Don’t tell me what your interview subject had for lunch

I have a pet peeve when it comes to many profile articles ( that is, an article that profiles an individual for a magazine or other publication).

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that many writers (way, way too many, if you ask me) have this little habit of deliberately alluding to the interview itself within the story. It removes some of the focus away from the subject of the article and puts attention back on the writer. And sports fans, we all know that it’s not supposed to be about the writer. The article is supposed to be about the person who’s being profiled.

The most obvious, and in my opinion most annoying, way of doing this is to talk about the interview setting itself–the location, the mood, the lighting, etc. The writer might write something like this: “Over a lunch of tofu salad on carb-free bread with a side of couscous and a tiny glass of wheatgrass juice, Grungy Rockstar/Sensitive Actor/Wide-eyed Starlet confided his deepest fear….” Sometimes the writer pounds out something more like this: “Acclaimed Director/Reality TV Star/Trashy Heiress dashed into the organic cupcake shop twenty minutes late, dripping wet and making apologies for her appearance–her chauffeur had bailed at the last minute–before sitting down and removing her Lanvin/Rag and Bone/TJ Maxx jacket and ordering a cranberry-banana scone without the cranberries…”

So. Annoying.

Hell, why don’t you just go ahead and also write, “And I had a tall non-fat pumpkin latte with organic nutmeg sprinkled on top. And then I giggled and batted my eyelashes at Sensitive Musician/Grungy Actor/Bleached-Blonde Starlet and pretended that we were best friends. Because after all, isn’t this story also about how co0l it was that I got to have a meal/snacks/coffee with this person?”

NO! It is not about YOU, fellow writer person! You’re supposed to be writing about this person! Not insinuating little random factoids that don’t actually add to the story except to remove a reader from the story and throw them back into the interview process. No one needs to know about the interview process, unless something really crazy or jaw-droppingly sordid happens. Haven’t you ever heard the old saw about how no one needs to see laws or sausages being made? Interviews are like that. The interview exists so that you can pry information out of your subject and then shape it and sausage-make it into something readable and interesting for other people to digest…er, read.

Women’s magazines tend to have the most egregious examples of this annoying little trend. I’ve rarely noticed it in newspapers, although they are not completely immune (I have to pick on a story in today’s Tennesseean about Olympic gold medal winner Scott Hamilton who apparently likes to chat with reporters over grilled chicken salads. Although I might be willing to give this one a pass, since the rest of the article is fine, plus it does address the issue of Hamilton trying to lose weight and be healthy enough to return to professional ice skating).

Now, I will admit that there may occasionally be a time when a nugget of information about an interview might actually provide something very telling about the interviewee. It might really impart some useful info about Celebrity/Starlet/Who is She Again? to note that she orders complicated food items that aren’t on the menu but expects to receive them anyway.

But really. Most of the time these interviews seem to take place over lunch or coffee, which hello, is where MANY interviews take place. And you don’t read too many articles about bank presidents or biomedical researchers or even sports stars eating ham-and-turkey-on-wheat while talking about what’s going on with them and their industries. I once profiled a really interesting television news anchor. But when you read the story, you didn’t learn that she offered me iced tea in her living room while I fiddled with my tape recorder. So I expect other writers to be a little more creative in describing their subjects, too. Unless you conduct the interview someplace really, really off the wall. Or in a war zone. Then you get a pass. But not for a coffee shop or cafe interview. I know you think it might be a good example of “show, don’t tell” to note that your interview subject slowly stirred non-fat creamer into her coffee, but honestly, it really doesn’t. If she dreamily refers to her habit of rereading “Macbeth” on dark, stormy nights while she stirs said creamer into said coffee, then please, tell me that. But leave out the coffee, ‘kay?

And no, to my knowledge, I have never done anything like this in my writing, athough I am VERY sure I’ve committed plenty of other writing-related sins. And if I ever do slip up and fall into this little habit, you have my permission to call me out on it. You can even invite me out to lunch and write down what I’m eating.  (But please, don’t tell everyone what I’m wearing.)

Is it a good career choice?

One of my tried-and-trusted sources for info on freelance writing is Allena Tapia’s About.com page about freelancing. In a new item, Allena answers the question “Is freelance writing a good career choice for a mother who wants to work at home with her children?” and she does an admirable job at laying out the pros and cons. And I can say, as someone who’s been freelancing regularly for several years, there are definitely pros and cons, and anyone who’s considering a career as a freelance writer should probably carefully consider them before taking the plunge, especially if the plunge entails quitting a full-time job.

