Infographic: the writing process

Here's a fun graphic posted by British science writer Ed Yong to his Not Exactly Rocket Science blog that explains how he goes about writing a feature story (click on it to enlarge):

(By Ed Yong, Not Exactly Rocket Science)

Yong says he plotted his level of "enjoyment" in the task on the vertical axis; time is along the horizontal.

Can you relate to it?

Although Yong has a day job and does (award-winning) freelance writing on the side, the graphic isn't particular to the non-staff genre. Indeed, the highs and lows easily coincide to long-form newspaper reporting, from series to project to Sunday section front.

Feel free to chuckle at will.

New media, extinction, gridlock: Read!

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

It's the weekend. Time to wrap your brain around these ideas:

"New Journalism Ecosystem Thrives" (Investigative Reporting Workshop): The iLab, as it's called, a part of American University's School of Communication, set about chronicling the new nonprofit news operations that have risen as Old Media has declined. Charles Lewis, founder of the group, calls it a "living resource" in that it is a first pass at a list, with additions and corrections expected. One interesting finding: "Of the 60 nonprofit organizations profiled here, 38, or 63 percent, were begun just since 2006," he writes. And another: some two-thirds of the people who work full-time for these organizations once were employed at commercial enterprises. Be sure to click on the interactive map and the link to the detailed list of the nonprofits, complete with head-count and budget information.

Music video interlude: Because my daughter and I couldn't get far enough into the crowd at the Stewart-Colbert rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to see anything via JumboTron or hear everything we wanted to (over the constant chanting of "Louder, louder, LOUDER!" from those behind us.)

"NBCU: Old Is the New Young" (Mediaweek): Boomers, rejoice. You no longer are irrelevant once you hit the far side of the 25-54 demo. Now, says NBC Universal, 55-64 is just as important for advertisers as 18-34. And the company has even given the group a new name: AlphaBoomers. W00t!

"Launch of Newspaper Extinction Timeline for Every Country in the World" (Trends in the Living Networks): In case you want to keep track of how soon the newspaper (the ink-on-dead-trees variety) will disappear, futurist Ross Dawson has obliged with a color-coded map and graphic outlining "key factors" in their extinction. For the U.S., he predicts they'll be irrelevant by 2017; Canada isn't far behind at 2020. Unfortunately, some of the countries where newspapers are likely to hang on longer have also been identified as among the most dangerous for journalists, so moving there might not be a good career decision.

"10 Things I Wish I Knew about Freelancing a Year Ago" (Adam Westbrook): Westbrook, a radio broadcaster turned multimedia journalist, offers lessons from his 12 months as a freelancer. You'll need to click over to a French site to get the actual list, but the tips are in English. (Is it just me, or do some of them sound more negative than positive: "Being underpaid sucks"; "Cold-calling does not work"?) Words to the wise in any event.

Bonus video: Last week, I attended a day-long program in Washington, D.C., put on by the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, a group that offers free training to business reporters. (Disclosure: I've taken several of their courses in the past year; I'm a fan.) Our lunch speaker was Ezra Klein of The Washington Post, who coordinates Wonkbook, a blog about economic and public policy. His talk, pre-election, focused on how partisan Congress had become -- particularly the Senate -- and predicted "less and less will get done" with a new Congress in which each party controls a house. The Reynolds Center taped his talk. Listen for his discussion of the predicted gridlock beginning at about 3:50.

Saving freelancing, one writer at a time

In the spirit of the aphorism "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness," one freelancer is helping another break away from so-called content mills in order to make a living from writing.

You may recall that early in the year, the Los Angeles Times wrote about the sorry state of freelance pay. In part, the article blamed the recession for cutting the budgets at newspapers and magazines that use freelancers. But it also cited the likes of Associated Content and Demand Media, companies that use armies of freelancers to fill vast websites with how-to and other service pieces.

"Seasoned professionals have seen their income drop by 50 percent or more as publishers fill the Web's seemingly limitless news hole, drawing on the ever-expanding rank of under-employed writers," said the LA Times.

Indeed, an oft-cited reference to Demand shows that the freelance copy editors it uses to read through all those stories for its website are paid $3.50 per piece.

And Demand isn't alone: A quick check of my local Craigslist found a freelance offer from a travel website that pays $20 for a minimum 1,000-word article -- or 2 cents a word. (Compare that to a regional magazine in my area that pays 30 cents a word for freelance feature stories of 2,000 to 4,000 words -- or up to $1,200.)

The trend toward lower pay so infuriated one freelancer that she penned a couple of anti-content mill pieces and called on others to steer clear of Demand and its brethren.

Then, in the spring, came the offer from Jenn Mattern, a freelance writer since 1999 and niche blogger since 2004 who operates a website that provides advice and assistance to freelancers. Her proposal: free one-on-one coaching "to help a freelance writer move beyond content-mill work to something better."

She selected a "winner" from among the pitches received, and has been blogging weekly about the "student's" progress in branding herself via a new website; soliciting clients who will pay at least 25 cents a word for her work; creating a marketing plan; and so on.

It's interesting reading. Will it inspire others to leave the content mills (and perhaps rescue freelancing)? Maybe -- or maybe not. But at least those who do exit will have a road map to follow.

Doing the hustle for a writing gig

I'm late to the party here, but I'll say in my own defense that the phrase would have washed over me a year ago. Today, it has meaning: The Gig Economy.

