Meghan Murphy: Adam Bosch definitely used some workshop tips on a daily crime story in today’s Record. Note that he asked the neighbors exactly what they were doing (vacuuming and tinkering with the leaf blower) when Elisabeta ran into their garage screaming, with a hole in her shoulder “the size of a half dollar.”
Read the rest of this entry »Update from Janine: My editor was not happy when I suggested brown bags for writers. Then we had one, where I got to talk about things I learned at the workshop. Everyone participated, asked great questions, had a great time … and he approved of everything everyone said. Now he wants to have them once [...]
Read the rest of this entry »Pete Hamill: “Some of this, in my opinion, has been our fault. Over the last quarter of a century, in too many newspapers, we’ve trivialized the newspapers as if trying to capture the TV audience; to capture the youth audience; to capture the ‘dumb guy’ audience. Dumbing the paper down is not smart even as [...]
Read the rest of this entry »In an e-mail:
It was a wonderful evening for me, talking to the young reporters, feeling their energy and drive pulsating in the room. It all renewed my cockeyed optimism about the craft itself, no matter how we get it to readers.
Lindsey in an e-mail:
I would like to tell Mr. Ottaway that the workshop was a powerful way to pass on the legacy of Mike Levine, a man many of us never got to meet but whose influence we felt keenly last weekend. I thought the workshop struck the right balance between informality and structure, between the solitary work of writing [...]
Scott Waldman is now seeing stories everywhere.
Read the rest of this entry »Lee in an e-mail:
I asked the managing editor if I could start a writing group here. He said he was all for it. Said that the mood has been so down here, with editors overworked due to lay offs and additional editing responsibilities. “In the end, it’s good stories that will either save us or [...]