Speaking to your source directly is a tenet of reporting — except when it isn't. When you and your source speak different languages, interpreters intervene. Laura Shin writes on Poynter about finding and using interpreters: Quoting New York Times reporter Barry Bearak, Shin advises, “When you write, tell the reader what language was spoken and that a translator was used ... 'The reader deserves to know that the words have passed through the translation process.'”
Science writing news
Joel Shurkin: Forty-three years ago this summer I covered one of the most important stories in human history: The first human landings on another world. Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong. The moon. It was a different journalism world then, and a different America. The media were concentrated, rich, powerful. America was self-assured, rich, daring. Children, you missed a wonderful time.
It used to be that the telephone and mailbox were the primary tools for oddball readers to reach busy newsrooms, but now there's email. Kate Galbraith writes in Nieman Reports about the makeover pitch and other doozies that have crossed her screen: "One person, upon seeing that my mini-biography on The Texas Tribune website included a degree from the London School of Economics, rambled on about Queen Boudicca's destruction of Londinium (London) in the year 60 A.D."
Joseph Esposito posts on the Scholarly Kitchen about the Random House/Penguin merger and why he says it may not be good news for authors: "There will of course be huge cost savings in the back office from this merger, but perhaps the primary rationale is upstream, with the relationships with agents and authors," he writes. "A combined Penguin Random House ... would be in a position to get agents to toe the line" in fighting off efforts to raise royalties for e-books.
As a wise man said, “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” So it goes with first drafts, But Joanna Penn offers advice and tool tips on The Creative Penn: “A perfect sentence does not appear fully formed on the page, and it is not followed by another one, and another, to create a perfect story in one go. That’s not how writing works – but it is the myth of writing which we must
It's a bane of the struggling freelancers' life — markets that pay writers late, or not at all. On WordCount, Michelle V. Rafter offers tips for shaking your check free from the accounting department, and ways of dealing with the most recalcitrant ones: "You know the old saying, 'fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me,'" Rafter writes. "If you’ve been burned by a publication, you should have a very good reason for ever wanting to work for them again."
Last month in Raleigh, N.C., during the NASW business meeting, three dedicated volunteers were awarded the 2012 Diane McGurgan Service Award. Congratulations to Rick Bogren, Robert Irion, and Mari Jensen. Read on to learn more about their contributions and the award.
On July 11, 2012, an investigation I had worked on for approximately six months appeared simultaneously on TheAtlantic.com, Good Morning America, and ABC News’ World News Tonight. I am a freelancer. If you know anything about the freelance marketplace, you’ll spot at once that those two sentences don’t go together.
There's no trick to getting grants to support your journalism, writes Jillian Keenan, who offers tips on the Poynter site: "I’ve conducted research in Cuba and Oman, lived in Singapore and England, and traveled around the world — all thanks to full or partial support of grants. Without those grants, my resume (and, more significantly, my life) would be pretty boring." NASW members can also search in the ScienceWriters funding sources database.