THE FREE LANCE

by Tabitha M. Powledge

Do You Need a Web Site?

Not so long ago, the form you filled out for your listing in the NASW member directory didn't even ask for e-mail addresses. Now the one you recently sent in wants your URL. Estimable though this organization is, it has not been noteworthy for being ahead of the curve, technically speaking. Yet all of a sudden, a Web site address is essential information.

Filling in that form forced me to face up to the fact that I have spent years postponing a Web site, even though a significant NASW bennie is two megs for a personal home page, absolutely free. (Instructions on getting started at http://nasw.org/homepage.htm. Also links to members' sites, and there are lots of them.)

What has chiefly held me back is the cost, in both time and energy. Assuming you don't want to pay someone to set it up for you, there's an appreciable learning curve to building a Web site. There is also a certainty of tsouris. The fellow writer with whom I share office space and much else has branched out in recent years to building Web sites for clients. The guy actually enjoys doing this. Yet, expletives and the clash of tooth-gnashing have on occasion drifted upstairs from his office to mine.

So getting a Web site together is a significant undertaking, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Especially for someone like me and perhaps you; those of us for whom a computer is an essential tool, but nonetheless just a tool. I don't find its innards endlessly fascinating, I resent the time I have to waste futzing with it-and I have lots of company. Still, filling out that form started me thinking maybe it was time to get serious about a site. Maybe a self-employed writer needs a Web site in order to be taken seriously. So I turned to that peerless source of reliable advice, my peers.

My post to the freelance listserv (http://nasw.org/lists) brought a remarkable response, both on-list and off-. Most of it was enthusiastic and helpful counsel from old computer hands who are also true URL believers. But a few skeptics were doing fine without one, and were delighted to say so. Which got me to wondering, did I really need a Web site? Or was I being browbeaten into it by the shame of going naked and URL-less into the NASW directory?

So before we get to the how-to, to be covered in future columns, let's examine the whether-or-not. I have always assumed that I would eventually set up a site, and that it would be a marketing tool, a way of attracting new clients. But, like many of the skeptics, I've been getting along swell without one. There's been plenty of work around. I've been able to do all right taking on only projects that appealed to me and have even had to turn down intriguing assignments because I didn't have the time. Given the work involved-work for which no one would pay me-a Web site hasn't been a priority.

And I'm not alone:

"I've never had a Web site, no one's ever asked about it, and I have more work than I can handle from referrals," said Evelyn Strauss. "[A]t one point I was feeling really pressured to put together a Web site, but wasn't finding the time to do it, and feeling really lame. As it turns out, it wasn't necessary if my goal was simply to have my hands full doing interesting work that I want to be doing. It's not a 'must' for freelance writers."

"As someone who has assembled a handful of Web sites, I reckon that most freelance writers can survive without a Web presence. I don't know that mine has ever brought in any work," said Mike Kenward (http://www.michael.kenward.dial.pipex.com/).

"All of my new clients come by referral and through plain-text e-mail, followed by faxed clips to editors who want them," said Alan Wachter. "This may be atypical, but I've always had as much work as I can handle this way; have never been asked about a Web page and so did not develop one."

In short, Who needs it?

You do, Karla Harby declared. (Her site's at http://nasw.org/users/kharby/.) "You mean there are freelance writers out there who don't have a Web site? How do they survive?"

She may have a point. If not now, then soon. Just because George W. keeps telling us the economy is rocky doesn't mean it's not. Web sites for which many of us have written are collapsing daily, and some of the ones that are holding on are cutting back. In tough times, freelance writers head the list of Expendables. Maybe we're all going to have to scour the underbrush for business before long. Could be that a Web site will become as essential as a phone.

Assuming, that is, that a site does work as a business magnet. Some swear by their site's ability to snag clients. Karla said she acquired two good clients that way, and she's got lots of company.

"The two assignments I did accept within the past year were both covering meetings in New Orleans," said Shauna Roberts (http://www.nasw.org/users/ShaunaRoberts/), who is based there. "I turned down a few other potential clients because they needed an article written or editing done right away and I was booked."

Said Jeff Hecht (http://www.sff.net/people/Jeff.Hecht/), "The few leads I've received have been for consulting on fiber optics, which I've written a couple of books about."

And Lara Pullen (http://people.ce.mediaone.net/lpullen): "I haven't gotten tons of work from my Web site, but I would say that I have gotten as many jobs from my site as I have from responding to job postings."

And Rebecca Skloot (http://www.nasw.org/users/skloot): "I have gotten new clients, probably three or four in the last six months, just because they found my Web site either through NASW or one of the search engines."

