Jim Stasiowski, writing
Writing coach Jim Stasiowski welcomes your questions or comments.
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Insights from the library I have amassed in 40 years of buying books about writers and writing:
“(Willie) Morris had a way of engaging writers in conversation on diverse subjects; when the writer began to glow and verbally roll, he would simply say, ‘Write about that for me.’” From “None But a Blockhead: On Being a Writer” by Larry L. King, referring to King’s editor at “Harper’s.” (Larry L. King is not the TV interviewer.)
“Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists.” From “One Writer’s Beginnings” by Eudora Welty.
“Today’s press agent regards the newspaper as a ventriloquist does his dummy.” From “Understanding Media” by Marshall McLuhan.
“Sometimes one hears the warning, ‘Never begin a sentence with “and” or “but.”’ The fact is that good writers do begin with these words. … Don’t be afraid of initial ‘ands’ or ‘buts.’ But use them moderately.” From “The Oxford Essential Guide to Writing” by Thomas S. Kane.
“At the other extreme are the stylists who for one reason or another feel compelled to trouble the waters, to shout their name, and who are conspicuous even to untutored readers. Instead of transparency, (they) find themselves strangely and strongly drawn to opacity. As Richard Lanham says, they do not want their prose to be looked through; they consciously or unconsciously want it to be looked at.” From “The Sound on the Page” by Ben Yagoda.
“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” Quotation by Agatha Christie from “Writers On Writing” compiled by Jon Winokur.
“What a difference an apostrophe makes. Every possessive has one, right? Well, not necessarily so. ‘It,’ (like ‘he’ and ‘she’) is a pronoun – a stand-in for a noun – and pronouns don’t have apostrophes when they’re possessives: ‘His coat is too loud because of its color, but hers is too mousy.” From “Woe Is I,” Patricia O’Conner explains why “its” is the possessive form of “it.”
“All stories are ultimately the same story: someone falls in a hole and has to find a way to get out.” From “How To Write” by Richard Rhodes.
“Be a newspaperwoman, Kay, if only for the excuse it gives you to seek out at once the object of any sudden passion.” From “Personal History” by Katharine Graham. (The source of the quotation is Agnes Meyer, Katharine’s mother, speaking to young Katharine.)
“‘Go out and get your own assignment,’ (Dan Wolf) was apt to tell a beginner, and wait for an article to be dropped off … . He would read it, looking for just one paragraph in there, the one paragraph that would tell him that here was a writer who looked at life a little differently, who was an original, an individual. That, and only that, was the essence of a writer to Dan Wolf.” From “The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the Village Voice” by Kevin Michael McAuliffe. (Dan Wolf was one of the founders of the Village Voice.)
“Getting from one paragraph to the next smoothly may require a transition. But the best transition is no transition – a story so well organized that one thought flows naturally into the other. The information in one paragraph should raise a question that needs to be answered in the next. Or it can be backed up with a supporting quote or facts in the next.” From “Writing and Reporting News: A Coaching Method” by Carole Rich.
“Ultimately there was no ‘banging out’ a quick story about Ganga Stone. In my writing I usually struggle for simplicity, to find the narrative through line. But Ganga’s story reminded me that people are often motivated by multiple and conflicting factors: religious belief, emotional desire, economic necessity, political conviction. People are complicated. Our stories should be, too.” From an interview with Laurie Goodstein in “1997 Best Newspaper Writing.”
THE FINAL WORD: “Something that is ‘veritable’ is true, or at least figuratively true. George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988 in a veritable landslide. ‘Virtual’ is different. It carries the meaning of ‘in effect, though not actually.’ Thus, ‘Many families classified as “low income” live in virtual poverty.’” From “Fine Print: Reflections on the Writing Art” by James J. Kilpatrick.
Facebook’s increasing role as news source comes with responsibility to be credible
Gene Policinski, inside the First Amendment
Gene Policinski is chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute and senior vice president of the Institute’s First Amendment Center. He can be reached at gpolicinski@newseum.org.
