Here is the link to Cheryl's updated presentation on web research. Thanks again to Cheryl from The Seattle Times for sharing her considerable knowledge about where to find information on the internet.

I set this up in Google Docs. When you click on the image above it should open in PowerPoint. Go to the upper right corner and click on "Start Presentation" for the slides to show. When I tried it, the links to the various sites were live.

Let me know if you have trouble seeing the presentation.

Some can get away with it

A few posts ago, Larry Cheek provided a list of what to do (or not) when dealing with editors. He said, "An essay, being much about your voice, your experience, and your interpretation, is basically the writer's property."

Apparently, that's what David Foster Wallace believed too, because in 1998, along with an essay on Kafka, he sent a letter to the editors of Harper's Magazine, basically demanding that they keep their red pens in their pockets.

If they touched his essay, he promised to "find a way to harm you or cause you suffering* if you fuck with the mechanics of this piece."

I don't know that this is in keeping with Cheek's other recommendation to "cultivate a personal relationship."

Introductions

On many Internet forums, moderators ask that newcomers introduce themselves to the group. So...
My name is Laura L. (as opposed to Laura G.), and John B. Saul was my professor in Fall 2008 when I was a student in the School of Journalism at the University of Montana.
He took on the Herculean task of beating my boring, boorish and backward copy into something more bearable. Three years later, I am still trying to improve my writing - an undertaking that is never-ending and now more difficult without such a guiding hand.
But I enjoy the process, and if it takes a lifetime of trial-and-error to become fractionally better, there are worse ways to spend a lifetime.

Now that the introductions are out of the way, I would turn your thoughts to paraphrasing.
Every writer has to try to condense a source's comments to write a compelling story. The use of too many direct quotes can slow the pace of prose.
But writers must use caution when paraphrasing, because if key details are lost, so is the intended meaning.

Case and point: the inscription that is now on the sculpture at the new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The inscription paraphrases part of one of King's speeches, but Roy Peter Clark and others argue the paraphrase is inaccurate. Unfortunately, now it is literally carved in stone.
King's time was recent enough that people are still familiar with his speeches, and some know better than to trust the inscription. But as time goes by, that could be less the case, especially considering how often incorrect information is perpetuated on the Internet.
So if a writer wants a story to be accurate - every nonfiction writer should want that - pay particular attention to paraphrasing. The treasury of history depends on veracious retelling.

The blog that refuses to die

Former students (and fellow teacher Larry):

I have maintained a WRI-TING blog since 2007 while teaching at two universities. Now the school I am teaching at requests that we use its software product instead of outside sources. I'm doing that, but I could not stand to see our blog die. So I have renamed it and re-purposed it.

From now on, consider this a place to share thoughts, books, websites, other blogs and anything else that has to do with writing. The contributor list will be open to anyone who has taken a reporting or writing class from me.

Let me know if you want to be added as a  contributor. If you just want to look in on us once and a while, feel free to do that. There are only 100 spots on the contributor list, so if you join as a contributor, please contribute. And mind your manners.

Larry and I added last year's class as authors. If you are one of those people and want to be removed, let me know.

John B.

Feel free to add to this list

Mantra asked me for a list of "must read" non-fiction books, something I had never thought of. I suppose someone has compiled one somewhere but I have not. I can share some suggestions from last year's class. I have read most of them and found them worth my while:

"Our Guys" by Bernard Lefkowitz
"Methland: The Life and Death of a Small American Town" by Nick Reding
"The Red Parts: A Memoir" by Maggie Nelson

We had at least two people in class last year writing about murder cases, so some of the suggestions tended to be on the grisly side.

Also recommend but still on my "to read" list:
"At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays" by Anne Fadiman

Here's a book that William Dietrich said he read as part of his research for "Blood of the Reich," the novel you can read for this class (or if you prefer to read some of Bill's non-fiction work, I recommend "The Northwest Passage," his book on the Columbia River): "Himmler's Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origin of the Aryan Race." That would be a good one to read before Bill visits the class.

Here are the non-fiction book I have read in the past year that I think are worth consideration:

"The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town" by John Grisham (famous novelist tries out non-fiction, successfully, I thought)
"North by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters" by Capt. Sigg Hansen and Mark Sundeen (I didn't expect to like this one, but it tells a lot about Seattle and its connection to the fishing industry.)

I highly recommend two books by Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist: "The Taliban" and "Descent into Chaos"
"The Lexicographer's Dilemma" by Jack Lynch is a fascinating book on the English language and the development of grammatical rules.
Bill Bryson brings humor and his own personality into his non-fiction: "Notes from a Small Island" is about living and traveling in England.

"At Home" by Bryson was recommended by the class last year but I have not read it.