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Yours, Truly

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In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives. Anatole Broyard Does anyone write letters anymore? After weeks of not looking at two large boxes of accumulated clippings from decades of journalism jobs, I got to the bottom of one box to discover something I'd forgotten. It was a small file box and in it were letters. In my youth, and until the introduction of the word processor - no typewriter ribbons needed! no cramping hand from holding the pen too tight! no smudgy print! no need to rip out a paper and rearrange the paragraphs! - I wrote letters to friends and family in ink, then switched to the typewriter when my handwriting became too much like the cramped scrawl of my doctor father.  When I was about to leave college I asked several of my journalism professors - all working newspeople - to write a letter of recommendation I could send to possible sources of employment. I found those letters as...
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Gems in the Clippings

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After asking myself for the zillionth time what the late, great Molly Ivins would say after the latest mind-numbing actions by the Trump Administration, I dusted off and started rereading her first collection of essays (1991) " Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She? " I think Ivins, who died in 2007, would've found a lot of similarities between Trump and others she wrote about back in the day. "One thing the Reagan years have accomplished is to take away the sting and shock of seeing homeless people in a land of plenty. The juxtaposition of extreme poverty and extreme wealth no long seems obscene because it's so familiar." (1989) Or: "When you see government encouraging the concentration of wealth, check your wallet." (1991) (What Trump would say about a 6-foot, brash-mouthed female journalist is easily guessed .) (Margo D. Beller) She was similarly sharply funny about presidents "Texan" George HW Bush and his son (she called him Shrub...
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My Role Model

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When the woman who later became my mother-in-law was a teenager, she wanted to be a journalist. Maybe she wanted to be a globe-trotting foreign correspondent like Martha Gellhorn . Her father forbade her, saying journalism was no profession for a lady. When she told me this, many years after I married her oldest son, I remarked that he was right. A lot had changed between her teenage years and mine but what had not changed is there are some professions where it is hard to be a working woman. In my case I had my mother, the doctor, as a role model for my journalism career. (Margo D. Beller) I don't know much about my mother's life as a child in western Canada except it wasn't an easy one. She was good in the sciences and wanted to be a doctor. It was not a profession for women then. When she applied to enter medical school there was a quota - only two women per class. My mother tied with another woman in taking the entrance exam and so the university had to let in three wome...
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Byline Strikes and AI

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What follows is strictly my opinion and not generated by AI.  The other day I saw this article in the New York Times : Reporters at McClatchy Withhold Bylines in Dispute Over A.I. Content J ournalists at newspapers like The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee are refusing to let the chain use their names on summarized articles generated by a new A.I. tool. Toward the end of my time with the online cryptocurrency news publication, one of the editors started to test artificial intelligence to write some of the features. We were told many, many times the AI-generated articles would be rigorously checked by a real live person to make sure whatever AI created was factually correct.  (Vecteezy.com) At the time I wondered why bother with AI if you were going to have a person check the article anyway. Then I wondered if this was a prelude to replacing news people to close the major budget hole created when the price of bitcoin went south and the publisher wanted to attract another own...
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Swag

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When I was a journalism student, it was the time of Watergate and Woodward and Bernstein bringing down President Richard Nixon thanks, in part, to their reporting. But as time went on in my career I learned journalism was less high-profile scoops, and more writing  product briefs  and  mundane calling of sources and reporting on everyday events. (Margo D. Beller) So it was relief to be able to leave the office and attend hearings and press conferences where I could take notes and ask pesky questions. Usually I had a question ready so I could jump in to fill the 5-second pause between "Any questions?" and the first hand going up. My questions were usually rather blunt, such as, "What do you want to accomplish by pulling all of us in here?" Maybe I was being naive but I really did want to know.  Usually one of two press flacks would rush up to me as the press conference broke up to further explain the company's or the politician's position. But it wasn't ...
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I'm Old-Fashioned

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I have no online portfolio. When I worked as a reporter for newspapers and trade magazines I had clips, something physical to show for my labors. I could take the best articles, cut them neatly and put them within the pages of my portfolio to show prospective employers. When I became a copy editor, however, that became more difficult. I would look at copy jobs on LinkedIn and would start filling out applications until I got to the part where I was asked to give the URL of my portfolio. URL of my portfolio? There are many things I no longer understand about a lot of things but I couldn't fathom how you took something that is not physical and put it in a portfolio with a URL. I never completed those applications and I still know nothing about virtual portfolios, especially for work that doesn't have my name on it. Nowadays everything is online. Putting your life's work on a website you can share with a prospective employer is surely more convenient than the large portfolio bo...
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Looking Through The Past

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It is now about a month since I removed several bags' worth of newspaper clippings from a closet in my home. I had intended to go through the bags and file the articles in a more coherent system. But when you work for a five-day business newspaper you are expected to write a story a day, every day. It quickly became clear there was no way I could go through eight years of newspapers in anything less than a year. So I started culling. I decided to save the columns I once wrote for the newspaper. But as I went through the newspapers I started to more clearly remember things I hadn't thought about in over 25 years. When my favorite boss  sold the insurance trade magazine to a person who moved it from Manhattan to Westchester, I started working for the business newspaper. My beat continued to be insurance. Every day I had to write something , including briefs, the more the better. Insurance took up only one page of the newspaper, which was focused mainly on trade and transportatio...
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