Nuts &
Bolts: Archive Recommended Reading 4 Try finding a watchdog these days Recommended reading 3 When to Use Quotes, and When not to Recommended reading 2 The disease that haunts our lives Recommended reading inside! A perfect game and an imperfect relationship 'Don't Give Up. Don't Ever Give Up.' A speech to put the L.A. Times' bloodbath into perspective What? He recorded a CD? What kinda career switch is this? Best of all, it comes with money-back guarantee Once you begin killing quotes. . . . . .interesting things happen. In this case, powerful details blossomed Obama's secret weapon 1954 is happening all over again 'It is your business. . . to keep the channel open' A therapist's guide to using the best part of yourself Does your copy have that bloated feeling? 23 tips to cut fat from your story It's always more complicated than you think What 4 op-ed pieces in 11 days can tell us about 'truth' Striking a balance when the facts are cloudy Breaking down an NYT cop-shooting story Squeeeeeez it! One life told in 408 words Going deeper Take four bites of David Brooks and call me in the morning Unhappy anniversary Why there's less 'good' news at my old paper Characters, characters, characters What I learned from David Halberstam 'I Want to Watch' They let you in. Now what? Pardon me while I ram my hobby down your throat The story of how Walter Mitty met Conway Twitty Taking the easy way out NYT puts itself in front of the battering ram with abortion story 'It makes me crazy...' '...But I grit my teeth because I know that things are changing' How not to blog Giving in to your impulses is a good way to start a posting, but it's a lousy way to finish it Wanna keep your readers? School 'em The genesis of a must-read education column Make your story sing before you hit the 'send' key Reporters' tips on self-polishing If you read only one 9/11 story... ...Read Joe Nocera's column about the odyssey of Sandler O'Neil & Partners At the end of the day, do an about-face on clichés A database specialist exposes the worst violators Eliminate the elliptical! Why one 'superhero' story crashed as another succeeded Critiquing the NYT critique Staffers warn of 'gum in the gears,' self-absorbed writing and too many rules The war on leisurely leads and anecdote addiction Inside the NYT's self-critical effort to energize its A-1 writing 'Passion' is no ordinary word Which is why Bob is banning it. Don't tell me what it's not. Tell me what it IS The war against negative characterization Your pledge for 2006 Try creating a symbolic mathematical statement of where you want your game to go Well, maybe it DOES matter Some readers are inspired. Others urge Bob to take his head out of the sand 'It just doesn't MATTER' A new mantra for the next time Chicken Little crosses your path Knitting the yarn Stuart Pfeifer scores and gets credit for an accidental assist Step away from the vehicle Nick Sortal's formula for finding true-life tales '...and you can paraphrase me on that.' how to deprogram yourself from overquoting Conceit bites writer! A first-person tale of the price of self-deception A big hand for those 2 little dots Plus: --Exploiting contrast --The case against adjectives --Breaking down your Q/A style Because you asked for it... ...Here is Part II of Barry Siegel's reconstruction Two tricks to punch up your leads (1) Ask a question. (2) Throw the jab Cruising cool intersections Two examples of why the NYT is so damned interesting Breaking down the power of a tsunami 'tick tock' Kill enough quotes and keep your eye on story momentum and your reconstruction will sweep away the reader The 'I's have it Paul Lieberman makes the case for the first-person injection Distillation = Context + Compression Columnists have some lessons to teach writers on the straight side Will perspective outweigh news on the campaign trail? Taking note of candidates' truth-stretching and opaqueness pushes stories toward contextual overload Winning from behind Shawn Hubler on following--and transcending--the competition It's the transitions, stupid! A feature falls into Bob's lap...if only he can make the pieces fit Once you get 'em in the tent, how do you keep 'em there? Tricks to battle reader attrition Finally...a guy who makes you think An early valentine to columnist David Brooks 'Burn! Baby! BURN!' Bob co-authors the autobiography of the R&B deejay who enthralled him as a kid Blogging the blogger Fearful of losing his readers, our hero stoops to parody 'These great truths need no bucking up from me' Read Steve Rubenstein's feature for what's not