That’s the gist of Chapter II of Bhargava’s “Personality Not Included.” I’m relating his points to U.S. 1 Newspaper’s silver anniversary, and you can apply the same tips to your own firm.

An example of an “accidental spokesperson” is Jared Fogle, who famously lost weight by eating Subway turkey sandwiches and became – despite lots of resistance from the company’s suits – an advertising icon.

An example of an intentional spokesperson is a company founder, whose personality imbues the company at carefully chosen opportunities. For instance, Wally Amos of Famous Amos cookies or Craig Newmark of Craigslist.

As a newspaper, U.S. 1 is fabulously positioned to showcase its accidental spokespeople, its writers and freelancers. For instance, sometimes staff editors Jamie Saxon and Scott Morgan will write personal columns. You can tell it’s a column, not an article, because it doesn’t have a regular head. Instead it has a “reverse head” (white on black) with the author’s name. You get the undiluted “voice” of Jamie (jazzy, hip, young) and Scott (to-the-point, wry, unabashedly honest). But that “voice” also shows through in the way they caption pictures, write headlines, and even the way they assign stories.

Freelancers get a similar opportunity to write in their own voice. Bart Jackson, Pat Tanner, Simon Saltzman, Elaine Strauss, Richard Skelly – regular readers don’t need the byline to know who’s writing.

This is, after all, a publication that puts a higher priority on words than on design. And the writing doesn’t have to conform to the daily newspaper style. If I think that Second Person Plural will draw the reader into a subject, I use it, just like I’m using it now. I’m talking directly…..to YOU. Is that part of the Barbara Fox voice? Maybe.

Advertisers are among the “intentional” spokespeople. They believe the product works so well for them that they put their money behind it.

U.S. 1 Newspaper’s chief intentional spokesperson is, of course, the founder, Richard K. Rein. Even though you never read a column of his, you can discern his voice, because he set the tone. No business too small or too big to write about. No cow too sacred to gore. No subject too “adult” to write about or photograph. (We’ve been banished from several school lobbies.)

I won’t try to explain Rein’s policies. He’s going to do that himself in the issue of November 11. He also invites the readers, and that means you, to the first of several anniversary celebration events, a rush hour reception on Tuesday, November 24, 5 to 8 p.m., at Tre Piani in Princeton Forrestal Village.

You the reader, after all, are among U.S. 1’s best “accidental spokespersons.” You’re the one who tells your job hunting friend to get the U.S. 1 Directory, or who uses the PrincetonInfo.com website to plan next weekend, or eagerly looks for news of companies that have just come to town. Bhargava says it’s one thing to identify the accidental spokespeople and quite another to figure out what to do with them. “As soon as you identify them, you need to be thinking about ways to embrace them.” Don’t ignore them, he warns. “Embracing them means giving them the content, attention, and access they need to tell a compelling story.”

If you recognize yourself as an accidental spokesperson for U.S. 1, write and say so! What did you like and not like for the past 25 years, and what would you like to see for the next 25? Toss me an e-mail or leave a comment here. You can stay anonymous!

My favorite part of the excerpt: On the day before Woodrow Wilson’s presidential inauguration Paul managed to stage a march the likes of which the Capitol had never seen. When Wilson stepped off the train, having been hailed and farewelled from the train station in Princeton, he found no welcoming crowds. All his supporters (men of course) were out harassing the marching suffragettes, who captured the headlines on what should have been his triumphant day.

That was in 1913, and almost 60 years later at the time of the nursing home interview, women had gotten the vote (1920) but the Equal Rights Amendment still had not been passed. Of course we now know that it never passed, but mention of it brought Paul out of a seeming coma. As Schlegel writes, her eyes flashed: “It WILL PASS,” she said. “It will pass because it is right!”

I may have a docile persona, but I was raised to think women are not just equal to, but better than, men. I can still hear my mother saying, with disgust over some ill-advised male’s dumb-cluck move, “Just like a man.” Of course my father was the exception; she devoted her married life to him, a brilliant teacher/researcher who, at home, cooked and did dishes.

Her attitude might have had something to do with her alma mater, Goucher, where she was declared a Goucher Treasure for the Class of ’31, but when I read Baker’s account of suffragette days, I realize that my mother came of age when women were more obstreperous. In contrast, I was a teen in the 1950s, a time when “girls” hoped to emerge from college, not just with a diploma, but with an engagement ring.

And by the time of the next feminist wave, in the early 1970s, I was nursing my third child. Ten years before I’d married into a pre-feminist world where men didn’t change diapers. The prospects of my being able to amend the marriage contract didn’t look good.

I was too late for the first feminist movement and too early for the second. I’ve never been particularly interested in the history of either one, but my appetite is whetted now. And — like you — I hope to goodness we are all still feisty at 92.

By chance, also yesterday, I fetched up next to John Guthrie of IsisGlobal (a competitive intelligence firm in Pennington) at Princeton University’s Keller Center lecture featuring Stuart Essig, CEO of Integra Life Sciences. We enjoyed comparing notes on “messing around in boats” as Rattie so famously said in Wind in the Willows. Turns out Guthrie makes regular treks to a private Adirondack lake and also has a lightweight boat, though from a different maker.

Buttercup is perfect for us. We like to row, but ordinary rowboats are heavy to heft, and the Adirondack Dory is like a canoe with oarlocks. It’s light (80 pounds, Kevlar and graphite, we can lift it off the trailer) and is painstakingly crafted, with cherry wood gunnels fold-down cane seatbacks. Look for her on Carnegie Lake!