Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for May 15, 2013

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10 Simple Steps to Get Your Journalism Project Funded | MediaShift Idea Lab

Jordan Young of the Knight News Innovation Lab at Northwestern University walks readers through the steps she took to get her side project, Boxx Magazine, off the ground with funding. My two favorite tips are things that many journalists have trouble putting into practice …

Get Help. Track down people who have been awarded grants before and ask them for advice. If you’re like me, you’re not naturally inclined to ask for help and you haven’t done anything like this before. You’re learning while doing. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to ask for help. The best way to save time is to gather all the helpful tips from those who have tried something similar before.

 Learn some business. You will need at least a basic understanding of business concepts, or have a partner who does. Not everyone majored in business — I’m finally glad I did. Again this is where research is your best friend. Take a class, ask for advice, and use that Internet.

Confessions of a Twitter Holdout | Poynter

Stephanie Yamkovenko, a freelance journalist in the Washington, D.C., area, discusses how she overcame her fears of tweeting and discovered that Twitter could be a boon, not a bane, to her career. Early adopters may find some of her former fears somewhat exaggerated, but I think this post is a great comfort to more old-school journalists who still wonder what the hoopla is about and how to use the platform responsibly.

Here’s a sample of what she’s talking about, in a segment where she discusses overcoming the fear of appearing biased if she used Twitter:

I feared seeming biased.

I’m no ideologue, but I prefer not to share my opinions publicly and was afraid these might “slip out” on Twitter. I’ve found it’s possible to stay politically neutral on Twitter, though it does take some effort. Before I follow someone or retweet something, I try to imagine how a reader might interpret that action. If it would make someone question my objectivity, I don’t do it — just like I don’t put campaign signs in front of my house or bumper stickers on my car.

What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains | Buffer

Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, shares brain research that articulates precisely why storytelling produces such a profound impact on our brain and the brains of others. He also provides several tips for leveraging that power to accomplish your goals in terms of influence with other people using storytelling.

Dan Gillmor Says Journalists Are Uninformed About Who Controls the Platforms They Publish On

Caroline O’Donovan, a staff writer for the Nieman Journalism Lab, writes a thought-provoking piece about Arizona State University journalism professor Dan Gillmor (who is a heck of a nice guy, BTW – I have interviewed him for a podcast and he’s judged a writing contest my magazine held) and his attempts to help journalists better understand online security systems and controls. Gillmor’s concern is that journalists aren’t aware of the impact of widely used platforms (like Facebook, for example) when they block or censor content. She quotes Gillmor talking about why remaining ignorant of this issue can do more than just put their own careers at risk – it can endanger the lives or livelihoods of their sources:

It’s not just employees and others who want to blow whistles who need to be more careful — such as using external accounts, encryption and a lot of other tools to be safer. (Note: I didn’t say “safe”, because absolute safety is exceedingly hard to achieve, if it’s even possible.) Journalists, too, need better tradecraft when it comes to their dealings with sources. My impression of the typical newsroom’s precautions is that there aren’t many.

It’s a great introduction to a topic I have to admit I hadn’t really given much thought to before.

Write This Way, Condensed: Top Writing and Editing Links for November 12, 2012

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A Professional Editor Takes on Self-Editing | The Book Designer

Book editor Linda Jay Geldens provides indie novelists (and other writers pursuing options beyond traditional print book publishing) with a compelling argument for finding a way to have a professional editor supplement their own self-editing of their manuscript. She does a wonderful job of outlining why self-editing by the writer can only be partially successful:

Now, self-editing is fine. Going through your manuscript’s rough drafts several times over a period of weeks searching for errors and omissions, perhaps even reading the text aloud to catch awkward phrasing or redundancies or overcomplicated construction, is certainly not going to hurt—and possibly might even improve—your writing. But let’s face it, there’s only so much self-editing an author can do. Frankly, you as the author are too close to the subject matter to be objective, even if you take a break from the material and come back to it later.

“The Power of Storytelling,” Part 2: Jacqui Banaszynski on the future of stories and Evan Ratliff on digital entrepreneurship

A long, wonderful compilation of two presentations from the Power of Storytelling conference that occurred in Bucharest, Romania, last month. Banaszynski is one of my editing role models, and her presentation on what will happen to narrative in the future is amazing and eloquent.

