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Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

The joys of amateur blogging

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, creativity, humor, journalism, Personal, tazzu, tazzuwordpresscamp, Uncategorized, wordpress, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2008| 3 Comments »

(The following is a recreation and expansion of the talk – or maybe “rant” is a better word – that I gave at the Tazzu WordPress Camp on April 30. The talk was titled by Rastin Mehr, but I decided to keep it for the sake of irony.)

I’m a little surprised to be here tonight. Two years ago, the last thing I thought I’d be doing was blogging.

Back then, I thought that bloggers were self-important amateurs. When I looked at the topics for blogging conferences, I was reminded of academic seminars, and it all looked so serious and earnest that I wanted to shake the nearest blogger and say, “For God’s sake, well you get over yourself? Why don’t you just shut up and write?”

For me, blogging was like vanity publishing, or playing tennis with the net down: You could do it, but wouldn’t you always wonder if you were good enough to make it on your own?

Yes, I know there are a handful of bloggers who are respected for their in-depth coverage of a subject and who have essentially become professional journalists. Pamela Jones of Groklaw springs to mind. But these bloggers probably would have been well-known anyway, and had they gone the traditional routes to recognition, on the way they might have shed some of the amateur self-indulgence that often still mars their work.

As for the majority of bloggers, they’re never going to be recognized and they’re never going to monetize their blog in anyway. In fact, even most of those who succeed in living off their blog are probably only going to do so by focusing on the marketing to the expense of content – if not their integrity.

Yet here I am today, a blogging addict. I still haven’t changed my opinions of most blogs, yet despite my reservations, I still believe that the worst of them has value.

Why I blog

My own reasons for blogging are probably peculiar. I started because, while I am a professional journalist who covers free and open source software, there are other subjects that I want to write about. Mostly, I stay away from free software subjects, although I know that I can get thousands of hits a day if I discuss them. But I can do the same and get paid for it, so I have no great interest in increasing my audience.

Still, for a professional (which really is just a name for an exhibitionist with respectable outlets for their proclivities), writing implies an audience, no matter how small. In fact, philosophically speaking, a writer without an audience can hardly be said to be a writer at all. Even Samuel Pepys, the famous secret diarist, seems to have developed the idea of a future readership as he went on. So, if I’m going to write, I do want a few people to react to it, if only a handful.

For me, writing a blog entry is a warmup for my paid work, or a way to bleed off excess energy when I’m done for the day. It’s a place where I can experiment with structure and subject matter, and learn about the short personal essay as an art form. Sometimes, I even use it as a sandbox for subjects that I later write a paid article for, its content enriched by the feedback from commenters.

But all these are idiosyncratic reasons. Why do I think blogging holds value for anyone?

Reasons for blogging

My answer begins with my past occupation as a university composition instructor. I used to ask students to keep a journal during the semester with a minimal number of entries, to be graded simply on whether it was done or not done. Early on in my thinking, I realized that, if I were still teaching, I would have graduated to asking students to keep blogs. The trendiness of blogging would encourage them in a way that private journals never could.

The reasons I assigned a journal also applies to blogs. Unless you are doing an entry level manual job, the ability to write clearly is always going to give you an edge in your profession. The medium of your writing, whether it’s paper or a computer file doesn’t matter. And if you want to write well, the only way to do it is to keep in practice. You wouldn’t expect to play a guitar well or run ten kilometers easily if you only tried once every three weeks, so why would you imagine that writing is any different?

More importantly, writing is an ideal way to explore your thoughts. I think it was the American writer William Faulkner who said he wrote to learn what he thought on a particular subject, and that idea is in tune with my own experience. It’s only after I stop researching a subject and start thinking how to structure an article that I know my opinion on most of what I write about. When an interviewee asks me what the point of an article will be, most of the time, my only honest answer would be, “I don’t know. I haven’t written it yet.” So, if my own experience holds true for others, writing is a way to self-knowledge. Through the act of writing, you can under both your subject and yourself better.

Even more importantly, writing is one of the lowest-entry creative tasks that you can do. Admittedly, blogging requires access to some relatively expensive hardware, but a computer is relatively cheap compared to say, a painter’s supplies or a dancer’s outfits. If you have to, you can even do blog from a public library terminal, reducing your costs to next to nothing. And if you believe with Abraham Maslow, that everyone has a basic need for creativity – well, how can you argue with a trend that gives everyone who wants it a means of self-expression?

All this, and blogging is fun, too. For some, it’s a way to keep in touch with their friends. And for those who, in the words of Ray Wylie Hubbard, “are condemned by the gods to write,” doing so becomes nothing short of addictive. And if you are an addict (“Hello, my name is Bruce, and I’m a writing junkie”), then you know that nothing quite compares. Personally, I’ve always appreciated the response that science fiction writer Isaac Asimov made when asked if he would rather make love or write: “I can write for twelve hours a day.”

