Category: Blog / Column

News & discussion on columns as blogs, blogs as columns

‘#IAMaColumnist’: NSNC’s campaign for Columnists’ Day 2017

By Lisa Smith Molinari President National Society of Newspaper Columnists What makes one a columnist? Is it occupying a weekly space on page seven of the newspaper? Is it blogging? Is it a regular spot in the local Patch? Is it a monthly feature in a regional magazine? Is it a series of opinion pieces…

Find Your Literary Agent at NSNC 2017

Have you written a book? We have agents eager to hear your pitches. Here’s how it works First, find out how pitches and the types of books compel professional representation from the NSNC’s first-ever Literary Agents/Publishers’ Panel on Saturday, June 10, 2017 at the NSNC annual conference at the Manchester Radisson in NH.  Direct questions…

Have Questions? Ask Alex.

Do you ever wish you had a mentor to give you advice about the business? Sure, we have the Columnist Clubhouse as a place where anyone can go to gather, share and offer support. Of course, you can always post questions there. But people don’t always see every post and let’s face it, maybe you…

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?…

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…

Blog on, Blog off

President’s Message By Ben S. Pollock President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists   Instead of polishing this column, I should have been sewing nametags into my clothes and shaking out my sleeping bag for WordCamp. If I showed up with that stuff, even the geeks there would laugh. We’re all geeks at WordCamp, www.wordcamp.org. The…

Meet One of America’s Best Social Media Columnists

You, the Columnist By Dave Lieber Fort Worth Star-Telegram Columnist www.YankeeCowboy.com Years ago, in this space, I wrote a piece wondering what the 21st century columnist would be like. Of course, I got it wrong. I didn’t understand how social media, not yet invented, would change what we do. I didn’t realize that the 21st…

Interview with NSNC Veep

Karen J. Rinehart is a Charlotte, NC area syndicated columnist, author and speaker. She has been writing her award-winning column, “True To Life”, (a.k.a. The Bus Stop Mommies), since 2002. It is syndicated by Media General newspapers and a regular feature on CatholicLane.com and CatholicExchange.com. Rinehart is a frequent guest humorist and “mommy expert” on…

Resolutions for the Columnist

By Ben Pollock, NSNC President 1. Quit grasping onto obvious topics like “Columnist Lists New Year’s Resolutions.” 2. When writing, quit the posed, “I don’t know about you, but as for me …” or a similar phrase. Reflective columns are just that, writing about oneself and hoping they strike a chord in readers. Writing in…

The Future Just Showed Up: Like

Ben Pollock

President’s Message By Ben S. Pollock NSNC President September 2010 Ben Pollock Last year I asked my Facebook friends on my “Wall,” where conversations are texted (Is this English?), “Why are people so upbeat on Facebook?” I’d been on Facebook a few months, having been sold on it by NSNC veteran Dave Lieber (who pushed…

Let’s be honest…

by Sheila Moss, WebEditor In a recent column of advice to journalism students, Robert Niles warned, “Be careful what you post online as it reflects upon the reputation you are trying to build.” As it turns out, truer words were never spoken for Sports Columnist Mike Wise of the Washington Post who got himself in…

Robert Niles advice for Journalism Students

Robert Niles Robert Niles, computer and journalism guru, offers his advice to students arriving or returning to journalism schools this fall in the Online Journalism Review. However, what is true for students is also true for anyone trying to build a career in the journalism field. Niles will be recalled as panel member speaking on…

Social media was built for YOU…

Dave Lieber

you, the columnist Social media was built for YOU So why aren’t you doing a better job?   By Dave Lieber NSNC Education Foundation Secretary    I heard somebody say the other day that the only thing social media does for you is make you less social.    Knew you’d like that.    You’re a…

Increase your search rankings/readership with simple videos

Dave Lieber

By Dave Lieber www.WatchdogNation.com    By now, as a columnist, writer, information entrepreneur, whatever you call yourself these days, you have figured out that the chief currency in this stage of the information age is the keyword search in a search engine of your name.    Borrowing from Microsoft’s search engine, when someone looks you…

Welcome Bloggers

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…

He was down, but never out

Dave Lieber

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…