Writing, marketing and technology
One of the most popular pages on this site is How to be a freelance journalist, which is based on my experiences in that job in the early 2000s. It’s a tough gig and getting tougher. Because of this post, Marc Leverton interviewed me for his recent book, How to work as a freelance journalist. [...]
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Tim Phillips’s analysis of press releases on Factiva shows a worrying trend. The number of press releases that contain the words ‘significant’, ‘substantial’, ‘meaningful’ and ‘unique’ in the same text has nearly trebled in the last seven years. Something should be done. I don’t really understand how writers get away with this. Journalists automatically discount [...]
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I met René van der Meer last year when I was in Amsterdam. He writes Aanhetwoord.com, a website about journalists, the working methods and ambitions. It’s a great resource for Dutch writers and I was very pleased when he published the interview he did with me. Of course, we mostly spoke in English during the [...]
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Mark Macias takes us inside the newsroom in this guest post. As an Executive Producer with WNBC-TV and Senior Producer with WCBS-TV, Mark Macias has vetted story ideas from reporters, producers, publicists and viewers. He is the author of Beat the Press. It’s the one question every news junkie wants to know. How do the [...]
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Quotations can make an article, press release or case study real or they can make them deathly dull. As a writer, it’s your choice. You have complete control over how you quote people and a few simple techniques can make all the difference. Go to the top. One reason to include a quotation is to [...]
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When I do an interview I tend to write near-verbatim notes. This is an old habit from my days as a journalist. However, it gets me into some interesting problems when I do it for corporate clients. For example (and without naming any names!): One client who, on hearing that I did this, tried to [...]
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This post contains advice for anyone considering a career as a freelance journalist. I was a freelancer for five years, writing for Wired, Popular Science and some UK business magazines. You can see a list of most of my journalism on my personal site. Now I am writer in chief at Articulate Marketing and I wrote [...]
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Interviews matter. Interviews are the foundation of good reporting. They are the best way of understanding a complicated situation and seeing it from someone else’s perspective. A wise, old editor of mine used to say “report it out.” She meant ‘go talk to people, don’t rely on your own opinions and judgment.’ It’s a good [...]
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Tips from a journalist who does dozens of interviews every week.
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Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He edits Golf Hotel Whiskey and writes the Forbes Aviator column.
Check out my new, free eBook, 30 Days to Better Business Writing, 71 pages of expert tips and advice to make you a better writer. Available on Kindle, paper and free online.