In this commercial, supposedly hard-headed days, these reasons for valuing something may be slight. And it’s true – blogging has more to do with a liberal education than going to law school or getting your MBA. For most of those who blog, the activity is not going to pay off, definitely not in the short term and almost certainly not in the long term. Get used to it.

Yet contrary to the conventional wisdom, choosing to do something without the potential for a return can be neither stupid nor naive. When you’re talking about something like blogging, it means you have your priorities straight, and you know the intrinsic worth of what you’re doing.

I have no claim to wisdom or influence, but, if I did, I’d urge bloggers to stop taking themselves so seriously and just enjoy what they are doing. If you’re blogging, you’re helping yourself to think better and can have fun while you do so. I mean, what more joy do you need? In my experience, money come and goes, but personal growth stays with you forever.

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Writing effective news releases

Posted in Bruce Byfield, corporate communications, journalism, Personal, Public Relations, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , on March 31, 2008| 1 Comment »

Every day, thousands of news releases are emailed. And, every day, thousands of news releases are deleted unread or only partially unread — all because their writers don’t bother to make their news sound important.

Let me explain. Not counting duplicates, I receive several hundred news releases a week. However, I only read about 30-40. I can discard most of them because their distributors haven’t bothered to target their work, and the releases have nothing to do with free software or GNU/Linux. But I also discard many of the rest without reading beyond the first paragraph because they fail to make me care about their news. If the PR people can’t focus enough to make their news interesting, why should I waste more than a minimal amount of time reading their releases?

That may sound harsh. Yet, without ruthless tactics, I would hardly have time to do anything except read releases. Nor did I (or would I) ask for most of the releases I receive.

Besides, I am hardly alone. If anything, I probably receive fewer releases than many computer journalists. A public relations writer who doesn’t know this reality is ignorant about one of the basics facts of their trade. So, really, it is only common sense that they should do what they can to emphasize the relevance of their news, especially when the task is fairly simple.

I always say that, to write successful PR, you need to assume that your everyone in your audience has an attention deficit disorder. They see so many releases that they’re easily bored. A PR writer’s job is to break through that lack of attention so that journalists will read the details and be roused to do a story based on the news.

The best way to attract attention would be to write a custom release for every long term connection. However, that’s hardly practical (although targeting your release is, despite the modern PR writer’s fondness for spamming techniques). But. with a little effort a writer can craft a release that keeps recipients reading.

If you want to attract interest in a release, the place to start is with the head – which should also probably be the subject line if you send the release in an email. Far from being the after-thought that many PR writers seem to make it, the head should be a pithy summary of the news and why it matters. It should not be – as so many PR writers make it – something as bland as “News release from MyPR.”

In fact, it should not just be a bare statement of fact, no matter how specific. For instance, instead of “Jack Parker becomes company CTO” try “Company refocuses on core values by appointing Jack Parker CTO.” The first head sounds irrelevant, while the second explains how the news might affect the company.

A head is usually less than a dozen words, but if you’ve struggled with them the way you should, you won’t need a sub-head. Many long-time writers will actually tell you not to bother with a sub-head, because it’s usually just one more chance to lose the reader. However, if your news is especially complex, those few more words might help keep readers’ attention.

However, most of the time, you’ll want to get directly into the lede. Like the opening of a short story, your first sentence should be the hook you use to catch readers’ attention. You can use the rest of the first paragraph to expand on the gist of what you have to say, but if readers flounder on the first sentence, many of them won’t read beyond the rest of the paragraph, let alone the release.

One thing you do not do is throw away the first sentence with long sentences and cliches. Yes, you want the lede to summarize your news and its importance. But it won’t fill this goal if it’s a compound-complex sentence, and even the most sympathetic reader has trouble following through its entire ten line.

Nor do you want to lose interest by describing your client as a “world leader” in its field or by using any other cliche that the reader has heard thousands of times before. Cliches lose readers’ attention, accomplishing the exact opposite of what you should be trying to do.

Once past the head and the lede, you can relax a bit. However, keep the release short for all but the most monumental news, and put a few quotes in to break up the bald recital of facts. But remember that the quotes should be people talking like people, not like an animated dictionary. Like a cliche, lame prose is just going to lose the reader.

Don’t worry, either, about giving a company bio until the end. Anything more than a clause half a dozen words long will only complicate your basic message unnecessarily. The only reason that anyone will want more about the company is because they are going ahead with a story based on your release. Providing a corporate bio is a courtesy you do journalists, not something that will help you drum up interest in your story.

