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Joan Fitzgerald is Professor and Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University. Her new book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development, is a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development. Emerald Cities is very readable and Marco Trbovich of the Huffington Post wrote, “Fitzgerald combines the academic discipline of an urban planner with the rigors of shoe-leather journalism in crafting a book that documents where real progress is being made….” In the original post below Fitzgerald shares how she found the fine balance between “academic discipline” and “shoe-leather journalism”.
Emerald Cities is my first true crossover book—a serious piece of scholarly research rendered as a journalistic narrative for a wider readership. In recent years, I have had plenty of practice on this front, writing several oped pieces for the Boston Globe and longer features for The American Prospect, a monthly magazine that often draws on academics to write many of its policy-oriented articles.
My journalist and editor husband, Bob Kuttner, has long urged me to discover the joys of the interview, both on the record and on background. And indeed, when you follow a formal research design or rely purely on data, you don’t get to ask impertinent questions. You are at risk of missing what is really going on.
When I first started writing more popular pieces, Bob would say, “Get some quotes” and “talk to people off-the-record.” So I did. Interviewing facilitates networking. One interview leads to another. I was intrigued at how much I learned—say about an industry such as solar or wind and the true state of play as opposed to the self-serving claims—in a few phone calls with industry insiders. If one is intellectually honest, this kind of interview is a legitimate scholarly technique as well as a tool of narrative journalism.
Journalistic reportage also helps bring prose alive. Reporting on data without bringing in a human element makes for dry reading. Another discipline of writing in a more journalistic style is that your ideas need to be compressed into a lot less space. The standard academic article is 25 pages. An oped piece is typically three typescript pages and a Prospect policy article between six and eight. It is amazing how many words some academic writers waste, telling you what they are going to tell you, then telling it, and then telling you what they told you.
The discipline of tight, lucid writing also clarifies one’s thinking process. In fact, I now require my policy students to write regular short assignments or op-ed-style pieces. At first, they hate them—they find it easier to write 10 pages than 2, which reminds me of the old saying, “I would have written it shorter but I didn’t have the time.” It does take time, and many drafts. Professor John Kenneth Galbraith, a scholar much admired for his incisive prose was once told by an admirer how “
0 Comments on Writing Emerald Cities as of 1/1/1900
On February 19th, 2010 Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with fulltime freelance writer, proofreader, and editor Ernest Dempsey. He shared encouraging information on how you can get started in the fun and profitable art of freelance writing. In addition to having written 4 books, he is now the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Recovering the Self: A Journal of Hope and Healing and also works as the country editor for Pakistan on the celebrated Internet news channel Instablogs.com. He shared with us on the following points:
Where are some places that I can go to look for freelance web writing?
Is it “ghost writing” or does sometimes my name get shown?
What about being a Foreign Correspondent for a news organization in another country?
How does getting paid work?
How do you manage personal time, schedules, and deadlines?
What types of writing projects are available: interviews, reviews, tutorials and how well does each pay relative to the others
How have you improved your knowledge of English by writing over time?
How does freelancing compare to a “regular job”? Do you get to travel more?
Karim Khan, pen named Ernest Dempsey, hails from Hangu, a small town in Pakistan. As a child, he enjoyed two things: The joyful company of his brother and Khan’s best friend, Shais; and making airy castles with lots of characters in his mind. At twelve, he started writing detective stories, horror, thrillers, and humor. He has a Masters degree in Geology and one in English Literature.He has authored four books including his latest The Blue Fairy and other Tales of Transcendence and, in just the last few years, seen the publication of his poems, essays, short stories, and literary reviews worldwide. Khan is now looking forward to completing his first novel.
Why Hasn’t Charlie Rose Called Me Yet? « M. Ste said, on 2/19/2010 5:37:00 PM
[...] about plays and theater by Victor Volkman of Authors Access. My topics are below. For now, listen to the great Ernest Dempsey. 1. the process of writing a play 2. being a playwright-producer 3. directing your own play 4. the [...]
