Norman Mailer's Writing Routine

From Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Alamanac":

It's the birthday of Norman Mailer, born in Long Branch, New Jersey (1923). He grew up in Brooklyn, went to Harvard, and then got drafted during World War II. He served in the Philippines, and although he didn't participate in much fighting, he got enough material to go home and write a novel, The Naked and the Dead (1948), published when he was just 25 years old. It was a best-seller, it made him famous, and for the next 60 years he continued to publish books.

Mailer was incredibly productive, and stuck to a strict writing regimen. He said: "Over the years, I've found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write."

He wrote every day from 9 to 5, up until his death at the age of 84. For the last 27 years of his life, he shared a studio with his sixth and last wife, Norris Church Mailer, an artist and writer. They each had their own space. Mailer sat on a wooden chair looking out at the Provincetown Bay — he liked to be near water when he wrote — but he closed the curtains when he really needed to concentrate. Mailer and his wife ate breakfast and lunch on their own schedule, but they would meet up at 6 p.m. to drink wine and eat dinner.

The routine worked for most types of writing, but he couldn't force his novels. He said: "It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way — just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love." He carried a small, spiral-bound notebook with him at all times, in case inspiration struck.

He wrote by hand — he usually wrote in the morning and then typed it up in the afternoon, or gave it to an assistant to type. He said: "I used to have a little studio in Brooklyn, a couple of blocks from my house — no telephone, not much else. The only thing I ever did there was work. It was perfect. I was like a draft horse with a conditioned reflex. I came in ready to sit at my desk. No television, no way to call out. Didn't want to be tempted. There's an old Talmudic belief that you build a fence around an impulse. If that's not good enough, you build a fence around the fence. So, no amenities. (But for a refrigerator!) I wrote longhand with a pencil and I gave it to my assistant, Judith McNally. She would type it for me and the next day I would go over it. Since at my age you begin to forget all too much, I would hardly remember what I had written the day before. It read, therefore, as if someone else had done it. The critic in me was delighted. I could now proceed to fix the prose. The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor."

He wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. His books include The Deer Park (1955), The Armies of the Night (1968), The Executioner's Song (1979), and his last novel, The Castle in the Forest (2007), the story of Hitler's childhood.

He said, "I become an actor, a quick-change artist, as if I can trap the Prince of Truth in the act of switching a style."

End of a Good Magazine

Your Church Magazine Ends 50-Plus Year Run

Publisher Christianity Today International to expand focus on church law, finance, and safety resources for church business administrators.

CAROL STREAM, Ill., Jan. 28, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- Christianity Today International (CTI) ceased publication of Your Church magazine and digizine effective January 1, 2011.

Launched in the 1950s, Your Church was acquired by CTI in the early 1990s and served as an essential resource for church purchasing, services, and administrative guidance. "We rejoice in the 50-plus years God allowed the Your Church ministry to prosper and the years God has granted CTI to minister to church administrators across the country through this storied publication," notes CEO Harold Smith.

In 2011, CTI will continue to serve executive pastors and church business administrators through focused energies on key publications and resources including, Church Law and Tax Report, Church Finance Today, ChurchLawToday.com, and ChurchSafety.com. In addition, prominent print resources such as the 2011 Church & Clergy Tax Guide by Richard Hammar will be available through YourChurchResources.com.

Two popular resources will also continue to support church leaders under the Leadership journal brand. Valuable purchasing information on church products and services can be found at ChurchBuyersGuide.com. Your Church's weekly e-newsletter will become the Church Management Update, a bi-monthly publication offering practical insights on church law, finance, safety, and more.

Christianity Today International ( www.ChristianityToday.com) is a not-for-profit communications ministry that serves the global church through print magazines, digital publications, books, websites, and blogs which together reach over 2.5 million people each month.

iPad Newspaper Debuts February 2

Murdoch's iPad newspaper The Daily to launch Feb. 2

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- News Corp.'s iPad-exclusive newspaper, The Daily, will launch next week at an event in New York City.

The company sent an invitation to reporters Thursday morning. The launch will take place midmorning on Feb. 2 at New York's iconic Guggenheim museum. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch will be at the event, along with Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) Internet services executive Eddy Cue.

