The newspaper industry had another bad year in 2010. Overall, circulation for newspapers in the U.S. declined 5 percent during the six months ended Sept. 30, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ Fas-Fax, the industry’s semi-annual scorecard.
Just one American newspaper — the Wall Street Journal — managed to increase its
circulation during that period — up 1.82 percent. Some papers, like the
San Francisco Chronicle (11.2 percent), saw its paid circulation take a double-digit tumble.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
A Word for Discouraged Writers
Are you a discouraged writer? Take heart and be encouraged from this glimpse into the life of novelist Mary Higgins Clark, who has now sold 80 million copies in the U.S., and millions more around the world.
She grew up in the Bronx during the Depression, the daughter of Irish immigrants who ran a pub.
She worked a secretary, then as a flight attendant for Pan Am, married at age 22, and had a child nine months later. She would have four more children in the next eight years. Then her husband died. To make ends meet, she wrote four-minute-long radio scripts for a show called Portrait of a Patriot.
But in the early mornings, before her kids woke up, she sat at the typewriter and wrote short stories — her true passion. She sent them off to magazines, and she got back dozens of rejection slips. One read: "Mrs. Clark, your stories are light, slight, and trite." Another slip said: "We found the heroine as boring as her husband had."
While she was still writing radio scripts she decided to try writing a novel, a historical one about George Washington. It was published, she said, and then "remaindered as it came off the press."
A group of her radio co-workers went out to lunch and she pointed out her book in a Manhattan bookstore window. When they came back from lunch, the book was not there any more. She insisted that it must have been snapped up. But when they passed by the store again at the end of the workday, the book was there in the window again. She went inside to ask about it, and the bookstore employee told her: "Whoever bought it returned it."
But she was highly encouraged by the fact that she had been published at all, and she decided to try writing a suspense novel inspired by the time that her three-year-old child had gone missing briefly near a deep lake. In 1974, she sold it to a publisher for a modest $3000. Three months later, she found out the paperback rights to the book had sold for $100,000.
Her second suspense novel sold for $1.5 million, and soon she was being paid $12 million per story. Each one of her suspense novels has been a best-seller.
She grew up in the Bronx during the Depression, the daughter of Irish immigrants who ran a pub.
She worked a secretary, then as a flight attendant for Pan Am, married at age 22, and had a child nine months later. She would have four more children in the next eight years. Then her husband died. To make ends meet, she wrote four-minute-long radio scripts for a show called Portrait of a Patriot.
But in the early mornings, before her kids woke up, she sat at the typewriter and wrote short stories — her true passion. She sent them off to magazines, and she got back dozens of rejection slips. One read: "Mrs. Clark, your stories are light, slight, and trite." Another slip said: "We found the heroine as boring as her husband had."
While she was still writing radio scripts she decided to try writing a novel, a historical one about George Washington. It was published, she said, and then "remaindered as it came off the press."
A group of her radio co-workers went out to lunch and she pointed out her book in a Manhattan bookstore window. When they came back from lunch, the book was not there any more. She insisted that it must have been snapped up. But when they passed by the store again at the end of the workday, the book was there in the window again. She went inside to ask about it, and the bookstore employee told her: "Whoever bought it returned it."
But she was highly encouraged by the fact that she had been published at all, and she decided to try writing a suspense novel inspired by the time that her three-year-old child had gone missing briefly near a deep lake. In 1974, she sold it to a publisher for a modest $3000. Three months later, she found out the paperback rights to the book had sold for $100,000.
Her second suspense novel sold for $1.5 million, and soon she was being paid $12 million per story. Each one of her suspense novels has been a best-seller.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
PR Agency Project Coordinator Position Posting
Here is a current job opening posted at the DeMoss Group (public relations agency) in Atlanta. I post it just to give you insight as to the skills needed, and potential duties of a position with an agency.
Project Coordinator
Position Description:
Assist the project manager in the implementation and management of projects, schedules, creative production and distribution for public/media relations, marketing and administrative campaigns.
Key Responsibilities:
* Project Coordination: Maintain a master calendar for all projects requiring distribution, printing, compilation, mailing and creative development, as well as keep projects on schedule.
* Quality Control: Proofread all materials for grammar and spelling errors, applying extensive knowledge of the Associated Press Stylebook; modify Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents for formatting and content consistency.
* Computer Knowledge: Possess a high proficiency in multiple software applications including, but not limited to, Web-based applications, Word, Excel and PowerPoint; a working knowledge of the programs Visio and Photoshop is beneficial.
* Website Newsroom Maintenance: Update and maintain online client newsrooms through the web-based application Expression Engine.
