a. fish

Just shut up and code

Years back came the conclusion that I wanted needed to break out of the programmer's pigeonhole. The pivot was long and bumpy, but a few writing classes and several paycuts later, here I am. Cruising the Craigslist classifieds today evoked an epiphany: "create innovative deliverables (info portals, cue cards, viewlets, dynamic links, developer guides)" - you mean you want to hear my suggestions? Gone are the days of the manager gritting her teeth while I quickly mention a marketing angle, or arbitrary innovation, she could pass onto her boss, or whomever, only to respond with a directive to basically keep my ideas to myself, shut up, and get back to coding.

How do other engineers break out of that pigeonhole role? Maybe the career trajectory is coder->manager/team leader->[entrepreneurial position/marketing contributor]. For me, freelance writing was the only escape hatch I could find. With my newly found freedom, now a coding gig, and coding itself, looks viable again, even fun.

The art of the nicheless blog

By nicheless blog I mean a blog without a particular focus. How do you do it? Or rather, how do you do it well?

Rogers Cadenhead recently had a reader survey Getting a Read on my Readers asking why people come to his site. Here was a typical Workbench reader's reply:

"I read the site for its diversity. One day you are keeping your finger on the pulse of florida culture, the next day chatting with Dave Winer about RSS and the day after that getting all psyched about your new glasses. keep it up!"

This reader's answer and others like it surprised Cadenhead:

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. It's funny to see so many people compliment this weblog's lack of focus. I always figured that was a problem.

Lisa Williams of Learning the Lessons of Nixon compares her personal (nichelss) blog to the community (niche) blogs she participates in The Joy of Covering Small Communities:

It’s also different from the blogging I do here. Here, the only thing holding the content together is my own interests. As a whole, it doesn’t neccessarily add up to something larger than the sum of its parts, and there isn’t an ongoing storyline (let’s hope there isn’t — most blog storylines that happen naturally have to do with illness or other disasters).

I get this strange feeling when I’m doing community blogging, that there’s a narrative. Together, all the bits self-assemble into a larger story on their own. My community blogs have a cohesiveness and a sense of ongoing story that I didn’t put there.

It’s magic.

I think I ask the question of what makes a good nichelss blog because the answer relies on a vexing subquestion: What makes these folks good writers? We with math and technical backgrounds often have an anxious desire to break everything down into formula. I recognize these two write well, but my method for drawing this conclusion is no more evolved than that of a famous justice who recognized pornography thusly: "I know it when I see it."

Stephen Buel's East Bay Express Formula

Ah the wonderful world of blogs, where you can post your eighteen inch story on East Bay Express editor Stephen Buel using only a few inches of bullet points, hurray! I'll post the full story in the the last installment just for yucks. And heck - yucks aside, the main reason for journaling, more recently known as "blogging", is to have a record of how far your work has come since the days of your first news writing class.

Lede: "Stephen Buel of the East Bay Express had an impressive number for journalism students last night: Since he became editor in 2001, circulation jumped 40%. Audit Bureau of Circulations’ records confirm that rate, along with declines for The Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News."

Questions popping in head, which I didn't have time to research: is this a trend for alt newsweeklies? Are they the place for quality reporting, given the Williamette Week's Pulitzer, the fifth ever awarded to an alternative weekly? Deadlines are sacred, the teacher says, so these and many more are left unanswered for today.

So, what is behind that impressive number Buel dropped at the very end of his class appearance? Well looking back at our notes we can glean a few clues:

1. format and distribution mechanics,
2. content on under-reported areas and topics, and
3. (maybe) the winning combo of seasoned newsman with practical business sense that is Buel himself. (sound too kiss-ass? yeah...could be.)

Part 1. Mechanics

• 2001 New Times Inc. bought EBX February 2001. Converted from quarter-folded format to tabloid June 2001. It's a trend: SF Examiner, Christian Science Monitor, and others, doing the same.
• 2001 New Times provides EBX with their first ever free standing news racks in bright yellow by the hundreds. (Sounds like a duh! move to me. New Times has the money, not everyone does.)
• 2002 Art Director Mark Gartland gives EBX "cleaner, brighter, punchier" new cover, having an "immediate impact" on circulation. Buel: cover design's influence on circulation "cannot be overstated"
• Circulation Editor Weslie Chung, Buel praises this "outstanding" guy twice. Free papers can boost circulation just by printing more papers. Buel: "The reduction of our return rate from 11 percent to 3.5 at the same time that our circulation was increasing from 62,000 [in 2001] to 87,000 is indeed very remarkable." (how long did it take to memorize that sentence, and make it sound casual? I kid, he was actually quite cool, and very straight forward. Also his clothes were not wrinkled. Not saying that's unusual.)

Coming soon: parts 2 (content) and 3 (editor's personality). Also: the whole written story, in non-bulletted format. And maybe a part 4 (all other factors I couldn't squeeze into eighteen inches.)

News Writing Class: the column-inch warp

Teacher: "Your assignment is to treat Stephen Buel's guest appearance tonight as a press conference, and write it up as a  neeeewwwws story. Something he says tonight, he's speaking for an hour and a half, so there will surely be something nneeewwsworthy in the information you get.  So listen to what he says for an aaaannnngle that you could use. The lede is NOT 'Stephen Buel spoke to a journalism class last night'. This is NOT a feature story, it's inverted pyramid neewwwwss style. Eighteen column inches. I'm in a good mood, so I'll give you a hint: an inch is 35 words. You can use a caaaalculater to compute required length."

Wow, got lots of notes and plenty of quotes. Should be a snnap! Writes writes writes. Word count: 45 words. Good...pad this up with supporting points. Pads pads pads. Word count: 115 words. Pads pads. Word count: 145!!! (18 x 35=) 630  must be five full pages in MS Word? Procrastinates. Googles writer's block. Looks through del.icio.us tag 'writing' . Here's one: Writing, Briefly "Write as fast as you can." Good idea. Blurt it all out, take a break, THEN edit. Blurts blurts blurts. Better keep going. Blurts blurts. Little more. Blurts. Just to be sure. Blurts blurts blurts blurts. Blurts. Blurts blurts blurts. Blurts. For good measure...eeehh second thought, that's probably enough. Word count: 1,935 words. Oy.

News Writing Class

Writing is impossible now. After seeing the capslock teacher corrections NO QUOTE LEADS QUOTE LEADS DON'T WORK  embedded in my graded stories, I think so much about each word that no words come to mind. Of course, I took the class to improve my writing skills, but...but....it's just so hard now! I can't even get a sloppy rough draft out onto the screen.

Somebody help please!