WordCount post included in The New Writer's Handbook 2008
I’m happy to announce that a post from WordCount, my blog about freelance writing, will appear in The New Writer’s Handbook 2008, an anthology about writing scheduled to be published in August by Scarletta Press. The post, Asking the Hard Questions is a list of tips for conducting tough interviews. The New Writer’s Handbook 2008 [...]
Lessons learned: WordCount's 100th blog post
What you’re reading marks the 100th post on this blog, WordCount, which I started as an easy and free way to post my resume and clips online where prospective editors could see them. Very quickly it evolved into a continuing examination of how online media is changing the business of freelance writing. I did a [...]
Paging Dr. Sawaya: Milton is hip again
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the English poet, John Milton. There’s a lot of hoopla going on to mark the occasion: new versions of his epic work, “Paradise Lost” as well as other books. New biographies and studies examining Milton’s lasting effect on culture, high and low. You can read [...]
OC Register experiment to move some edit functions to India
I write about outsourcing a lot, for publications like Workforce Management and IncTechnology.com, so I know companies are outsourcing more of what they consider to be non-essential business tasks: processing payroll checks, staffing health benefits call centers or other back-office human resources or finance department duties. Sometimes it’s to reduce overhead costs. Sometimes it’s to [...]
Sick day redux: it's amazing what you can do if you have to
I am still sick. But today I had to do an interview for a 2,000-word company case study. I’d already postponed it once due to being sick and one of the guys I was scheduled to interview is going on vacation for two weeks, so there was no question of postponing it again. And surprise, [...]
Even freelancers have to take a sick day sometimes
I am sick. Very sick. With some kind of super flu bug. So sick I actually postponed a phone interview I had scheduled for this morning. So sick I’m having trouble typing this without making mistakes. So sick this measly post is going to be it for me today. Because even freelancers have to take [...]
To freelance for trade magazines, be a team player
A lot of writers go freelance because they like the independence of working alone. But to write for trade magazines, you’ve got to be a team player. I’ve spent the better part of my career writing for trades. Out of journalism grad school, I spent four years as an associate editor and then editor of [...]
Tina Brown to headline Online News Association's September annual conference
Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, and currently working on a start-up news aggregator Website, will headline the 2008 Online News Association conference Sept. 11-13 in Washington D.C. Brown is working on the project for media mogul Barry Diller’s Internet enterprise, InterActive Corp. According to this report in Radar Magazine, [...]
Online Journalism Review shuttered, Niles starts SensibleTalk
If there was ever a need for a scholarly discussion of online media it is now, when more people are turning away from newspapers and to the Internet for their news. But don’t tell that to the University of Southern California. Earlier this week, the university’s Annenberg School of Journalism pulled the plug on the [...]
Will freelance writers save newspapers?
Are freelancers the wave of the future for newspapers? They might be. Daily newspapers are trimming jobs and looking for other ways to cut costs, and one way to do that is by using contract workers such as freelancers. Some papers, including major dailies such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, routinely [...]