The Daily will be the guinea pig for Apple's new subscription option for purchasing iPad content. Until now, Apple has only let publishers sell individual issues, paralleling the company's model for selling apps.

The Daily plans to sell its subscriptions for 99 cents per week, News Corp. executive James Murdoch said at a media conference this week, according to Reuters.
News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500) has been at the forefront of charging consumers for online journalism, including running a paywall around some content on the Wall Street Journal's site.

The Daily has been in the works for several months, but its launch date was delayed. AllThingsD said earlier this month that there were some technical issues with Apple's new subscription service, which will debut alongside with The Daily.

The subscription service will be "a new 'push' subscription feature from Apple, where iTunes automatically bills customers on a weekly or monthly basis, and a new edition shows up on customers' iPads every morning," AllThings reported.

Beyond the technical challenges, many questions are swirling around The Daily. Pundits and bloggers alike have wondered if the world is ready for an iPad-exclusive newspaper -- and if it even wants one.

Others wonder if iPad buyers are the type to buy subscriptions to newspapers. Still, that demographic is growing larger: Apple reported sales of 7.3 million iPads in the holiday season, for a total of 14.8 million iPads sold for the year.

CNN Investigates the FBI

As you think about your potential investigative projects, you might want to take a look at some of the reporting CNN is doing on their recent investigation of the FBI. It's not a very pretty picture, but it's an example of a news organization digging deep into a governmental agency and performing the "watchdog" role.

More here:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/27/siu.fbi.internal.documents/index.html?hpt=C1

New Christian Publishing House Debuts

From Publisher's Weekly:

New Christian Publishing House Debuts
By Lynn Garrett

Veteran Christian publisher Byron Williamson has announced the launch of a new publishing house, Worthy Publishing, which releases its first books this fall.

Over a long career Williamson has published many powerhouse Christian authors, including Sarah Young (her Jesus Calling, published in 2004, was the top-selling Christian book of 2010); Beth Moore (Get Out of That Pit); Frank Peretti (This Present Darkness); Emerson Eggerich (Love & Respect); and Max Lucado, who Williamson first published at Word in the late 1980s when he was president of its publishing division.

After Thomas Nelson bought Word in 1992 Williamson became executive v-p of the Nelson Publishing Group, where he developed the Countryman and Tommy Nelson Imprints. Williamson left Nelson in 1999 and founded Integrity Publishing for Integrity Media; it was sold to Nelson in 2006. While he waited out his three-year non-compete, Williamson did some author management—for Max Lucado and others—and packaged 11 books for Zondervan.,

Worthy is privately held and independent, and Williamson told the Daily this will make the house more nimble and less prone to the communication problems that can arise with publishers that are a Nashville-based division of a New York house. “The feedback we’ve gotten from agents and authors is that their relationship to a publisher can be complicated by those ties,” Williamson said. “And we’ll be able to make decisions in days instead of months.”

He added, “We are bringing ideas to authors and helping them shape projects, rather than waiting for them to come to us.” Half the books on Worthy’s first list originated with ideas from his team, he said.

Of the current climate in Christian publishing, Williamson commented, “Some of the older, more traditional publishers have struggled in the past few years, have changed hands, and have become vulnerable to losing authors. There’s a perception they are stale and have lost the entrepreneurial spirit, and we’ll be able to provide that. We will also do marketing and put some energy into it.”

Worthy’s fall list of 12 books includes titles by evangelical stalwarts Chuck Colson (The Sky Is Not Falling, Sept.), Gloria Gaither (A Homecoming Christmas, Oct.), and Stephen Arterburn (Walking into Walls, Sept.). The remainder of the list will be announced in March. Worthy will publish a variety of genres, among them fiction, devotionals, inspiration, Bible study, personal growth, and children’s books.

Staff of Worthy Publishing includes Williamson as CEO and publisher, Rob Birkhead—who held senior sales and marketing positions at Thomas Nelson and Integrity--as senior v-p of marketing , Dale Wilstermann—another Nelson and Integrity veteran--as senior v-p of sales, and Jeana Ledbetter—formerly a literary agent at Yates & Yates--as v-p of planning and author relations. Headquartered in Nashville, Worthy will announce the appointment of an executive editor in the next few weeks, Williamson said.