Here’s just a brief sample, in which she is talking about the continuity of storytelling from the preshistoric past until the present day:

I see the connection between that history in the past and what I do now. The troubadours, the scribes, the people who carried fire from camp to camp in Indian tradition because they carried the stories along with it. I also now see that future, that need to recognize that stories are as eternal and essential as humanity itself. We too often in our anxiety confuse the means of delivery with the essence of what we deliver. Sure, how we tell our stories matters. And we must master as many ways of telling stories as there are stories to tell. But the center that will hold is the story itself. Stories will survive and be needed as long as human beings survive.

Ratliff tells conference-goers about his journey into entrepreneurship when he launched The Atavist, which publishes narrative nonfiction that is sold on Kindles and Nooks as e-books, as well as in apps on iPads. He reflects on the success of his business, which took him in some ways far from where he expected to be as a nonfiction writer:

So, lawyers, accountants, investors. That’s the way I spend most of my time now. It was very difficult for me because here I am, fancying myself a writer, and trying to make it in the world of narrative journalism, and suddenly I’m doing all these things I became a writer not to do.

I think the lesson here is one that I’m still grappling with. I think that sometimes you just have to get over yourself, and sometimes you just have to survive. And this is what we had to do to survive. We had to do things that we were not ready to do and I think that is true for a lot of journalists who want to strike out as freelancers, who want to write things that are different from what your editors want you to write, and you want to go out in the world and find new magazines and find new homes.

24 More Fabulous Tips For Writers, From Writers | Daring to Live Fully

Marelisa Fabrega shares two dozen quotes from writers that address how to write fiction, although there are plenty of tips among them that can easily apply to nonfiction writing, as well. Authors quoted include Issac Asimov, Anne Lamott, William Saroyan, and Joyce Carole Oats.

6 Tips For Getting Gigs as a Freelance Journalist | Poynter

Beth Winegarner provides practical advice and support for new freelance writer. I especially like her emphasis on how networking aids freelancers looking for work:

Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, connecting with fellow freelancers has never been easier. Knowing who’s writing, and who they’re writing for, gives you a good sense of which publications are open to taking freelance work. Get to know other freelancers on social networks and, once you’ve built a rapport with them, ask them to introduce you to their editors. While cold-pitching works, your success rate will be much greater with a personal introduction.

The article also has a replay of a Poynter-sponsored web chat with Winegarner on this topic embedded with it, which is a nice plus.

From The Archives: Can This Profession Be Saved?

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Today’s post originally ran in November 2009, but is still just as relevant to the ongoing conversation about the re-invention of American journalism in 2012! Enjoy! – Liz

Can This Profession Be Saved?

I’ve finally read the synopsis of Leonard Downie Jr. and Michael Schudson’s report, “The Reconstruction of American Journalism, ” in the Columbia Journalism Review, as well as a number of reactions to it. I appreciate that CJR let the authors publish such a rich (30-page!) summary of their 100-page report.

Downie, a former executive editor for the Washington Post and currently a professor of journalism at Arizona State University, and Schudson, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, provide their take on what has led up to the current sad state of affairs at American newspapers, and to a lesser degree, at television and radio stations. They discuss the approaches of a number of new media operations (and are generous with links to the projects in question) and suggest several possible new business/nonprofit support models for the industry.

Whether you end up thinking the authors are offering sage advice to journalists, or are off in left field, you really should read the CJR synopsis or the report. It’s important that those of us working in the media have a say in what happens to our profession in the future, and the only way to do that is to be aware of where we’re at now and what people are doing NOW to adapt to the challenges and opportunities the Internet Era has brought us.

On the plus side

The report largely accepts that Web 2.0 and the other cultural factors that have disrupted American journalism are here to stay and cannot be magically “rolled back” by industry collusion (think simultaneous content firewalls on all major newspaper sites) or government mandate. I know this sounds mean, but this is a good sign!  I have been concerned about the number of journalists—including professors and veteran editors and writers—talking as if the Internet is something that must be, or even can be, “stopped.”

Downie and Schudson present a variety of options for fixing the current situation from across the business spectrum. They discuss multiple variations on publicly funded media, as well as foundation-endowed news projects and hybrid corporate/nonprofit news operations. By doing this, they are acknowledging that one model will not fit all in the future, and that journalists need to consider the context of their news operation or project when devising a funding plan.

