#24 You’ve got to be a bit more canny when using hook intros than with a summary intro. Look for unusual parts of the story or details which you have seen or gathered from your reporting. Go through your notebook and have a look at the different parts of it and make sure that you’ve Read More
Month: March 2011
Publisher loses the plot: Elsevier closes CW and sells website
Computer Weekly, after 45 years of UK publication, is to close its paper edition and the web site is to be sold by Elsevier to TechTarget, a US publisher. This is a case study in how to lose the plot. CW was a pioneer of IT journalism. Steady and also, in certain times, speedy. Speedy Read More
Proofing your own writing
Have you ever counted up how long you spend writing each day? I’m guessing it adds up to quite a sizeable chunk of time. People may talk about the death of print, but many of us spend our working days generating far more text than ever before. Jess Cartner-Morley’s piece in the Guardian about the Read More
Pass the cheese please…
Last week I spent a very enjoyable day working with two very well-known and widely respected B2B editors. We were looking at the copywriting tasks they have to fulfil, and the associated skills they need. As seasoned journalists they are clearly excellent at written communication, but of course writing that is focused purely on persuasion Read More
Digital feeds back to paper success
The traffic is not all one way: from paper to digital. It can flow the other way: from an interest in digital to a paper magazine, as long as publishers understand their strengths. Two instances provide evidence for this trend this week: Future is to launch a paper magazine in its crafts section called Mollie Read More
Top tip – grammar
#23 Be careful with: it’s (it is) and its (belonging to it); they’re (they are) and their (belonging to them); you’re (you are) and your (belonging to you). See more top tips here. Read More
Draft Defamation Bill nearly gets there
The Government’s draft Defamation Bill published today goes a long way to sorting out libel – but not far enough. The good things it proposes are: The claimant shall prove they were substantially damaged or were likely to be substantially damaged by the statement – now the claimant does not have to prove either; There Read More
What’s the most common writing mistake?
What do most people get wrong, most often, when they write? I’d say it’s sentence length. Most people try to pack far too much into their sentences. They’re aiming for flow. But what they get is a bottleneck as readers get bogged down trying to follow too many ideas. They ignore a simple rule that Read More
The words flow like water…
I was captivated as a child by the idea that the planet is an entirely closed system. I hadn’t yet encountered the brilliant James Lovelock or his elegant, totally sensible Gaia theory, but could see that something very clever was going on. If literally nothing escaped our atmosphere – ever – then water, for example, was a Read More
South Korean venture raises questions over BBC Magazines
BBC Magazines’ latest business venture will add to the calls for the BBC to sell off the business. It has licensed its Lonely Planet magazine to a South Korean publisher. This is the 8th international edition of the magazine. Its critics will ask: Why should the BBC be licensing such a magazine internationally? Why should Read More