Spell checquer

Subject: Spell checquer

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

NYT: Pay Model Doesn't Show Traffic Decline

From the New York Times:

Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers’ Web Traffic

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: January 17, 2011

While newspapers around the world are anxiously asking themselves what would happen if they started charging readers to view articles online, a few answers have started to emerge.

Steven Brill’s Journalism Online experiment, which developed a system that allows newspapers to charge their most regular online visitors, has analyzed its preliminary data and found on average that advertising revenue and overall traffic did not decline significantly despite predictions otherwise.

The sample size of Journalism Online’s data was small — about two dozen mostly small- and medium-size papers that had been charging readers for several months — so divining any potential pattern for large newspapers is difficult.

But the initial findings showed that newspapers found success with a pay model by setting a conservative limit for the number of articles visitors could read free each month, and by making clear that most readers would not be affected.

Journalism Online said monthly unique visits to the Web sites included in its study fell zero to 7 percent, while page views fell zero to 20 percent. No publishers reported a decline in advertising revenue.

Unlike a strict pay wall — which requires a subscription to view almost all editorial content — a model like the one Journalism Online employed does not choke off huge amounts of Web traffic.

“If you set this meter conservatively, which we urge people to do, it’s a nonevent for 85, 90, 95 percent of the people who come to your Web site,” Mr. Brill said.

Mr. Brill said most papers set a limit on the number of free articles readers could view from five to 20 each month. Papers charged a range of monthly subscription fees from around $3.95 to $10.95.

L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher who is helping run the project, said one lesson to be taken from the numbers so far is that readers were willing to pay for some, but not all, content online. Consumers “will pay for the few news brands they really rely on, if they use them a lot,” he said.

The newspapers using the Journalism Online venture were focused on local news and included The Commercial Dispatch in Mississippi and The York Daily Record in Pennsylvania.

With the exception of The Wall Street Journal, large American newspaper Web sites have so far remained free. The New York Times will become the largest American newspaper to employ a subscriber option for its Web site when it begins a system early this year to charge the heaviest users of NYTimes.com.

Tim Ruder, chief revenue officer of Perfect Market, a news media consultant, said that what worked for small papers would not necessarily work for large papers. But he added that since no larger national papers have switched from free to partial pay, it was difficult to make any guesses. “How well that success will translate to larger sites depends on many things, including the quality, nature and exclusivity of content,” he said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 21, 2011


An article on Tuesday about initial results of an experiment in charging for newspaper Web content misstated part of the name of a Columbus, Miss., newspaper that is among those involved in the venture, called Journalism Online. It is The Commercial Dispatch, not The Columbus Dispatch.

Running Your Own Local News Website

From Editor and Publisher:

Running Your Own Local Website

By: Hal DeKeyser


Published: January 20, 2011


Ten or 15 years ago, when I was still in the newspaper business and the writing on the wall was coming into focus, I speculated to horrified colleagues that the last new newspaper reader had already been born.


In the five years I've been out of the game, I've come to realize that I was about a generation off. The last new newspaper reader is long out of college.



You could blame papers' emerging buggy whip status on corporate ownership. Those huge corporations dug their own graves through overly leveraged buyouts, expecting monopoly-driven 20-percent-plus margins to run forever. Or blame the Internet, which made 30-hour-old news dropped once a day on your driveway look like a Victrola in an Apple store.



The "what happened" is less interesting than the "what's next," which we all know is online, although consensus on what it looks like ends there. For ex-pats from the trade like me who can't seem to stay in remission, this new era offers the chance to run your own news operation, without the big iron and distribution expense. But the barriers and headaches are numerous.



You do need technology, marketing, reporting, sales, partnerships, hosting, supplies, and on and on. Most of us are underfunded, either hoping to catch a spark or doing it as a labor of love. Or perhaps just passionately deluded.



The ease of creating a local site also creates a lot of noise. Many in the game are doing it on a lark, or without experience in reporting, writing, editing, and dealing with local governments about First Amendment issues. Whatever you do will be lumped in with all that until you prove yourself.



I've made several tries at local online news sites and portals, some as full-time ventures and now as an after-hours sideline until it catches hold. I have learned a few hard lessons along the way. As the lawyers say, your results may vary:



1. What worked to make money in print doesn't work online, at least in my experience. Don't count on making much on classifieds or banner ads.



