I've finally succumbed. There's something irresistible about an era when cigarettes and alcoholic "refreshments" were acceptable at office meetings any time of day.

But at one such gathering, something other than the Camels and Gibsons caught my attention. It was a pitch to a client from uber-advertising man Don Draper, which went something like: "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation. ... PR people understand the concept but can't execute."

The slight toward public relations was amusing but not the most interesting part of the line. Rather, it was the larger lesson that is germane to both industries some 40 years after the meeting supposedly took place: Distilled to their common essence, there's little difference between the goals of public relations, advertising, marketing, and even journalism.

There has been much debate about social media's place in these perceived disciplines, but the fact is that such concerns matter only to the people who work in them. It's all information--once packaged and delivered differently but now with increasingly blurred distinctions. Semantic preoccupation does nothing but distract from the task at hand.

For years as a news editor I tried to explain to reporters that the competition was no longer other publications or websites; instead, the threat was digital advertising, marketing campaigns, fan forums, and sponsored blogs.

Why? Because these other types of media carried much of the same basic information we were trying to convey, but often took a more succinct and entertaining form. It's the same reason that "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" has eclipsed "legitimate" TV news programs. People can laugh while still keeping up with the headlines.

Let's take a closer look at the "Mad Men" example, which was based real-life events. The builders of Madison Square Garden faced huge opposition in the 1960s over their intent to demolish Penn Station's historic Beaux Arts building. The fictional firm Sterling Cooper was bought in to change public opinion over the controversial project.

Sterling Cooper was an advertising company but, as Draper suggests, the job could been done just as well by a PR firm that knew what it was doing. The same is true of marketing specialists and even newspapers not shy to embark on crusades for the sake of circulation or business interests, if not nobility.

In the end the landmark was razed, the arena built, and the outcry drowned out. And no one remembers the name of the agency that handled the campaign, let alone which industry it was in.

Like many kids who visited Disneyland in the '60s and '70s, I always remembered Monsanto's "Adventure Thru Inner Space," an exhibit that pretended to shrink its visitors to microscopic size and examine them with a giant eyeball as they exited. (We became particularly familiar with it after my frugal father learned that it was one of the few free rides at the park.)

Little did I know that Monsanto would become the embodiment of corporate evil to many farmers, environmentalists, health groups, consumer advocates, and opponents of genetic engineering. Yet, in the face of all its controversies, the biotech behemoth's blog blithely attempts to portray itself as a wholesome subject of the Magic Kingdom.

The latest entry to its blog, called "Monsanto According to Monsanto," is a July 27 item headlined, "Farm Girl Goes Global." Its fresh-faced author--a smiling new intern named Alyssa, pictured petting a Holstein calf--documents her journey from a small family farm in central Illinois to the agribusiness giant's global headquarters in St. Louis, complete with 4-H livestock awards along the way.

Alyssa is listed on the "About the Bloggers" page along with more than a dozen other kawaii-type avatars that are reminiscent of "South Park," but without the edge. All that's missing is Hello Kitty.

There are many obvious critical observations to be made here, especially about lending oneself to parody. But before I could even start taking notes, yet another blunder presented itself under a section labeled "Why a Monsanto Blog?" There we find a defensive 400-word over-explanation that begins: "The title Monsanto According to Monsanto is a spoof of The World According to Monsanto, a horribly biased documentary which portrays Monsanto in a very negative light."

I was not familiar with that documentary but, upon learning of it through this blog, naturally went looking for it and found it immediately. I'm sure many others have done the same thing.

This is the very reason that newspapers tell their reporters not to restate errant material when writing corrections. The thinking is that readers will remember only the mistake when it is republished, even as it is being rectified. Monsanto takes that concept to new heights, unwittingly paying homage to the offensive film at hand in the naming of its own blog.

For all its missteps, however, there is a diamond to be found in this biohazardous rough: a post headlined, "I Am Monsanto," penned by an employee distraught over the incessant criticism of his employer.

"Jeff" describes himself as "a Ph.D scientist, husband, father, biophysicist, biochemist, blogger, history buff, platform lead, poet, Monsanto employee, and political progressive"--taking care to note that "the last two things on that list are a source of great conflict, at least for me recently."

The post is "not part of some contrived PR plan," he says, and it doesn't read like one either. What it does read like is an honest but even-tempered post that could probably have been written by any number of Monsanto's 21,700 employees worldwide.

The discussion drew 61 comments, some of them by the author in response to vociferous critics in what became an open dialog.  So the lesson here, if there is one, is that Jeff's apparently heartfelt diary entry was far more effective in putting a human face on Monsanto than any number of county fairs, cute emoticons, and theme park rides could ever achieve.

Granted, this piece and the discourse that followed won't likely reverse the opinions of anyone who participated, but it did at least generate some civil discussion. And for a multinational corporation as reviled as Monsanto, that's a pretty impressive feat for a single, unassuming blog post.

Larry Ingrassia, the business editor of the New York Times, recently quoted two opening paragraphs from front-page stories on 1987's "Black Monday" in response to a reader's question.

The first was from Gray Lady herself: "Stock market prices plunged in a tumultuous wave of selling yesterday, giving Wall Street its worst day in history and raising fears of a recession." (Whew.)

The second was from the Wall Street Journal: "The stock market crashed yesterday." (Perfect.)

'Black Monday,' 1987

To appreciate the concision of the latter, some context is in order. On Oct. 19, 1987, journalists everywhere were glued to their TV sets, watching the financial carnage unfold (including yours truly, at the Washington Bureau of the L.A. Times). By the time the Dow had plummeted 22 percent at the closing bell, reporters were falling over themselves to capture the enormity of the history they had just witnessed.

What resulted were "leads" (newspaper lingo for first paragraphs) that were larded with all manner of verbiage and hyperbole--except the Journal's, which said so much with so little.

Therein lies our writing lesson for the day: Less is more. And nowhere is that truer in blogs, where 500 words is considered Tolstoy.

As Andrew wrote the other day, there's already more than enough noise in the echo chamber as it is. To make a worthy contribution, therefore, it means you need to be a ruthless editor of your own copy. So below are a few points to consider on that score.

• Short isn't superficial. The most effective sentences need few qualifiers or "hedging." That's because they're often written by people who can write and speak authoritatively in simple declarative sentences on the subjects at hand. Keep your adjectives and adverbs to a minimum so that, when you do use them, they have maximum effect; otherwise they'll just dilute the point.
• Overthinking is a sin. Over the years in various newsrooms, I've developed an "80/20 rule" while supervising editors who have a tendency to go overboard in rewriting their reporters' work. If you've accomplished 80 percent of what you want in a story, I'd tell them, let the other 20 percent go--you'll be the only one who will notice the difference. The same is true for your blogging.
• Restraint is a virtue. One of my first editors once told me that almost any news stories longer than 10 column inches (about 400 words) are essentially padded. That number is debatable, of course, but it's still a good idea to draw a horizontal line somewhere on your Word page or whatever software you use as a red zone that warns when you're approaching un-bloglike lengths. This will train you to "think shorter" and, eventually, help limit your research beforehand so you don't end up with more material than you need.

A Mozart concerto and a Barry Bonds swing have one thing in common: They both seem effortless yet are deceptively complex. That's the ultimate achievement in writing as well--beauty in simplicity.

By the way, those Ingrassia quotes came on the 10th page of his online piece in the Times. I happened to come upon it quite by accident in researching that Journal story to make sure I quoted it correctly.

Please don't make your readers wade through anywhere near that much stuff.