An unexpected outcome of the publication of HTOED was the interest it generated in both UK and overseas media. On the whole, encounters with the press have been an enjoyable experience, and they’ve done us proud with articles, reviews, and interviews, but sometimes I find myself conning over the less flattering words for members of the journalistic profession (hack, penciller, tripe-hound, ink-slinger, creeper, thumb-sucker, press gang), and plotting my revenge.
So what interests the media? I learned to carry with me at all times a list of ‘favourite words’ to distribute on request. During the final stages of the project, I had asked the proofreaders to keep an eye open for anything suitable – unfortunately what they considered entertaining was often not what one would want to spell out over the phone or see in a family newspaper. However, I managed to offload such rare gems as spanghew ‘to cause a frog or toad to rise in the air’ (unfortunately mis-spelled as it whizzed round the world), purfle ‘to decorate with a purfle’, and ostrobogulous ‘indecent, somewhat bizarre’. I’m still waiting for a victim for Old English paddanieg ‘an island with frogs on it’ or weirding peas, a Scottish term for peas employed in divination.
Anecdotes were much in demand. Fortunately, we had one anecdote to cap them all, the Great Fire of 1978, when the building housing the project went on fire (as Glaswegians disingenuously say). At that time, all our research was contained in a single set of paper slips, which luckily were housed in metal cabinets and escaped unscathed. Recounting this for the twentieth time, it was tempting to embellish the narrative, rescuing screaming infants, or at least professors, from the flames rather than smouldering volumes of the OED.
Human interest questions varied in subtlety: “how many years have you worked on the project”, “how old were you when you started”, or simply, “how old are you?” Colleagues threatened to get me a badge like the ones children have on their birthdays, emblazoned with ‘I am 69’ to forestall such questions. Many reporters seemed to find it incredible that anyone would work on a project for 44 years, as several of us did. Some hinted that this was at the expense of a more fulfilling life, but I was nevertheless startled that in 2009 a newspaper would produce a headline describing me as a “lingo-loving spinster”, and one, moreover, who “coyly confessed” to celebrating publication with a glass of champagne.
I am not really a morning person, so the number of breakfast radio programmes requesting live (or fairly live) interviews was something of a trial (unless they were in Australia, which was fine, as the interviews took place in the evening). On publication day, I set off at 6.30 a.m. for the BBC headquarters in Glasgow, and by 7.45 had chatted brightly to four radio stations. At that point a colleague and I were handed a news story about an Australian golf course and asked to ‘translate’ it using HTOED synonyms, thus providing an uplifting finale to the programme at 8.55. HTOED does not abound in synonyms for the creatures which apparently haunt Australian golf courses, such as kangaroos, camels, dingos, and hairy-nosed wombats. We felt that we had done pretty well to produce boomers, ships of the desert, warrigals, and hirsute-nebbed badgers. Then we returned to campus to deal with three television crews.
One learned to be tolerant of minor inaccuracies (OED is a dictionary, OUP is a publisher; HTOED contains 800,000 different meanings, not 800,000 different words). Often I longed to launch into my first-year lectures on the history of the English language, while refusing even to attempt to answer such questions as “What is the oldest word in English?”
The closing question was often on the lines of “What are you going to do now?” as if life had come to a stop when the last slip was entered in the database (by coincidence, or careful planning, the last slip was the word thesaurus itself). One interviewer had thought this through, however, taking due account of age and gender, and asked: “And now you’ve finished, have you got something else you’d like to get back to, like your garden, or a big piece of knitting?” I’d like to put it on record that I do not have, and never have had, “a big piece of knitting”.
0 Comments on Historical Thesaurus: On dealing with the press interest as of 11/19/2009 2:24:00 AM
La Bloga readers have various reasons for coming here, not the least of which is news we share from the Spanish-speaking world--from Spain's SemanaNegra to cultural news from all over the Southwest. Despite being primarily an arts/literary blog, real-world events necessarily affect our art and how we live in each of our niches.
The Internet, the WWW have provided us with floods of information--as countless as the over a billion Tweets or two hundred million blogs in existence (incl. Chinese). But the reliability of news and searches for "the truth" threaten to be buried by the staggering number of pieces out there. At the same time, mainstream sources of reliable journalism are declining. We the public, Chicano and otherwise, don't necessarily know as much as we once did.