2. Start slow. Our current beta site, DigitalPeoriaAZ.com, presents the full array of local information - schools, government, business, calendars - but not a lot of original reporting yet. It's important to get the site up, running, noticed by the search engines, and begin creating local partnerships first.



3. As an editor and publisher, I've always told reporters they have to build "what does it mean to me?" into stories, and the same goes for local portals. You have to prove your value.



4. Eventually, it has to make a buck, unless it's just a hobby. Nothing wrong with hobbies, but that's not a sustainable model upon which to build the new American journalism. Our strategy employs the experience of our partners who created the WoodlandsOnline.com site in the Houston area (and now many more). They created a system that gives local businesses an inexpensive, easy-to-use and strong marketing device, one that gets them recognized in the community and in search engines, one that targets the very local customer. Some people use a local news site as a marketing device for their real support business, like real estate, although that might create some conflicts in focus and news credibility. If you've got a better way, run with it.



5. It must be Google friendly. Eric Kintigh, who developed the Woodlands Online site that gets millions of page views, has created a system that often can get local stories and business self-publishing on the first search page within a day, when searched locally.



6. You need business partners who know about things you don't. Four keys are content, technology, marketing, and sales. My role is content and connection to communities.



7. Create partnerships. With all the sites out there, plus good and halfhearted stabs at it by the newspapers still publishing, local entities won't think they need you. Be valuable to organizations, businesses, schools, clubs, governments, and chambers. A media partner would be killer. Woodlands Online has a new partnership with CBS affiliate KHOU-TV, which plays on both of their strengths: being intensely local and regional.



8. Tell the world, through social media, links, and e-mail blasts to opt-in registrants, getting your customers and partners to promote the site and its content, repurposing messages through as many pipelines as possible.



9. Pick your niche and live it. For us, it's local. Another site in the Phoenix area concentrates only on non-school youth sports. Some are business or areas of business, like real estate, or even more narrow niches, such as Hispanic women in business.

I haven't found the Holy Grail of online journalism yet, but I'm convinced something will fill the space vacated by good local newspapers. If you have ideas, please share them. We'll compare notes at either the billionaires' conference or the 12-step program for recovering journalists.



Hal DeKeyser was a reporter, photographer, opinion editor, columnist, and publisher in the Phoenix area for 25 years. He can be reached at hald@whizbanggroup.com.

Waitaminnit!!

Isn't there something slightly wrong with the math in this press release?

Grace College, Winona Lake, Ind.: The National Science Foundation provided Grace College with a $5 million grant. The grant money, which the institution is to receive in yearly $75,000 installments for five years, is to help with researching how water quality in the Great Lakes is affected by climate change. A community water quality program at Grace College is known as Kosciusko Lakes and Streams, and it’s directed by environmental biology professor Dr. Nate Bosch.

Mormons Sell Major Media Voices

WTOP, other Bonneville stations sold
By Washington Post editors

WTOP radio in the District has been sold to a Minnesota-based broadcasting company.

Deseret Management Corporation, a for-profit arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has agreed to sell its Bonneville International radio stations, including WTOP and stations in Chicago, St. Louis and Cincinnati to Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. for $505 million.

DMC will retain its Bonneville stations in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle and Salt Lake City.

WTOP, the Washington area's most popular radio station, will remain an all-news station, according to reporter Paul Farhi.

So . . . the Camera DOES Lie!

(CNN) -- The official hotel photos showed off a sparking pool, lush palm trees and a stunning waterfront location, but the online review from a recent guest wasn't so pretty.

"Travelor27" felt that the resort in San Diego, California, just didn't live up to the lovely pictures.

"We couldn't believe it when we pulled up. Where was the hotel in the photos?" Travelor27 wrote in a review titled "Website Photos VERY Misleading" and posted last month on TripAdvisor.com.

Another poster let loose about a hotel in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

"The pictures on the internet look rather appealing, however, they are EXTREMELY MISLEADING. THIS PLACE IS A DUMP," fumed Summer228.

All travelers have been there at one point or another, because it's hard not to fall in love with the gorgeous marketing photos that hotels use to entice guests. Who can resist swaying palm trees, pristine beaches and luxury decor?

