http://mattmedia.net/writing Ideas, observations, and rushed judgments on writing Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:34:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Over the years, I've been a huge fan of all forms of mash-ups and bootlegs. Back when I used to have free time, I did a bunch of my own audio mash-ups for kicks, some of which got picked up and played around the world. Anyway, I recently ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/12/eclectic-methods-story/ Bud Shaw has a great story over at Mental Floss on the rise and fall of The National, a short-lived national daily sports newspaper. I read it regularly and loved it, before it died a year after it sprang into existence. It was supposed to be the USA ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/12/20-years-later-i-still-miss-the-national/ Linda Formichelli at the Renegade Writer blog posted an interesting piece on "writing for peanuts": freelancers working for sites like Associated Content and... um, Examiner.com. Interesting discussion of some of the arguments and bad logic about freelancers who sell themselves shows and work for pennies. She does an effective demolition ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/12/writing-for-peanuts/ A few weeks ago, New York Times did an interesting profile of one of my favorite writers, Bill Simmons, better known as ESPN's "Sports Guy." It includes some interest background on the early days and his rise to becoming a model of a new breed of columnist that broke a lot ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/12/new-media-sports-guy-rises-as-old-media-sinks/ The original Thanksgiving narrative is a semi-true tale about a harvest festival between American colonists and native Americans in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Reportedly, there was no pumpkin pie, only boiled pumpkin. Meh. The narrative usually stops there, leaving out subsequent massacres and wars. Anyway, the key storyline was ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/the-thanksgiving-narrative/ My story on paternity leave, "Odd Man Out" was published on Babble today. I'm pretty happy with it. The editors at Babble left it pretty much intact. The story talks about why so few men take paternity leave, even those who work for companies that will give ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/odd-man-out/ One of the writers I most admire is Malcolm Gladwell, a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the author of the Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. His insightful writing explores big ideas through deep research and reporting, linking together seemingly disconnected events and ideas. In one piece, ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/dissecting-gladwells-take-on-football-and-dog-fighting/ There's a lot to learn and know about the craft of writing well. There are the literary building blocks, or as Roy Peter Clark puts it, writing tools: things like word choice, structure, description, rhythm, transitions, details. But then there are the more technical, marketing-minded elements of the ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/headlines-first/ One of my guilty pleasures is the site texts from last night, a site that posts random mobile text messages sent to and from anonymous people, mostly college-aged kids, usually drunk, high, or hungover. A few recent examples: (407): i went to disney world today with my friends, met snow ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/why-texts-from-last-night-make-great-narrative/ In the Washington Post last week, Joel Achenbach wrote an interesting feature on the diminishing opportunities for long-form narrative nonfiction in the newspaper-death-spiral/Twitter/iPhone era. As seems to be the case anytime that I read about trends in the magazine and news business world these days, the outlook isn't promising. There ... http://mattmedia.net/writing/2009/11/long-form-narrative-and-the-art-of-cooking-slow-food/