Columnist tips from Dave Lieber
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist Take this quick digital skills test and see how well prepared you, the columnist, are to serve your audience as a digital journalist in the 21st century. Ready to begin? Give yourself two points for every YES answer. Do you have your own website? Do…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist As a columnist — a creative entrepreneur who communicates to the public on a regular basis — how is your personal website doing? I mean the one you operate, not the one where your column runs as part of your media company’s website. Everyone should…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist I’m so excited about seeing everybody at the 2015 Indianapolis National Society of Newspaper Columnists conference that I started going through my wardrobe. What to wear? So many NSNC related T-shirts. Then I realized, I could tell the story of our group through my T-shirts. (Hey,…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist Did you catch any of the wonderful snippets of advice on Twitter recently tied to the hashtag #AdviceforYoungJournalists? Hundreds of folks participated from around the world. Some responses were annoying such as one posted by anti-newspaper dolt @jeffjarvis (“Don’t get old.”) Others were quite wonderful:…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist It’s New Year’s Eve. I’m feeling good. Not because of the spirits but because I’ve had a wonderful year. One of my best ever at a newspaper. Hey, that last column I wrote. Wow. Loved it. Who wouldn’t? I wonder if it got any public…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist Are you getting your Pulitzer contest entry ready for 2014? I’m not kidding. I just looked at the winners for commentary going back to 1970. No active NSNC member has ever won. Sure, plenty of Pulitzer winners have attended our conferences as special guests when…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Dallas Morning News columnist I’m taking the long view with you, the columnist, about the future of journalism and column writing. The long view now is 18 months away. Remember when it was five years? In this briefest of essays, I was prepared to argue that all the efforts…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Columnist, The Dallas Morning News In his typical Midwestern self-effacing manner, former NSNC President Bill Tammeus hides his autobiography inside a grander study of modern America based on its early baby boomer years. His new book centers mostly in the 1950s, when middle Americans such as Tammeus developed a…
you, the columnist This column originally was published in the March 2014 edition of The Columnist, the members’ newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. By Dave Lieber Columnist, The Dallas Morning News I keep tellin’ my columnist friends: YA GOTTA GO BIG! 2014 can’t be the play-it-safe year for you, the columnist. More…
you, the columnist This column was originally published in the January 2014 edition of The Columnist, the members’ newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. By Dave Lieber Columnist, The Dallas Morning News You, the columnist, are your own marketing department. If you don’t market yourself, no one else will. But how? Facebook, Twitter,…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Columnist, The Dallas Morning News Originally published in The Columnist members-only newsletter Two months after one of the best-attended conferences in recent NSNC history, I wondered: what was the main takeaway for attendees? I polled them, and here’s what they told me: Cynthia Stead, Cape Cod Times: “Columnists are…
I’m not expecting this. Well, I am, eventually, just not at this moment. you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Unaffiliated It’s 1993. My first column. By way of introduction, I ask readers of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram if chicken-fried steak is chicken or steak. I know. It’s a dumb way to begin. Maybe the dumbest.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
you, the columnist By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Are you familiar with Klout.com? The website says it rates your “online influence” on a scale of 1 to 100 “based on your ability to drive action in social networks. We process this data on a daily basis to give you an updated Klout score…
