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 […]
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 […]
Time out: why writers need to unplug on the weekends
If you use rechargeable batteries you know they don’t last forever. They work, they run low and then you recharge them. Writers are like that too. We can’t work non-stop without the juices running low. But if you’re like me and you spend your work life tied to a computer, email and the Internet, it’s […]