by eubie

Lists for my reading list

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of the Year. Several interesting non-fiction books

Wired News: Slip a Geek Book Under the Tree. For my list: “Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills, and %*@)# Enlargements” by Brian McWilliams.

The Economist’s top book picks of 2004. For the list: “Other People’s Money: The Corporate Mugging of America” By Nomi Prins.

rexblog library of accidental blog books. For the list: “Pattern Recognition” by William Gibson

by eubie

More news to depress newspaper execs

Wired news: Newspapers should Really Worry. Washington Post focus group of 18-34-year-olds found many who would not accept a subscription even if it were free. Point of article is repeat of what many already know: this age group will never acquire the newspaper-reading habit.

Lauren Rich Fine, a managing director for Merrill Lynch and a member of Poynter’s board of directors, noted some positives in her annual industry forecast, including that newspapers have a better reach than other mass market media (the broadcast industry faces even more challenges) and newspapers will continue to do will with Sunday preprint advertising. The negatives facing the industry include: its demographics are older and less attractive to advertisers, long-term circulation decline, and further loss of local help wanted advertising.

While saying nice things about newspapers, when Fine recommends stocks of newspapers she lists only E.W. Scripps, with its cable operations, and Washington Post, with its education division.

Last Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal’s advertising newscolumn looked at the lack of a rebound in newspaper advertising. Reasons given was inability to provide a compelling product from either the what’s on the web or CNN. One marketing consultant in the article said another problem was stodgy “squared-off, regimented print ads.”

Even when looking hopeful, there seems to be worries. Last month in MediaPost: Print’s Future: Full Of Changes, But Experts Say There Will Be One. “Print will see its place at the media table change over the next few years, as technology dramatically impacts both the business and users’ habits, but the medium is expected to survive and potentially thrive.”

by eubie

Why I Write by George Orwell

The Literature Network has an essay by George Orwell about writing.

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism.
Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm.
Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse.
Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose.
– Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Tip from Websense.

by eubie

Punctuation tips

Roy Peter at the Poynteronline has offered 50 writing tips since April. The current tip is about punctuation.

“Most punctuation is required, but some of it is optional.” he writes. Quick tips on using semicolons, commas, dash and thos other pesky things.