The idea that a news release should explain why the information it carries is important sounds obvious. Apparently, though, the idea has never occurred to the majority of people working in public relations. Perhaps they are so busy writing a release that pleases their boss or client that they don’t stop to think that they are being paid to offer their expertise as well as please. Or, perhaps, they think the importance of their news is self-evident; the fact that their company has a new point release of a product has kept everyone in the office working overtime for weeks, so why shouldn’t the rest of the world be concerned?

I suspect, though, that many PR writers simply find mass mailouts easier than taking the time to craft a release that journalists will read. Spam, after all, is easy, and effective writing hard. But it is only by effective writing that the composers of news releases can even hope to have their efforts read. Otherwise, they may as well not even bother.

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How to generate ideas for journalism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, oysterband, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 27, 2008| 3 Comments »

“I’d like to write more often for your organization,” a some-time contributor to Linux.com wrote to the editors the other day. “However, I was hoping you’d have some advice for someone like me that suffers from writer’s block. Sometimes I’ll come up with a topic, other times I struggle for ideas, then I read other articles on Linux.com and think to myself, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”

By the time I logged on in the morning, Lisa Hoover had already given a comprehensive answer, to which I could only add a few points (I’m on Pacific time, so I log in long after everyone else in North America, although I sometimes get there before the Indian editors). Lisa posted her reply in the Linux.com forums, and I urge anyone interested to read it.

Meanwhile, here’s my suggestions, which includes my rewriting of Lisa’s as well. I’m talking about free and open source software. but I think that with a few changes of context most of the points would apply equally to any kind of journalism:

  • Know the field you’re writing about. In this case, that means keeping up to date on the other basic news sites, such as Linux Today, LWN, and FS Daily. It also means checking out information on new software from FreshMeat, and keeping track of what’s happening with major organizations in the field, such as the Free Software Foundation or The Linux Foundation. Often, these sites just give the bare bones announcement of events, so there is almost always room to go deeper. Moreover, once you have extensive knowledge, you’ll be able to see connections – and, therefore, possible stories – as you make connections between different pieces of information.
  • Subscribe to mail forums in areas that you’d like to write about, and join local meetups of people with similar interests. Their problems and interests will provide endless stories, and, occasionally, a piece of breaking news.
  • When you read a how-to, try it out. What information does it leave out? What information is now outdated in it? Could the information be presented more coherently? Is there a related topic that is left out? Could your personal experience add anything to the instructions? Answering any of these questions can lead to an article.
  • Question what you read. If someone makes a claim about a particular piece of software, go see for yourself. If someone is quoted, contact them to expand on their comments. The more you know about the field, the more you are likely to question. For instance, a few months ago, I got a story when a software project’s members were being quoted as having an opinion which I knew was likely to be wrong.
  • Read bloggers and columnists in the field. Note their opinion, and see if you can come up with a counter-argument (For the record, I write a lot of blog entries using this technique, especially when the subject is career advice).
  • As you get to know your chosen field, you will become familiar with the truisms that everyone knows. Play the contrarian, and see if you can come up with a valid argument that qualifies or over-turns conventional wisdom. An example is my article for Datamation, “It’s time to get over Microsoft,” which suggested that free software was now strong enough to have no need to fear its traditional nemesis. Of course, I received plenty of negative criticism, but I still feel that the point needed to be made.
  • Everyone has a story, and so does every group. I’ve never yet met someone who was boring when talking about what matters to them, so get in touch and tell those stories.
  • Watch for common problems that people have, either in online forum or in your everyday life. Lists of resources or steps to overcome these problems are articles that editors will love, because they’ll continue to be read for months after they’re published.
  • Make lists. For instance, in the last 3 years, I’ve written “11 tips for moving to OpenOffice.org,” “9 characteristics of free software users,” and at least a dozen more. Lists are an excellent way to make use of random observations and thoughts.
  • Think of what’s appropriate to the season. For instance, last Christmas, Linux.com carried articles about gifts for geeks, and non-profits to which people might want to donate before the end of the year to get a tax break. For Valentine’s Day, the site carried suggestions of how to mark the day using free software. In the past, other articles were published to mark the university of the OpenOffice.org and Debian projects.
  • Think about your own experience in the field, whether with your home computers or at the office. Often, what you’re doing with your computer will make a good how-to article, especially for beginners. For instance, I got at least half a dozen stories from my customization of my new laptop last summer.
  • Contact companies and experts, asking for more information about new software or new policies. If you see something interesting in the way of hardware, ask about getting a review unit.
  • Network like crazy, not only with movers and shakers, but also PR experts and ordinary developers. This advice is always sound no matter what you’re doing, but, in journalism, it pays greater and greater dividends as you continue to write, because people will contact you when they think they have a possible story. I don’t know how it works for other journalists, but I now get 2-3 stories and another 2-3 possible leads per month – a substantial reduction of my need to generate ideas. Three years ago, when I started, I got none. And, increasingly, those stories are scoops, given to me because people feel that I’ve written about them or their colleagues with some fairness or insight in the past. Of course, many of these contacts have their own agenda, but generally that agenda is only to get publicity, so you generally don’t have to worry about preserving your independence.

