I’m negative about appositives
It’s often said about broadcast writing that it should sound conversational, but what usually goes unsaid are all the little technical things and thoughtful phrasing that go into giving written prose the feel of conversation. Those techniques will be a large part of my emphasis here. One such important ‘rule’ (in quotes because, once well understood, rules can be treated as guidelines and cheerfully broken to achieve a desired effect) is avoiding appositives. An appositive is a word or phrase, set off by commas, that further describes the noun it follows. For example: John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is now...
That’s quite a dangling attribution you’ve got there
One of the most common problems I see in newbie broadcast newswriting, especially among those who have prior print newswriting experience, is the dreaded ‘dangling attribution.’ That’s where the who-said part of a quote ‘dangles’ off the end. For example: “That’s the last time we shoot first and ask questions later,” said Sheriff Williams. This is one of those rare never, never, nevers in broadcast writing, for two simple reasons. First, it isn’t conversational. No one in the history of ever has used this construction in conversation (okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much). The second, related reason is that it...
I’m relaunching this diary as a Journalism Blog
So it turns out that, for a journalist, I’m not very good at keeping a daily journal. Perhaps that’s because even I was bored by the minutiae of my daily life. Imagine how the readers of this blog (if there were any) felt. In the meantime, for the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking that there ought to be a way for me to share some of the practical wisdom about journalism that I’ve acquired over 25 years in the business. I’ve been ramming it down the throats of the unsuspecting interns who I train here at Sirius OutQ. But perhaps there are some...
Gay journalists, cough cough
I would have posted about my great time at the NLGJA convention sooner, but I’ve been sick for ten days (more on that in a moment.) Now that I’m feeling a bit better, it’s time to catch up. Noel and I spent a few days in Miami Beach earlier this month at the 2006 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association national convention. The programming at the convention was about like usual, but we had a great time because the Loews Miami Beach is such a spectacular venue for a convention. In addition to beautiful lobbies, rooms, restaurants, and fabulous service, the Loews also has a...
To the Berkshires and back again
The weekend before last I joined my friends Marty and Michael, and their new Jack-Beagle puppy Zoe for a weekend in the upstate New York Berkshire Mountains (photo gallery).We rented part of a horse country cabin, cooked, ate, slept, geocached in nearby Massachusetts, and swam in the pool. It was lovely and very relaxing. The only fly in the ointment was that Noel couldn’t come; he’s been so busy lately that I haven’t seen as much of him as I want. But that problem got some attention this weekend. Noel and I spent the whole weekend together. We sent to a Judy Holliday film festival...
DC Day Trip
Noel and I made a quick day trip to Washington, DC, last Sunday for the 50th birthday of Noel’s longtime friend Bob (co-celebrated with the birthday of Bob’s partner, Alex; both pictured here). The party itself was a lot of fun, and a chance to meet numerous new and interesting people. The same cannot be said of the roundtrip drive from New York to DC and back again — 9 hours in all. But Noel, God bless him, drove both ways (I had a little too much sangria and champagne to drive the return leg as planned). So all in all, a good party.
R & R
I took a day off work after I came back from covering the Gay Games in Chicago, but it wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. So I’m now taking a four-day weekend — and just staying home, taking care of a few errands, and watching some videos. In a way, I feel like I’m kind of wasting precious vacation days by putting myself under house arrest instead of travelling. But on the other hand, I have lots of comp days saved up (mostly from working company holidays that fall on weekdays when we still do the news)… and what I really need is a vacation from...
Gay Games Closing Ceremonies (& celebutante dinner)
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: What a great show. Gay Games Chicago organizers took account of the feedback from the Opening Ceremonies, which many people felt were too long and boring. They ruthlessly cut speeches and other ‘fat’ from the Closing Ceremonies rundown, so it really zipped right along, actually ending slightly under its planned three-hour run time. And unlike the Opening Ceremonies, the weather at Wrigley Field was bee-youtiful — clear, relatively dry, and about 79 degrees, with a slight breeze off nearby Lake Michigan. The performances were uniformly good. I especially loved Cyndi Lauper, dressed as a rainbow Statue of...
Watching the Pink Flamingoes
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: I’ve been at the Sirius studios in the Chicago Hilton for a lot of the week, making sure that all of our correspondents’ reports get on the air. Haven’t had as much of a chance to get out to Gay Games events as I would have liked. But finally, as we’ve gotten caught up on our production, I was able last night to see the famed Pink Flamingoes event at the Flames Natatorium (i.e. competitive diving pool) at the Univ of Illinois Chicago campus. This event happens at each Gay Games, and I understand, at national gay...
Gay Band Concert at the Park
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: The horrible heat wave has broken here in Chicago. It was actually pleasantly cool(er) and breezy tonight for the lovely Gay Games band concert in the amazing Frank Ghery-designed Millennium Park band shell. Naturally, nothing so sublime could go completely unsmirched. At the exit from the park, the self-deluded hypocrits from Repent America were staging a noisy anti-gay protest (covered in today’s Sirius OutQ News). Is it just me, or are the evangelicals who engage in this kind of public hate-mongering getting wierder, sadder, and frankly, less scary, as the years go by?
Gay Games Opening Ceremonies — the real deal
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: It’s late Sunday night — early Monday morning, actually — and I’m contemplating the beauty and spectacle of the Gay Games Opening Ceremony. When it was actually happening Saturday night, I couldn’t really let the experience wash over me because I was focused on describing what I was seeing for the audience. But at a distance of just over 24 hours, as I caption the photo’s I’ve uploaded to our Flickr site, I can see just how amazing it was to pull so many performers, athletes and spectators in the same, inspired direction. The producers of the...
Gay Games Opening Ceremonies rehearsal
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: John McMullen and I are sitting in the Sirius broadcast booth at Chicago’s famed Soldier Field, watching the Friday night dress rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony. As is the norm with this sort of thing, there are lots of stops and starts to take care of technical problems — wireless microphones not working and so on. There are also a few queer moments that arise when performers don’t make it to the dress rehearsal — and the producers send out technical personnel of the opposite sex to hold their place. For example, the plus-size White guy who...
Gay Games a-comin’
From my Sirius OutQ @ Gay Games Blog: My sources tell me things are crazy at the Gay Games offices in Chicago as the clock ticks down to the spectacular Opening Ceremonies on Saturday night. Things are nearly as crazy here at Sirius OutQ, as we make our final preparations to cover the Games. Our plans are very ambitious: The first-ever live national broadcasts of the Gay Games opening and closing ceremonies. Four reporters providing a dozen daily updates that will air at the bottom of each hour starting on Monday. All that, plus a couple of daily stories for our signature top-of-the-hour newscasts. Oh,...
Geocache ’06 #1
Noel and I did our first geocaching expedition of the year… a little late in the year, if you ask me, but we’ve been busy, and better late than never. We found two caches, and didn’t find one. By the end Noel was getting a little tired of it, and I had a couple of big ole mosquito bites, so we knew it was time to quit. So then we did what we often do when we go out to the ‘burbs — we hit the Big Box stores and chain restaurants that aren’t available to us in Manhattan. Picked up some socks, underwear and...
La Donna Wengert
Michael Wengert, the OutQ News morning anchor, can be such a diva sometimes. Usually, at the end of my shift, I have an Instant Message conversation with him detailing what I’ve left behind for his morning newscasts. Well, yesterday I didn’t contact him because he wasn’t online the last time I checked and he often doesn’t come online Friday evening because it’s early Saturday morning for him. When I got home and looked at my work email, there was a note from him asking why I had signed off without a word. Was I mad at him for some reason? If I was, I should...