03 December 2014
Intro to Journalism
One of my favorite online writers is Anne Helen Petersen. She used to write for The Hairpin and on her own blog while working as a professor, but recently she was hired full-time at Buzzfeed. This essay is about her first six months on the job, and the transition from academia to journalism:
"I came back with 10,000 words of copy, because why wouldn’t the reported version be as lengthy as the first? My editors told me to cut 2,000 because people only read 10,000 words when the name Ta-Nehisi Coates is on the byline. I hemmed and hawed and stared at the screen and did it. They asked for a better lede. I googled 'lede.' I made a better lede."
"I came back with 10,000 words of copy, because why wouldn’t the reported version be as lengthy as the first? My editors told me to cut 2,000 because people only read 10,000 words when the name Ta-Nehisi Coates is on the byline. I hemmed and hawed and stared at the screen and did it. They asked for a better lede. I googled 'lede.' I made a better lede."
Labels: Anne Helen Petersen
# posted by mamurd @ 9:27 PM 
