When winter leaves, Canadians, for the first time in months, can take their hands out of our pockets, straighten their shoulders and look up. No need to act like battering rams against the cold. The dog park is one of the first places I go to celebrate the glowing effects of the earth’s new position. […]
News really is getting mobile
Originally published in February 2015 in Blog
News organizations that have been focused on their online real estate — i.e. stuff they own, like their websites — need to start thinking more like train-hopping vagabonds. This means going homeless and filling their rucksacks with original stories formatted for mobile-only apps, then hitting the road and stopping at a variety of destinations along […]
Move over
Originally published in December 2014 in Blog
New technology has always been forcing us to change. Here is a priceless vignette by Doris Lessing about the introduction of the television set to the row houses of post-war London. [I]t was the summer of 1950. Before I left Denbigh Road I saw the end of an era, the death of a culture: television […]
Your reading brain ~ part deux
Originally published in September 2014 in Blog
Marcel Proust (above) defined deep reading as the moment when, “That which is the end of [the author’s] wisdom appears to us as the beginning of ours.” (1906) Book editor Peter Dimock took it one step further, calling deep reading, “A time of internal solitary consciousness.” (2010) Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust & […]
Think like a newsroom
Originally published in July 2014 in Blog
When my story pitches for magazines or newspapers tank, it’s usually because: 1. My story idea is lame. 2. The story is good, but my pitch sucks. 3. My editorial connections are too thin. 4. It’s already been done (and, tut tut, I should have known that). 5. It’s a good pitch, but the wrong magazine […]
More on loving your job
Originally published in June 2014 in Blog
He was all shiny and aquiline when he walked up to the lectern.* His face was pulled tighter than a drum. Jeff Koons, Julian Assange and Andy Warhol stood backstage and watched. Meanwhile, a team of caterers behind some swinging doors at the back were preparing to serve us His Menu of grilled salmon and […]
Language classes
Originally published in May 2014 in Blog