Follow him on Twitter:
@genefac
Forgive me for a little old-fashioned smirking when following the digital-era dilemma of Facebook having to own up to some human involvement in its tidy, algorithmic universe.
Millennials and others were outraged — outraged! — at the recent disclosure that the internet social media giant’s “trending topics” report might have had more than a smidge of real people decision-making involved in the daily determination of what’s hot in posted news.
On May 9, web tech blog Gizmodo carried a report quoting an anonymous former contractor who said that while he worked on the “topics” report, he and colleagues were directed to regularly insert liberal topics into the report while suppressing conservative subjects.
News flash (if I may use that no-doubt-dated term): Not everything on the web is true, unbiased or selected by a soulless mathematical computer-guru with your best interests at whatever passes for its content-neutral mechanical heart — and the same goes for things you don’t get to read.
None of this is to minimize the real concerns about potentially hidden bias built into a source of news for something like 40 percent of U.S. adults, used daily by about 1 billion people worldwide. Those concerns were serious enough to cause Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to convene a meeting with a group of conservatives — and even to attract attention from a congressional committee.
And for First Amendment purposes, let’s up the controversy-ante a bit and inject the future of journalism and the news media into the mix.
The popularity of the social media empire that is Facebook rests in no small part on a self-proclaimed goal of being a mere provider of information directly to its users, without the “traditional media” systems that an increasingly skeptical group of our fellow citizens thinks has baked its own biases into news reports.
Ah, but while Facebook said in a recent statement that it “does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period,” a number of unchallenged news reports said Facebook concedes that its algorithms are not the only way trends are determined. Staffers — called curators — can “inject” or “blacklist” topics for certain reasons, including duplication, or if a story was popular but erroneous.
So, “curators” can use good judgment and knowledge of the breadth and details of the day’s stream of newsworthy events news to shape a report consumed by others about the developments of the day. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Substitute “editor” or “news director” or “media mogul” for that “curator” newspeak and that same definition applies to those making editorial decisions in newspapers and electronic media.
Social media experts have been theorizing for some time about the need for Facebook — as it (gasp!) ages — to replace users who no longer consider it cutting-edge with those who use it to send and receive information of value.
A recent report in Mashable, an online site about media and entertainment, says Facebook is devoting “tremendous resources” to attract newsy video posts, celebrity items, news articles, sports event streams, and even is “considering a branded morning show.” If it did all that on paper or via the airwaves, we’d call it a newspaper or a network. But let’s just note that Facebook drives up to 20 percent of daily visitors (“traffic” in digital nomenclature) to traditional and new-media news sites.
And that goes to the heart of the matter — and why Facebook’s founder is right to get out in front of the issues of bias and trust. For some time, I have considered it obvious that news operations in the 21st century must face up to the idea that there is only one big “thing” on which their survival will depend: credibility.
Financial problems for “old media” rooted in a loss of amazingly lucrative advertising and relatively easy-to-get circulation? Facebook’s balance sheet shows you can get nearly $18 billion in revenue (2015) by delivering news and information in a newer format that people like.
Lose ads and “circ” and what’s left? Content. And what have people demanded from news media throughout history — content on which they can depend. Credible news. That requires a whole new level of transparency, ethics and acceptance of the responsibilities that earlier forms of news media have embraced, including acting as a “watchdog on government.”
So I don’t mind, Facebook, if you have decided that some fluffy piece of click-bait, which might or not be true, ought not to push real news off the “trending topics” list, and that you do it via some real person’s hand rather than by deus ex machina.
As it happens, good journalism throughout the years has had to balance the sensational and silly against the important and needed-to-know. Not something simply to be automated, at least yet.
Face up to it, Facebook. You have added “news media” to your moniker of “king of social media.”
Hey, that’s news worthy of anybody’s “trending topics.”