You see the common thread? Consistently generating ideas to write about means that a part of you is always hunting for stories. As you go about your business, a part of you needs to be always analyzing the story potential of what you encounter.

If my experience is anything to go by, once you have this habit, your problem won’t be coming up with ideas. It will be choosing which stories you want to write in the limited time that you have in the day.

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The spine of the story

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Probably the best piece of advice I’ve heard for writers is from screen writer William Goldman the writer of The Princess Bride (You know, the book and the movie with the immortal line: “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”). When writing a script, Goldman says in Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?, you need to discover what he calls the spine of the story – that is, the impression you want to leave with the audience, or what the story is about besides the bare events. If you’re an English major, you could say he is talking about the main theme. But, whatever you call it, the advice holds true for both fiction and non-fiction.

The point is easiest to understand if you think in terms of fiction. Imagine that you are writing one of those time-honored stories in which a young man rises from obscurity to become rich and influential. It is not enough simply to narrate the events in his life; if that is all you do, then the result will be like one of those endless cell phone conversations teenagers seem to have at the top of their voices when you’re trapped with with them on a bus (“Then he says, and I say, then he goes . . .”), until you want to scream with boredom.

Instead, you need to understand how you want the audience to view the events. Will the story be about how the young man is unable to shed conventions until he finds himself trapped by his own success? Or will it be about personal courage and having the strength to realize your dreams? Either of these perspectives could be a legitimate spine, and each could apply to the same sequence of events. But without discovering the spine, you won’t know what to emphasize, or even the metaphors you need to tell the story.

This need explains why telling a real person’s story is notoriously difficult to do well. Very few people’s lives have a spine – even a well-known person’s life contains a lot of living for the moment and random incidents. You need to find a perspective from which to tell a person’s life, and usually it’s easier to find meaning in a small portion of a life rather than the whole thing.

Goldman is talking about fiction, of course – specifically, writing movie scripts, although his comment applies equally well to short stories or novels. I’ve found it useful when writing the handful of stories I’ve published professionally. However, as I’ve slowly struggled to learn journalism over the last few years, I’ve realized that his advice applies equally well to features and news items.

It’s not surprising, really, because articles are narratives, too. Take, for example, a simple news release. A company issues a news release because it has a story it wants told – it has a new product, it has hired a new executive, or maybe it has a comment on industry news. The publicist’s job is find the perspective that the company wants on the news, while a journalist’s is to find the perspective that makes the story worth the attention of the audience. The publicist who has found the spine of the story is working hard to make sure that journalists believe the perspective offered, while journalists – if they have any integrity – are trying to discover the spine for themselves.

At least, that’s the way it should be. In reality, many publicists and journalists never discover what the spine of a particular story should be, either because they are in a rush or lazy or just plain ignorant of their roles. A publicist without a spine sends out a boring release that no one wants to read, technically fulfilling the needs of their client or employer, but in truth doing them no favor at all. Similarly, a journalist who doesn’t bother to find the spine either tells a disconnected story, or worst, shows a lack of integrity by simply accepting the one that the publicist offers. You can find hundreds of such releases or stories on any given day, but, unless the news is so major that it tells itself, none of them are of any value to the audience.

In both fiction and non-fiction, finding the spine takes time. Yet the effort is always worth making. Not only is the search a matter of integrity, but writing without the spine is infinitely harder, and is far more likely to produce rambling or mediocre results – and to be excruciatingly boring and painful to produce.

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Overcoming writer’s block

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writer's block, writing, tagged , , , , , on March 12, 2008| 1 Comment »

Does writer’s block really exist? For all the dramatic agony it causes among would-be writers, I’m not sure it does. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, being at a loss for words is the result of sloppy writing habits, and can be overcome if you make the right effort.

The easiest way to avoid writer’s block is to write every day. What you write doesn’t matter, so much as the fact that you keep in practice. You wouldn’t expect to play the violin well or run efficiently if you didn’t practice every day, and writing is no different. Keep a journal where you write loosely and without any pressure (not a blog: you might start worrying about how readers will react), and after a couple of weeks you’ll be warmed up as soon as you pick up a pen or sit down in front of the keyboard. Instead of being an unusual act for you, it will become something you do as naturally and unthinkingly as you touch-type (assuming, of course, that you do).

