Writers

Found while moving!

February 3, 2009 by Michael Boyle

Tonight when moving the last of my stuff I came across my old copy of Millennium Cabaret (and yes it’s amazing to me that the site is still up). It’s a CD that (now) doubles as an important cultural record of a scene that thrived in Montreal throughout the 90s – and stretched backwards to the early 80s, as I recall the history.

The CD is full of performance poetry – a recorded anthology put together by Ian Ferrier including a who’s who of what was once a really thriving community here. Check out the website for some clips – but the CD itself is a wonderful document. I won’t name everyone (again, check the site) but if you can find a copy (or convince Ian that it’s time to put the whole thing online), you’ll find early work by Heather O’Neill, now-Toronto-expats Buffy Bonanza, Julie Crysler, and David Jager. It also features the ever-wonderful Cat Kidd (on temporary – I hope – leave from Montreal), the dean of the Montreal scene, Fortner Anderson, and many, many more.

Freelancing as a career

April 21, 2008 by Michael Boyle

My friend Craig Silverman has written a post with some great advice for freelance journalists trying to develop their career in difficult economic times: Freelancing the future. He came to this in response to a post by Adrian Monck, who has been making the case recently that journalism is not at fault for the decline in newspapers.

Monck is almost certainly right, and Craig’s advice is really good advice – not just for freelance journalists but for any independent consultant-type person trying to get things going. But it’s the business side of the news media business that has and continues to screw everything up, IMO. When the net came along, they said, “look, blogs are great, everyone wants more opinion and context” and went ahead and gutted their news reporting function in favour of more opinion, more columnists, more of what the blogosphere was doing very well from it’s inception.

The problem is – that was the exact opposite of the bet they should have made. Opinions are like noses – everyone has one – and no one gives a damn if it’s some “journalist” (whose publisher likely sold him/her out long ago) who has written the opinion piece. On any conceivable subject, I can go out into the blogs and find at least one if not a dozen writers with more experience, more context, and more knowledge about a subject than any journalist has.

What we need – and by “we” I mean society at large – is honest, exhaustive, factual reporting. Newspapers should have (and should be) increasing their reporting budgets and decreasing their spend on columnists and opinions. I do want more opinion and context – but the last place I want to go to get it is a newspaper.

More on the WGA strike

November 9, 2007 by Michael Boyle

Derek Powazek has written about the Writer’s Guild of America strike: Luddites on the Picket Lines? He’s right – the writers need to demonstrate that they understand the internet a lot better than they have so far.

But before you start talking about the internet, read up. Internet distribution is not the same as TV or DVD. A DVD buyer is someone who then owns a shiny plastic disc with stuff on it. Codifying a viewer online is a lot trickier. If I watch half a show on NBC.com, do you get half a royalty? What if I only watched 12 minutes, while the browser was in the background, while I was also chatting and texting and doing whatever it is the kids do nowadays?

There is a distinction between, say, a paid download from iTunes and a YouTube viewing, and if the writers want a percentage of the latter, well, they’re going to be waiting a long time.

A techie on the writer’s strike

November 6, 2007 by Michael Boyle

Marc Andreessen has written an interesting post about the Hollywood writer’s strike: Suicide by strike. The title’s a bit misleading though – his main questions are about the bosses, not the workers.

You’re faced with a massive, once-in-a-lifetime shift in mainstream consumer behavior from traditional mass media, including film and television, to new activities that you do not control. […]
Is this really the right time to pick a fight with the writers over royalties from DVD and Internet sales, leading to an industry-wide shutdown and massive economic pain for all sides in the world of traditional scripted film and television content?

Zeldman

January 20, 2002 by Michael Boyle

Zeldman

: “Our stupid industry pitifully undervalues good web writing.” Bravo! In my experience this is completely correct. Sadly a lot of writers resist learning about the web as well, and so can’t transition to becoming good web writers in the first place.

Zeldman does repeat the old saw that people don’t read, though, which I simply don’t believe. They don’t read everything on every page. But if there’s actual unique content, they’ll read it. They do every day – millions of people read websites very thoroughly. But in general I agree with the proposition.

I approach this from the point of view that the workflow involved in developing sites is fatally flawed. Contrary to many, I don’t believe websites are primarily IS/IT projects, or that they should be managed by technical managers. Of all the activities that must be carried out to make a successful website, only about 30% of these are “technical” in the sense that a programmer, DBA, or other coder must be involved. Content development, graphic design, IA – all these are more fundamental to the development of a website than ANY technical function. The leadership of a web project should be done by a person who can speak intelligently to all of those folks: the editors and writers, the programmers doing any application development or DB work, the IA person and the graphic designer. And each of those functions should be done in concert with all the others on the team.