You can make a living writing

Neil Gaiman's inspirational university commencement address popped up on my YouTube page after I watched a Sally Hogshead video. I'm not sure why YouTube's algorithm classified these two speakers as comparable, but I'm glad it did, because Gaiman's talk fortified me like few others.



One of the first things he says is that he never expected to give such a speech, because he never graduated from college. Never even started.

This is one of the most reassuring things I've ever heard. Suddenly made me feel less ashamed of having dropped out of college. I mean, hey, at least I started. I have more college education than Neil Gaiman. Which adds rather a lot of weight to the argument that a college education may not be necessary.

Gaiman says he saw being an author as a mountain he had to hike to, and then climb. And he made decisions based on whether they would get him closer to the mountain. He started in journalism.

Why didn't I think of that?

More to the point, why didn't my English teachers or guidance counselors think of that? When I was in school and said "I want to be a writer,' people said "That's a nice hobby, but you can't make a living at it."

Monkey Business Images * iStockphoto

It wasn't until 20 years later, when I was sitting in a newsroom full of people making their living by writing, that I got irritated. Had I been told "try journalism," and ignored that advice because I thought journalism would be boring? I don't think so. I could be remembering wrong, but I just don't remember being offered options like copywriting or technical writing when I was in school.

Lacking both a clear goal and single-minded focus, I sort of blundered my way along, until I fell into journalism almost by accident.

It is difficult to make a living as a novelist. But, as Rachel Hauck once told me, "You can make money at it." It requires a lot of hard work, persistence, and Gaiman-like single-minded focus on the goal. And it is possible to earn a living from other kinds of writing in the meantime. Or at the same time.

When I compare life stories with other writers at conferences, I find that many of them heard the same thing when they were in school. "You can't make a living as a writer."

Yes, you can. You just have to broaden your definition of what "writer" means. And you have to keep moving toward the goal.

When is it OK to spell it OK?

Poynter is holding a poll about the punctuation with quote marks issue (periods inside or outside?), putting the question this way:

© 3d_kot - Fotolia.com

"How outraged are you by the idea that it might be OK to put commas and periods *outside* quotation marks?"

One commenter proved McKean's Law (that when you correct someone else's speech or writing, you're likely to commit an error in the process). The poster wrote, "It's okay, not OK."

Erm, how can I put this nicely...no.

Poynter, as an organization serving what's left of the newspaper business, almost certainly follows AP style, which calls for using first-listed spellings whenever a word has two allowable spellings.

You'll find the spelling "OK" listed first in all the major dictionaries. The alternative spelling, "okay," is given equal weight in most, but not all. The Compact Oxford gives the OK spelling more weight.

When a dictionary lists two spellings separated by "also," as Compact Oxford does with OK, then the first is preferred, but the second is acceptable. When two spellings are separated by "or," both are equally correct. Which to use is a style choice. All that matters is that one be consistent, at least within each work, if not across all works from a given publisher. Many book publishers prefer "okay" because it behaves like a word, forming other words such as okayed and okaying. And it looks like a word, instead of looking like a cheerleader jumping up in the middle of your book yelling O-K!

I've heard a couple of writers say "okay" is Chicago style. It's not. I asked. Here's what the staff at Chicago Manual of Style had to say:

CMOS doesn't specify, but as it happens, the manual uses "OK" twice (at 2.66 and 2.113) and does not use "okay." … We follow Webster's 11th Collegiate, which puts OK as the first spelling, but lists "okay" as an equal variant (also standard).

So you oughtn't say with certainty, as the Poynter commenter did, that one way or the other is right or wrong. It depends on the publication. When I edit for Orlando Business Journal, it's OK. When I edit for Splashdown Darkwater, it's okay. Each is right in its own way.

For more about "The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word," including its incredible origin, see the book by Allan Metcalf, which, I must point out, is titled OK.

Take the [hey...] train

The other day, I cracked Tribune for its use of standardized features. Since the Sam Zell takover, Tribune has increased the number of features produced in Chicago and shipped nationwide to be printed wholesale in sundry locations. Not just the stories. Art and page layout packages are routinely pre-fabricated for use by all Tribune papers.