My initial reaction to the question, however, was, “Well, are you actually a writer? Or are you just looking for something you think you can do at home, and writing seems easy enough?” Because here’s the deal: writing is not like selling Pampered Chef products or scrapbooking supplies. It’s a skill, one that needs to be honed with plenty of practice. The average person can’t just pick it up, just like that, after a couple of orientation sessions and some tips from the experts. Many of us who are freelancers are actual trained writers, with extensive backgrounds in professional writing. We have degrees, experience, clip files, writing seminars, professional memberships. We take this seriously. We’re not just doing it because we don’t want Johnny and Susie to go to daycare all day. Personally, I am freelancing for a couple of major reasons, including 1) I’m a professional journalist with years of experience to draw from, and it’s logical for me to continue my career in writing and 2) I have one young child and another one on the way, and it’s wonderful to have the chance, the opportunity, to not have to work away from them in an office full-time during this time in his/their lives. I can schedule interviews and writing sessions during preschool and around visits to the pediatrician. I contribute to our family income, and I am keeping my writing and reporting skills, not to mention my clip file and resume, current.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t start out with zero experience  and work your way up. You certainly can, and lots of people do. But if you are not truly dedicated to not just becoming a writer but to writing and to working on improving your writing, then this is not the career move for you. If you’re just settling on “freelance writing” because it doesn’t require you to have any special degrees or training or background, well, try again. Find something that does match your skill set, or your background. Or if you are bound and determined to become a freelance writer, then, by God, work at it. Take it seriously. Because I do. And lots of my colleagues do, too.

Okay. I’ll hop off my soapbox now. After all, I have a new assignment to tackle…

What’s your major?

Allena Tapia recently conducted a useful discussion on her About.com blog about freelance writing. She asked what major is the best major for a fledgling freelance writer. She asked those of us who make a living by freelancing to weigh in on what advice we’d give to a young person who wanted to follow in our footsteps.

Interestingly, many of the people who responded said they’d recommend an English major. I was an English major myself, once upon a time. My small liberal arts college didn’t have a journalism program, so most of us who wanted to pursue careers in journalism chose a major like English or political science and then worked on the school newspaper and got internships at outside publications. I chose my major based on two things: 1) English was my best subject and I adored it, and 2) I wanted to major in something that would teach me to think critically and write well. Since I didn’ t get the chance to take any formal journalism courses, I learned most of what I knew about journalism from internships and the school paper. But I developed good research and writing skills from writing a regular series of papers for my English classes, from Advanced Essay Writing to Shakespearean Tragedy.

Would I recommend the same course to a young person today? Maybe. I think there’s definitely value in studying a particular subject, like history or English or psychology or international studies, in great detail. You become much more familiar with a particular area of study, which can only help you in a writing career; you actually know something about a particular specialty, not just how to write about it.

Meanwhile, journalism is a wonderful course of study in that you learn a lot about the trade, including the laws that govern it. You also learn how to write and structure an article, and so on. But you don’t necessarily learn a lot about any one subject matter, which I think is useful for developing critical thinking skills. Is it going to hurt someone to major in journalism? Absolutely not, particularly if you’re attending a really good journalism school. It might be the best course of action for some people. And also, it helps in developing important networking connections, which can’t be discounted if you want to pursue a career in journalism. But ultimately, I’m glad I did what I did. And for the record, I went on to get a master’s degree in journalism, had an absolute blast doing it and learned a lot of things that have been meaningful in my career.

And frankly, I wouldn’t advise a young person to plan on being a freelance writer anyway, at least not right off the bat. I’d tell him or her to get a job working in journalism or publishing and get some experience* first. Work hard, work under some good editors, and build up a good clip file. Get some good online experience. Hone your writing skills and develop your resume and contacts. Then go freelance. (*Not that it’s that easy to get a job in journalism these days, but you can be creative.) If you’re a good writer and you’re persistent, that’s what matters in the end.

Gannett cuts more jobs

Gannett’s cutting 1,400 more jobs, the Associated Press is reporting today. Most of the layoffs will be announced by July 9.

Ack. I hope none of my old buddies at The Desert Sun get laid off this round. A lot of my former coworkers have gone on to other jobs, but I still know a fair number of people there–and they need their jobs.