Tina Brown and The Daily Beast apparently coined it when the online news and entertainment site, headed by Brown, reported in January 2009 that workers on higher rungs of the career ladder were "hustling" -- working multiple jobs to make ends meet. They no longer were employed in the traditional sense -- one 9-to-5 job offering paid vacation and other benefits -- but instead worked gigs that involved putting together multiple projects to make "the nut" of ongoing expenses.

Brown used the term again this afternoon during a panel discussion held (and webcast) as part of the forum "Transforming Journalism: The State of the News Media 2010." Staged at George Washington University in D.C., it drew students in person, online and through Twitter, and offered them this nugget retweeted (#SoNM) around Twitterdom: "Don't let your parents say you shouldn't go into journalism. You're the ones to reinvent it."

Maybe, but first let's revisit the Gig Economy and do a little back-of-the-envelope mathematics.

For most Americans, the traditional 40-hour workweek remains, The Daily Beast said in its 2009 report. "But fully one-third of Americans in our survey are now working either freelance or two jobs, with nearly one in two (45%) taking on these additional positions in the last six months."

And what's more, "by and large, these new alternative workers are not low-income -- they are college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year," it said.

In other words, they paid the entrance fee to climb the career ladder, but now find they're no better off than their paycheck-to-paycheck brethren who didn't go to college.

The survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, a Washington, D.C.-based market research firm, involved 500 interviews via the Internet with U.S. workers aged 18 and older. (See survey results here.)

According to The Daily Beast, the Great Recession bears some blame: "This shift toward freelance and multiple jobs ... is being exacerbated by the economic crisis." But this time, it's not only those on the lower rungs of the ladder who are having to hustle to adapt. They're being joined by middle- and upper-class workers who are "being asked to do more for the same or less pay, to work more outside of normal hours --and are more likely to see layoffs around them."

For journalists laid off in the past few years as newspapers cut expenses to fight declining ad sales, freelance gigs often were the answer. Some wrote for new entities created to pick up what legacy media jettisoned or never did well; others helped slimmed-down newsrooms keep coverage going.

The Daily Beast (late 2008) and GlobalPost (early 2009) were founded in this period. Both use freelancers, who are paid $250 to $350 per story -- a one-day, quick-turnaround piece, Brown and Global Post Executive Editor Charlie Sennott said today.

That's better than the freelance pay offered by others, but if I wanted to use either gig to earn anywhere near $75,000 a year, I'd have to really hustle. At $250 a pop, I'd have to write one story a day for 300 days over the course of a year to earn that kind of income -- meaning I'd be working many seven-day weeks to accomplish it.

For $85,000 annually, I'd have to produce a story daily for 340 days each year; for $100,000, a story a day for 400 days -- or more than the 365 days that comprise a year. It's hyperbole, of course, but you get the point.

So did Frank Sesno, director of George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, who moderated the panel: "This model is not going to sustain a journalist" once he or she is no longer a fresh-faced newbie but has a mortgage and kids.

That's one place where those who will reinvent journalism can lend a hand: Get us away from this gig model and back to one requiring less hustling.

(GWU's School of Media and Public Affairs promises video clips of today's discussion and a full transcript by week's end.)

What price better-paid journalists?

Leonard Witt, founder and executive director of the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, has posted a video interview on YouTube in which Lisa George, an assistant professor and empirical economist at Hunter College in New York City, talks about her belief that there will be fewer but better paid journalists in the future.



Did you catch her point about "superstar" journalists? That "some of the best reporters, and the most insightful commentary, will come from fewer and fewer sources. But," she says, "these reporters will have national reputations, and those reputations will be well-financed, both from media itself and also from books and speaking engagements."

A shiver just ran down my spine.

George spoke about the same thing last month in a workshop held in Washington, D.C., by the Federal Trade Commission on the future of journalism in the Internet age. (You can see a webcast of her presentation here, at about 1:12:43 into the afternoon session on the second day of the program. Read the pdf transcript here.)

Her argument is that technology has given newspaper readers many more choices than they had with traditional ink on paper, and that will push journeyman scribes out of the marketplace as papers disappear. But it will elevate to superstar status those with expertise offering analysis and commentary.

At the FTC workshop, George seemed to suggest there will be no market in the future for local news -- "hyperlocal" coverage (news at the neighborhood level) most recently was the lifeline at which many ad-revenue-starved newspapers grasped -- so the reporters who become expert at big-picture national and international issues will see their stock (and paychecks) rise.

(The lesser reporters, I guess, will make their living in the future earning micropayments as freelancers. George told the FTC she was "a big proponent of micropayments -- penny per click," which is one business model now being tried by an ever-growing number of online-only media companies that use free-lanced copy to fill their sites.)

Witt, George's YouTube interviewer, also is chief blogger at PJNet.org, site of the Public Journalism Network, which is described as "a virtual global network of journalists, educators and lay people interested in exploring and strengthening the relationship between journalism and democracy."

You'll note Witt's interjection asking George whether the creation of superstars is "a good thing or a bad thing for the public square?" -- with "public square" generally meaning the place in a democracy where the exchange of ideas occurs. (Some say that role is shifting to blogs and the Internet.)

"It’s generally a very good thing because people can read more and better stuff," responds George.

The "more" I can understand, but I still need convincing about the "better."