Category: Newsletter

Selected articles from the NSNC newsletter; only members get the entire contents of the monthly newsletter

Bob Welch Does It Right

IBM Selectric II typewriter

Honored Oregon Columnist Spreads His Talents you, the columnist By Dave Lieber www.YankeeCowboy.com When a newspaper is named to Editor & Publisher’s annual “10 Newspapers That Do It Right” list, a columnist is not usually pictured with top editors. But when The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore. was placed on the 2012 list, columnist Bob Welch…

In the December newsletter

newspaper

The last newsletter of the year is out — notifications emailed to members on December 1 with a link to open the PDF file. In the December issue of The e-Columnist: A special offer is announced. Dave Lieber has another interesting and helpful “you, the columnist” offering. There’s some valuable information in the “Tip Sheet…

Pop Culture and Politics in Op-Ed Writing

Axel Jäderin of Svenska Dagbladet, studies the concurrent newspapers.

Art of Column Writing By Suzette Martinez Standring 2004-06 President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Years ago, op-ed was associated only with political commentary. Today, op-ed can take invented directions on current affairs. For example, how pop culture is mirrored in politics is the unique viewpoint of columnist Joanna Weiss of The Boston Globe. “Putting…

Circle the Dates

Downtown Hartford, Conn.

President’s Message By Eric Heyl President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Circle the dates. Trust me, it’s OK. The calendar cops won’t appear at your door to arrest you for beginning to arrange next year’s schedule with a full two months of this year still to go. With the nation’s prisons being chronically overcrowded, they…

The Real Dave Astor

Shakespeare and Company bookshop, Paris

Memoir Tells Lively Stories of Famous Cartoonists, Columnists and Author you, the columnist By Dave Lieber www.YankeeCowboy.com Book Review: Comic (and Column) Confessional: Finding Myself While Covering Syndicates, Celebrities, and a Changing Media World. By Dave Astor. Xenos Press (2012). 232 pages. Paperback. $25 Dave Astor, that quiet guy sitting in the first row at…

Foreign Affairs Op-Ed Writing Has Lessons for All

Stoopendaal Map of the World - 1730

Art of Column Writing By Suzette Martinez Standring Past President National Society of Newspaper Columnists No matter what our specialty is, we can learn from columnists with a very different focus. Joel Brinkley, who also serves as the NSNC education chair, is one of only a handful of foreign affairs op-ed columnists in the United…

Searching for Truth in the News, Today?

Hartford Courant

President’s Message By Larry Cohen President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Decades ago, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant shipped me off to the national conclave of the Episcopal Church, in Louisville. The Anglican natives were restless. There was news to be reported. Sure enough, the assembled faithful slapped around the sort-of-liberal church leadership at the time…

Semi-Clueless about My New National Blog

Blog comments

Art of Column Writing By Suzette Martinez Standring Past President National Society of Newspaper Columnists I come late to the blogging party. This has been my reluctance: What, another deadline? I can’t compete with established, tech-savvy bloggers. Do I really need more emails to suck up all my writing time? Now I blog. What changed?…

Wooing the Audience, Wooing Us

2012 NSNC Conference, Macon. Photo: Larry Najera

President’s Message By Larry Cohen President National Society of Newspaper Columnists When Steve Lopez, the great L.A. Times columnist, spoke at an NSNC convention a number of years ago, he joked about being labeled a “local” columnist. What exactly did “local” mean in a Los Angeles metro area that sprawled for hundreds of miles, with…

Copy and Paste: Avoiding Plagiarism

Polygraph Letter Copier Jefferson Used

Attribution is the antidote to plagiarism you, the columnist By Dave Lieber www.YankeeCowboy.com Angry as all get out, as Texans like to say. That’s how I feel when I think about what happened in recent months to many of our NSNC colleagues. More than their words were stolen when their columns were plagiarized in separate…

Larry’s Inaugural Address

New Orleans Item newsroom, circa 1900

President’s Message By Larry Cohen President National Society of Newspaper Columnists Larry Cohen With the financial help of my mysterious Political Action Committee in the Cayman Islands; with a last-minute surge of support from the National Rifle Association; and with my foreign policy promise to transform Syria into a Disney amusement park; I was able…

Fare Thee Well Address

By Ben S. Pollock President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists   Dear Larry, [NSNC Vice President Laurence D. Cohen is on the slate of nominees for the May 6 election, for 2012-14 president.] This, the columnists presidency, has been a humbling experience. I’ve had plenty of humbling experiences in my life, so I should know.…

If you feel it, you can convey it.

By Suzette Martinez Standring NSNC Past President At writing conferences, creativity often gets short shrift in favor of growing one’s business. Supersize followers on Facebook and Twitter!  Get readers a-gogging with vlogging and blogging! Strengthen your footing on the technology trail. Very helpful, yes, but when all is said and done, it is about our…

Embed, Blog, and Beyond

By Suzette Martinez Standring NSNC Past President   Vlogging, blogging, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter – it’s all under the umbrella of social media and I’m dog paddling in the deluge. Recently, I attended the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop in Dayton, both as a presenter (Hypnotic Recall Fills the Creative Well), and as a seeker of information…

In the May Newsletter

I Love Macon

Preview of 2012 “Macon Whoopee” conference … Not one, but two columns by regular contributing columnist Suzette Martinez Standring … President Ben S. Pollock gives a “fare thee well address … Reports and photos from the 2012 Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop … Plus “What Are You Writing?” and “Columnews”

National Columnists’ Day – Another Ernie Story

By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram   No matter what crevice of Ernie Pyle’s life you look into, you find something interesting, honest and authentically American. His real name was Ernest, after all. April 18 marks the 18th annual celebration of the NSNC’s National Columnists Day, a project former NSNC President Bill Tammeus and I…

President’s Message: Buy Low, Sell High

By Ben S. Pollock NSNC President   It must have been this time of year in 1999, I was on the phone with my mom about soon flying to Louisville, Ky., for that year’s NSNC conference. “You go there and ‘network’ your heart out. That’s what they call it now, right? Chat people up and…