I must admit, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Any national news organization does this to some extent. If the same story needs to be told in 40 cities, there's no reason to send 40 reporters to do the same thing 40 times. (Before 2012, someone please explain this to the local TV stations, or they will once again each send a reporter to cover the Olympics. Which, last time I checked, Bob Costas et al did quite competently.)

So packaged national content isn't wholly objectionable. But some effort must be made to make it locally relevant. Or at least, not locally irrelevant. But our local daily ran one such feature on the topic of incorporating more physical activity into your daily routine. One suggestion was to use the stairs instead of the escalator at the station when taking the commuter train to work.

Orlando, as you may know, has no commuter train.

Attack on your wallet

With the news dominated by Wacko Jacko and Bernie Made-off-with-your-money, I was pleased to have a lead story for today's OBJ Market Wrap radio report -- thanks to my colleague Steven E.F. Brown in San Francisco -- that hadn't already reached the saturation point: Oil over $71 a barrel after Nigerian attacks.

But then I started to wonder: Why, with the SEC filing charges against even more Ponzi scheme operators and troop movements in Iraq and Nigerians blowing up oil rigs, did our local daily devote a large portion of page A1 to a story about a woman whose car has 600,000 miles on it?

I'll admit this is mildly interesting. And it is local. And an attempt was made to make it relevant to the reader by including a list of tips on how to keep a car running for a long time. It surely would have made a better inside feature than another of the one-size-fits-all Tribune features packaged in Chicago for distrubution to every market in the country. (You can spot these because the writers are identified as being with "Tribune Media Services" instead of as staff writers for the local paper.) But local or not, a person driving the same gas-guzzler since the Johnson administration is not A1 news.

The destruction of oil rigs in Nigeria is. Need I explain why?

I don't know at what hour the local daily is printed, but Bloomberg had the Nigerian oil story at 3 a.m. EDT. At that time, it said "Crude oil for August delivery rose … to $69.41 a barrel."

By the time I did the OBJ Market Wrap for WLOQ-FM this afternoon, crude was up to $71.50, a 3 percent increase from yesterday's close. In after-hours trading, it's up further still, at $71.87. This means all of us will be paying more for gas, no matter how old our cars are.

When do we get to the last "first?"

I long for the day when the first deaf Jewish female president nominates the first quadriplegic Buddist of Kazakh descent as a supreme court justice, and the only thing the media mentions is ... you know, the nominee's actual judicial record.

Do pigs swarm?

An OBJ poll showed most respondents believe the news surrounding H1N1 virus -- that virus of many names -- to be hype. One commenter summed the matter up well, pointing out that "over 36,000 people die from influenza every year in the U.S. … More people die in car accidents … yet you do not see them staying out of cars. Just practice good hygiene and go about your business."

You also rarely see news of flu deaths delivered with the breathless sort of mania that has attended the recent outbreak.

Detracting from the hype is the inappropriate amount of furor over what to call the thing. "Swine flu" offends the pork industry and Israelis. "Mexican flu" annoys Mexicans.

Whatever you call it, don't make this unfortunate error:

Third Case Of Swine Confirmed In Orange County.

I'm sorry, a "case of swine?" Is that a crate containing a dozen pigs? Or is it more like "Hey, I've been turned into a pig. Can I go home?" What does a swine outbreak look like? Or is a rash of swine better called an "infestation?"

One may justifiably ask why the story wasn't headlined "Third case of flu confirmed..."

Well, obviously, that would draw a big "who cares" from the readership.

Which is exactly the point I wish to make.

Perhaps it is inappropriate to belittle a fatal illness. But the problem with coverage of The Virus That Must Not Be Named is that it has been completely out of proportion to the actual threat. Moreover, it is out of proportion to the usual coverage of the flu. This sort of skewed journalism needlessly frightens the naive and just leaves the rest of us jaded.

Initially concerned

Sometimes when I get an intitialism-riddled press release, I can decipher it with some judicious Googling. But I was stumped by a release from a bank about its new "BSA officer."

