Sunday, May 16, 2010

Honolulu newspaper sale approved

Most of Saturday, the Ides of May, was spent at the National Press Club here in Washington where I was privileged to speak on the subject of operating freelance writing businesses. More about that on another day.

For those of you who have never visited the National Press Club, the lobby is decorated with framed leather renderings of memorable front pages from America's past. Phil Graham, former Publisher of the Washington Post, once famously proclaimed to the Overseas Press Club that "Newspapers are the first draft of history." Graham's observation was right on the money even if his exact wording is open to some argument.

One of the framed front pages in the lobby always attracts my attention because of a personal connection to it. An original framed copy of that page hangs on my office wall. It is the "Extra Edition" of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin from December 7, 1941 detailing the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It was distributed so soon after the attack that the lead story acknowledges only six dead and 21 injured. The death toll eventually reached 2403 souls.

My connection is that I spent close to a year in Honolulu as Chief Operating Officer of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Honolulu Newspapers operated as a JOA (joint operating agreement) between Liberty Newspapers and Gannett.

In the late 1990's, the partners chose to end their JOA. JOA's were (and still are in a few places) a creature of Congress designed to keep diverse editorial voices operating in big cities. The darn things never worked very well. Business operations were handled by a supposedly separate "agency company." The editorial departments were free to be independent.

A judge stopped the dissolution on anti-trust grounds after a lawsuit was filed by the Newspaper Guild. An attempt needed to be made to sell the weaker of the two newspapers... the afternoon Star-Bulletin... to a third party. I was sent to protect the asset and supervise the sale.

The Star-Bulletin was sold to a new company operated by a reserved, Canadian newspaperman named David Black and jointly owned by Black and a number of prominent local families.

Almost a decade has passed. This week. the Justice Department announced it would allow the Star-Bulletin owners to buy out their competition, The Honolulu Advertiser, from the Gannett Company.

Hawaii is a magical place and, despite a pressure-cooker situation, I would not trade my time there. When you live on Oahu, you acquire an entirely different perspective from what a visitor might get. The Hawaiian perspective has its roots in its colonial past. Still active is the wonderful atmosphere of the elite "Pacific Club." One might easily imagine Sidney Greenstreet sitting in a Rattan chair wearing a white tropical suit as he did in so many old movies. A societal divide between Asians and Europeans continues to simmer just under the surface.

The background to all this has to do with newspapering in America and with Hawaii's colonial past. General circulation publications are in serious trouble. The societal stew in Hawaii bubbling Sub-Rosa adds yet another dimension to the drama. All news employees at "The Advertiser" in 1941 were of European extraction. "The Star-Bulletin" staff was more mixed racially. Hawaiians have not forgotten and this colors their views even sixty years later.

The sole, surviving, Asian reporter who covered the Pearl Harbor attack was honored by the Asian American Journalists Association and I got to attend. Sixty years earlier, he told me about carrier-based Japanese bombers screaming overhead disrupting a quiet Sunday morning. He arrived at the Japanese Consulate in time to see secret papers being burned in the trash before they could be seized.

Both the "Star-Bulletin" and the "Advertiser" will disappear in June to be replaced with a new nameplate: "The Star-Advertiser." Partial ownership of the newspaper reverts to Hawaiian hands. The combined properties will employ about 300 fewer people than they do separately.

From this great distance, it is impossible to recognize winners and losers in this complex transaction. The folks who lose their jobs will certainly be losers. Whether the quality of news coverages for Hawaiians suffers remains to be seen. The news resources devoted weighs on the shoulders of those Hawaiian families who have chosen to invest. David Black's operating company has shown in other places that it needs to profit from operations. Effects from a dearth of competition might also figure into what is available to the Hawaiian citizenry.

Newspapers are, of course, a business. The Star-Bulletin has not made money the past ten years. It managed to grow its circulation from around 45,000 when I was there to about 65,000 today and that speaks well for the editorial effort expended. I wish them well in their new venture.

I mourn the passing of the historic competition and the loss of two famous newspaper flags. Both are a sign of the times. The reason I was asked to speak yesterday is because opportunities available for writers are changing so radically. Writers will survive and prosper, but by doing different work.

News widely available to all readers may require a more discriminating eye than has been recently necessary. In the 20th century newspaper world, a safe assumption could generally be made that the writer was attempting a measure of objectivity. In the new, blogospheric, world of information, objectivity can no longer be assumed as the starting point.

I think I must be turning into a dinosaur, but it seems somehow comforting to hold something memorialized on paper or carved on stone tablets in my hands. There is a permanence to it.

My lecture from yesterday was encapsulated on a little flash drive carried in my pocket about the size of a thumbnail. It performed flawlessly. And I got a chance to hold and play with an IPAD for the first time. I was unexpectedly dazzled and want one. The thing is really cool.