* Production: Complete general production tasks, including copying, collating and assembling press kits, notebooks and reports.
* Systematization: Organize and maintain client stock media materials and collateral, archived projects, production supplies, etc.
* Clipping Management: Procure, lay out and maintain media clips, including press kit articles and clipping packets.
* Record Keeping: Assist with producing and filing information regarding completed projects.
Core Proficiencies:
* College degree (preferred)
* Ability to manage multiple projects and demanding deadlines
* Excellent grammar and proofreading skills
* Computer expertise
* Aptitude for learning new software packages and web applications easily
Project Coordinator
Position Description:
Assist the project manager in the implementation and management of projects, schedules, creative production and distribution for public/media relations, marketing and administrative campaigns.
Key Responsibilities:
* Project Coordination: Maintain a master calendar for all projects requiring distribution, printing, compilation, mailing and creative development, as well as keep projects on schedule.
* Quality Control: Proofread all materials for grammar and spelling errors, applying extensive knowledge of the Associated Press Stylebook; modify Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents for formatting and content consistency.
* Computer Knowledge: Possess a high proficiency in multiple software applications including, but not limited to, Web-based applications, Word, Excel and PowerPoint; a working knowledge of the programs Visio and Photoshop is beneficial.
* Website Newsroom Maintenance: Update and maintain online client newsrooms through the web-based application Expression Engine.
* Production: Complete general production tasks, including copying, collating and assembling press kits, notebooks and reports.
* Systematization: Organize and maintain client stock media materials and collateral, archived projects, production supplies, etc.
* Clipping Management: Procure, lay out and maintain media clips, including press kit articles and clipping packets.
* Record Keeping: Assist with producing and filing information regarding completed projects.
Core Proficiencies:
* College degree (preferred)
* Ability to manage multiple projects and demanding deadlines
* Excellent grammar and proofreading skills
* Computer expertise
* Aptitude for learning new software packages and web applications easily
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Is Internship the New Entry-Level Job?
This is an excerpt from a CNN posting entitled "Is an Internship the New Entry-Level Job?" To read the entire article, click here.
(CNN) -- Ani Kevork has interned at seven companies since she graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2009. She's trying to get a full-time job, but there's just nothing out there.
"It wasn't really a choice," she said. "It's just the reality of the job market today."
No. 7 proved lucky for Kevork in that her current internship at a film studio in London is paid, unlike her six previous internships. Still, she has no benefits, no job security and no idea where she'll be in a few weeks.
Kevork and two of her former classmates started a blog, The Eternal Intern, about the struggles of the current job market for other college grads with the same plights.
"I want to do what I studied, and I don't want to settle," she said. "I'm still applying for full-time positions, but I don't see that happening anytime soon for me."
Like Kevork, a growing number of college graduates are forced into internships after graduation because of the lack of entry-level jobs. For now, it's important to take those internships, said Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State University's Collegiate Employment Research Institute.
"In this environment, if a young person gets an internship, I'd tell him to take it," Gardner said. "Not because he needs another internship, but because he needs to stay engaged in the labor market so that when jobs open, he can switch to a full-time position.
"You can't go home and sit and whine and wait for something to happen. This is one way to be proactive."
(CNN) -- Ani Kevork has interned at seven companies since she graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2009. She's trying to get a full-time job, but there's just nothing out there.
"It wasn't really a choice," she said. "It's just the reality of the job market today."
No. 7 proved lucky for Kevork in that her current internship at a film studio in London is paid, unlike her six previous internships. Still, she has no benefits, no job security and no idea where she'll be in a few weeks.
Kevork and two of her former classmates started a blog, The Eternal Intern, about the struggles of the current job market for other college grads with the same plights.
"I want to do what I studied, and I don't want to settle," she said. "I'm still applying for full-time positions, but I don't see that happening anytime soon for me."
Like Kevork, a growing number of college graduates are forced into internships after graduation because of the lack of entry-level jobs. For now, it's important to take those internships, said Phil Gardner, director of Michigan State University's Collegiate Employment Research Institute.
"In this environment, if a young person gets an internship, I'd tell him to take it," Gardner said. "Not because he needs another internship, but because he needs to stay engaged in the labor market so that when jobs open, he can switch to a full-time position.
"You can't go home and sit and whine and wait for something to happen. This is one way to be proactive."
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Memoirs of an Airport 'Writer in Residence'
Here is an excerpt from an article on a 'writer in residence' who lived for a time and wrote in London's Heathrow airport. To read the entire article, click here.
(CNN) -- The man at a check-in counter at London's Heathrow Airport lost it.