there The beginning of the ending How good advice from (gasp!) an editor set up the setup Who's your paper's most-quoted 'expert'? He, or she, just might make a story Chunky soup Life rarely gives you a seamless narrative. Here we employ three separate chunks of movement. Quotes? We don't need your stinking quotes! When your own syntax and structure do the talking Post-Rehab IV: What goes up? What goes down? A multi-dimensional story demands a sequencing concession Post-Rehab III: It's a story because I say so Chronicling C- and D-level personalities Post-Rehab II: Keeping it real A con man's story leads our hero to new heights of second-guessing Post-Rehab I: Whatever happened to...? Scratching an itch leads to an unexpected tale Rehab V: D'oh! A gimmick addiction! In which our hero is unable to leave well enough alone Rehab IV: Feature writing on deadline With little time to think, planning became the key virtue Rehab III: The Profile In which our hero walks the tightrope between guiding the reader and getting the hell out of the way Rehab II: Get me re-write!!! Law, technology, sex and religion throw a groovy little party, and Bob gets overwhelmed. Rehab I: Bob returns to reporting Lessons learned--and re-learned--after a 9-year layoff Our affair could not last, but the archives will Bob rejoins the ranks of reporters, halts new postings and reveals why Taking notes and making notes Bill Hatch probes the symbiotic relationship between music and writing 'Yeah, I'm defensive. You gotta problem with that?' Laurie Hertzel goes searching for counsel on how to take criticism more gracefully Making sense of a landmark decision NYT vs. LAT on Supreme Court execution case offers lessons in sequencing and sidebars A dummy's guide to the hard-core basics Writing coach Steve Buttry offers a handy checklist of all the easy stuff we continually forget. Print this out and carry at all times. Obits: Closing the gap between good and great To sum up a life, you must improve your sense of focus and authority Connecting the pop culture dots Are we in the midst of a blackploitation revival (L.A. Times) or a funk revival (N.Y. Times)? 'How I wrote the story': Navigating the 'anniversary' assignment Steve Springer probes the legacy of a few ill-chosen words about race that stunned the sports world The case for understatement How holding back the hype can create the proper tone How to be a more enterprising beat reporter What happened to that annual promise to stop doing obligatory stories and start doing pieces that say something? Fifteen tips for renewal 'How I wrote the story': Coming of age in the riots Ten years later, Daren Briscoe finds big truths in small tales Editor's Journal: A test of perspective Two more weeks of the priest abuse scandal means even more pressure to explain inside baseball Telling your story through the life of one person Stephanie Chavez scores one big goal and one big assist Editor's Journal: The church abuse scandal A newspaper takes on a stonewalling cardinal and nobody wins 'How I wrote the story': Bringing a subculture into focus Explaining a poignant social problem near the Mexican border, Sebastian Rotella became the real Boss 'How I wrote the story': Wrestling with obscurity Mike Boehm makes you want to know more about somebody you never heard of 'I want to edit with more authority' Marc Duvoisin's post-mortem tips for line editors 'How I wrote the story': You have five hours to make sense of 9,000 pages Matt Lait & friends find a needle in a haystack on deadline 'I want my writing to be more nuanced' Breaking down a story that operates in the gray areas 'How I wrote the story': When is it a brief? When is it 1,200 words? A reporter finds deeper meaning in an everyday big-city crime 'I want to write with more authority' Six strategies to put a higher proportion of your reporting into your stories 'How I wrote the story': Getting inside a character Josh Getlin's profile of a notorious lawyer shows you how to peel back the layers 'How I wrote the story': Making the audience love the story you hate Tom Gorman conquers journalism's dullest subject Math for journalists Shaky on percentages? Ratios? Rates? Averages? Take Jack Robinson's refresher course Going the extra mile before you hit the 'send' key Your final self-edit should hurt. If it doesn't, you need to do one more. How to be a playah Playing off the news: a graf-by-graf breakdown of local-angle journalism 'How I wrote the story': Wrestling with the access dilemma Armed with a stack of business cards, David Ferrell probes a jailhouse Ten