Category Archives: Newspaper article

Going Beyond Optical Code Recognition for Writers

Tremendous amounts of primary research material in newspapers, books and magazines continues to fall apart in libraries and warehouses around the world. Much of it won’t physically survive much longer. And much is still unrecognizable to the best OCR software. … Continue reading

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Are Writers Made or Born? by Jack Kerouac (transcribed for the first time!)

I transcribed this article from two image files at the Writer’s Digest website. I have introduced line breaks of my own to make the text more readable online. This is a six minute read. Kerouac reserves the word “genius” (and … Continue reading

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Goldfield Lays Town Father Bryan Smalley to Rest

August 31, 2022 UPDATE A ten minute video about Bryan can be viewed here. It’s a short film the family asked me to do. https://vimeo.com/thewritingrockhound/videoforbryan Original Article Follows: Bryan Smalley died in Goldfield on October 30, 2021. He was 61 … Continue reading

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Can Writing a Certain Amount of Words a Day Improve Your Writing?

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT Can you improve as a writer by writing a certain amount of words every day? I have heard this advice over the years or read this advice over the years. I remember Ray Bradbury in particular. I think … Continue reading

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Original Photographs and the Impossibility of Everything Connected to Them

After your article proposal has been accepted your next challenge will be providing photographs to accompany the text. I hope you can take them yourself. The world of Nat Geo doesn’t exist anymore for freelancers. You will not have a … Continue reading

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A Computer Wrote This Op-Ed. Sort of.

The Guardian (external link) asked Liam Porr, a computer science undergraduate student at Berkeley, to have a computer with the latest technology write an essay. The op-ed dragged on endlessly and I wondered if repetition was programmed into its instructions. … Continue reading

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Reporting Will Change You

I never talked to strangers until five years ago when I did some newspaper reporting.(internal link) That changed me. I was forced to ask questions, the best I could think of. Turns out that nearly everybody is interesting if you … Continue reading

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Architecture and Writing and Compromises

Tom Wolfe once said that we all have to live with an architect’s mistakes. How true. My bad writing won’t assault your senses (and that of the public) every time you drive to work. That’s unlike the concrete tilt ups … Continue reading

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Does a Book Validate You as A Writer?

It’s in every writer’s DNA to want to have a book published but it’s not necessary to prove a writer’s worth. I make little money from my writing but I am still a professional and proud of it. Writing can … Continue reading

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The Greatest Challenges in Writing for Publication

The greatest challenge in writing for publication is word count. It’s set by the editor, it can’t be exceeded. A topic easily explained in 1,000 words becomes tremendously difficult given 250. A reader never knows your word count, only that … Continue reading

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