The authors rightly identify local news coverage as one of the biggest casualties of the shifts in journalism over the past two decades, and do propose several ideas for reviving it. While local involvement and participation seems to generally be associated with our “bowling alone” culture, there are plenty of people who do care about it, and who now have fewer mainstream media resources for tapping into news about the community they live in.

On the minus side

I immediately noticed that there is almost NO discussion of the fate of the magazine industry, perhaps because that’s what my degree is in (magazine journalism) and because I have worked for nearly all my career as a journalist for magazines—either as a freelancer or a staff writer/editor. I believe that magazines had to face the decline of the so-called “mass media” far earlier than newspapers, after the death of “general interest” magazines such as Look, Collier’s and LIFE in the 1960s and 1970s.

By the time I was taking j-school classes in the 1980s, we were told that starting a magazine was much like starting a restaurant—if you know what you’re doing (business-wise) and can self-fund for part of the first five years in business, you have a good chance of making it. Notice that in that description there is no mention of whether the content (or the food) was any good, if competitors were using unfair tactics, or whether customers were reading (or going out for sit-down dinners) less and less. The focus was on establishing a niche and a business model first and foremost. Paying attention to the market, as well as knowing your craft well enough to produce a quality product, were also assumed parts of that model.

On a related note, Downie and Schuder make huge assumptions about the audience for news content and how they will, or should, behave. To be fair, this is something I’ve noticed over and over again when I read essays of this nature written by newspaper-based journalists. The report doesn’t focus much at all on what readers/viewers/listeners are telling journalists about how they’d like to receive their news, or what sorts of news they’d consider worthy of paying for online.

The authors even go so far as to proclaim that “American society must take some collective responsibility for supporting independent news reporting in this new environment,” and wonder out loud in another section whether journalism is a “significant public good whose diminution requires urgent attention.” These are important issues, but this mindset, coupled with a lack of curiosity or genuine connection to one’s audience, comes across as preachy and pedantic—not the sort of vibe one wants to project to attract supporters to an important cause!

Finally, the report points out one of the largest challenges in journalism’s current crisis—we can’t seem to decide if we’re a profession best suited to entrepreneurial or philanthropic support. I like the fact that the authors include both for-profit and nonprofit approaches to new media, but the way in which they are presented serves to highlight the lack of business sense many of us in the field seem to exhibit. What is it that newspapers do? They’re businesses. Wait, no, maybe we should run them as nonprofits? Wait, maybe we can sell ads and get foundation grants, too?

Late in the CJR synopsis, Downie and Schuder use the term “independent news reporting” fairly specifically, and that’s really what they are concerned about, not so much journalism as an industry or business sector. As they note, “it may not be essential to save any particular news medium … What is paramount is preserving independent, original, credible reporting, whether or not it is popular or profitable, and regardless of the medium in which it appears.” (Emphasis in that passage is mine.)

It bothers me that so many of their suggestions rely on government intervention, although I share their opinion that stronger support for radio and televisions stations receiving money through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be a good thing. I am a huge fan of public media; however, I also believe that journalistic enterprises can be successful as for-profit businesses. It remains to be seen how that will happen in the future—my feeling is that the “large public” that the authors seek to have journalism’s best work presented to may have already been replaced by a series of balkanized niches, each one hungry for content, but only within a narrow spectrum of interest.

Please use the comment section below to chime in about your reaction to the report, or the state of American journalism in general.

Write This Way, Condensed: Top Writing and Editing Links for October 15, 2012

Photo courtesy SXC.

Longform Startups, New York and Beer | The FJP

Michael Cervieri of the Future Journalism Project interviews Noah Rosenberg, founder of Narratively, an innovative online/mobile start-up website that’s devoted to covering New York City in a fresh way. Rosenberg explains what the site is and how it works:

Narratively is a digital platform devoted to original, true, in-depth and untold stories. … Each week Narratively explores a different theme about New York and publishes just one story a day, told in the most appropriate medium for each piece. So, Monday might yield a longform essay, followed by a short documentary film on Tuesday, a photo essay on Wednesday, and an animation on Thursday. Fridays, we run a section called the “Park Bench” where we curate meaningful responses we’ve generated from our audience throughout the week, and we publish behind-the-scenes elements from our stories; the “Park Bench” is all about featuring different perspectives on each week’s theme.

He also explains the relaxed approach to editorial meetings that’s alluded to in the post’s title – and I have to say, this sounds good to me!