For instance, how many know there have been at least ten suicides at Ft. Hood this year, an increase in domestic violence on-base and a rise in local crime? And who in the world of journalism is analyzing that for us and tying it to Obama's adding another 40,000 troops to "our" wars?
Information on Mexico and the shared border is important to us, not only because of our proximity or cultural ties, but the nature of that border is changing. Narco violence has crossed the river and no one can say how far north it will travel or how it might change our lives in Phoenix, San Antonio and even Denver.
None of this relates to you? Heading south of the border for an affordable vacation soon? Do you know which beaches are hygienically dangerous, unfit for swimming?
Are you an academic whose dissertation or published piece suffers because your pocho Spanish won't let you navigate la idioma journalistic waters?
Or are you in education and public service where you daily work with Mexican immigrants, but lack info about what it is that made them leave their mother country?
I speak only for myself when I say that my world revolves around the Southwest. I tend not to realize I need to encompass more to understand how and why things are transforming around me.
Luckily, years ago I found FronteraNorteSur. Their purpose: "FNS provides on-line news coverage of the US-Mexico border." They do this by analyzing and summarizing U.S., Me
0 Comments on Frontera NorteSur, Denver's Festival de Cine Mexicano, y un chiste as of 1/1/1900
Still submitting and waiting for that first acceptance. I mean, I ain't gettin' any younger! Be that as it may...I'm back working on a play I started perhaps ten years ago with many edits and tinkering along the way. The more I read it - the more I realize that I really like it so I'm sharing the first ten or so pages with the world - or whoever happens to drop by. I should be so lucky!
Will provide updates as to its progress along the way. Meanwhile, enjoy. Feedback welcome.
DEAD WRITES
by Eleanor Tylbor
AT RISE: Funeral chapel. A group of people chat between themselves while waiting for the service to begin. A coffin is situated on an elevated stand in the middle of the room
FELICIA PEMBROOK, wearing a diaphanous dress, sits on the floor next to a coffin examining her surroundings. Slowly, she examines her body, touching her arms and legs
LIGHTING: Dim lighting, except for a coffin in the middle of the room, which is spot-lit with a white light.
SOUND: somber organ music.
FELICIA What the hell… Really must'a tied one on last night. Weird though. No hangover like usual… No feelings, period
Staggering to a standing position she walks around the coffin, touching the surface while trying to peer inside. A somberly dressed male passes by, seemingly without noticing or acknowledging her presence
(cont’d) 'Scuse me…hello'?'
Man continues to ignore her, focusing and fixing the inside of the coffin
Is this a… for real funeral parlor? Shoot! What’s the matter with me? Uh duh! This is another of Phil’s jokes. Wait 'til I get him…
Man continues to ignore her
Don’t bother answering me or anything… Fine – your funeral. Hey - cracked a funeral joke! Anyway, I'll find out on my own!
A man (JOSIAH) enters and stands directly behind FELICIA. He has white hair, is dressed in a white shirt and matching white pants that glitter
JOSIAH Perhaps I could be of assistance in some way?
FELICIA Ho-ly shit. What do we have here? A human Christmas tree ornament
SOUND: thunderclap
JOSIAH I beg your pardon? Were you talking to me?
FELICIA Do you come with your own sound effects, too?
JOSIAH We're quite witty, aren’t we? Just a suggestion here and take it for what’s it’s worth but your colorful use of language could prove to be problematic
FELICIA Do tell! You an agent for the grammar police?
JOSIAH Excuse me? Police?
FELICIA Aha! A little nervous are we, when I mention “po-lice”? Perhaps you’ve dealt with them on occasion?
JOSIAH In my business we deal with all types and police officers are very common where I work
FELICIA Not surprised. You earn your living dressed like… that?
JOSIAH Sorry?
FELICIA I bet you are – and then some
Holds up her arm and exaggerates a very feminine walk
One of the points I tried to emphasize in my talk about libraries and civic engagement (PDF) at last month’s Allen County Public Library’s Library Camp is that this isn’t a new role for us. The easy, soundbite way to explain this is to note that at the turn of the previous century, one of our major roles was to help immigrants assimilate into American society and learn how to be U.S. citizens. At the turn of the current century, there’s a similar need for us to do the same thing for digital immigrants, in no small part because there really isn’t anyone else to help those folks who are past high school age.