Another important tactic is to divide the writing and editing processes as you write. Writing is an intuitive process, uncritical process and editing a rational and analytical one, so the two don’t go well together. If you constantly finding yourself writing a few words, only to scratch them out or change them, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Most of the time, you make slower and slower progress that way, until you stop with a scowl on your face and writer’s block firmly lodged in your brain. But if you can force yourself not to be too critical in your first draft and to start correcting it only after it’s complete, then the words should come more easily – and probably more quickly as well. When I used to teach first year composition at university, realizing the need to divide these functions was often all that students needed to start becoming fluent writers.

However, if writer’s block occurs despite these first two tactics, the best thing you do is persevere. Words that come slowly are usually no better or worse on average than words that come easily, and you’re in no position to judge them while you write them. They only seem worse than usual because of the effort you’re making.

However, if you are still having trouble, try to get a different perspective on what you are writing. Skip to another paragraph or chapter – after all, nothing says you have to write in order. Read whatever you have out loud. Try writing the passage in which you’re bogged down without looking at the original. Play a game, such as imagining what the passage would sound like if a famous writer was composing it. Anything to get a new perspective, If all these ploys fail, try writing something else, so you still make some progress in the day.

Only after you have tried all the tactics of this sort that you can imagine should you take the last step of taking a break. A writer, don’t forget, is one who writes; if you nap instead, you’re a napper, not a writer. Often, cleaning or another form of creativity such as cooking will help. Heavy exercise is even better, either because of all the chemical stimulants with which it floods your brain or because when you’re straining your legs and arms, your unconscious can set to work on what’s bothering you. Try any of these tricks and the chances are high that you will start to write again.

However, the best cure for writer’s block is a deadline. If you have to submit a piece by a certain time or day, you don’t have time to worry about writer’s block. You simply have to produce. In fact, it’s exactly the motivating factor of deadlines that makes me doubt that writer’s block. Instead, I believe that writer’s block is mostly ineffective work habits or a love of the drama of being a tormented writer. If you don’t have time to work inefficiently or to dramatize yourself, then you’ll likely do neither. Most of the time, overcoming writer’s block is as simple as that.

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Beginning writers and style

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on March 1, 2008| Leave a Comment »

A comment on my blog entry “What Editors Want” suggested that I forgot to mention that writers are also required to write to a certain style. Actually, I didn’t forget so much as think it irrelevant, at least in the sense that most beginners usually think about style.

True, editors usually have a style guide full of arcana such as what terms you should capitalize, and whether you should write “email” or “e-mail.” Sometimes, too, they contain phrases and words that either you shouldn’t use, or should only with a particular meaning. And, in the case of major newspapers or wire services, these style guides can run to hundreds of pages.

However, writers – especially beginners or freelancers – are rarely expected to submit work that conforms to a style guide in every aspect. Even regular contributors or full-timers are generally asked only to conform to the most common aspects of a style guide. The practices outlined in a style guide are usually trivial to fix, especially with a search and replace function, so making your manuscript conform to a style guide is usually relatively trivial.

Nor are these technical aspects what beginners usually mean by style. Usually, what they mean is a distinctive voice, either for themselves or for a publication.

Beginners often worry considerably about style – probably because the concept is so difficult to define or analyze, partly because we lack the vocabulary. But, in my experience, style or a lack of it rarely determines whether a piece is accepted.

Sometimes, a publication will favor a particular style. For instance, Maximum Linux, a companion to Maximum PC in 1999-2000, favored an edgier style with more slang than most publications. However, regardless of a publication’s preferred style, most editors are so glad to receive literate and interesting copy to fill their schedule that they aren’t going to insist that it conform to a house style. That’s a nice luxury, but not an essential. If necessary, a few edits can usually bring an otherwise publishable piece of work into line with the house styles.

So far as style is an issue at all, what matters to editors is clarity, a decent sense of structure, and knowledge of your audience. Unlike the obscure concept of style that floats around in most beginner’s heads, these concerns are intensely practical – and, unlike beginner’s concepts of style, can be easily codified.

The rules for clarity listed at the end of George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language” have never been bettered in the sixty years since he wrote them. As for structure, you can learn the basics by reading Aristotle on rhetoric. Where to position your most important points, how to deal with opposing views – in the last 2500 years, Aristotle’s suggestions have been often repeated, often expanded upon, but only very occasionally added to.

Unfortunately, no equally well-regarded guide to knowing your audience exists, but that is mostly common sense. For instance, if you are writing for an audience with no background in your subject, you may have to explain terms that you could assume an expert audience would know. Similarly, writing for academics, you can use more compound and complex sentences that in writing for the general public. If you ask a few questions or take a look at a few articles in a publication, usually you can quickly pick up such details very quickly.

Instead of focusing on style, I always urge beginners to concentrate on these concrete considerations. If they do, they usually find that they don’t have to think too much about style, and that it has taken care of itself instead.

