Columnist tips from Dave Lieber
Dave Lieber By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram NSNCEF Secretary Hey, bloggers. Welcome to the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, where, finally, you are invited to join and also enter our annual contest. After a long battle – I started my fight to let you in more than a decade ago…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram www.yankeecowboy.com There’s a recession in the U.S. economy, but a depression in the newspaper business. Not a financial depression, but a mental one. Everybody in the newsroom and in the executive suites is giving up. Worse, nobody in the business is standing up on a chair…
By Dave Lieber, Fort Worth Star Telegram I am insecure about my life as columnist. I worry about my next column, my next error. I worry about repeating myself. I fear the next time my boss gets irritated with me. My hate mail adds fuel to the fire, as does my lack…
Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star Telegram Columnist Secretary, NSNC Education Foundation I feared the worst. Of the 110 columnists whom I hosted in Grapevine, Texas three years ago for the 2005 NSNC conference, how many still have columnist jobs? I decided to find out. Sent an e-mail survey to all e-mail addresses…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist www.yankeecowboy.com My first journalistic mentor was noted writer H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger. While in high school, I read his columns in the University of Pennsylvania student newspaper and decided I wanted to be like him. I enrolled at Penn, and in my first week as a freshman…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Secretary, NSNC Education Foundation www.yankeecowboy.com I looked all over for my Wall Street Journal. But it wasn’t there the other day. No, the New York Times, the Dallas Morning News and my own Fort Worth Star-Telegram were lying there on the driveway. But no Journal. This bothered me. I…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation www.yankeecowboy.com Listen up! If you write a newspaper column that appears three times a week, once a week or once a month, and that’s all you do related to that work, then you, my friend, are dead in the…
By Dave Lieber www.yankeecowboy.com Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation Suzette Martinez Standring underwent a career change in the 1990s, deciding to pursue her dream of becoming a newspaper columnist. She launched a column, joined the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, became a self-syndicator, acquired a base of several papers,…
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation www.yankeecowboy.com By Dave Lieber [Editor’s Note: Dave Lieber’s longstanding “Really Bad Column” is changing its name to “you, the columnist.” In a reflection of changes in our industry, the old title was a mirror image of the author’s own definition of his work,…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation Competitors One of the best things about being a newspaper columnist is you get to compete, really compete, with columnists on other regional newspapers. And you can laugh at their foibles, and they can laugh at yours, too. It’s all…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation The master returned. Jimmy Breslin, who has written two or three newspaper columns this year following his surprise retirement last year, was stirred to pen a brief memoir about the shooting death of Robert F. Kennedy. After he viewed the…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist During the summer, I celebrated an epiphany in regards to my column-writing life. I say celebrated because an epiphany – a sudden insight that changes the way you view the world – is something every columnist needs at least once a decade. If we are the same columnist…
Latest roundup of columnists’ foibles, triumphs, embarrassments and other weirdness By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Special to www.columnists.com I apologize. When was the last time you started a column with those words? Actually, I’m not apologizing for anything. I just want to get your attention. But the first part of this month’s Really…
By DAVE LIEBER Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist NSNC Education Foundation Secretary Here are the Really Bad Column Rules to be a Great Columnist. If you don’t like any of them, write and tell me why so I can argue with you in the next installment. If I don’t hear back from anyone, I’ll take that…
By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist Secretary, National Society of Newspaper Columnists Education Foundation Talking to Hartford Courant columnist George Gombossy on the phone the other day was really weird. It was like having a conversation with myself. He does what I do. He thinks like I do. Just weird, man. I told…
The next plagiarizing columnist who comes along? We’ll take it outside! By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist After hosting the NSNC’s 2005 annual conference, I took a short break. A four-day conference that felt like a month took two months to get over. Then it was back to school – literally. After 10 years…
