I’ll be honest with y’all, when they miked me up(!) I was a little nervous, but I think I did pretty well.

The moderator, Vocus’ Bill Wagner, asked a couple questions that got me thinking, though.

Bill wanted to know more about the mediabistro cocktail party I went to last year where an all-too-aggressive PR person wanted to engage in some mutual back-scratching. Essentially, for those who don’t remember (it was a year ago, after all), the flack offered me work writing press releases in exchange for favorable coverage of one of her clients.

I still get the shivers thinking about it.

Anyway, that was on my mind last week when I attended another mediabistro mixer (and I was honestly somewhat dreading that I’d run into this woman again, but I can’t even remember what she looked like at this point).

(Side note: Last year, I’m pretty sure there were a few comped appies. This year, not so much. And they say the media are bouncing back! Pah!)

I was chatting with a freelance friend of mine, saying something like, “Wow, the turnout is so much higher quality than last year–last year I just met sharks.” and explained the issue with the aggressive flack.

He said that that sort of thing happens all the time in the music freelance industry.

I’ve hardly covered music. It’s just not my thing (though I did write about Ted Leo’s new album once), so I had no idea. But his claim is that it’s totally common for a music freelancer to get good coverage for some album and then be offered work writing press releases for that label. The thing about music, I guess, is that much of it is assigned rather than pitched, because a magazine says “Oh, we have to do something about the new Vampire Weekend album” rather than waiting for a writer to say “Hey, I’ve got a feature on a great band nobody’s ever heard of.” Which means, I suppose, that you’re less likely to benefit from having done PR work for a label…other than by getting paid way more than you do for writing a music review. Which is why it’s so tempting.

An informal poll of my journalism and music friends garnered reactions ranging from “Ugh” to “That makes me feel weird but I completely understand it.”

So the issue of ethics and freelance is more thorny than I had initially thought. Sure, there are folks I know who cover both sides (journalism and marketing/PR), and do it well. But the rules are different, it appears, depending on what you’re actually writing about. Surely other beats—like energy policy or something that Actually Matters—frown on freelancers moonlighting for the American Clean Coal Institute.

I’ve done almost no marketing work, though once I wrote a fawning article for an internal company newsletter that paid very well (and gave me a bit of a suntan, as a bonus). I’m not sure how editors feel about writers who work both sides, but I would certainly want to disclose any connections I had before pitching an article to a newspaper or magazine.

I hope that, at least, is standard.

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As part of that goal, I’ve added a bunch of agent blogs and writing blogs to my RSS reader, figuring I can kill two birds with one stone by doing so: learning more about the publishing industry as well as learning which agents I may want to query, plus getting my name out there by leaving comments/participating in discussions. Win-win situation for everyone.

And now a well-known blogger has asked me to guest post for him! That was fast, as it’s only, uh, 5 days into 2010.

I won’t say who yet because we’re still working out the details, but this is fantastic news!

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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 story came out.

I’ll be taking the month of December off, and then will spend January and February writing Book Two.

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Meranda of Meranda Writes posts her outlining method here. It’s analog and oldschool, but effective…she writes each “fact” on a post-it note sliver and rearranges.

I did something like this when working on “Home,” but I had already written a draft. So instead, I printed out the draft and physically cut the paper into sections. Luckily, my first draft was organized enough that each paragraph or so was self-contained, so the cutting was easy.

I’ve also just discovered a freeware program called XMind which I’ve only been using for about 24 hours, but which I enjoy very much so far.

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Despite the totally different audiences and topics, the books are fundamentally about the same thing: You, you brilliant snowflake you, can break out of the molds The Man’s put you in and do your own thing. Money, by the way, is not an issue.

The books take totally opposite tacks, though. The Four-Hour Workweek seems to extol the ideas of selling a product—and doing whatever you can to let that product sell itself while you take a bite of the profits. Whether that means hiring a bookkeeper or outsourcing your entire operation, you want to own a thing and make money from that thing.

Be The Media talks about self-publishing for authors, self-distribution for musicians, and so forth, but those products—those things—are a means to an end. The end is some service you provide: in the case of writing, your “service” is usually a seminar or workshop or consulting.