Boy Scouts of America?
Business Software Alliance?
Boston Society of Architects?

Those were some of the top Google results. None in the first pageful had to do with banking.

Just for kicks,* I looked at Wikipedia, which gave me a very entertaining list that includes:

• Bearing Specialists Association


• Belarusian Socialist Assembly


• Bethesda Softworks Archive


• Birmingham School of Acting


• Bismuth (Bi), Tin (Sn), Silver (Ag) solder


• Botanical Society of America


• Bovine serum albumin


• Brazilian Space Agency


• British Soap Awards


• British Stratego Association

and much more.

Fortunately, the bank's publicist quickly responded to my e-mail request for a translation: "Bank Secrecy Act." Without that information, I would have had to omit the item. Of course, I would be much happier had I been given plain English to begin with.

This is a larger issue at daily newspapers, where staff cuts have been staggering. As journalists increasingly rely on publicists to provide information, that information must be correct, concise, and clear.

Clarity requires translating initialisms and other jargon into plain English. Only a handful -- CEO, CPA and MBA are the first that come to mind -- are so well-known as to need no explanation.

And frankly, outside of a business context, even those are iffy. There are circles in which those would be seen as referring to "Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization," "Craft Potters' Association" and "Marine Biological Association," respectively.


* — That Wikipedia is unusable as a source for proper journalism has, I think, now been well-established.

Tweet mystery of life...

After David Pogue told us Twitter can be useful, I've been looking for evidence of this.

I finally got it.

John McIntyre's blog, You Don't Say, was discontinued by the Baltimore Sun when McIntyre abruptly became the latest victim of newsroom cost-cutting.

Previously, when I attempted to follow colleagues on Twitter, I gave up because of the superfluity of most tweets. But this was important, dang it. I needed to know where to go to get my daily dose of McIntyresian wisdom.* So I added McIntyre's Twitter page to my webfeed reader.

McIntyre's interim tweets are entertaining. On April 28, his last at the Sun, he indicated he would continue the blog elsewhere. On April 19: "An unexpected pleaseure in reading here, at Facebook and elsewhere what amount to one's own obituary notices. Not. Dead. Yet."

Then, at last, today: "The blog is back."

So Twitter proved useful indeed for keeping up with one of my favorite sages.

So am I going to ask you to follow me on Twitter? Heck no. Not only do I not have time to tweet my every move, I suspect that if I did, anything I had to say would be superfluous.

* McIntyre is a giant in the field, and the publisher wise enough to hire him will be fortunate, indeed.

Distinguishing real mistakes from non-mistakes

Many of those who frequent the discussion boards of the American Copy Editors Society work hard to disabuse colleagues about journalistic shibboleths, such as the one Bill Walsh calls "the un-splitting fetish."

This is the wrongheaded belief that leads many--including, it seems to me, a disproportionate number of journalists--to write awkward constructions like "we already have been there," where any normal person would write "we have already been there."

This superstition about not allowing the adverb (e.g. "already") to come between the two parts of a compound verb (e.g. "have been") has been thouroughly debunked by the best minds in the field, some of which are cited in Garner's Modern American Usage. For example: "Not only is there no objection to thus splitting a compound verb...but any other position for the adverb requires special justification" (H.W. Fowler, Modern English Usage).

Nevertheless, many people continue to un-split, which is why Chief Justice Roberts, attempting to copy edit on the fly, bungled the inaugural oath. Steven Pinker, chairman of the usage panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, adds his voice to those of the aforementioned minds, giving an insightful examination of why unsplitting is pointless. In doing so, he also gives us a magnificent headline:

Oaf of Office

So let's review: split verb phrases or, dare we say it, split infinitives—not mistakes. Attempting an impromptu rewrite of the most solemn oath of office in the land—big mistake.

Fun with puns

Some of us collect bad headlines; I collect good ones. Of course, how you define "good" depends upon your tolerance level for puns. I classify this one, on a story about a woman who lost her hearing after a fervent smooch, as good:

Kiss of Deaf

Mainstream media fails the electorate--again

Orson Scott Card handed out some harsh medicine to local dailies in this opinion piece:

Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?