These are all wondrous devices, but I worry, just a little. What happens to all that we are if an unexpected electrical charge disrupts all those carefully arranged electrons on our hard drives and flash memory cards? What happens to Phil Graham's "first draft of history" when we are no longer here to tell the story?

The world is certainly changing. Much of this is a good thing. Does it strike anyone else as ironic that I'm musing about all this on a blog destined for the Internet. Well, the irony is not entirely lost to me.

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Thursday, May 13, 2010

A Note On Style

Reporter is an interesting word when considering the notion of style. Today's personality driven media (especially on cable TV stations) puts a premium on the teller of the story rather than on the story itself.

The reporter should be a conduit and almost never the focus of the information being delivered.

Professor Strunk said "Write in a way that draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the story. If the writing is solid and good, the mood and temper of the writer will eventually be revealed."

Not too long ago, ten hopeful writers attended a breakfast meeting here in Washington with a literary agent. The writers were looking for representation. Over scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee, the agent requested each briefly share their current projects.

Nine of the ten hopefuls described a memoir of their own lives. The tenth writer talked about an unusual and little known historical episode featuring some very wll known players.

Which project do you think the agent pursued out of the ten?

Be the lens through which ideas can pass without distortion. The weight of your evidence and the simplicity of your expression builds stronger arguments any expressed as your point of view.

Al Portner's "The Assignment Desk, LLC" provides
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Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Style and Revision

Readers of these hints will be aware of a short book by Professor William Strunk and the Journalist E.B. White called "The Elements of Style." White took classes from Professor Strunk at Cornell University in 1919. Strunk's "little book" has remained a roadmap for writers ever since.

The original little book was self-published by Strunk as a classroom text and re-animated by White many years later. White died in 1985, but not until he had reworked Strunk's book at least four times and after an illustrious career. Professor Strunk's essential handbook survives in a 2008 released 50th anniversary edition.

Browsing the chapter on style, Strunk's admonition about revision spurred another look at yesterday's blog entry and at a column written for www.examiner.com. Both pieces needed revision only a day in the rear view mirror. Most writers (including this one) see what they thought they wrote rather than the words actually saved to file and posted for the world to read.

If a writer is not too sold on his own prowess, revision is revelation. Everyone has favorite words that steal into prose over and over like dandelions in a suburban lawnscape. Grab a thesaurus and find other words. On re-reading, entire phrases (added as afterthoughts) will work better earlier in sentences. Move them. Verb forms repeat. I make the same keystroke errors time and time again. Watch for similar challenges. Make sure all phrase parallelisms continue to conclusion.

The commandment to rewrite begs still another issue... revision time. Many of us work under deadline pressure. The number of errors that get passed on in a newspaper environment are legion. Some problems are traced to new technology and fewer eyes surveying the product. Most should be blamed on a self imposed definition of deadline.

Deadlines have become the last possible time to do anything. I, frankly, procrastinate by habit and inclination. The magic potion for this particular failing is simple. Assume any first draft reeks and time to recover during a re-write is required.

Al Portner's "The Assignment Desk, LLC" provides
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TAD offers prevetted writers, photographers,
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Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Think Beyond Paragraphs

We've chatted a little about paragraphs and the virtues of not drowning one's readers in gray type. Like all living things, readers need to come up for air occasionally. Writers who choose not to share that facility best hope that animals with gills are consuming their pearls of wisdom.

Embedded bullet-points and short-lists are other ways to communicate shorthand within text. Graphics (like easily understood charts) can likewise help illuminate the way for readers not engaged strictly for pleasure.

White space is almost always your friend. As a young staffer at a local newspaper, I remember advertisers who insisted on filling every possible white space with type or product description. These crowded displays always fail. I suspect that the advertiser so exhausted his customers just reading his ads, that they were too tired to visit his store.

A final quick note for today is the notion of sub-heads. A sub-head is a brief couple of words stuck in the middle of an otherwise deadly stick of gray type. Every few paragraphs, readers get a signal that the subject is changing and something is important. This is usually the final step for any of my columns and the heads aren't necessarily brilliant, but I think of it as a way to stick out a hand to the reader and drag him along through the important points of the story.

Most members of your reading audience are bright and engaged. They are also busy and stressed. Anything the writer can do to enhance the reading experience will be very much appreciated.

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Monday, May 10, 2010

The Debate Over Paragraphs

When considering good writing, paragraphs are interesting animals. The traditional view is a paragraph is a group of sentences that fully illuminate a central idea. It is tough to argue with that definition.

On the other hand, many writers see articles and essays more in terms of a piece of music. Steven King calls them the rhythm section of his prose orchestra. King says paragraphs help keep the "beat" of whatever he is writing.