But buyer beware: That resort advertising itself as an oasis of peace may turn out to be next to a noisy construction site. Or you may find that the beautifully appointed room in the photos is just another generic hotel space when you get there.

Welcome to the art of the hotel photo fakeout, where careful framing, zooming and cropping can turn a property into paradise -- or at least a place where you'd definitely consider booking a room.

"Quite often, it's very remarkable what the hotel marketers think they can get away with," said Jennifer Garfinkel, the editor at Oyster.com.

The hotel review website has a popular feature that busts photo fakeouts by comparing marketing images with more candid pictures taken by its undercover reviewers.

Take the Hyatt Regency Washington, which shows off its proximity to the U.S. Capitol in its marketing photo (see gallery above). But the landmark seems much farther away when snapped in a casual photo.

The image is "probably the well-intentioned work of a skillful photographer using a telephoto lens," Oyster.com says.

The picture was taken with a long lens "in order to accurately portray the hotel's physical proximity to the Capitol building, which is indeed two blocks away," said Tammy Hagin, director of public relations for the hotel.

"Photography and videography quality can vary greatly depending on the technology/equipment used to capture images. Our standard practice is to accurately portray our hotel," Hagin said.

Here are some other common tactics hotels use to entice you with pictures:

Taking a photo from a certain angle

This is often done so that you won't see a building looming over the pool or the beach.

"Some would argue that's not (wrong). You're not Photoshopping; you're just being clever, but to us, that's still being dishonest, because the person is going to be disappointed," Garfinkel said.

Getting dressed up for picture day

Accessories can make an ordinary hotel room look extra cozy or opulent, so you might see lots of special touches in a photo that won't materialize when you get there.

"The same way a kid in elementary school is going to put on his Sunday best for his picture, you'll see hotel photos with flowers, champagne bottles, laptops set up, and of course when you get to the hotel room, those things aren't going to be there," Garfinkel said.

Zooming in

Caution: Objects photographed in this way may look larger than they appear.

"This is especially common with pools," Garfinkel said. "They show you only part of the pool; they zoom in really, really close ... so that you can't see how small it really is."

Sexy lady phenomenon

Resort marketing materials will often show an attractive woman surveying an invitingly empty pool.

"The reality is, the pool will be covered with screaming kids or there's a raucous pool party going on, but what they want you to think is that it's completely empty except for this one woman who is always very sexy," Garfinkel said. "Marketers for hotels absolutely love this."

What you can do

Some hotels do go to extremes and use Photoshop to take out a lamp post or insert a beautiful sunset in the background, but that's not quite as common, Garfinkel said.

So what can you do to help make sure the hotel you book meets your expectations when you arrive?

Be smart about your sources when you become interested in a property. Many popular travel websites rely on marketing materials that were provided to them by the hotels, so they're not good research sites, Garfinkel said. Check out sites like TripAdvisor, which allows you to see hotel photos submitted by guests, or Oyster.com, which includes photos taken by undercover reviewers.

Also, don't be afraid to call the hotel after you've booked a room to double-check what you're really getting.

"You can ask them, 'I know I have a city view room, but what does that actually translate to?' They should be open and honest with you," Garfinkel said.

Finally, remember that hotels have their own interests in mind, so take what you see on their websites with a grain of salt.

Catholic TV Network Buys Newspaper

EWTN Acquires National Catholic Register

World's Largest Catholic Media Network Acquires 83-Year-Old Newspaper

IRONDALE, Ala., Jan. 19, 2011 /Christian Newswire/ -- EWTN Global Catholic Network has signed a letter of intent to acquire the National Catholic Register, the nation's leading Catholic newspaper.

"I am very pleased and excited that the Register will now be a part of the EWTN family," said Michael P. Warsaw, the Network's president and chief executive officer. "All of us at EWTN have great respect for the Register and the role it has played throughout its history. It's a tremendous legacy that deserves to not only be preserved, but also to grow and to flourish."

"I believe that EWTN will be able to provide the stability that the Register needs at this time as well as to give it a platform for its growth in the years ahead. We're proud to be able to step in and carry on both the Register's name and its tradition of faithful Catholic reporting on the issues of the day," noted Warsaw.

Under the terms of the transaction, no cash will be exchanged between the parties. EWTN will take over the ongoing operational expenses of the Register and will assume the paper's future subscription liabilities.