hurdles to narrative journalism Use 2002 to conquer this obstacle course of progressively demanding techniques 'How I wrote the story': Trust your goose bumps Bob shows you how to start your feature in the middle of the action A vocabulary list for reporters and editors A guide to keep you and your boss on the same page from `BBI' to 'power verbs' to `speed bumps' 'How I wrote the story': Daddy, where does style come from? John Glionna answers the question with a tale of L.A.'s most dangerous bus line 'How I wrote the story': Who IS this guy? Scott Kraft on the struggle to profile a suddenly notorious newsmaker Who won the 'Who Won?' story? Breaking down five versions of the news media's uncounted-ballot study 'How we wrote the story': You can do a lot in a day Judy Pasternak and Stephen Braun bring extra dimensions to a tough murder story 'How I wrote the story': Lessons in planning Jenifer Warren's methodical work habits help a tricky profile succeed Why the best journalism of 2001 is 200 words long The NYT's WTC mini-obits are lessons in saying more with less A breakdown of a long story that 'tracks' In which we demand: Does each cluster of paragraphs perform a unique and vital function? A breakdown of a short story that 'tracks' In which we demand: Does each paragraph perform a unique and vital function? 'How I wrote the story': Abandoning your comfort zone Bill Plaschke gets hooked, crosses his fingers and chases a yarn far off his beat 'Voice' Part II: Profiles in courage A series of writers demonstrate a key component: the willingness to take a risk 'Voice' Part I: One writer's catalog of versatile styles A quintet of Kim Murphy leads shows you the importance of calibrating 'How I wrote the story': Take your assignments with a grain of salt Jill Leovy's editor had one view of the story. Jill's gut told her otherwise 'How I wrote the story': Making sense of a pissing match Doug Smith keeps an open mind when a gadfly takes on a small town 'How I wrote the story': Organizing the long piece Dancing the Barry Siegel Two-Step: (1) Deconstruct. (2) Reconstruct. 'How I wrote the story': Distinguishing your story from the other thousand Intrigued by an AIDS support group, Deborah Schoch solves the 'oh-no, not-that-again' problem `How I wrote the story': Creating a narrative spine A dash of structural seasoning perks up an everyday environmental news-feature `How I wrote the story': Parachuting into a strange town Bill Plaschke's mission was to make sense of a civic paradox in two days `How I wrote the story': Profiling the 'average' family Lessons in penetrating a social cliche Foreshadowing your key sub-themes Or, for the socially minded: Keeping that blind date interested through dinner Where good ideas come from Four writers offer four techniques about how to conceptualize more creatively Six questions to ask yourself before you type that anecdotal lead How make sure the anecdote doesn't cause more problems than it solves Curb your dependence on dependent clauses A continuation of last week's jihad against inflated sentences Those long sentences are sabotaging you How to stop cramming and start cutting. How to increase the maturity of your writing More ideas, analysis and sweat. Less wordplay, quotes and artifice The 17 worst cliches in the newspaper business With so many examples of overuse that you will never, ever employ any of them again 'I want my writing to be more sophisticated' Here are 14 techniques to make it happen more often 'Prewriting' from three perspectives How to get more out of those moments between the last scrawl in your notebook and the first stroke at your keyboard Forty ways to improve collaboration at your newspaper Take this list and share it with the offending line editor, copy editor or reporter. Give peace a chance Details, details and, while you're at it, some more details, please How one masterful feature writer psyches himself for battle Speed thrills: Improving your story's pace Why those final cuts you make (or are too vain to make) make such a difference in hooking the reader Your 'givens' ain't like mine Slow down and ask yourself: Just what does the reader bring to my story? The 15-minute workout Serious about getting better? Pick one technique from our list and work on it--every stinking day Lessons from covering the extraordinary How reporters grappled with the first month of California's electricity crisis Building stronger middle sections of your stories Finding ways to take the reader deeper by the halfway point |
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