The strongest kind of news writing–and writing in general, really–uses strong, active words and imagery. When given a choice between verbs that convey movement or action (even if you’re writing about a school board meeting or something equally uninspiring) or words that are static or bureaucratic, always pick the more active. For example, this is the limp, lame, motionless version: School board president Martin Smith questioned Superintendant Barbara Jones about a new school bullying initiative, and requested more information about the district’s planned implementation. And this is the active, vivid version: School board president Martin Smith grilled Superintendent Barbara Jones about a new school bullying...
There will be 166 street fairs in Manhattan this year… down just a hair from 168 last year. But really, who’s counting? They’re still great fun for those of us who love street food and cheap wallets and people watching. (And still an annoyance for cab drivers and others who find them a hindrance to getting around town.) Here, once again, is my annual Manhattan Street Fair schedule and map. As always, the information is here to help you find them or avoid them, depending on your inclination. And, of course, I once again include the standard disclaimers. The information is presented as is, without...
Another year, come and gone, with no posts. Some day, I’ll figure out what this blog is for–but until then, it makes a good home for my annual Manhattan Street Fair schedule and map. As always, the information is here to help you find them or avoid them, depending on your inclination. And, of course, I once again include the standard disclaimers. The information is presented as is, without any warranties, and always with the possibility that the event producers may change their plans at the last minute. There are a few outer-borough fairs, mainly gay prides. If anyone is interested in adding in a more...
This, unfortunately, has become my annual post to my old blog. But at least I write that much. It’s time again, ladies and gentlemen, to remind you of my annual effort at compiling and presenting all of Manhattan’s street fairs for the year. As always, the information is here to help you find them or avoid them, depending on your inclination. And, of course, I once again include the standard disclaimers. The information is presented as is, without any warranties, and always with the possibility that the event producers may change their plans at the last minute. Also, tracking just Manhattan’s street fairs is enough...
Love ’em or hate ’em. If you live in New York City–particularly, in Manhattan–you cannot escape them. From May through October, there are at least three of four every weekend–sometimes more. With several exceptions, they all have the same food vendors (sometimes with four or five booths scattered along a single fair!). They all have the same craft-and-T-shirt booths. But they are also–to me–a lot of fun. I go to at least two a month for the fresh-cut watermelon and/or mango, for the Mozzarepas, and for the unparalleled people watching. But it’s okay with me if you hate them, find them disruptive, whatever. This map...
Whether, like me, you love street fairs or, like some New Yorkers, you hate them, this is the only map I know of that collects all of Manhattan’s street events into one place so you can find (or avoid) them. This year’s NYC Street Fair map looks quite a bit different from previous years: Google’s newly-launched Maps Engine was intended to make creating your own map–like my annual NYC street fair map–simpler and more powerful. But in practice, it meant essentially re-doing my map from scratch (almost) to produce something that, in the end, would be more cluttered and confusing for the user. So...
Another spring has arrived with its showers sweet, and so has another edition of my annual New York City Street Fair Map and List. Full Google My Map with event listings in chronological order Like last year, I made this year’s map by editing the previous year’s. But to fix some glitches, I actually hand edited the kml file. Now the dates and other descriptive material will (I hope) appear correctly in the mobile version of Google Maps, and the color codes for each month will be consistent. For those viewing the map in Google Maps Mobile, please note that only the 100 events closest...
I still love New York City street fairs, and I still find these maps very handy for getting my weekly dose, so I wanted to make one for 2012. There’s a lot of work involved in collating the dates and locations from several web sites, and there’s no straightforward way around that. But I was hoping to at least automate the process of mapping that data. I looked around at several different systems for doing this and concluded that Google Fusion Tables would be the best tool. It comes in two tiers: simple UI platform and more a complex and powerful API platform. Unfortunately, I...
Time now for another resource on pronunciation, the news announcer’s abiding obsession. For this one, you have to set your wayback machine to 1857, the publication date of Elias Longley’s Pronouncing Vocabulary of Geographical and Personal Names, available (in the public domain) through Google Books. As the name suggests, this 205 page work contains extensive lists of pronunciations for place names, then personal names, then a shorter catalog of scriptural names. Because of its long-ago publication date, the book–especially the personal names part–is useful mainly for names of note at or prior to the mid-nineteenth century. It also uses an obsolete typographic phonography system (lots...
One of Google’s many boons to foreign reporting has been its Google Translate service. There are several ways to access it. Google searches, for example, include a “Translate” link for any website that’s detected as being in a foreign language. And if you use Google Toolbar in your browser, it will put a ‘Translate’ control bar at the top of any page you visit that’s detected as being in a foreign language (including some that aren’t really foreign). If neither of those cases apply to you, you can just go to the Google Translate page and type the URL of the foreign language website into...
How numbers are written out is one of the quickest ways to determine at a glance whether copy is intended for print/online or for broadcast. Numbers in broadcast scripts, in most cases, look nothing like those you’re used to reading on the page/screen, for the simple reason that the broadcast writer tries to relieve the news announcer of as much mental effort as possible, so she can concentrate on diction and performance. In short, you want to remove all the speed bumps that inhibit the anchor’s comprehension. Also, spelling out numbers helps to get a more accurate time calculation from computerized word- or character-counting systems....
Thousands, no, tens of thousands of words have been written about how to write a news lede (or lead, or leed). Whole forests have been felled. So rather than recap a lot of that same information, let me suggest you get the basics by visiting some of the sites linked to in the lede sentence of this post, and instead I will just offer a few supplemental thoughts of my own. If you haven’t already, go read my previous post on the use of tense in ledes. Likewise, my post on names in ledes. Now, in addition: A lede should always feature the ‘grabbiest’ element...
I’ve never had to actually file a Freedom of Information request. But I’ve come close enough in the past that I had to research how to do it. Behold, the Federal Open Government Guide, published by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. It includes a very detailed but easy-to-read guide on what FOIA is, how it works, and how to formulate and file a request. To make it truly easy as pie (or PopTarts™), you’ll find on this page a link to a tick-the-boxes automated request letter generator for federal and state FOIA requests. If I ever do need to file a FOIA...
We’ve already taken some time to talk about tense (especially as it relates to the lede), but I wanted to spend an additional minute on the special case of the verb “to say.” In general, the preferred tense for verbs of expression (say, claim, note, etc.) in broadcast newswriting is the straight present. 20-year-old Tim Spriggs says, “We need a gay-straight alliance at St. John’s for the same reason that there are organizations for other minorities.” This works most of the time, because most often we’re describing a recent statement that reflects the speaker’s current views (as above), or the current state of affairs. But...
Because it actually has two quite different meanings, one of them loaded, the phrase ‘so-called’ is particularly tricky to use in news copy, where we’re supposed to be neutral. Most people know without thinking about it that ‘so-called’ has two meanings. Both are a spoken way to signal quotation marks. But the first signals jargon the listener may not be familiar with, or sometimes an imposed nickname, as in this example. Republican Stacey Campfield is the sponsor of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill–it’s the same measure he unsuccessfully pushed for six years as a member of the state House. The second meaning is the...
