Journalism in the 21st Century

The subject of today's blog post wasn't hard to come up with: I recently made the decision to relocate for a job opportunity. However, even nearly two weeks into the job I'm still grappling with how to explain my decision-making process. It's sort of like someone throws you in a forest and tells you to find your way back to camp. You know you were at camp; you know you're only 3 miles away; but you also know you don't recognize anything where you are. Moving is one of the most stressful experiences in life, and so is taking a new job. Combined, you might as well get a divorce or grieve the loss of your puppy. I haven't researched this, but I imagine it's even harder as one ages. When I was 39 I drove across the country for a job in New York. It had been my lifelong dream to work in the Big Apple, having grown up on Woody Allen movies and fancied myself a kind of Mariel Hemingway-esque character. I would grow sophisticated on the Upper East Side and le...

Growing is painful, or so we're told. It's never a joy at the time, but in hindsight those jarring, embarrassing, soul search-inducing moments we have with our difficult bosses and editors can push us toward a higher level. I was thinking today about some of the lessons my tough bosses taught. Without naming names or publications, here they are - in no special order: Don't reveal your reporting methods in the story, other than to say "by e-mail" or "by phone" if appropriate. For example, don't say "Joe said Ginger was a difficult boss after he looked at my picture of Ginger on the desk." It's important to keep everything in the right context, but don't pull up the curtain for your reader. If you're quoting excessively, you probably don't know what you're talking about. Do enough reporting and research to thoroughly understand your subject. Use The Economist as a model for how to do it right. Just write "he sa...

What's happening to the English language? A twinkly-eyed customs agent at Heathrow would say I don't even speak English. When I arrived at his station in 2008, fresh off a trip to Prague, I breathily spat that I was "so glad to be back where I could speak English." He looked at me with an eye roll. "So is that what you call what you speak in your country." It was enough to bother me for, oh, since 2008. It's a story I recant as often as it's appropriate, but lately whenever I'm explaining to my French ESL student why we speak and write the way we do and how this differs across the pond. Unfortunately, I'm finding I have to also defend myself in my own country and outside the tutoring environment. Like when I'm watching a L'oreal Paris commercial and they brag that their product means "less wrinkles". Less wrinkles?! What happens when my student sees this, especially after one of our lessons on n...

I live in Milford, Conn., a pastoral community of roughly 53,000. We're about 26 miles south of Newtown, a town of about 27,000 and tucked within it lies the 18th century village of Sandy Hook. To call Sandy Hook quaint is like calling the Kardashians overexposed. Matter of fact, Bruce Jenner even graduated from Newtown High School. In addition to being a Connecticut resident, I'm a tutor; my mom is a fifth-grade teacher, and her mother was a high-school geometry and trig teacher. I don't have children, but consider myself a mother to my furry friend Wally, and have loved every child I've ever explained which way the printed 'e' should go or whose drawings of me on the subway or in a field of sunflowers graces my bedroom wall. It's trite to say this is a day of mourning, or that our hearts go out to the victims, but it's still worth saying. What's less obvious is that every journalist covering this story has, in a sense, gone to battle. Down on...

Reading the other day that AARP-the Magazine boasts over 22 million subscribers I felt a tingle -- how thrilling, I thought, to have a story appearing in its October issue. While this is my second small piece for them, I am aware that exposure on a national level is invaluable for a journalist. I've also been published in dozens, or close to 100 other publications, and these days it's tough to remember them all. I remember a time when waiting for a magazine article to come out was like waiting for Christmas and no one could ruin the surprise. That all changed with the Internet, though, and it's certainly likely I could be out-scooped. This is true not only for the AARP profile but for any stories I write, including environmental pieces for tce today or the new Green Guide published by the Hartford Business Journal. Even a citizen journalist or heck, Facebook friend, could publish an article that uses the same sources. While it's fine to say there are no accidents, i...

OK, my hands are shaking as I write this. Bobs of sweat are forming on my temples. Are they bobs or globs? I don't know - I'm nervous. Just talking about stress interviews makes me crazy. As a journalist, I've been through some stressful interviews, but always sail through because I'm on the proper side of the discussion. I am asking the questions. The stress comes because: a) a PR has decided to get on the phone with us and thereby direct the interview (or try to) or b) some bigshot has decided to put me on speaker (happens fifty percent of the time) and when I ask to be taken off, acts like I have a hearing disorder or c) someone has decided he doesn't really want to answer any questions so much as suggest how I should write the story. So given all of the preceding stressful situations you'd think I'd be equipped to just show up at some suit's office, look pretty, calm, collected (what am I collecting? armpit sweat?) and sell myself. But I'm no Mar...

After feeling like a schmo for telling a PR off last night, I realized it was time to write this credo for my flack friends everywhere. Note, I didn't so much tell them off as point out the obvious; but apparently, Simon Cowell-as-Laurie-Wiegler isn't sitting too well with innkeepers in Northern California right now (I imagine it wasn't a real publicist who sent the pitch, or she would have known better.) So here's what you need to know in order to keep the journos well fed and on your side: 1. Address us by name. This is so obvious that I can't believe I have to mention it. The above offender cut and pasted her pitch to me. I thought it was SPAM at first. 2. Get to the point in the first sentence or at least the first graf. 3. Stop at graf two. If you can't sell me in two grafs, I'm not interested. Remember, I am pouring through dozens of pitches like yours. I don't have time to read novels. 4. Please, please keep the links and cute images to a minimum...

I'm not a religious person, but tonight I have one prayer and one prayer only: "Please God, please save me from the 26-year-old editors." It's not that I'm jealous of their toned penmanship and taut critiques, their uber-slim fonts and invisibly small mobile phones ...It's something bigger. These 26-year-olds are taking over the publishing industry. Everyone who is not Arianna Huffington -- wait, does Arianna have one n or two? Ah, who cares -- or Anna Wintour is under 30. Because they are under 30 and were raised on laptops and notebooks and iPods and now iPads and Blackberries, these brats think they know everything. Last week, the problem was an idiot copyeditor at YeHaw (not the real name, but use your imagination) who changed everything I wrote in a stupid format-style piece of content I never should have stooped to write, and then when they edited my bio they spelled the word "writings" as "writngs." That's right - no second ...

It always amuses me that freelancers are usually the last to be paid. After all, we buy our own (very expensive) health insurance policies, manage our own books, fix our own computers and forego vacations. Also, many of us have been forced into freelancing due to the economy. Some of us have applied for several hundred journalism jobs, only to find said jobs are now non-existant. We are then "happy" to sell an article here and there. Why then do editors and publishers so often pay us late or play games with our payments? I am not sure why, say, a carpenter is paid one half upfront for his fine woodworking but a freelance journalist must wait up to eight weeks for a payment. I once asked for a deposit upfront, and the prospective client acted like I'd swallowed marbles and was asking him to fish them out. I therefore appeal to all publishers and editors to pay us quickly. That means under 30 days, which is often too long for hungry writers to wait. Don't assume we'...