He had just made a frantic sprint to catch his flight to Tokyo, Japan, only to be told he was too late to board. So he banged his fists on the counter and let out a primal scream so loud that he could be heard at the other end of the terminal.
Alain de Botton was watching it all unfold -- one of the many human dramas he observed as Heathrow's first "writer-in-residence." The job required him to do what many travelers would dread: Spend a week at the airport.
Last year, at the invitation of the company that owns Heathrow, de Botton set up a desk in the departures hall of Terminal 5 (perhaps best known to many travelers for its massive baggage handling problems when it opened in 2008) and took in the sights of what he calls "the imaginative center of contemporary culture."
He also visited the factory where workers assemble thousands of airline meals every day, watched air traffic controllers follow the path of planes on a giant map "like parents worrying about their children" and contemplated the poetry of a room-service menu at his airport hotel, where the roar of a plane taking off once prompted a waiter to shout, "God help us!"
De Botton, a Swiss-born writer who lives in London, chronicles his experiences in "A Week at the Airport," an elegantly slim and funny book recently released in the United States.
Virgin Releases IPad-Only Magazine Project
Virgin Releases IPad-only Magazine, Project
By David Dahlquist, Macworld
At a New York City press conference on Tuesday, Virgin CEO Richard Branson and his editorial team from customer engagement agency Seven Squared showed off Virgin's new digital publication for iPad, Project.
Branson bills the publication as the "first truly digital magazine for creative people, by creative people." Its editorial sections will focus on technology, entrepreneurs, design, and entertainment, and will profile influential people in these fields.
Branson noted that the focus of the magazine will be on people who are important to their fields, rather than on celebrities and big name stars. Though, with Jeff Bridges adorning the first issue's cover, it's clear they've made room for marquee names as well.
Project's editor in chief, Anthony Noguera, said he believes the iPad is "the most exciting thing to happen in generations" for media; he describes Project as "an agenda-setting magazine that spotlights the people who are changing the world in large and small ways."
During the press conference, Noguera gave a live demonstration of the app. The "cover" of the magazine closely resembles a print magazine, but from that point on, the differences quickly become apparent. The publication takes full advantage of the iPad's gesture-based controls, and was clearly designed to maximize reader interaction.
You can take a virtual tour through Tokyo, led by five prominent city residents; you can view high-resolution photos of the new Jaguar concept car--and even listen to the sound of its engine purring; touch a picture of Jeff Bridges, and watch him come to life. This is what the future of print media should look like.
Project will also make heavy use of crowdsourcing and user-generated content for its stories--a contest to develop next month's cover design is already underway.
By completely abandoning print media in favor of a digital medium, Project will be free of the constraints of typical magazines--an advantage Branson clearly plans to build on. All content can be custom-tailored to capitalize on the iPad's interactive abilities. Even the advertisements will be designed to be as engaging as possible--something entrepreneur Branson is especially excited about.
The Project app is free, but each month's issue will cost $3 as an in-app purchase. Unlike traditional magazines, however, the content of each issue will evolve throughout the month, with updates made on a regular basis. The first issue, featuring Tron: Legacy actor Jeff Bridges, is available now.
By David Dahlquist, Macworld
At a New York City press conference on Tuesday, Virgin CEO Richard Branson and his editorial team from customer engagement agency Seven Squared showed off Virgin's new digital publication for iPad, Project.
Branson bills the publication as the "first truly digital magazine for creative people, by creative people." Its editorial sections will focus on technology, entrepreneurs, design, and entertainment, and will profile influential people in these fields.
Branson noted that the focus of the magazine will be on people who are important to their fields, rather than on celebrities and big name stars. Though, with Jeff Bridges adorning the first issue's cover, it's clear they've made room for marquee names as well.
Project's editor in chief, Anthony Noguera, said he believes the iPad is "the most exciting thing to happen in generations" for media; he describes Project as "an agenda-setting magazine that spotlights the people who are changing the world in large and small ways."
During the press conference, Noguera gave a live demonstration of the app. The "cover" of the magazine closely resembles a print magazine, but from that point on, the differences quickly become apparent. The publication takes full advantage of the iPad's gesture-based controls, and was clearly designed to maximize reader interaction.
You can take a virtual tour through Tokyo, led by five prominent city residents; you can view high-resolution photos of the new Jaguar concept car--and even listen to the sound of its engine purring; touch a picture of Jeff Bridges, and watch him come to life. This is what the future of print media should look like.
Project will also make heavy use of crowdsourcing and user-generated content for its stories--a contest to develop next month's cover design is already underway.