I’ve been gravitating towards this topic lately because I see so much potential, for both libraries and society, and the following idea makes total sense to me.
“David Nordfors, who runs the innovation journalism program at Stanford, stays studens are moving towards a journalisatic method of learning – finding knowledge, assesing it, and then connecting the dots to build a story.”
Sadly, like the 2006 MacArthur report about participatory culture, the 2020 effort includes libraries in that future only as afterthoughts, no more than potential support resources, rather than central, driving figures. While I applaud efforts like MacArthur’s digital learning in education initiative and the 2020 Forecast, I remain convinced that as a society, we’ll have a much greater impact on civic life for a greater range of people by focusing on libraries as the primary change agent, not schools.
We’re already well-positioned in our communities to be the conveners for this type of activity, we have a library ecosystem for lifelong learning that includes adults (not just K-12 students), we have supporting resources (not just technology, but context), we teach how to navigate information, and we’re the last, safe, non-commercial space that’s open to anyone without any barriers. In fact, quite a few sections of the 2020 sitescream “libraries” to me, and I encourage you to read through the various sections.
So while I’m intrigued by and fully support the idea of schools encouraging “innovation journalists,” those programs won’t reach their full potential – nor will the students – without libraries to support them. And when those students get out into the real world, libraries can facilitate their non-school efforts. And we can bring them together with the rest of the community to put those new civic literacies into practice for everyone.
And don’t get me started on the participatory divide….
Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the achievements of Walter Cronkite. See his previous OUPblogs here.
For most of the second half of the twentieth century, Walter Cronkite was always there whenever history moved. Before the word “embedded” came into fashion, he flew on the first bombing raids over Germany in a B-17 Flying Fortress. Before he covered the Kennedy Assassination, Vietnam and Watergate, he was also right there at the Battle of the Bulge. He covered the first nationally televised Democratic and Republican National Conventions - out of which the term “anchor” (and the Swedish term “Kronkiter”) was coined to describe his role. Walter Cronkite was always there; he was the anchor of all anchors.
But while Cronkite was always there, he understood that it was never about him, but about the facts. Today however, his model of reporting is praised by everyone, but emulated by no one. Not by Lou Dobbs, or Keith Olbermann, and not even by his replacement at CBS, Dan Rather, who tried to meddle in politics rather than to report it. CNN has a name for this narcissistic reporting style: “I-report.” I don’t think Walter Cronkite believed that there was an “I” in the news, however much an event lent itself to self-reflection.
So Cronkite’s legacy lives on only in advertising slogans. CNN may be “the most trusted name in news,” and Fox news may be “Fair and Balanced.” But “the most trusted man in America” would tell us that self-praise is no praise and that objectivity should be practiced, not trumpeted.
To be sure, it isn’t that today’s journalists are unrepentant gossips or opinion exhibitionists (though some are). It is that their bosses know that opinion and feisty debate sells. It is because experts in mass communications and social psychology have discovered that listeners and viewers like to hear what they want to hear, especially opinions that cohere with their own. That is why our journalistic umpires venture their opinions, and if they don’t, they pose incendiary questions to get their interviewers to say something about their political opponents that would start a war of words. While Walter Cronkite covered the news, the news establishment today wants to drive it.
Cronkite was a first-rate journalist who understood that it is always about the news, never about the reporter, transmitting the news faithfully while at the scene but never making a scene. He didn’t
engage in story making, he didn’t engage in frivolous banter about the role of the media in order to insinuate the self-congratulatory premise that he is a mover and shaker and master of the universe. Walter Cronkite knew that it was never about Walter Cronkite. It was his principled commitment to reticence that made his exceptional departure in declaring the war in Vietnam unwinnable so compelling. In his self-abnegation lay his considerable credibility.
Walter Cronkite was confident enough in the processes of American democracy, and humble enough to know the difference between newscaster and newsmaker, to desist from meddling from either the meaning or movement of politics. Without touch-screen monitors or a teleprompter, he brought us the news. Plain and simple. He wasn’t cool, he wasn’t a model, and he was even, by his own admission, “dull at times.” Though his career is a period piece in the age of facebook and twitter, we will do well to remain anchored in his journalistic values.
