The weather here has turned from major distraction to major story. In Portland, snow of any kind is a rarity and snow before Christmas just doesn’t happen all that often. The city’s at sea level, locked between the coastal mountain range and the Cascades, so conditions have to be just right for the stuff coming […]
Archives for December 2008
WordCount weekly digital media biz recap
Over at the The New York Observer, John Koblin explains in At magazines, it’s 2.0 steps forward, 1.0 step back that while the Web may be the future for magazine publishing, right now print’s winning out and Website writers – and I might add Website freelancers – are getting axed left and right. ProBlogger guest […]
WordCount Q&A – NewspaperDeathWatch's Paul Gillin on online community news
Paul Gillin writes the NewspaperDeathWatch blog and it’s safe to say, he’s never been busier. As print advertising continues to plummet and online ads have yet to pick up the slack, papers are cutting frequency, shrinking geographic distribution, laying off workers – really doing anything and everything they can to cut costs – and anticipating […]
Analyze where the year's freelance work came from
As the days count down to the New Year, it’s a good time to reflect on the last 365 days of work. I came back to writing full time in September 2007, so this was my first full year of work. By most measures, it was a good year. I reconnected with several clients I’d […]
Freelancers' business wish list for 2009
If you’re going to spend money on your writing business in 2009, what’s at the top of your wish list? That’s the question I posed to writers on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago. The answers I got were as varied as the writing businesses of the people who replied. Many freelance writers are upgrading faster […]
How to work on a snow day
UPDATE – Dec. 19, 2008 – It snowed all week. Five snow days in a row off school. More snow predicted to fall before Christmas. Running out of things to keep kids occupied. Someone suggested letting kids play with these online games for all ages. * * * We interrupt our regularly scheduled program – […]