In which he accuses daily newspapers of bias in failing to cover Barack Obama's part in the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis. An excerpt:

If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.

Card's point is cogent, and eloquently put.

But many in the media are equally guilty of a less obvious bias: As long as mainstream media outlets continue to pretend that the Big Two are the only parties in this country, they cripple the democratic process.

An informed electorate is one of the keys to a successful democracy. Traditionally, Americans have looked to the media to consolidate the vast amount of information available. But when journalists employ bias in the process, or when they ignore third-party candidates simply because those parties are statistically unlikely to win, they prove themselves unworthy of the task.

The City Club of Cleveland hosted a debate today between Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader, and Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin. C-Span recorded the debate for addition to its archives.

I'm glad someone is paying attention. Because when I checked the "Election" tab at Google news, the only mention I found of any of these gentlemen was in this AP story, which is about a poll, not the debate.

So far, the blogosphere is picking up the slack, if you can pick through the slag. While I was picking, I came across this article, which shows that 55 percent of likely voters felt Barr should be included in the presidential debates. But the commission that organizes the debates will only admit a candidate who has "a mathematical chance of winning a majority of Electoral College votes, and . . . at least 15% support in national public opinion polls before the debates."

Get this, though--younger respondents were more likely to say that third-party candidates should be included. Because of this, the parties--and the media--need to change their approaches.

The more the love-hate triangle between the Democrats and the media and the Republicans continues to follow the same worn-out plot, the more disaffected voters are going to look for someone telling a new story in a new way.

Let's do away with datelines

Tupperware is based in Orlando.

Standard & Poors is based in New York.

Which doesn't explain why this article about S&P upgrading Tupperware's corporate credit rating is datelined "Mumbai."

Datelines originated with wire services, which would begin a transmitted story with the place and date the story was written.

Wikipedia's Dateline article gives this example:

"BEIRUT, Lebanon, June 2 — The outlook was uncertain today as ..."

That's how the story would appear to an editor pulling it from the wires. When it appeared in the newspaper, the date would usually be omitted, leaving the now misnamed "dateline" to carry only the location.

Of course, pre-Internet, a writer writing a story about Beirut was presumed to be in Beirut.

But now, in the interest of saving money, agencies are farming news-gathering tasks out to Mumbai and other points east.

I'm going to leave the question of whether this makes journalistic sense for another time. The truth is, the Mumbai correspondent did a proper job on the Tupperware story. What I want to address today is whether the story's having been written in India is of importance to the reader.

It is not. It is a useful piece of information, but the reader, for the most part, does not care. For his own good, he should be told, but not necessarily first thing.

We ought not yell "MUMBAI" at our readers before telling them a story about New York and Orlando. Let's spare them that incongruity. Let's just tell them the story and then, at the end, whisper, in italics, "This story was written by Our Correspondent in Mumbai."

There was a time when datelines made sense. They no longer do. Except when they're used to actually convey the date.

Drawing the line when others cross it

Remember when I said ethical journalists don't charge for news content?

The Society of Professional Journalists announced that on Sept. 6, it will present its Ethics in Journalism Award to Glen Mabie.

If you've never heard of Glen Mabie, don't fret—I hadn't, either, and as a person who works with journalists, I probably should have.

Mabie was chosen for the award because on Jan. 7, 2008, he resigned from his position as news director at WEAU-TV in Eau Claire, Wis.— resigned over an ethics issue.

From the SPJ's news release:

"The general manager at WEAU-TV and the top marketing and communications person at the area’s Sacred Heart hospital negotiated an agreement under which the hospital would pay an undisclosed amount to the station to do two 'health news' segments a week. These segments were to be broadcast as part of the station’s regular newscasts, and the reporters were only to interview Sacred Heart employees as part of the 'news coverage.'

"Mabie protested this agreement but could not get management to cancel the deal. Mabie submitted his resignation a week later and made no public announcement of his departure. In the end, the station’s management decided to end its deal with Sacred Heart."

