Rachel Kaufman, freelance reporter

I'm an interrogator of gargoyle lovers, frog fondlers, and the eternal optimists saving the news industry. These are some of the stories I've written.

Blog

Lessons From the Library of Congress for Researchers

By • Jan 20th, 2012 • Category: Blog

Three buildings, two librarians, and six hours into my first “real” Library of Congress visit, I’m no closer to getting the research done that I wanted to do. When you’re doing science writing it’s only common sense to look at the literature that’s out there. Most of the time I can access the academic journals [...]



The Ultimate High School Curriculum

By • Oct 6th, 2011 • Category: Blog

Inspired by The Oatmeal’s fantastic take on high school classes I began thinking about what the most useful classes I took in high school were. Besides the hard science courses, which have turned out to be serendipitously useful (but I really can’t suggest everyone run out and take physics just because they might decide to [...]



Taking My Own Advice: BACKUP!

By • Aug 10th, 2011 • Category: Blog

I almost lost my entire blog last week. Something (I have theories about what) somehow managed to corrupt my WordPress database, erasing every entry since 2008. That’s pretty much all my clips and everything “important.” My webhost apparently makes automatic backups of the database but deletes them after only a few days. I didn’t notice [...]



Off to Austin, See You There!

By • Mar 9th, 2011 • Category: Blog

I fly out to Austin for SXSW tomorrow, a day early, but then the craziness starts in earnest soon after. Heading down? Hit me up on Twitter and maybe we’ll meet up. I wasn’t super excited about a lot of the proposed panels at first, but with a little digging I’ve found a significant number [...]



You Wanna Write A ‘Me Too’ Story? Fine, But Get Your Own Sources

By • Oct 22nd, 2010 • Category: Blog

This blog is turning into a place to vent. Today I want to vent about poaching sources. A few times I’ve been contacted by people saying very nice, flattering things about something I’d written lately, followed by “can you tell me who you talked to to write the story because I’m doing one on the [...]



Testing MacJournal

By • Sep 23rd, 2010 • Category: Blog

I’m testing out MacJournal, from Mariner Software. It’s an offline blog editing client that works with WordPress and a few other blog hosts. I’m told that it even works with WordPress.com (i.e., you don’t have to have a self-hosted blog to use the client.) The software is a hefty $40, but there’s a 15-day free [...]



Coding, coding, and more coding

By • Sep 16th, 2010 • Category: Blog

I’ve finally gotten my website to a state where I’m happy with it..for now, though in a few months I’m sure the renovation bug will hit me again. Some people buy new curtains, I play with style sheets. It does give me satisfaction to use that side of my brain, which isn’t always taxed (or [...]



Freelance Ethics Part 2

By • Jun 22nd, 2010 • Category: Blog

I had the opportunity earlier this month to be a panelist at the Vocus User Conference here in Washington DC. All the flacks wanted to hear what the Future of Media looks like from a freelance perspective…and out of all the freelancers in the DC area, they chose me. I’m humbled. I’ll be honest with [...]



Social Media Success

By • Jan 5th, 2010 • Category: Blog

As some of you already know, this year I’m making the transition from “writer, editor, and blogger” to “writer, editor, blogger, and author. That’s right. I am gonna sell a book this year, darn it! As part of that goal, I’ve added a bunch of agent blogs and writing blogs to my RSS reader, figuring [...]



Nanowrimo 2009

By • Nov 30th, 2009 • Category: Blog

That’s right, folks, I’ve finished Nanowrimo 2009 with a steampunk story starring the spunkiest wrench wench ever to walk the streets of New Bombay. Considering the speed at which I churned out either 50,419 words or 50,093 words (depending on whether you believe Nanowrimo’s word counter or Scrivener‘s), I’m actually happy with the way the [...]