By completely abandoning print media in favor of a digital medium, Project will be free of the constraints of typical magazines--an advantage Branson clearly plans to build on. All content can be custom-tailored to capitalize on the iPad's interactive abilities. Even the advertisements will be designed to be as engaging as possible--something entrepreneur Branson is especially excited about.
The Project app is free, but each month's issue will cost $3 as an in-app purchase. Unlike traditional magazines, however, the content of each issue will evolve throughout the month, with updates made on a regular basis. The first issue, featuring Tron: Legacy actor Jeff Bridges, is available now.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Three Great Writers Born on This Day
It's the birthday of Louisa May Alcott, born in Germantown, Pennsylvania (1832). She's the author of Little Women (1868), a book that over the last century has been adapted into numerous stage plays, an opera, a Broadway musical, several Japanese anime films, and about a dozen Hollywood movies — including movies starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, and Claire Danes.
And this 1868 children's book inspired the novel that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize: Geraldine Brooks's March (2005), which is a retelling of Little Women, this time narrated by the girls' absent father. And in 2008, a dual biography of Louisa May Alcott and her dad won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. That book: John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (2007).
Little Women begins:
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
"We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words.
It's the birthday of the writer who said: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." That's C.S. Lewis, born in Belfast (1898), the author of the seven-volume children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the story of four children sent away from London because of wartime air raids. He also said, "Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
As a teenager, he went off to boarding school in England. He hated it there. He said that English accents sounded to him like the "voices of demons." Worst of all was the landscape; he first looked at it and in that moment, he said, "conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal." Also, he felt that his favorite poet, W.B. Yeats, — "an author exactly after [his] own heart" — was totally underappreciated in England. He wrote to a friend: "Perhaps his appeal is purely Irish — if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish." But despite all his disdain and contempt for England, he chose to live and teach at Oxford University for almost 30 years — while acquainting himself with other Irish people living in England as much as possible.
Besides fairy tales and children's classics, he wrote theological books, including The Screwtape Letters (1942), a novel in which a demon writes to his nephew; and The Great Divorce (1945), where residents of hell take a bus ride to heaven, and Mere Christianity (1952), based on talks he gave on the BBC during World War II.
C.S. Lewis said, "Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."
From the archives:
It's the birthday Madeleine L'Engle, born in New York City (1918), who struggled to find any success as a writer with novels about ordinary families and ordinary situations. But after reading about the ideas of Albert Einstein, she wrote a science fiction novel called A Wrinkle in Time (1962), about a group of children who have to rescue their father from a planet where individuality has been outlawed. The book was rejected by 26 different publishers, who all felt that it was too difficult for children but too fantastic for adults. But when it came out in 1962, the novel won the Newbery Medal, and it sells about 15,000 copies a year.
Madeleine L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
And this 1868 children's book inspired the novel that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize: Geraldine Brooks's March (2005), which is a retelling of Little Women, this time narrated by the girls' absent father. And in 2008, a dual biography of Louisa May Alcott and her dad won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. That book: John Matteson's Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father (2007).
Little Women begins:
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.
"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
"We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner.
The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words.
It's the birthday of the writer who said: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." That's C.S. Lewis, born in Belfast (1898), the author of the seven-volume children's series The Chronicles of Narnia, which begins with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the story of four children sent away from London because of wartime air raids. He also said, "Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
As a teenager, he went off to boarding school in England. He hated it there. He said that English accents sounded to him like the "voices of demons." Worst of all was the landscape; he first looked at it and in that moment, he said, "conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal." Also, he felt that his favorite poet, W.B. Yeats, — "an author exactly after [his] own heart" — was totally underappreciated in England. He wrote to a friend: "Perhaps his appeal is purely Irish — if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish." But despite all his disdain and contempt for England, he chose to live and teach at Oxford University for almost 30 years — while acquainting himself with other Irish people living in England as much as possible.
Besides fairy tales and children's classics, he wrote theological books, including The Screwtape Letters (1942), a novel in which a demon writes to his nephew; and The Great Divorce (1945), where residents of hell take a bus ride to heaven, and Mere Christianity (1952), based on talks he gave on the BBC during World War II.
C.S. Lewis said, "Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."
From the archives:
It's the birthday Madeleine L'Engle, born in New York City (1918), who struggled to find any success as a writer with novels about ordinary families and ordinary situations. But after reading about the ideas of Albert Einstein, she wrote a science fiction novel called A Wrinkle in Time (1962), about a group of children who have to rescue their father from a planet where individuality has been outlawed. The book was rejected by 26 different publishers, who all felt that it was too difficult for children but too fantastic for adults. But when it came out in 1962, the novel won the Newbery Medal, and it sells about 15,000 copies a year.
Madeleine L'Engle said, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children."
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