We like to refer to our weekly editorial gatherings as more “soiree” and less “meeting.” They’re very informal affairs that are as much about story-generation and feedback as they are about forming bonds within our passionate group of contributors. I’ve always loved bringing new people together and it’s been so rewarding to help foster friendships and connections all in the name of good times and great storytelling. The beer and the bar snacks are just a backdrop to some energizing discussions about important stories that would otherwise remain untold.

How Journalists are Using Soundcloud | Read Write Web

John Paul Titlow explains how radio journalists and many other writers are using Soundcloud, a social media tool that allows anyone with an account to share sounds with other users. Radio producers and podcasters are expanding their audience with Soundcloud; content experts such as Robert Scoble are publishing interviews with thought leaders, and The Huffington Post is using the service to crowdsource coverage of political robo-calls readers are receiving this election season. I am just scratching the surface of what Soundcloud can do, so this story was an inspiring prompt to dig deeper.

Best Book Editors on Twitter – GalleyCat

Jason Boog offers a list of editors, from a variety of genres and specialties, who have a presence on Twitter. It’s a great resource if you’re a writer or editor looking to make friends with social media folks who tweet, and the bios/intros for the editors on the list are instructive in and of themselves, in terms of how to be eye-catching in your introductory statement.

The Millions : Where We Write
The Millions, an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture, asked its readers who are writers to send them photos of where they worked. The photos are both a little astonishing (to me) and reassuring: from the writer who uses a guest bed to create a “writing nest,” to the scribe who created her own improvised standing desk to the gentleman who writes on a Royal manual typewriter and edits and transcribes on a Mac, each set up is quirky, individualized and tells a story about the storyteller.

Recommended Reading: Mediactive, by Dan Gillmor

Image courtesy of  Mediactive.com.

I was lucky enough to grab an e-copy of Dan Gillmor’s book, Mediactive, on Amazon while it was 99 cents. Although the price has since gone back up to $5.99, the book is well worth it. It’s a great read for anyone who cares about the present and future state of journalism as it’s practiced in America, and works equally well for journalists and other nonfiction writers and those who simply wish to know about the world around them via the media.

Gillmor is the director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and the Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University. (And in interest of full disclosure, I’ve interacted with Dan in my day job at ASU, via a podcast on writing today and asking him to judge a writing contest for the magazine I edit.) Before coming to ASU, Gillmor wrote the book We the Media and was a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News from 1994 to 2005.

The main thing that makes the book so good is Gillmor’s ability to parse both the current state of American media and what skills citizens need to cope with the implosion of traditional journalism’s business models. As a consummate participant-observer in the new media landscape (and a veteran of the old-school newspaper industry), he’s well equipped to critique what went wrong with journalism over the past 20 years, why it hasn’t adapted well to the rise of the Internet and digital culture in general, and what exciting experiments are going on along the fringes that are poised to move to the mainstream soon.

Here’s what he says about the promise and the challenge of the media landscape in the early 21st century:

Welcome to 21st century media. Welcome to the era of radically democratized and decentralized creation and distribution, where almost anyone can publish and find almost anything that others have published.

Welcome to the age of information abundance. And welcome to the age of information confusion: For many of us, that abundance feels more like a deluge, drowning us in a torrent of data, much of whose trustworthiness we can’t easily judge. You’re hardly alone if you don’t know what you can trust anymore.

But we aren’t helpless, either. In fact, we’ve never had more ways to sort out the good from the bad: A variety of tools and techniques are emerging from the same collision of technology and media that has created the confusion. And don’t forget the most important tools of all—your brain and curiosity.

Mediactive is useful to both professional journalists and those who care about what happens in our society because he discusses skills needed by both media producers and their so-called consumers. He focuses especially intently on work being produced by those who are not traditional journalists, but who create media that gets into our virtual news feed, including bloggers or YouTube’s amateur broadcasters. While he often notes the shortcomings of such work, he generously praises citizen-journalists and nonprofit organizations for engaging in what he calls “almost journalism,” producing fact-filled background reports that shed light on stories the mainstream media misses.