“And that’s the way it is.”
0 Comments on Remembering Walter Cronkite as of 7/21/2009 12:47:00 PM
Donald Ritchie, author of Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, Our Constitution, and The Congress of the United States: A Student Companion, reflects on Walter Cronkite’s death. Ritchie has been Associate Historian of the United States Senate for more than three decades.
The veteran news anchor Walter Cronkite died disappointed with the trends in network evening news programs since his retirement in 1981. Cronkite had aspired to make the CBS Evening News the New York Times of television, but after he left the air he thought the program went tabloid, reducing serious coverage of foreign and national events in favor of human interest stories, health and consumer reporting. He regarded this as “trivializing,” and lamented the general decline in standards of television news.
The root of problem was the limited time available for news in a half-hour format. Cronkite had begun anchoring when the network news had just fifteen minutes a night, following or preceding fifteen minutes of local news from the network’s affiliates. Over the Labor Day weekend in 1963, CBS inaugurated the half-hour format, featuring Cronkite interviewing President John F. Kennedy at Hyannisport. NBC used CBS’s initiative to overcome resistance from its own affiliates and expand its popular Huntley-Brinkley Report to a half hour. Soon afterwards, surveys showed that more Americans relied on TV than newspapers as their chief source of news. But even at a half hour, with seven minutes subtracted for commercials, there were only twenty-three minutes for news. Cronkite’s program devoted an average of eight minutes each night to its Washington bureau, whose stellar squad of correspondents–including Roger Mudd, Dan Rather, Marvin Kalb, Daniel Schorr, Nancy Dickerson, Bernard Shaw, and Leslie Stahl–jockeyed for air time. They boasted that their deadline of 6:30 PM EST became the deadline for the entire federal government.
Cronkite wanted to expand his news program to an hour, opening with hard news and then turning to lighter features. Even at the height of network domination in the 1960s and ‘70s, half of all television owners never bothered to watch the evening news and only one in fifty watched the network news every night. News drew its viewers from older, better-educated, middle- and upper-income professionals, who were disproportionately male. To expand their audience the networks needed to attract more women, racial and ethnic minorities, and younger people–consumers that advertisers were anxious to reach. The networks’ affiliates pioneered with local news programs heavy on crime, disaster, scandal, celebrities, and sports, which Cronkite dismissed as more show business than news reporting. No matter, local news grew so profitable that the affiliates resisted his efforts to expand network news to an hour.
The passing of the old era became evident as early as August 16, 1977, when Elvis Presley died. ABC News–being managed by the sports producer Roone Arledge–led off with Presley, while on CBS Cronkite opened with a report on the pending Panama Canal treaty. (Compare that to the way all of the networks covered Michael Jackson.) With Cronkite’s retirement, the local news approach finally penetrated the CBS Evening News. Cable networks challenged the three original networks–whose share of the news audience shrank from 98 percent in the 1960s to less than half today–and Cronkite lamented that too often the newcomers replaced sober news analysis with “polarizing diatribes.” He regretted that networks’ business managers replaced serious news documentaries with “trashy syndicated ‘news’ shows” on prime time. The Federal Communications Commission dropped the public service requirements for broadcast licensing, and the networks’ new corporate owners saw news budgets as ripe for trimming. CBS’s Washington bureau, which employed 21 correspondents at its peak under Cronkite, shrank to nine by the end of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, a new generation of news consumers was turning to the Internet as its major source, abandoning the evenings news along with the newspaper. The number of patent medicines sponsoring the evening news clearly demonstrate its aging demographics. “And that’s the way it is,” Cronkite had famously signed off his program, but what he saw of television news was not the way he wanted it to be.
0 Comments on Walter Cronkite and the Decline of the Evening News as of 7/21/2009 12:47:00 PM
A few months back Anastasia wrote a post on reinventing online high school newspapers in the hopes of grooming a new generation of journalists for the new media frontier.
Earlier this week an article in The Chicago Tribune spotlighted several high... Read the rest of this post
Steve Kroft, of 60 Minutes, recently spoke at Indiana University School of Journalism and shared some insight into the news business and life at 60 Minutes.