The acquisition of the Register is the latest in EWTN's efforts to expand its news presence in the global Catholic digital and multimedia market. At the start of 2010, EWTN entered into a partnership with the Catholic News Agency (CNA), a Denver-based independent Catholic news media outlet with bureaus in North and South America and Europe. Under that agreement, EWTN and CNA are sharing news resources and have created a joint news service found at www.ewtnnews.com. That arrangement was recently expanded to include a new original Spanish-language news service, EWTN Noticias, ( www.ewtnnoticias.com) launched in January 2011.

EWTN Global Catholic Network provides multimedia services to more than 140 countries and territories. The Network transmits nine separate television channels in several languages to audiences around the world. It also operates multiple radio services including a network of hundreds of AM and FM stations, a Sirius satellite radio channel, and a global shortwave radio service. EWTN's main website, www.ewtn.com, draws more than 20 million unique visitors annually.

The National Catholic Register grew out of Denver's Catholic Register, which began on Aug. 11, 1905. Under the leadership of Msgr. Matthew Smith, the Register System of Newspapers was developed, with the first national edition appearing on Nov. 8, 1927. It was acquired by the Legion of Christ in 1995.

Contest Open for Submissions

Announcing 2nd Annual
WestBow Writing Contest
Now Open for Submissions


Dear Writer,

We are proud to announce the 2011, OCC Writers Conference will be held on April 29 & 30, 2011, at
Mariners Church, Irvine, California.

WestBow Press Writing Contest
Now open for submissions. Total prize package over
$4,200

Complete entry instructions are available
WestBow Writing Contest

Three winners will receive

First Place: Bookstore Advantage Publishing Package
Valued at $2,799.00

Second Place: 50% discount off Bookstore Advantage Publishing Package.
Valued at $1,399.50

Third Place: 20% off standard WestBow Publishing Package. (excludes Essential Access).


See last year's winner Mary Henderson's book
Winner of the 2010 WestBow Writing Contest

2010 WestBow Contest Winner

The OC Christian Writers Conference is one of the most exciting one day conferences in the country. This year our list of authors, editors, & literary agents is the most comprehensive in our

• Two all-day mentor workshops -- Fiction & Memoir Writing-- on Friday, April 29
• WestBow Press Writing Contest
• Fiction Writing Contest
• Memoir Writing Contest
• Beverly Bush Smith Aspiring Writer Award
• Three literary agents
• Four book acquisition editors
• Advance book marketing track
• Friday night greet-the-faculty buffet & panel discussion
• Two keynote speakers
• Twenty-seven workshops to choose from

Please go to the Web site and look over the selection of faculty, classes and mentor workshops. This conference is designed to help writers get further down the path of achieving their goals of excellence and publication.

I hope to see you there,

John DeSimone
Conference Director
Friday Night Panel Discussion at Mariners Church -- April 29, 2011



Friday night's panel discussion and get-acquainted
buffet dinner with the faculty will held at Mariners Church in its spacious Community Center. All food, Friday and Saturday, will be catered by Mariners Global Cafe.

Friday night greet the faculty buffet begins at
5:30 in Community Center.
Panel Discussion will follow immediately at
7 to 8:30 pm.
For more information go to
OCCWF

Orange County Christian Writers Fellowship
is in its 27th year of sponsoring a conference for writers to learn from and network with professionals.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

OCCWF
John DeSimone
Conference Director
john@occwf.org

Well....I Guess This is One Way!

Here is a little account of the strange writing habits of the American novelist Mary Robison (born 1949):

After a while of being unable to write anything, Robison began taking drastic measures. She started driving around in her car with a tape recorder, and whenever anything came into her head, she would just scream it into the tape recorder.

Then she'd go home and write these things down on note cards. Eventually she had about a thousand note cards, and she realized that with a little work she could arrange them into a novel.

The result was her book Why Did I Ever (2001), a very short novel told in 536 very short chapters about a woman named Money Breton, divorced three times, who's addicted to Ritalin and trying to support herself as a screenwriter.

Her most recent book is a novel called One D.O.A., One on the Way (2009).

Is Sarah Palin Right?

What do you think? Is she right? Is the media at fault in any way here?