"I've gotten a few cold-call nibbles (people who find my site and then contact me), but most of those are recruiters," said Steve Hart (http://nasw.org/users/hart/). "Far more useful, IMHO, is the Web site as resume/clip set. Here's a typical e-mail I send in response to job ads: 'I would like to learn more about this project. You can find full information on my experience and education at my web site' . . . I've realized that it's important to put the URL of my Web site *in the sentence,* even though it's in the signature. It's a two-by-four upside the head when you realize how e-mail illiterate many folks are, even though they work at Internet startups. OTOH, I've lost patience with those who won't bother to look at anything other than paper submissions."
In fact, the writers who weighed in on the side of a site tend to use theirs mostly in the way Steve does: as a substitute for sending a resume and clips in response to job postings. They say it seems to work. It's also a useful way of persuading new clients that you're a responsible grown-up and likely to deliver.

I've got a couple of worries about that approach to snaring an assignment. One is that prospects may be faintly annoyed at having to go get information about you rather than getting it delivered to their mailboxes. You will often be one of scores-sometimes hundreds-applying for an assignment. Why put barriers in the way of persuading an editor to pick you? It is always wise to assume an editor is Very Busy. (Or-dare we say it?-Very Lazy.)

Another concern is that it will rob me of the ability to custom-tailor the way I present myself, depending on the nature of the job I'm after. I write several kinds of stuff, and so every time I seek an assignment from a new prospect, I not only compose a targeted cover note, I also tweak my e-resume and arrange the bouquet of clips in ways I think are most likely to fit the circumstances. And, not unimportant, least likely to drive an editor away. I wouldn't risk terrifying a consumer pub by sending the very technical piece on genome annotation that ran in EMBO Reports, and I wouldn't chance repelling a professional journal by sending the flip (not to say snotty) things I've done for Salon. If I proffer a Web site with a range of clips rather than specific ones, I've lost control over the message I want the editor to get. If you specialize in one kind of writing for one kind of audience, that won't be a problem. But most of us do a lot of different things, by inclination and/or necessity. We may think versatility is a virtue. But editors want to know if a writer can do a particular kind of thing, and the task is to persuade them you can. Quickly.

That's not an insurmountable objection. It may be possible to solve that problem, at least partially, by setting up different pages on your site for displaying the different kinds of work you've done. But of course that approach complicates the task of site design.

A Web site is a commitment. It takes time to put it up and time to maintain it. It's also something of a risk. It's the face you show people in an attempt to persuade them to hire you and pay you, and if it's not classy and up to date, you may be damaging your reputation and your earning power no matter how able you really are. Do you want to take that on? Do you need to take that on?

Maybe, in the Bush-league economy, the answer is yes. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm dithering. I'll probably go ahead. On tiptoe.

How Not to Lie with Statistics, cont'd

The last column (The Free Lance, SW, Fall 2000) explored some resources that help journos deal with statistics. Now a paper in Science (290:2261-2262, Dec. 22, 2000) drops this bombshell: Other professionals don't have a clue either. Not lawyers, not AIDS counselors, not even docs. What a surprise.

But contain your chortling. The paper is concerned less with describing the math deficiencies of so-called professionals than with figuring out the optimum way to express a statistic so that more people grasp it. The authors conclude: "It makes little mathematical difference whether statistics are expressed as probabilities, percentages, or absolute frequencies. It does, however, make a psychological difference. More specifically, statistics expressed as natural frequencies improve the statistical thinking of experts and nonexperts alike."

Translation: More of your readers will get it if you explain that one out of five people will develop Crud's Disease than if you say the chance of coming down with crud is 20 percent.

If you write about medical testing, you may find it useful to consult the paper's four-step procedure for translating the positive predictive value of a test expressed in probabilities into the more intelligible natural frequencies.

All News, All the Time

In the past year, I've been writing an unusual number of news pieces and also commentaries based on breaking news, which has led me to seek ways of keeping up with ongoing stories like the gene therapy mess at Penn. When the search engines like Yahoo! and Excite! started to turn themselves into "portal" sites some time ago, they experimented with news-alerting services. I played with them a bit but found them cumbersome as well as nonintuitive.

Yahoo!, however, has come up with a tracking service that really works. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/, then scroll way down on the left and click on News Alerts. Enter your keywords and, whenever one of a long list of news sources posts something containing one, Yahoo! sends you an e-mail containing a brief description of the piece plus a link to it. You can add, inactivate, and delete alerts easily. You can elect to scan all the news sources or just a few. You can also control the frequency of the dispatches, getting them in a lump once a day or, when you are in fanatical following mode, right away. Quite handy.

Also handy is the fact that, once you surf to the news item, you will frequently find it accompanied by links to related pieces (including some from sources not on Yahoo!'s news alert list), plus relevant Web sites, and even audio and video clips. These are often part of Yahoo!'s Full Coverage service-a large archive of canned searches (for example, on the Mir Space Station) containing pieces dating back several weeks or even months. A great way to play catch-up when you suddenly must know something about a topic in the news that you've been ignoring. Find the list of Full Coverage topics at http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com.

Tabitha M. Powledge can be reached via e-mail at tam@nasw.org.

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