I won’t lie. Sometimes I really really miss working at a newspaper. There is nothing quite like working at a newspaper when major news is breaking, or when you’re getting to put together a huge series that really tells an important story. There are days when I pick up The Tennessean, our local newspaper (also a Gannett-owned paper), and I think, “I wish my byline was there.” I do like the freedom that freelancing allows, but I miss seeing my name and my words on A1.

But at times like this, I’m kind of glad that I don’t. I’d be bracing for layoffs myself. I read the letter about the layoffs on the Poynter website, and it just depressed me. I don’t know why, exactly. It’s not like this sort of thing is a new phenomenon in this economy.

Read my new articles!

Want to see what I’ve been up to?

Check out the website of Breathe magazine and read my two contributions to the latest issue: “Sun Smarts” and the “Health Bites” column.

And I also had an article appear this week on the women’s website BettyConfidential. Here’s my article titled “When to Have Another Baby?”

Finally, I have a new article up on the website NurseZone: “Are We Better Off? New Report Weighs Impact of Economy on Nursing Shortage.”  The article went up today; I turned around the whole piece in about 24 hours. I had a good time writing this particular piece because it reminded me of the adrenaline rush that I used to get from working on a daily deadline. Also, I got to interview a terrific source, which is always fun.

Thanks for humoring me. Every so often, you just have to toot your own horn.

I used to get so excited whenever I got a new byline in print. (I still do, actually. Especially when it’s a new publication for me, like Breathe is.) I used to send links of my stories to my parents and my husband with an exhortation to “Look! Read my story!” and the expectation that they’d not only drop everything and read it but that they’d immediately write back and tell me how amazing it was. I don’t really do that much anymore, but I figure, I can post the links here, and those of you who read this blog can check them out (and of course, tell me how wonderful they are).

Hopefully I’ll have more new links to post here soon, too.

The freelancer away from home

I’ve been out of town for the past few days, and I haven’t had a chance to post anything here on my blog.  Sorry, y’all. I didn’t even say I was going anywhere, either. But I am still alive, really.

And I’m experiencing the challenges of being a freelancer who is trying to work away from her home office.  I know that some people routinely work out of coffee shops, libraries and even their cars, but my chosen spot for working is the messy little office on the second story of my house. I often do have to conduct interviews or return phone calls from random spots–for example, I recently did an entire interview with two nursing professors from the parlor at my church, with my young son running around and jumping off all the chairs and sofas while I scribbled notes–but I like to do most of my work at home. I have my ergonomically correct chair, my big computer screen, the phone, the printer/fax machine, office supplies, reference books,  and files all right there. And the fridge with the cold Diet Coke is just a staircase away.

But I’m visiting my parents right now, so I am working on things from their home office. This poses a unique set of challenges.

First, there’s the noise factor. Ma and Pa Larson’s home office moonlights as a laundry room, with the washer and dryer located in an alcove adjacent to the desk. Since I brought the aforementioned son along with me, I’ve been having to do a lot of laundry, since (as you’d expect from a three-year-old boy) he tends to get dirty. So I have to time things where I’m not running a load of  laundry while trying to talk to someone on the phone. I hate having to explain such little domestic things to people, though. I try to maintain a friendly but very professional demeanor at all times, and somehow, I feel like having to say, “Please excuse the washing machine noise. If I don’t wash sheets and pajamas right now, my son won’t have anything to sleep on or in tonight” undermines that a little bit.

And then there’s the Great Diet Coke Standoff. Mom thinks I drink too much Diet Coke. She maintains this attitude, despite the fact that a can of Diet Coke has half the amount of caffeine that a cup of coffee has. I have explained over and over that even if I drank four cans of DC per day, I’d still only be ingesting about the same amount of caffeine as two cups of coffee. She drinks a cup of coffee most mornings herself, and we both know many people who drink far more than that (i.e. most other journalists), yet I don’t see her going off on some great crusade against any of them. Yes, yes, I know, I’m her daughter, and yes, she loves me and worries about me. I’m a parent. I get it. I do. But I’m also 34 years old. I promise that I’m old enough to take care of myself. Besides, I have a husband now who likes to worry over my caffeine consumption. Frankly, I need to take both of them to a newsroom and let them monitor the average daily caffeine consumption of the people who work there because after that, they’d leave me alone, I guarantee it.