Sarah Palin accuses journalists, pundits of inciting hatred and violence after Ariz. shooting

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Sarah Palin posted a nearly eight-minute video on her Facebook page early Wednesday, accusing journalists and pundits of inciting hatred and violence in the wake of a deadly Arizona shooting that gravely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Last spring, Palin targeted Giffords' district as one of 20 that should be taken back. Palin has been criticized for marking each district with the cross hairs of a gun sight.

In the video, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate said vigorous debates are a cherished tradition. But she said after the election, both sides find common ground, even though they disagree.

"But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible," she said.

Jared Loughner, 22, is accused of trying to assassinate Giffords, wounding 12 others and killing six people.

"There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal," Palin said. "And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those 'calm days' when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols?"

WJI to Participate in CPAC February 10-12

Top journalists join world journalism institute at cpac

New York, N.Y., January 6, 2011—The World Journalism Institute has become a participating organization in the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), seeking to equip young conservative journalists to effectively compete for jobs in the mainstream newsrooms of America. This year’s conference will be held in Washington, D.C., from February 10 – 12. CPAC is the nation’s largest gathering of conservatives annually. It is a project of the American Conservative Union Foundation.

CPAC brings together nearly 10,000 attendees and all of the leading conservative organizations and speakers who impact conservative thought in the nation. Regularly seen on C-SPAN and other national news networks, CPAC has been the premiere event for any major elected official or public personality seeking to discuss issues of the day with conservatives. From Presidents of the United States to college student leaders, CPAC has become the place to find our nation’s current and future leaders.

WJI will hold seminars and panel discussions on freelance writing, investigative reporting, opinion writing, the new media’s role in the Tea Party movement, as well as offering a tutorial class for young college journalists by top editors of WORLD magazine.

Accomplished journalists such as Mark Tapscott (Washington Examiner), Mindy Belz, Marvin Olasky and Nick Eicher (WORLD magazine), Bill Mattox, Julia Duin, Fred Barnes and Andrew Ferguson (Weekly Standard), Ross Douthat (New York Times), David Brody (CBN News) and SE Cupp will be joining WJI for the conference.

Robert Case, director of the World Journalism Institute, stated, “We have had our displays and seminars in the major professional journalism gatherings for the last decade. We are now broadening our outreach.”

The World Journalism Institute’s mission is to recruit, equip, place and encourage Christian journalists in the newsrooms of first America and then the world. To that end, WJI offers courses, conferences, internship funding, and monographs on the intersection of Christianity and journalism.

For more information:

Kim Collins

World Journalism Institute

800-769-7870

Kcollins@worldji.com

www.worldji.com

Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?

From Fortune magazine:

Are social media jobs here to stay?

December 21, 2010 12:36 pm

The demand for social media jobs has exploded, even as overall unemployment heads in the opposite direction. But in a fledgling field surrounded by hype, some industry insiders are saying it may be too good to last.


By Anne VanderMey, reporter

With billions of dollars on offer for fledgling social media companies and even the biggest corporations refining their approach to the Tweet, the budding social media industry seems like a goldmine for young and tech-savvy jobseekers.

The demand for social media jobs has exploded, even as overall unemployment hovers around 10%. A recent study published by SocialMediaInfluence.com showed that 59 of the Fortune 100 companies have at least one employee who works full time in social media, and that job postings directly related to social media have soared 600% in the last five years.

The Social Media Influence report, which collaborated with the career site Indeed.com to research online job listings, found more than 21,000 social media-related job postings -- up from only a few thousand in 2005.

That may be a glimmer of good news for the country's vast pool of young and underemployed college graduates. But in a fledgling field surrounded by hype, some industry insiders are saying it may be too good to last.

As social media hiring has picked up, the pool of qualified talent has failed to keep pace. The resulting imbalance of supply and demand, says Curtis Hougland, founder of the New York-based marketing and social media firm Attention, is the surest sign of hiring inflation.

Demand for social media skills in the corporate world has outstripped the supply of candidates with training in communications and the analytical skills to track the effectiveness of a media campaign. The void, Houghland says, has been filled by a burgeoning workforce of self-proclaimed social media experts -- qualified and not so qualified.

To explain the situation, Hougland turns to an analogy that has become ominously common when describing social media -- the dot-com bubble.

