Is anyone else feeling a little* blue at the demise of print journalism?
In my first real job, I worked in Washington, D.C., alongside former print reporters who had crossed over to the Dark Side to write for Fortune 500 clients. There was one tough woman who had covered the White House and the Pentagon, a former wire-service editor who could spot a misplaced comma at 50 paces, and a rumpled guy named Mike who could write better in a state of inebriation than the other two could write sober -- and those folks could write.
All three had a passion for the written word, but that's not what made them great writers. As much as they loved words, what they really prized were the people who read them. They knew it didn't matter how many words they cranked out. In their newspaper days, they made bank on how many people read their stuff. That's a brutal standard to meet, and it made them the most brutal critics I've ever known.
Awkward sentence construction, verbosity, a boring lead or garbled grammar -- these were grounds to accuse me of showing disrespect to my reader. My colleagues cheerfully kicked the stuffing out of me two or three times a week. And I loved it, because I have always been a besotted fool when it comes to words, and I knew they were making a better writer out of me.
Here's a writing tip for you: The next time you sit down to write, try imagining your reader as someone to whom you are devoted. Imagine that you'd rather ride out a Category 5 hurricane duct-taped to a palm tree than to abuse your beloved reader. Write to that person. Writing Coach Paula LaRocque advises us to write as we speak when we speak well. Speak well to your reader.
If this tip works for you, raise a glass of your favorite beverage to Mike, and go buy a copy of The Washington Post.
*Vague modifier alert
In my first real job, I worked in Washington, D.C., alongside former print reporters who had crossed over to the Dark Side to write for Fortune 500 clients. There was one tough woman who had covered the White House and the Pentagon, a former wire-service editor who could spot a misplaced comma at 50 paces, and a rumpled guy named Mike who could write better in a state of inebriation than the other two could write sober -- and those folks could write.
All three had a passion for the written word, but that's not what made them great writers. As much as they loved words, what they really prized were the people who read them. They knew it didn't matter how many words they cranked out. In their newspaper days, they made bank on how many people read their stuff. That's a brutal standard to meet, and it made them the most brutal critics I've ever known.
Awkward sentence construction, verbosity, a boring lead or garbled grammar -- these were grounds to accuse me of showing disrespect to my reader. My colleagues cheerfully kicked the stuffing out of me two or three times a week. And I loved it, because I have always been a besotted fool when it comes to words, and I knew they were making a better writer out of me.
Here's a writing tip for you: The next time you sit down to write, try imagining your reader as someone to whom you are devoted. Imagine that you'd rather ride out a Category 5 hurricane duct-taped to a palm tree than to abuse your beloved reader. Write to that person. Writing Coach Paula LaRocque advises us to write as we speak when we speak well. Speak well to your reader.
If this tip works for you, raise a glass of your favorite beverage to Mike, and go buy a copy of The Washington Post.
*Vague modifier alert