“60 Minutes was, and is, a competitive and combative place,” Kroft said. “It’s a place where grudges are held for a long time. I remember Ed Bradley, not long before he died, talking about how Mike Wallace had screwed him over on a couple of stories.”
In a time where newspapers are folding and cutting delivery days left and right, it’s easy to forget that the newspaper was once the favorite, and maybe only, way for people to get information. During the American Revolution, journalists were similar to modern-day bloggers. Everyone, it seemed, was starting a newspaper to bring his opinions to the public, including some people who might surprise you. In Scandal & Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy, Marcus Daniel, associate professor of American History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, offers a new perspective on the most influential, partisan journalists of the 1790s. Daniel reminds us that journalists’ rejection of civility and their criticism of the early American government were essential to the creation of modern-day politics. Check back tomorrow for the answers.
1. What early American journalist studied epidemics while taking a break from politics and his newspaper?
2. What grandson of a certain Founding Father used his inheritance to start a newspaper?
3. Which former public-school student, after failing to successfully run a dry-goods shop, decided to “try his luck” at journalism?
4. What Princeton alumnus and early journalist wore homemade clothes to his commencement ceremony?
5. What journalist scandalized Philadelphia with the window dressing in his printing shop and bookstore?
0 Comments on Early American Journalists: A Quiz as of 2/26/2009 7:23:00 PM
Found it, in a box in the attic, filled with mid-80s softcore porn mags containing interviews, book or film reviews, or articles, all by me. (When asked why, back then, I would explain that I sold my first article to a "respectable magazine" who paid 80 pounds for it and never printed it, and my second, because the first wouldn't take it, to UK Penthouse, who paid 300 pounds and printed it in the next issue, and really, it was decided for me then.)
I don't like the title, and I do know how to spell Judge Dredd and Roscoe Moscow, but here's a nice pen-portrait of Alan Moore written at the end of 1985, published in the March 1986 issue of Knave, some months before the first issue of Watchmen was published. (I'd read the first three issues by then, in lovely Dave Gibbons photocopies.)
Again, click on the pictures for an oversized, readable version.
Also found in one copy of Knave, and scanned in, a long-lost Alan Moore short story called SAWDUST MEMORIES. But I don't think Alan would want it posted, so I won't.
And now it's found, I'll sign the Knave with the Alan interview in it, and donate it to the CBLDF, and someone else can explain to their loved ones that they bought it for the articles. (A moment of ruefully remembering the teenage heartbreak when I discovered that someone had thrown away the men's magazine -- SWANK -- with the Vaughn Bode/Berni Wrightson Purple Pictorial mermaid two-pager in it that I'd found in a Streatham grotty used bookshop when I was fourteen.)
From September 1986 TIME OUT. I was a very proud 25-year-old journalist, because this was the first big article on comics to be published in the UK, in a "real" magazine. It's hard to communicate, in this golden age of geeks, how hard this was to make happen, or how important it was for a number of things, including morale. (They prepared a Dave Gibbons Watchmen cover, and, at the last moment, didn't use it and went with Michael Clarke instead.)There are goofs in there (it wasn't Walter Hill, it was Joel Silver, and once again, Spiderman not Spider-Man; and I'm not convinced that the summaries of the recommended comics on the last page are all my writing -- they may have been trimmed or rewritten) but I was happy, and thought it deserved to be dragged from the vaults.
Click on each page to make it readable.
(The follow up to it was a huge article on comics commissioned by the Sunday Times Magazine, for which I interviewed everyone, got original Brian Bolland art, and which was rejected by the editor when I sent it in because, he explained "it lacked balance". I asked what kind of balance he needed. There was a pause. "Well, these comics..." he said. And then blurted out, "You seem to think they're a good thing.")
Right. Now we're looking for the Alan Moore interview from Knave. It's somewhere in the attic.
La Scena Musicale, a bilingual, classical music magazine based in Montreal, seeks freelance pitches for its upcoming November issue. Preference given to critical analysis, literary journalism and other in depth articles by professional writers, musicians and musicologists. Theme: Higher Education. Length: 750-2000 words. Payment: 10 cents a word. Send a CV, writing sample and query letter to [email protected].