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What editors want

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on February 16, 2008| 4 Comments »

Because I make a living by selling articles, I am constantly fielding questions about how to become a freelance writer. I always oblige, since I’m an ex-instructor, and the teaching instinct is still strong in me. However, I usually sense that they’re disappointed by my answers. For one thing, I came to my profession by desperation more than by the hard-headed planning that career experts and how-to-write magazines are always urging people to adapt. It wasn’t exactly luck (a suggestion that, somewhat inconsistently, I resent), but it wasn’t calculation, either. But, even more importantly, I suspect that the questioners are disappointed by how mundane my answer is. Rather than offering the sort of secret that you normally only get when you go through an initiation and learn the special handshake as well, what I usually tell people is that they need to have consistently good ideas, deliver stories on time, and create a minimum amount of work for editors.

Right away, listeners balk at this answer, because it doesn’t include anything about writing well. That’s partly because, while writing well is a welcome bonus, it’s not a requirement for success so much as a requirement for admission. Unless you are moderately literate to begin with, you probably won’t get a chance to submit your work in the first place because of my third rule; editors are simply not going to allot much time to a writer whose work always needs major corrections. If your ideas are excellent, you may make two or three sales, but eventually the average editor is going to get tired of teaching you basic grammar and structure.

Besides, while editors appreciate quality prose, their immediate concern is filling the vacant slots on their publishing schedule. Once you understand this basic point, the three requirements I listed become self-evident.

Given the pressure that editors are under, a writer who can regularly produce quality ideas is a valuable asset. Few editors have enough of such writers, which means that they are constantly taking a chance on new writers – and new writers, even the best of them, require more maintenance than ones they’re already worked with, who know their quirks and style guides.

Nor is this requirement easy to meet. While teaching first year composition at university, I found that, given reasonable intelligence, almost anyone could be taught to write acceptable prose. But coming up with the ideas that makes that prose worth reading – that’s the hard part, especially when you need several ideas a week. Usually, it means gaining some subject matter expertise so you have something to write about. Also, just as a photographer comes to see the world in terms of possible pictures, you have to develop a part of your mind that is always running in the background, looking for potential stories. And, compared to finding the stories in the first place (and researching them), the actual writing is easy.

The fact that editors are on a schedule also explains the second requirement. If you don’t deliver a story when you said you would, then editors suddenly have to scramble for a replacement – and show me the person who enjoys being inconvenienced in their job. In any business relationship, being able to depend on each other is essential if trust is going to develop, and writing is no different.

That doesn’t mean that most editors are going to develop a permanent grievance if you fail to deliver occasionally, especially for reasons beyond your control. But they would like to know as much in advance as possible so they can fill your slot with something else. Nor are they going to have much sympathy with writer’s block or a desire to talk through every piece of writing you do at great length, although almost all editors are willing to help develop an idea that needs just a bit of fine-tuning. Amateurs and undergraduates can indulge in such pastimes, but what writers need to do is prove themselves professionals.

Editors also need to consider their time. After they’re been in their position a while, they know how long they can afford to work on a particular story and still meet their quota. For instance, if they need to edit four stories a day, that means they can only spend about two hours on each one – less actually, since they have duties such as answering queries and staff meetings. If your submissions constantly take two and a half hours to prepare for publication, their schedule is thrown out. Perhaps they have to work longer hours in order to accommodate you.

Your ability to generate ideas and your dependability may buy you some time to learn, but, eventually, even the most generous-minded editor will have to run the cold equations in their head and conclude that you are more of an asset than a liability.

Even if you’re an expert on a subject, your knowledge only buys you so much grace time. I’ve seen prominent writers dropped because editors tired of proofreading their sub-standard prose or grew tired of their demands for endless amounts of time. And if experts can’t get away with being difficult to work with, what do you think your chances are if you consistently cause problems?

That’s not to say that editors will object if you protest the occasional edit. Most editors are as interested in writing well as you are, even if they don’t always have the time to indulge in it. But it does mean that you should make your protest without personal attacks, and limit it to two or three exchanges.

If the editor does not agree with you, then you either have the choice of withdrawing the work in question from consideration as politely as possible, or accepting their decision with all the grace you can muster. Just make sure that you don’t make the exchange overly personal. Even if you withdraw the story, you may want to sell to that editor again. And, for their part, they may want to buy from you. It’s just that, in one particular case, they rejected rather than accepting you.

These sentiments may sound hard-nosed to you. If so, then the best thing you can do is confine writing to a hobby. Earning a living as a writer requires as much realism as talent. If you can’t cultivate that realism, then chances are that writing isn’t the profession for you, no matter how much talent your friends say you have.

