Writing
We journalists love our aphorisms. One of them popped into my Tweet stream this morning: “News is something everyone wants to repress. The rest is advertising.” (The most-loved it would seem, based on how often we hear it, is: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”) All such sayings are cute and [...]
Write or Die (motto: Putting the Prod in Productivity) is an interesting tool to help journalists-to-be get to that magical point where they have the confidence to write quickly. The web-based tool (there’s a desktop app; more on that later) lets you set a word-count target and a time limit, then gives you a writing [...]
Continue reading about Write or Die: Nice tool for learning to write quickly
Back when I slung words for a living, I spent as much time as anyone lamenting the inverted pyramid. It’s part of the newsroom culture to deride the beast as soul-destroying, not-real writing and just plain ugly. But I’ve crossed over to the heretical side when it comes to the combination of summary lede and [...]
April 24 and 25 are the dates for this year’s Northwest Writers Workshop. Benefits: it’s close, it’s cheap ($70 US for students) and it’s mightly inspirational.
Cliches really drain the life out of writing. While sections such as sports and entertainment are particularly cliche-laden, the news sections aren’t exempt. When you come across them in your writing, cull them ruthlessly.
Here’s one to bookmark: the Plain English Campaign Web site. Start with the press release that reports “at the end of the day” is the most disliked cliche of 2004, and go from there.
Bill Walsh, copy editor and author of Lapsing into a Comma, wants caption writers to get rid of silly words like “gestures.”
“Is the only way to become a big time reporter these days to make stuff up?”
Tom Mangan, a copy editor at the San Jose Mercury News, has some thoughts on the raft of fabrication scandals at his blog, Prints the Chaff.
Jon Udell, a tech writer, explains how he uses the Internet to connect with his readers as part of the process of writing articles.
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