In his nomination letter, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire professor David Gordon wrote: "I believe that Mabie’s willingness to draw a line in the sand and to stand up for his ethical principles regardless of the personal cost is a perfect fit for the criteria set out for the SPJ Ethics in Journalism Award."

Acccording to the SPJ, Mabie said the award is "a reminder of the strong code of ethics to which journalists adhere."

That's true.

Mabie also said his colleagues in the newsroom contributed to the award. But Mabie is the one who put his job on the line, and therefore serves as a living example of ethics in action.

Don't ask

Today — and not for the first time — a businessperson asked something like, "If I buy an ad, will it guarantee my press release gets in the paper?"

No.

No.

No.

Questions like this really get my blood boiling. Let me make two things perfectly clear: First, asking this question is an insult to the integrity of a newsperson.

Second, if the answer is yes, you are dealing with a news organization that has no integrity.

With this second point, you understand, I acknowledge that not all news organizations have the same ethical standards. But what rankles—as it does with any group—is when all are painted with the same brush.

To imply that all newspeople lack integrity is precisely as prejudiced as to imply that all women are bad drivers or all men are too stubborn to ask for directions or … well, pick your subgroup and the stereotypical insult most commonly hurled at it.

I would say "all generalizations are wrong," but you see the inherent problem …

Well done

The Chicago Tribune has the best headline I've seen yet about Congress's questioning of Steve Mendell, president of Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Co., which was responsible for what the Trib calls “the largest meat recall in U.S. history:”

House grills meat packing chief

Putting the "free" in free press

I know some people think "journalistic ethics" is an oxymoron, but I work for a paper with high ethical standards. Nothing upsets me more than people who ask how much it costs to get their article in the paper.

It is sad that the line between news and advertising has become so unclear.

If, every time I was asked "how much does it cost to get my press release printed in your paper?" I said, "twenty dollars in small, unmarked bills," I wouldn't have to worry about putting my kid through college.

Whenever I get this question, it puts my guts in a knot. I disturbs me to think people believe they can buy news coverage. It disturbs me still more to think that at some news organizations, they can.

I consider myself fortunate to have worked, for more than 16 years now, for a news organization where journalistic ethics is not an oxymoron, it is a way of life.

So here's my public service announcement: If you approach a news outlet and it wants you to pay to get a news story written about you — that's not a news story. It's an ad. No news outlet of any integrity will charge you for being a source.

Journalists don't go into journalism to get rich; they do it because they have a deep-seated desire to disseminate information. Or, as one of my colleagues once said, "It's a great way to channel nosiness into a career."

That's why I answer the "how much does it cost" questions honestly ("there's no charge to submit a press release, but no guarantee of inclusion"), and hope my kid qualifies for a scholarship.

Here is a speech in which Bill Moyers discussed journalistic integrity and the lack thereof.

——
“News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.” — Bill Moyers
——

That's what blogs are for

So much has been written about the New York Times' shoddy story about John McCain, I hesitate to even attempt to address it. But since it sits squarely at the intersection of democracy and journalism, I feel compelled to comment.

The story in question starts with a reference to something that happened eight years ago, which makes me wonder if the writers have forgotten the "new" in "news." It's all downhill from there: anonymous sources, vague allegations, and a bias more slanted than the cut of my skirt.

A respectable newspaper is no place for rumor and innuendo.

Also, I aggree with Frank James, who points out that this could actually help McCain in the long run.

Rounding up the usual subjects

When I'm sorting through the messages in my inbox—more than 100 per day, not counting spam—I'm dismayed by how many of them have non-descriptive subject lines or, worse, no subject line at all.

Tip: Write detailed subject lines. People who receive many messages each hour scan the list of subject lines and respond first to those that look most important.

For example, if you have a deal worth $20 million in the works, don’t ask for your supervisor’s input with a message headed “FYI – need input.” Send a message that says “Potential $20 millon deal - need your advice.”

This is doubly important if you are e-mailing a member of the press and expect to be noticed. A message with the subject line "Local firm signs $20 million deal" will get read before one with the subject line "press release."