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Just call me Robespierre

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on February 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Okay, now I’m scared. On Monday, I published a story about a boycott against Trend Micro for its aggressive use of patents against a competitor – a case that revolves around use of the free software Clam AntiVrius. By Tuesday night, the Trend Micro head offices were burning.

Well, not quite. But the story was widely picked up, and, whenever it appeared, people were making comments that were a variation on, “Well, I was going to buy some anti-virus licenses from Trend Micro, but now I’m not.” So my reporting has a large part of the responsibility for the spread of the boycott.

Don’t get me wrong. Personally, I support the boycott. The patent in question is such an obvious one that it never should have been granted, and I believe that Trend Micro is not only abusing the American patent system, but doing so in ways that could have serious repercussions for free software.

Nor an I so conceited as to imagine that, had I not written on the subject, the boycott wouldn’t have spread. Admittedly, as a regular contributor to Linux.com, I have a better pulpit than most for proclaiming what I think is important. However, with the Free Software Foundation supporting the boycott, it would have had a lot of attention without me. If in some alternate universe I hadn’t started covering the story, then some other journalist would have, and the results would have been much the same.

However, in this universe, I was the one who gave the boycott one of its biggest boosts. Again, this is not conceit, because every site that picked up on the story linked back either directly to my story or to its mention on Slashdot. And this simple fact suggests another with which I am extremely uncomfortable: What I write can have influence.

A lot of influence.

I don’t write a story that I lack interest in, and the boycott story interested me considerably more than most. However, lurching from story to story day by day in desperate scramble to meet my monthly quotas, I don’t think much about how a story will be received. Usually, I’m too busy getting the facts right and finding the structure to put them in, with a little worry left over for how many more stories I have to do before the end of the month.

Apart from a general hope that readers will find the result interesting, I don’t spend much time thinking what the reaction to any given story will be. And usually, by the time a story appears, it’s something I’ve finished with a few days ago, and I’ve moved on to thinking about another topic.

However, the spread of the boycott, coupled with the unwarranted amount of attention paid last month to my off the cuff ramblings about conspiracy theorists in free software, are making me realize that my attitude is too casual. I would be irresponsible if I ignored the fact that, when the wind is right, people are going to listen to me.

What exactly that means to me as a writer, I don’t know. I have no wish to become a pundit who imagines that everything he says is of absorbing interest, but neither do I want to be so paralyzed by the possible consequences that I can no longer write.

In the short term, my dawning realization means that I am more determined than ever to make sure that my facts are correct and complete, that I am impartial except when writing a piece clearly marked as commentary, and that I include all the necessary qualifications and nuances necessary to describe a situation with maximum accuracy. If I don’t, I risk misleading readers.

As for the long term – who knows? Maybe I just need to be more comfortable with the idea that I have an audience. But I’ve a nagging suspicion that the situation is not that simple.

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Slashdotted!

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Datamation, journalism, Linux.com, non-fiction, Personal, Slashdot, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Slashdot, the portal site that bills itself as “News for nerds. Stuff that matters” has a strong hold on technical people’s imaginations and ambitions. For this reason, I’m often asked how to get a story mentioned on the site. They assume that, because I sell most of my articles to Linux.com, a web site that, like Slashdot, is run by SourceForge, that I have inside knowledge about how Slashdot’s inner workings. But the truth is, Linux.com and Slashdot are run so independently of each other that I have no idea how to interest the Slashdot staff. Nor do I have any better luck than anyone else at getting contributions accepted. That means that, when I do get a story on Slashdot, I’m as pleased as any outsider.

The first times I had stories on Slashdot, I wasn’t using my own name. Instead, I was ghosting, first for Stormix Technologies, and then for Ian Murdock at Progeny Linux Systems. Each time, I was pleased, but retained a sneaking suspicion that the link wasn’t so much anything that I had done so much as the interest that Stormix commanded as a new distribution and Ian as founder of Debian GNU/Linux.

For this reason, the first time I got on Slashdot under my own name was a heady experience. It was on March 2, 2005, with a review of OpenOffice.org 2.0. At the time, I was more than a little unsure how to react. I wrote ruefully in my journal that day:

My reaction is a little mixed. On the one hand, I like the increased visibility. On the other hand, when I see that several hundred comments have been posted, I feel that, should I ever be eaten by piranhas, then I’ll have a sense of deja vu.

Very little of my reaction has changed since. Like any writer, I like the idea of a larger audience for what I do Yet Slashdot is such a free-for-all that reading the comments can be a strain – not simply because some people disagree with me, but because I often get the feeling that people haven’t read the story at all and reacting as much to things in their mind as anything they can see on the screen.

Still, that doesn’t mean that I was displeased. As Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” I could pretend that I was simply glad that an important subject was becoming widely known, but, although that would be partly true, I would hypocritical if I tried to dodge the fact that much of my reaction was sheer ego.