I’ve read a number of articles and books discussing the state of journalism today, and I have to say that Gillmor surveys the media landscape far more clearly and less defensively than most of his peers. I particularly like his explanations of nuanced concepts. For example, he makes a persuasive case that media outlets should drop the charade of presenting themselves as bias- or viewpoint-free, and suggests reasonable alternatives. Here’s a sample of what he has to say on the issue:

Professional journalists claim independence. They are typically forbidden to have direct or indirect financial conflicts of interest. But conflicts of interest are not always so easy to define. Many prominent Washington journalists, for example, are so blatantly beholden to their sources, and to access to those sources, that they are not independent in any real way, and their journalism reflects it.

Mediactive is potentially useful to a wide variety of people who care about journalism and other forms of nonfiction writing – reporters and editors, new media creators such as bloggers and podcasters, and ordinary people who care about what they read in the news and want to ensure they are truly well-informed. Gillmor walks newbie media creators through the essential tenets of trustworthiness (and provides an excellent refresher for the rest of us) without becoming pedantic or stodgy.  The book, like the thinking behind it, is fresh, and Gillmor has used his http://mediactive.com site to make the book a living document, adding examples and continuing the conversation on these topics in his blog.

Write This Way, Condensed: Top Writing and Editing Links for October 18, 2011

Photo courtesy SXC.

25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer | The 99 Percent
Jocelyn K. Glei has compiled a great list of insightful snippets from 25 famous authors, from P.D. James and Kurt Vonnegut to Margaret Atwood and Annie Dillard.

Here’s a sample of the quotable wisdom provided, from Cory Doctorow, author of “For The Win”:

Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement.

The 5 Step Process That Solves Painful Writing Problems
Copyblogger contributor Brian Clark presents a simple regimen for avoiding writer’s block, bloated copy and do-nothing endings. The most surprising part of the system he recommends? Headlines and subheads should be developed before the rest of the body copy – which is rarely the order in which they are developed for magazine articles.

Spend Some Time Living Before You Start Writing | Advice to Writers
Jon Winokur quotes novelist Annie Proulx, who confronts the old saw “write what you know” head-on, saying, “It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. ”

Game Changer | Fast Company
Do games have any place in the training of future journalists? Adam L. Penenberg, a journalism professor at NYU, reports on the improvement in learning retention in his graduate classes after he layered in game mechanics (prizes, walking tour treasure hunts, social media leader boards) to his business and economics course. An intriguing article and interesting reading for anyone following the emerging trend of schools employing simulations and games to stimulate learning.

If “He Said, She Said” Journalism Is Irretrievably Lame, What’s Better?
Jay Rosen, journalism educator and author of Press Think blog, discusses his criticism of a recent NPR investigative series on security at the Mall of America and shares examples of paradigm-busting online publications that insist on fairness but do not hide behind “objectivity” as a way of coming to a well-researched and well-reported conclusion about the facts as a reporter has discovered them.

How to feed your journalism cow
UK journalist Adam Westbrook suggests a number of idea-sparking sources for writers of nonfiction and those in associated genres (filmmaking, photography, design). I’m most interested in exploring Adam’s own Video.fu film library, which focuses on nonfiction films that tackle their topics in a story-based way, and using the crowdfunding site Kickstarter as a source of ideas that their owners are trying to make viable.

Bonus!

Forget the candy, give books for treats this Halloween
Book editor Barbara McNichol shares a link related to the Books for Treats campaign, which aims to replace the candy-begging ritual in American neighborhoods at Halloween with adults giving out books to kids instead of candy. What a great idea!!!

Listen up: my podcast on writing careers today

Photo courtesy SXC.

I don’t often talk specifics about my day job, but earlier in the year, ASU Magazine, where I work as managing editor, published the winners from its first-ever writing contest. That experience could easily be a post in and of itself (or may worm its way into my memoirs) but one of the more interesting off-shoots of the experience was that I produced a podcast that featured interviews with two of the judges for the contest: novelist Jewell Parker Rhodes and journalism educator Dan Gillmor.

The podcast, which is part of the ASU Alumni Association’s official iTunes channel, The Alumni Experience, focuses on what fiction and nonfiction writers need to know in order to thrive in today’s rapidly changing media marketplace. Both Gillmor and Rhodes were a delight to interview, and no matter what genre you write in, you will learn something.

To access the podcast:

Visit The Alumni Experience page via  iTunes or the ASU Alumni Association’s podcast page. At both sites, you will want to select the podcast entitled “ASU experts discuss writing careers today.”

Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for February 7, 2011

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A manifesto for the simple scribe – my 25 commandments for journalists | Guardian.co.uk
Former Guardian science editor Tim Radford provides 25 ironclad commandments for writing better. And, actually, they are good enough you SHOULD follow them!

Killer tips for acing your journalism job interview | 10,000 Words
Mark Luckie discusses some modern-day basics for doing well when interviewing for a media job. My favorite tips: 1) Have an online portfolio, and don’t forget to list it at the top of your resume, and 2) Have a Twitter account (shows you have at least a passing acquaintance with social media).

HOW TO: Beat Writer’s Block Online
Amy-Mae Elliot, writing on Mashable.com, offers several ways to use online tools to break through a writing impasse.

How journalists can get ahead of the game in 2011 « Adam Westbrook
Westbrook, an innovative UK journalist, discusses a report from JWT Intelligence on trends to watch in 2011, and picks out 12 particularly relevant to journalists — everything from Africa’s middle class to mobile blogging and next-generation documentary making.

Cracking Open TED Books: Brilliant Ideas in Single Serving Size | Fast Company
TED is taking its “Ideas Worth Spreading” video presentations a step further with TED Books, an imprint of short nonfiction e-books available for the Kindle and Kindle Reader through Amazon’s new line of Kindle Singles books.

Write This Way: Top Writing and Editing Links for January 16, 2011

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How technology is changing travel and journalism | 10,000 Words
Mark Luckie discusses new advances in travel and location-based mobile and desktop technology — everything from Foursquare and Gowalla to mobile overlay apps Historypin and Streetmuseum — and their implications for travel and journalism.

Disposable E-Readers on the Way? | FolioMag.com
Matt Kinsman posts an intriguing note about new developments in the creation of “e-paper,” which could lead to digital reading devices made of paper but offering ever-changing content.

News Entrepreneuring
Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, posts 10 excellent tips for journalists interested in starting their own news site to make a go of it. Very, very practical!!!

15 magic minutes toward kick-starting your writing
Daphne Gray-Grant, writing for Ragan.com, lists five tasks that can be done in a quarter hour that can move your writing ahead.

William Zinsser’s 5 tips for becoming a better writer | Poynter
At 88, the author of “On Writing Well” is still writing and teaching people to become better writers. He shared five tips with Poynter blog writer Mallory Jean Tenore for sharpening one’s skills. My favorites: “Learn to take readers on a journey,” and “Think of writing as a process, not a product.”

Bonus Link!

Zinsser on Friday | The American Scholar
William Zinsser’s weekly column on writing in The American Scholar.

Write This Way, Condensed: Top Writing and Editing Links for October 16, 2010

Wordle image representing Write Livelihood’s home page.

The Urban Muse: 5 Ways Facebook Can Boost Your Freelance Biz
Susan Johnston describes five ways that time on social media enhances her freelance writing business.

You Ask, I Answer: How Do I Know if My Writing Is Any Good?
Author Linda Formichelli, writing on her blog The Renegade Writer, advises a new nonfiction writer about how to determine if her writing is ready to publish or if it still needs work before “showtime.”

Modern Journalists Technology Toolkit To Cover Live Events
Editor and blogger Neerav Bhatt, writing on his site, Rambling Thoughts Blog, discusses (and shows photos of!) the multimedia equipment that journalists need to adequately cover media stories. (Hat tip to Teaching Online Journalism for the link!)

Mutating books, Evolving Authors
Scott Rosenberg, the author of Say Everything and Dreaming in Code, writes on his Wordyard blog about his attempts to stay current on the impact of e-reading devices and e-books on the print publishing industry.

My favorite quote:

“I don’t see the point in hand-wringing … I still plan to write long-form non-fiction and hope to earn at least some portion of my living doing it. So I’m going to do my damnedest to try to understand the changing publishing environment and figure out the smartest way for an author to navigate it. I’d rather adapt and evolve than gripe my way to extinction.”

Welcome Back Wordle… Plus 7 Other Free Word Cloud Generators!
Michael Gorman, writing on his 21st Century Educational Technology and Learning blog, discusses the pros and cons of a number of word cloud generators. Although he’s writing for teachers, the clouds could be used in a variety of ways by writers and editors — analyzing frequency of word usage, summarizing long passages by looking at keywords, taking a fresh approach to self-promotion by generating a word cloud from one’s resume, etc.