This was on the dessert stand in the cafeteria at lunch:
I did not eat any of them, nor did I even try to use my standard rationale: I ran five miles this morning. I can eat a cake. I think it was something about the message. Why does one eat love? How does one eat faith? You could go the metaphorical route, aim for the biblical teaching or, like me, just be a little weirded out by pink icing.
If you stare at those for a second you realize someone wrote all of those out by hand. That’s another thing. How do you expect me to eat that? You wrote faith on a cake square and now I devour it in two bites?
And what of the hope? 1 Corinthians is hardly complete without it.
Man, this is a great diet plan I’ve discovered, huh?
So, yeah, five miles. I can do six miles, no problem. (I do not know what is happening … ) I once knocked out eight miles around the neighborhood, with a fair bit of walking in it. But, still, eight miles. Here’s the problem: I need something to ward off the boredom. Around mile six I’m just ready to move on. Any tips?
Things to read … because you can always find helpful tips if you read enough.
I’m a big fan of making sure students never ask a rhetorical question in their copy. There are times it works. Too often, though, it leads to things like this non sequitur, “Are you a Red Bull Drinker? Do you want to be?” Red Bull Settlement: How to claim your piece of $13 million
There’s a great line in this story, which is always a difficult one to tell, Jury hears emotional testimony from Leonard’s father during sentencing hearing:
Wright, who wore clothes he borrowed from Leonard, pleaded with the court to spare his son, who is facing the death penalty for fatally shooting three people and wounding three others during a party at the former University Heights apartment complex on June 9, 2012.
The dad is in and out of prison, he tells the judge and jury he was never really in his son’s life. He’s actually been hauled to this hearing from his prison sentence. And he’s had to borrow his son’s clothes. The reporter told me he’d noticed that the tie was familiar. He’d seen the defendant, and now his father, wear it. That’s the sort of reporting you can’t get over the phone or in a rewrite. Message: Go to the place you’re writing about.
The trend continues, Marketwatch editor: Most stories will now be less than 400 words:
We need to reshape how markets and financial stories are told to better reflect how they are consumed. What do I mean by that? Like most news sites, MarketWatch still leans too heavily on the 750-word story — a legacy of print newspapers that has outlived its usefulness. We want to go shorter – and longer.
The majority of our stories will soon be under 400 words — breaking everything down into short bursts of news and insight that cut straight to what is most important to readers, without all the empty calories and filler journalists love to stuff in the sausage . We will also do longer, deep dives on important stories that warrant such treatment. This is the way the digital news is going: tall and venti, no more grande.
Let’s play ‘Can you find all the snippy bits?’ The “priesthood” is real and we do not need another one.
Perhaps you’ve seen a list like this before. This one has alternatives! And, yes, it has a gif, but it is from “Princess Bride,” so it gets a pass. So many qualifiers! 5 weak words copywriters and bloggers should avoid (and what to use instead).
Mobile news consumption hits the tipping point:
Now that mobile traffic is at or near 50% at many newspapers, editors and publishers need to put ever more of their thinking – and resources – into optimizing products, content and advertising for not only smartphones and tablets but also for such emerging devices as smart watches, smart televisions and whatever smart stuff comes next. As discussed below, mobile publishing is as distinct from web publishing as web publishing is from web printing.
And it is happening fast, too, as expected. (For a few years now I’ve noted that the mobile move was one thing that was outpacing the web’s legendary rapid adaptability.)
Well now, CDC Director on Ebola: ‘The Only Thing Like This Has Been AIDS’.
And, to end on a happy note, this is a video package worth watching:
I had to look four different places to find an embeddable version of that story, but it was worth it.