Since then, I’ve had a trickle of articles on Slashdot. Usually, they are just enough to keep me going, while being just uncertain enough that the novelty never wears off. It doesn’t hurt, either, that I receive a small bonus whenever one of my Datamation stories hits Slashdot.

My best month for Slashdot was September 2006 – but through no virtue of my own. That was a period when Linux.com had an employee whose job was to submit likely stories to sites like Slashdot and Digg. Still, that run of luck made me feel that I had arrived as a journalist.

A week later, when I attended my first high school reunion, I felt like I didn’t have to take apologize for what I’d been doing with my time. I had proof of my success, even if few non-geeks understood exactly what it meant.

I’ve never equaled that tally, or come anywhere near it since. But I have seen links to my work on Slashdot on two successive New Years’ Eves – again, not because of anything I could boast about so much as the fact that the last days of the year are slow for news and I’m usually still laboring to meet my monthly quota then. Both times, I enjoyed a quiet moment of satisfaction.

Getting on Slashdot isn’t the only mark of success for someone who writes about free software. I’m pleased to get something on the front page of Digg, and, just this morning, my first article made Techdirt provoked a cry of triumph as I sat at my computer (much to the surprise of the parrot who was on my shoulder at the time). But, given Slashdot’s status in the sub-culture in which I work, I don’t suppose I’ll ever tire of this momentary mark of distinction – all the more so because, like everyone else, I’m never sure when it will arrive.

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Public relations that works

Posted in Bruce Byfield, corporatelife, journalism, Personal, Public Relations, Uncategorized, work, tagged , , , , , , on February 9, 2008| Leave a Comment »

In another blog entry, I criticized public relation managers for not doing their job well. Doing so expressed a pet peeve – and one that I feel perfectly justified in holding, since I’ve done public relations work myself. However, in the interests of fairness, let me describe two PR types that do know their jobs.

One manages communication for a non-profit organization whose activities I often cover in my articles. On my request, he sends me each of the organization’s news releases directly – but didn’t do so until I specifically asked him to. Once the release is sent, he knows that I can be trusted to follow up on it if I have permission from my editors to develop a story based on it.

When I ask for an interview with one of the people he represents, he gets back to me in a few hours, knowing that, as an online journalist, I am on Internet time, and that a response in two or three days is frequently too slow for my needs; sometimes, his response is only to let me know that he has been unable to find someone who is travelling or otherwise busy, but he lets me know so I can work around the situation.

When I phone for an interview, he ensures that all participants is there, then leaves the call, rather than hanging around worrying whether any of those he represents will say something rash (which would be a waste of his time as well as a discourtesy, since his co-workers are formidably eloquent and experienced dealing with the media).

While I can’t say he is is an unmet friend, he is always professional and courteous, and stops to exchange a few pleasantries whenever we talk. But, most of all, he is dependable. I know that when something is in his hands, it will be efficiently and politely handled, and, in return, I try to conduct myself by the same standards.

The second example is a woman who is just as professional. However, while I don’t know whether the man in the first example has the least interest in the activities of the organization for which he works, this second example has just discovered the free software community, and is exploring it with enthusiasm. She gives the lie to those who claim that, to do PR, you don’t need to know what your clients do, because, the more she learns, the more useful she becomes to her clients and to the journalists who cover them.

In fact, the last story I wrote about one of her clients, she even went so far as to gather source material to help me make the deadline – not because I asked her, but because she was interested in the subject. The result was that I got the story out faster, to the satisfaction of both her client and me.

What both these examples have in common is that they understand that communications is about enabling everybody to meet their needs. Their employers or customers have stories that they want covered, and I have deadlines that I have to meet. By cultivating good relations with journalists like me, they ensure that those stories get told. and everyone wins.

By contrast, other PR agents have ensured that their employers’ stories have gone untold for reasons as trivial as their refusal to tell me what the story was they wanted me to cover; given my workload, I simply can’t afford to devote time to a story unless I know that it’s worthwhile and have some details to pitch to my editors.

Probably, too, the people I’m praising are also laying the groundwork for how their clients are regarded by the media in the future. Naturally, journalists try to be fair, and not to hold back on criticism when they think it’s deserved, but we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t respond well to people who make our lives easier.

My only concern is that the kind of PR epitomized by these people may be on the way out. One similar communications manager told me recently that, because she targets her media inquiries, only sending out a dozen or so a day when others send out hundreds, her employer sometimes gets testy with her. Apparently, those to whom she would report would rather have hundreds of emails sent out that are treated as spam than a smaller number that all get results. But in expressing such a preference for quantity, companies are only hurting their own publicity efforts. It’s the PR people who build long-term relations through efficiency and helpfulness that represent businesses the best, not those who copy the techniques of spammers.

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