Both these models are tempting..who doesn’t want to have piles of cash to roll around in? But neither leaves much room for writers. Someone who wants to create something for its own sake, not as a promotional vehicle for a seminar. The Four-Hour Workweek’s model is more promising, but a writer can’t hire someone else to write for her. (Unless, again, the written product is a means to an end, not an end in itself.)

I apologize in advance for the wretched portmanteau, but what would a true writerpreneur look like?

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Wasserman offers up some rules he thinks media organizations should cleave to, and I couldn’t agree more:
1. Presume good faith.

2. Be clear on the principles at stake.

3. Actively encourage recusals.

4. Require internal disclosure.

5. Get people to talk about this.

6. Tell the public when appropriate.

7. Police others.

What else would you add to the list?

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I was at a media professionals mixer the other day, chatting with a number of TV journalists and writers. Then I saw a woman making her way through the crowd, staring at nametags. She grabbed this guy behind me whose tag read “Freelance” and pushed him into some sort of conversation. A minute later, though, she was on the prowl again—and she latched on to me.

Our conversation went a bit like this:
“Are you looking for more writing work? I sometimes use freelancers to write press releases.”
I consider telling her flat-out that I don’t “do” PR, but think about it for a minute. If her clients were people I would never write about from a journalistic perspective—and if it was made clear that I would never write about anyone I wrote a press release for, plus a few other rules, it’s POSSIBLE I could have done this while still preserving my integrity.
Her: And what do you write about?
I tell her I’ve been focused on careers, especially those in the media industry. I tell her I’ve written for the Post and for Express.
She tells me about her client. Then she says: “I’ll forward you more information about my client. Maybe you’ll want to write about her for one of the publications you write for, and who knows what that could lead to, if you know what I mean? I can tell you’re a serious writer.”

Wait, is she actually offering to give me work as a freelance flack in exchange for good coverage? She is.

She leaves me shocked and speechless.

The next day I get a phone call from her. I tell her that I’m not comfortable with the way she approached me and thus am going to have to decline her pitch.

“What do you mean? Apparently I said something you don’t like.”

We beat around the bush for a while until it’s clear she’s going to continue to play dumb. “Ellen*, you were pretty obviously offering me work in exchange for favorable coverage.”

She huffs. “I’m not offering you a JOB. It would only be a little work writing press releases here and there. And I’m sorry that you thought that was implied.”

Notice she didn’t actually correct me. Or really apologize in any sort of sincere manner.

The really sad part? I probably would have written about her client. She had a pitch that was totally targeted toward what I’ve been working on lately. And if she had just approached me like a normal human being she would have gotten a lot farther.

*Not her real name, duh.

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rating: 4 of 5 stars
A fascinating study of words *as people actually use them.* Most books on language do not have the power of the Corpus behind them, which is what makes Damp Squid so special.



This book is written for a British English audience, which means that even hardcore linguaphiles like myself will be kept slightly off-balance the entire time. Even during the introductory, English-comes-from-German-and-1066-blah-blah-blah portions you won’t find yourself bored (unless you’ve also studied British English, I guess).



The origin of the title, apparently a common phrase across the pond, isn’t glossed until Chapter 6. Or an exercise in collocation–”What word most naturally comes at the end of this sentence?” isn’t as dead simple for American English speakers as it would have been for Brits.



Have a very basic knowledge of Brit slang before going into this, or be willing to Google: if you don’t know what a chav or a lorry is, you may be thrown a little too much off balance.



Definitely recommended for any word lovers.


View all my reviews.

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My Tuesday posts have been lacking, I know, but that’s because I’ve started blogging at mediabistro.com’s MediaJobsDaily.

So instead of a list of markets and freelance opportunities this week, I’d like to highlight a few tech tools I’ve found indispensable for my new role as breaking-news-blogger and social media maven.

• Twitlet – I love this little bookmarklet for its ability to post to any Twitter account without having to log in.
• CoLT :: Firefox Add-ons – for easier copying and pasting of links.
• SpliTweet – for monitoring brand mentions and @replies across multiple twitter accounts. Love it.
• Compfight – lovely interface for searching flickr creative commons.
• And good old Applescript. I don’t know where I’d be without Applescript. Y’all on Macs, don’t be afraid of coding: it’s easy to start and very, very powerful. Apple’s tutorials are here; there’s plenty more around the Web.

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