Anyway, because of the Great Diet Coke Standoff, Mom always refuses to stock the requisite amount of DC that I need to function. This trip, she purchased one eight-pack of the eight-ounce cans. That’s it. “But we have the caffeine-free Diet Coke right here,” she said, gesturing toward a twelve-pack of twelve-ounce cans that some well-meaning but clearly misled relatives left at her house the weekend before. This is her house, so she certainly can buy or not buy whatever she wants. But when I say, as I always do, that I need to go out and buy myself some more Diet Coke, she always sighs and gets that Worried Mom look on her face. Oh, the guilt. Mom, this is my only vice! Just let me have it already and stop worrying about it! I’m a former newspaper reporter! You’re just lucky that I don’t guzzle coffee, smoke and drink heavily too! (Okay, yes, I just maligned my whole former cadre of colleagues. I’m sorry. You’re not all a bunch of smokers and boozers. I love you. I do. Am I really all wrong, though?)

The third major challenge of working as a freelancer away from my usual spot is that I have to rely on my cell phone for calls. Unfortunately, the reception here in Natchez, Mississippi for Verizon calls can be a bit spotty, so that’s sometimes a risk. But the alternative is to provide people with my parents’ phone number. That might turn some people away though; they would call, expecting to get my voicemail and hear me saying “Hi, you’ve reached Jennifer Larson…” and instead get my dad’s very serious, almost stern “Thank you for calling [South Mississippi phone number ]. No one is here to take your call…” Neither is particularly great, but what else can I do? Typically, I give people my cell phone number, my email address and, in some cases, my parents’ number with the heads-up that it is my parents’ number and that I’m out of town at their home for a few days. We usually find a way to work it out, although it can necessitate some additional explaining on the front end. I have yet to have someone flat-out avoid talking to me (at least because of phone confusion), so I guess it’s okay.

Besides, it’s all temporary. Yes, I have to deal with the challenges of working away from home, but on the upside, I get to visit my parents. My son gets to visit his grandparents. Mom made William breakfast this morning so I could sleep past 6:30. And she made me a sandwich for lunch. So I’ll keep plugging away and get done what I can get done.

But I am definitely going out to buy more Diet Coke later.

Working for (or during) the weekend

Raise your hand if you’re working–either as an employee of someone else or as a freelancer–today or at some point over the three-day Memorial Day weekend.

I was grousing earlier because I am trying to pin a couple of people down for interviews, but because of the holiday weekend, no one is available. That is, I can’t reach those people because they’re not in the office today or for the next few days. Must be nice. I don’t even want to interview them right away; I just want to schedule something for later, but I have to put that off. Grouse grouse grouse.

When I worked for a newspaper in California, reporters routinely had to work at least one holiday each year–and sometimes more than that. The party line is “the news never stops and someone has to cover it.” So usually the senior reporters got to choose their must-work holidays first, and then everyone else competed for the leftovers.

Surprisingly, it was never hard to get people to volunteer for Christmas or Thanksgiving. There were always people willing to do those shifts. I worked Thanksgiving one year, and it was actually kind of fun. I covered some community dinners, interviewed a group of international students who were celebrating their first American holiday, and then ate a company-sponsored turkey dinner with my husband back at the office. Memorial Day, on the other hand, was usually not very popular. I actually volunteered for that shift a couple of times because we usually didn’t try to leave town then, but we did like to travel back east over T’giving or Christmas. You got paid time-and-a-half. It wasn’t too bad. I was still jealous of all the people in other industries who always got all the holidays off, plus other random days, but hey, at least I had a job.

Maybe that’s the root of my grouchiness: these people not only have jobs, but they have jobs that give them all this amazing time off! Where do I sign up?

Anyway, I guess that just gives me license to loaf around a little this weekend myself…

Paper copies

You know what is currently frustrating me? No? Ah, well let me just tell you then.

Many of my best writing clips are not in digital format. In fact, most of my favorite clips from my stint as a reporter at The Desert Sun in Palm Springs are not. The Sun’s archives switched formats not long after I left the paper, plus you have to pay a fee to access archives that go back past a certain date anyway. So many of those clips are only accessible to me 1) if I pay for them and they’re actually even still available in the archives, 2) if I could get access to LexisNexis, which I can’t because it is SO incredibly expensive for individuals and it’s unavailable through our local library, or 3) in paper format.