Paragraphs are an argument I personally have frequently with English teachers. When my daughter was in high school. I deliberately taught her to write concisely. Her English teacher critisized her essays for too many choppy sentences. I think she was done a disservice.

I was taught to write as a Journalist. Because undeniable identification is so important in news, qualifiers in sentences tend to stretch out the number of words in sentences and in paragraphs. Rather than the need for identifiers giving permission for windy paragraphs, this special need makes clear, concise prose even more important.

Heaven knows how many sentences wind around endlessly with phrases and clauses ad infinitum. In a world that increasingly communicates in 140 character bundles, saying exactly what you mean is essential.

You'll notice if you look at past entries on this blog, I have lots of paragraphs. I'm trying to accomplish a number of goals.

I'm trying to keep the ideas to little bites rather than whole mouthfuls. Ideas are more easily understood swallowed tiny rather than taken in big gulps. Think of paragraphs as cheeseburgers. You want the reader to chew them completely or they can become lodged in the food pipe.

Like Steven King, I try to establish a beat to my writing. Varying sentence lengths keep folks interested. Shorter paragraphs give readers a chance to jump in and out of an article. Long patches of gray type make all but the most determined readers groan like they are being asked to swim through molasses.

I watch for my own bad habits. I write too many sentences with introductory phrases and too many with a series of clauses separated by commas. When sentence lengths and senetence construction are consciously variable, it keeps readers more interested in the subject matter. Perhaps small variations help to keep a little surpise in the composition.

Some very good writers will disagree vehemetly with the suggestions I've just made. You pays your money. You takes your choices.

Al Portner's "The Assignment Desk, LLC" provides
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Saturday, May 8, 2010

Newsweek for sale

A quick note on media... Don Graham of The Washington Post Company announced this week to a shocked magazine staff that Newsweek was for sale. Most of these things are done behind closed doors. A new owner is simply announced and the staff takes a deep breath and soldiers on.

Don's Mother, the legendary Kay Graham, purchased Newsweek in 1961. At one time, the magazine had more than 4 million subscribers. Now, it is reduced to only 1.5 million paying copies. It is sad to see another publication head down the path blazed by U.S. News, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, and Look.

This Intenet do-dad thingie is changing the business of sharing information. Graham said Newsweek lost tens of millions of dollars during the past several years. The biggest piece of The Washington Post Company is not publications or TV or even cable. The biggest revenue generator is Kaplan University... a mostly online education company.

Times do chance. For the full story on the Newsweek pending sale... Click here:

Al Portner's "The Assignment Desk, LLC" provides
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Adverbs are not your friends...

A few days have passed since I promised to continue this on again, off again narrative on writing. Steven King's useful manual "On Writing" left off with an explanation of why he penned a writer's help book back in 1999.

I've had a busy week covering oil spills and jobs reports and financial disasters and arguments in Congress. But I digress...

King refers frequently to a source all good writers should memorize; Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." It is a tiny volume - only about 85 pages - but if writing for a living is your life's goal pay attention to it!

Rule number one in Strunk and White is get rid of the passive verbs. Use the active voice instead. King agrees that they weaken whatever it is you are trying to say. Make the subject of your sentence do the work of the idea.

The example he uses is... Instead of "The body was carried from the kitchen by Tom and Jerry and placed on the couch", say "Tom and Jerry lifted the corpse and moved it onto the couch." While perhaps a very Steven Kingsian sentence, the idea is... the body can't do anything, but lay there. Tom and Jerry, on the other hand, are still alive and can actively do something proactive. The effect is stronger.

King's rule number two (and the one that stuck with me) is avoid adverbs in all their myriad forms whenever possible. Like passive verbs forms they make the active verbs wimp out in your sentence.

Remember, an adverb is something that MODIFIES a verb, adjective, other adverb, or adverbial phrase. How can modify ever be a good thing? It saps the strength out of whatever you are trying to get across.

By the way, always remember the great Mark Twain quote: "No generalization is worth a damn... including this one!"

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Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Steven King as a writer's mentor

Over the weekend, I stumbled into re-reading an unlikely book on the craft of writing by Steven King. King is, of course, one of our most productive and popular fiction writers.

He is best known for horror novels like "Carrie, Cujo, The Shining, The Stand" and dozens of others. My personal favorites are somewhat lighter in tone like "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile."

During the summer of 1999, King was walking down a rural road near his home in Maine when he was hit by a reckless driver and severely injured. His book, "On Writing," was written as he recovered from what was a near death experience. It is surprising insightful and useful to writers of all stripes.

I will share many of the points King makes that I have found most helpful during the next few blog entries. One you get past all the horror genre stuff and his autobiographical musings, the guy really knows his stuff.

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