"What happened [in the 1990s] is just that the market became impatient," Hougland says. "That's the only danger with social media. We might already be there."

Hiring for social media jobs started picking up steam in about 2005, though it still constitutes only a small percentage of overall post-college job placements, says New York University's Trudy Steinfeld, director of the university's office of career services. Steinfeld estimated that only a few students -- ballpark 1 to 2% -- take jobs in social media specifically, but that those numbers have been increasing.

More often, companies eager for social media authenticity aim even younger, tasking student interns with charting their new media course. "They're using interns to test it out more and more," Steinfeld says.

That can be a dangerous strategy, says Bernhard Warner, director of Custom Communication, the London-based consultancy that publishes Social Media Influence.

Stories of social media mishaps abound, fueled by unfiltered, and often unapproved, communication. Most famously, British furniture retailer Habitat used hashtags identifying with Iranian protests in its Twitter feed to have its promotional Tweets appear in newsfeeds about the political actions. After the ploy was widely criticized, company executives credited the fallout to an "overenthusiastic intern" and apologized.

"You can't leave this in the hands of babes, because this is what's going to happen," Warner says.

That hasn't stopped a sea of recent graduates from adding Facebook and Foursquare to the skills section of their resumes. Nor has it stopped colleges from launching social media classes or even adding entire social media masters degrees.

It's all part of an effort to get in on a hiring spree that shows no immediate signs of slowing, says Jim Durbin, a social media headhunter and entrepreneur.

"This next year," Durbin says, "is when it will really start to explode."

There are several levels of expertise within the social media profession. Most commonly, there's the community manager – the feet on the ground, so to speak, who oversee a company's online communities; the analyst or strategist -- who builds and monitors social media campaigns; the product developer – who is responsible for keeping the company's software up to date; the editor or publisher -- who oversees content and the brand; and the executive -- a rare position, usually filled by a public relations professional.

Typically, companies hire some combination of these positions. The field also dances along the edges of customer service, IT, public relations, marketing and sales, according to the Social Media Influence report.

As the profession has developed, companies have moved away from hiring social media "gurus" or "ninjas," terms that were clichéd almost as soon as they were coined. But businesses often still struggle to find the right candidates for the jobs, and expect their new hires to move mountains with few resources.

"Often, these companies have inflated expectations when they hire," Durbin says.

It can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when the qualifications for a social media manager are so nebulous. It presents a serious challenge for hiring managers, especially those unfamiliar with social media -- in a field less than five years old, who can really claim to be an expert?

"It's one of our biggest frustrations," Hougland says. "You can't always discern who's a social media expert and who's not."

As the field matures, Durbin and others foresee widespread restructuring. To prepare, Durbin is opening a social media consulting and placement firm designed for mid-career professionals, where he sees the most growth potential. Durbin foresees that it's just a matter of time until dubiously qualified social media experts, both young and old, but especially those with little to no experience, are exposed.

"The good news is, I think that's the bubble," Durbin says.

But even for the most qualified social media wizards, pure social media careers may not exist 10 years down the line. As it becomes more ubiquitous, social media is evolving into a skill set, not a profession.

"Social media departments are basically going to go away," Durbin says, as the practice is merged with other divisions. "You don't have an e-mail manager, do you?"

But that doesn't spell a life of poverty for tech-smart, well-spoken social media managers. The Community Managers Meetup, a group of social media professionals started by Mashable.com social media strategist Vadim Lavrusik, counts more than 300 people in its membership. And Lavrusik says they aren't worried.

Most, Lavrusik says, came to the field serendipitously, whether because the jobs they thought they'd get after college weren't available, or simply because they discovered they had a knack for the field.

"They're saying, 'Here's an extremely new field, something that I'm really interested in, and hey, I'm actually pretty good at it,'" Lavrusik says.

After all, the primary purpose of social media is enabling connectivity and "just to connect with other people," Lavrusik says. And that need isn't going anywhere.

That's the other side of the dot-com boom-and-bust analogy. Even after the bubble burst, Internet companies went on to have a profound effect on both business and everyday life around the world. There was also an oversupply of programmers, which had been the hot job du jour. But you rarely hear about programmers going hungry.

"In the long run, they did fine. The same way I feel about programmers I feel about social media," Hougland says. "The need for people who understand social media is only going to grow."