So when I apply for writing jobs or send queries to pitch story ideas to magazines and websites, I have to either send digital copies of other stories or links to other stories OR I have to send paper copies of my old newspaper stories. I really hate to waste paper by sending out multiple copies of old stories to people who may just glance at them and then toss them into the trash. But I think that some of my paper copies represent some of my strongest stories. I think my pitches are more likely to get noticed if they are accompanied by proof that I’ve written some really good stuff. You know, as in ‘Hey, Ms. Magazine Editor: check THIS out!’

Not that the articles and stories that I’ve written that are still online are bad. They’re not. (Take a look: check out the column to the right.) But some of my favorites aren’t there, like the huge article I wrote about a high school freshman who was paralyzed in a freak accident and who, along with his family, had to adjust to a new kind of life. Or the series of feature stories I wrote about a graduating high school class; we called it “The Last 100 Days,” and it won an honorable mention award in Gannett’s quarterly awards. Or the story I wrote about a group of churchgoers who hiked up a mountain on Good Friday so they could pray the Stations of the Cross in the foothills of the Santa Rosas. Or the story I wrote about teenagers who drink and drive and pay the consequences. Or the series I wrote about gifted education programs and how they often get the short shrift in today’s test-oriented educational system. I love those stories. I threw myself into them, and I think the effort paid off. But for a potential employer or client to see them, they have to look at paper copies. And we all know how lousy a newspaper clip can look when it’s been copied on a photocopier.

Recently I investigated the possibility of scanning in some of those old newspaper and making them into PDFs, and I may still do that for some of my favorites. It is not cheap, though. When the local copy shop told me how much it would cost per page, I gulped. But it’s still probably cheaper than trying to buy a subscription to LexisNexis. And ultimately it may be worth it to show off some of my best work.

Unless anyone else has some better ideas. I’m happy to entertain them!

U-T lets its people go…and the Chronicle…and…

And yet more bad news from the newspaper world made the headlines today.

Guess we shouldn’t be surprised. On the heels of getting new ownership, the San Diego Union-Tribune is cutting 192 positions.

They haven’t said yet what newsroom positions will be eliminated. I hope none of the people I know who are still there are directly affected.

The San Francisco Chronicle is letting people go. The San Francisco Business Times reports that the Chronicle began laying off editorial employees yesterday.

Am I forgetting anybody?

Ah yes. And who knows what’s going to happen to the Boston Globe. The owner is threatening to shut the venerable paper down altogether. And today, Globe publisher, Steven Ainsley, predicted job cuts, of course. Yeah, if your whole paper is in jeopardy, I’d think layoffs are pretty likely.

Why did I decide to go into this field again? Was it the possibility for an endless upward career trajectory? Because if it was, 22-year-old me really should have re-evaluated. Well, at least as a freelancer, I can’t get laid off. I might not get new assignments, true, but at least I won’t have to clean out my desk and take home all my belongings in a white copy paper box.

Not panicking just yet

A few years ago, SARS was the big health news. Now it’s swine flu. Excuse me, H1N1 flu. Whatever they want us to call it, I hope that it’s a mountain that turns into a molehill. I don’t blame my fellow journalists for covering this so closely; it’s big news. It might even become bigger news. And I’d rather know as much as possible than be ignorant. But I do hope it ends up being not as big a deal as it is now.

I am definitely monitoring the situation, as you’d expect from someone who has covered health care off and on for more than a dozen years. I heard on the radio this morning that they’ve found a case of swine flu as far away as Denmark. The World Health Organization has confirmed that cases have been diagnosed in 11 countries as of earlier today. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are keeping an updated list of confirmed cases in each state; so far, New York tops the list.

But for now, I’m mostly just keeping an eye on what’s happening in my neck of the woods. Two schools here in Nashville have closed down because they had a student or students who were suspected of contracting the virus: Harding Academy and Montgomery Bell Academy. I probably wouldn’t even be that worried yet about that if both those schools weren’t located near us…or have students with siblings at my son’s preschool or who attend our church.

On the one hand, hundreds of people die each year from the regular non-swine flu flu, and you don’t everyone getting all worked up about it. And the child in Brownsville, Texas, who died of swine flu had both underlying medical issues and had recently been in Mexico. But on the other hand, my husband, who is a physician, noted that most of us have no residual immuno-memory (I think I made that word up) of the swine flu because we’ve never been exposed to it, so we don’t have any residual protection against it.

So, I’m not panicking yet. I’m not convinced this is going to be a terrible global pandemic yet. But I think I will swing by Target and pick up some more hand sanitizer this afternoon, just in case. It never hurts to be as prepared as possible.