writing news stories on Newser

Gadget of the Year? Pen and Paper

Matt Cantor — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:42:07 CST

Smartphones and tablets have left everything from alarm clocks to GPS systems pretty much "obsolete"—but iPhones and BlackBerrys still haven't topped writing by hand, writes Mark Smith in the Detroit Free Press . He's no technophobe—in fact, he's a tech columnist. But when he sat down to make a...

This Year's Winner for Bad Sex Writing Is ...

John Johnson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 14:41:05 CST

Ron Charles of the Washington Post wins the prognosticator award among book critics. When he reviewed (and panned) David Guterson's novel Ed King , he took note of one part: "What follows are three pages that might very well win the Literary Review ’s annual Bad Sex Award." Well, that award...

Palin Emails' Big Reveal: Sarah Writes at 8th-Grade Level

Tim Karan — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:25:51 CDT

Sarah Palin writes like an eighth grader, and that's actually a compliment. Following Friday's massive release of hundreds of emails she wrote as governor, two writing analysts evaluated 60 randomly chosen messages that were at least one paragraph, and determined that Palin wrote them at a grade level between 8....

Groupon: We Owe Our Success to Good Writing

Evann Gastaldo — Sun, 29 May 2011 17:18:05 CDT

Pop Quiz: What’s the best way to describe a 4,700-pound chandelier? If you want to work at Groupon, your answer should be “More brilliant than a studious Christmas tree.” That’s an actual question the booming Internet company asks its prospective employees, reports the New York Times in an in-depth...

High School English: A Waste of Time?

Evann Gastaldo — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:14:05 CDT

Sometimes, while Kim Brooks is grading essays by her college composition students, she cries. "Not real tears, exactly—more a spontaneous, guttural sob, often loud and unpleasant enough to startle my husband or children," she writes in Salon . Why? Because many of these students "simply ... cannot write." They don't have...

25 Commandments for Journalists

Park — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:26:48 CST

Some 15 years ago, a British writer drummed up a list of "commandments" for journalists. Tim Radford, former science, arts, and literature editor at the Guardian , pulled together 25 thoughts in response to a question he asked himself: "What is the most important thing to remember about writing a story?"...

Bad Sex Writing Award Goes to...

Polly Davis Doig — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 07:55:19 CST

“Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her.” If this less-than-amorous passage makes you cringe, you're not alone: Irish author Rowan Somerville has won this year's Bad Sex in Fiction Award for the passage in The Shape of Her. Somerville calls...

Inside James Frey's Sweatshop-Like Novel Factory

Evann Gastaldo — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 09:17:05 CST

James Frey, infamous for angering Oprah with his "fake memoir" A Million Little Pieces , idolizes Vonnegut, Hemingway, and Henry Miller. He's the kind of writer who talks about wanting to "change the game" and "move the paradigm." Yet he's also the head of Full Fathom Five, a young-adult novel factory...

Let's Rethink How We Teach English

John Johnson — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:54:07 CDT

Take it from a first-year college instructor: The writing skills of young adults are a joke. "They have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place," writes Kara Miller of Babson College. And while the media focuses on the need for better science...