What would you tell this young, anxious student about the future of journalism?
Over at MediaShift, a New York University undergraduate journalism student Alana Taylor (studying, coincidentally, where I teach) wrote a critical essay about the online aspects of her education. Her essay was custom-built to stir up controversy (and boy, did it ever), but we should all check it out:
"[The professor] informs us that people actually get paid to blog. That they make a living off of this. For me this was very much a “duh” moment and I thought that it would be for the rest of the students as well. They should be fully aware at this point that blogging has become a very serious form of journalism. Furthermore, they should be aware that it is the one journalistic venture that requires little or no ladder-climbing."
Honestly, .0000001 percent of all writers actually support themselves completely online, and I am frank with all my students about that fact--and I give them suggestions about ways to cobble together more online experience with web writing, citizen journalism tools, and webby-videos.
Young writers are seeking answers to questions that won't be answered for another 50 years until after all the dust from digital publishing has settled. In the meantime, what's your advice to young writers? Chime in, and I'll collect the answers in a post this week.
How do you prepare for an interview about your book?
Until five minutes ago, I hadn't pondered the question. But now, I'm convinced that it is one of the most useful questions a newly-published writer can ask themselves.
As a journalist who has interviewed countless writers, I love it when a writer and I understand each other going into the interview. This bit of wisdom from Publicity Hound is priceless:
"If you don’t know the reporter personally, Google their name and see what you find. If the reporter blogs, read the blog!"
Reverse Graffiti Project - Self-described "professor of dirt" creates art in public spaces by cleaning away grime.
Here’s Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They’re Banned - washingtonpost.com - "So here's our new policy on A.P. stories: they don't exist. We don't see them, we don't quote them, we don't link to them. They're banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculo
Here at The Publishing Spot, we specialize in one thing: practical tips for the working writer.
This site is for writers with dayjobs, families and other commitments. Everytime I meet a published author, I ask them how they managed to write a book with all the distractions that can keep you away from the computer. Today, I asked Joie Jager-Hyman describing how she found time and motivation to write Fat Envelope Frenzy--a non-fiction look at the college application process.
This is my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog: While writing this book, your life sounded pretty busy. How did you find time and energy to write your book with such a busy schedule? Any tips for the writers out there with dayjobs and other commitments?
Joie Jager-Hyman: Unfortunately, there's no magic formula other than to just make the time to write and stick to a schedule. Continue reading...
"If I knew nothing about these students, I could ignore the fact that the vast majority of them (about 80 percent of Dartmouth applicants at the time) would eventually be turned away. Like the students themselves, I focused on the positive. I persuaded every high schooler I met to take a chance at applying to the Ivy League."
That's Joie Jager-Hyman describing how she survived as the Assistant Director of Admissions at a highly competitive college. After that experience, she followed five high schoolers from one end of the country to the other as they struggled to get into school.
She recorded that journey in her new non-fiction book, Fat Envelope Frenzy. Today she explains how she chose her characters, and how these important relationships developed.
This is my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog: As readers, we really get wrapped up in the lives of these characters. How did your subjects feel about the intimate portrait you made of them? How did you build and maintain these relationships? Any tips for journalists looking for deep relationships with their subjects without being too intrusive?
Joie Jager-Hyman: I interviewed about 20 kids before selecting the 5 for this book and only chose students that I truly respected and thought had a decent chance of getting into a top college. Continue reading...
"[I]t is harder today than ever before to get into a selective college. Harvard College turned down almost 21,000 candidates--including thousands of valedictorians and students with perfect SAT scores--in 2006-2007. That same year, Columbia University denied admission to about 16,500 high-achievers. And Stanford University sent out approximately 21,500 rejection letters."
Those are a few depressing statistics from Joie Jager-Hyman's new non-fiction book about the mind-numbing struggle to get into an Ivy League school. In Fat Envelope Frenzy, she followed five students from the application process to the final acceptance and rejection letters.
Jager-Hyman is our special guest this week, explaining how she used her experience as a college admissions officer to pitch, research write and promote this captivating book.
Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.
Jason Boog: How did you go about proposing this book? What did you do to make your idea stand out in the field of college-prep books? Any advice for journalists looking to propose a larger project?
Joie Jager-Hyman: I hadn't seen any books that talked about the college application process from the students' point of view, so I guess I'd tell other writers to look for something that hasn't been done. Continue reading...
Boy was he right! Below Ritchie talks about the National Press Club and its place in history.
The National Press Club is celebrating its centennial, raising a question about why journalistic competitors feel compelled to band together. Founded in 1908, the club had many short-lived predecessors. The Washington Correspondents’ Club, for instance, held several dinners designed to reduce tensions between reporters and their political sources during the difficult days of Reconstruction. Such nineteenth-century press clubs failed because they let their members run up a tab at the bar (the National Press Club has never extended credit), and because they were either press clubs, founded by reporters for Washington, D.C., papers that excluded national correspondents, or correspondents’ clubs that barred the local press, indicating the animosity between them. The genius of the National Press Club was that it combined reporters for both the local and the national press.
But only men. The club left women and minorities outside the parameters of mainstream journalism. Not until 1955 did it hold a vote of its entire membership to admit Louis Lautier, a reporter for the National Negro Publishers Association. Radio news broadcasters were also treated as second-class citizens at first, being permitted to join the club only as non-voting members. Women reporters founded the Women’s National Press Club, but the separation prevented them from covering the National Press Club’s regular “newsmaker” luncheons.
In 1956, the men offered a compromise by inviting women to attend the luncheons, so long as they sat in the balcony and left as soon as the lunch was over. While the men dined below, the women shared the balcony with television cameras, hot lights, and coils of electrical wiring. Women reporters appealed to the famous guest speakers not to participate unless they could dine below with the men. Among the few to comply was Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, eager to publicize an American injustice. One who failed to offer solidarity was Martin Luther King, Jr., desperate to attract national press attention to the March on Washington. Dr. King spoke to an audience segregated by gender rather than race. Economic pressures on the club, whose membership declined during the 1960s, finally persuaded the men to admit women as members in 1971. Fittingly, the club’s centennial-year president is Sylvia Smith of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
Regardless of race, gender, or media, Washington correspondents have historically been caught in a creative tension between the scoop and the pack–between professional rivalries and forces that pull the competitors together. They spend much time together outside the same closed doors, riding the same campaign trains, planes, and vans, being handed the same press releases, attending the same press conferences, cultivating the same high-placed sources. This pack journalism is counteracted by each reporter’s dream of the scoop, beating everyone else to the big story that makes a difference.
Somewhere between the scoop and the pack, the club has provided a welcome respite for the working press. Formed for reasons of camaraderie, the club has helped to shape the press corps and to define legitimate reporting. Unique among world governments, the U.S. allows reporters themselves to determine who deserves a press pass. Both the press galleries and the press clubs have guarded this prerogative jealously, and have labored diligently to decide whom to admit. Sometimes they have been too narrow in their definition and too slow to diversify. But ultimately the galleries and clubs have expanded to accommodate a more diffuse news business, one that continues to evolve with each startling technological breakthrough. The Internet will not be the last. A central institution in this transformation, the National Press Club has provided a common ground for newsmakers and news reporters. It would be hard to image the Washington press corps operating without it.
on this front, writing several oped pieces for the Boston Globe and longer features for The American Prospect, a monthly magazine that often draws on academics to write many of its policy-oriented articles.
Anecdotes were much in demand. Fortunately, we had one anecdote to cap them all, the Great Fire of 1978, when the building housing the project went on fire (as Glaswegians disingenuously say). At that time, all our research was contained in a single set of paper slips, which luckily were housed in metal cabinets and escaped unscathed. Recounting this for the twentieth time, it was tempting to embellish the narrative, rescuing screaming infants, or at least professors, from the flames rather than smouldering volumes of the OED.
What would you tell this young, anxious student about the future of journalism?
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[...] about plays and theater by Victor Volkman of Authors Access. My topics are below. For now, listen to the great Ernest Dempsey. 1. the process of writing a play 2. being a playwright-producer 3. directing your own play 4. the [...]