Strategy magazine

Fall TV issue, July 2010

www.strategyonline.ca

Twelve hours prior to the writing of this article, two million viewers across Canada gathered in front of their TV sets, popcorn in hand, to say goodbye to one of the last cliffhanger-driven, “event” dramas in prime time. The day was May 23, and CTV was airing the series finale of Lost, a cinematic ender to six years of brow-furrowing plot turns and existential online debates.

As the show proceeded to its heavenly ending, the question arose: how many offbeat shows like Lost will continue to earn such loyal viewership in today’s fractured media landscape? Read More.

There are a few things about being a freelance writer that never really get a lot of attention. One, doing your own accounting sucks. Two, you are your own IT department. Sure, you can call someone or send your computer in when it’s acting up, but that costs money. So, you learn to do it yourself.

This week, I had to replace my hard drive. This is always a big job, but it’s the second time this has happened to me in a little over two years. However, the actual installation wasn’t as bad as it initially appeared to be. If you’re ever in the position of having to replace your Macbook’s HD, here are a few good resources:

Apple Manual: This manual is quite good, but neglected to note a few key details, like the fact that I had to replace the casing around the HD that allowed you to pull it in and out. And that you needed a T8 Torx driver to do so. (Which I did not have and had to go out and get while my computer’s guts were spilled out on my desk.) However, when it came to re-installing the OS, it was really handy.

ifixit: Great site, very common sense. It was here that I found out the casing had to be replaced and that I needed the T8 torx driver. Very valuable advice for a rookie. Without it, I would have jammed that HD in and would have not been able to get it back out again if needed.

Youtube: I also want to replace my RAM, so I was investigating this while the battery bay was open and couldn’t get the memory back in. This video was a big help.

This is one of those things that appears to be much harder than it really is, so I’d definitely recommend giving it a shot yourself if you have a few hours and some patience. Now, comes the crappy part: rebuilding all my content. Luckily, all my actual work was backed up online at Mozy.com, an automatic online backup serivce. Last time my drive died, I was not so lucky.

Special thanks to Neale at Number 9 studios for his tips and advice, which he offered up freely and enthusiastically when I emailed to inquire about purchasing a drive.

I titled this blog with the “viva” not so much becuase I want social media to live long and prosper but because an alumni of mine (that word is so lame, isn’t it? Alumni? It makes me think of New England parking lots, ladies in fur coats, kegs of beer and Homecomings) wrote a good blog recently on the Death of Social Media and I was listening to Coldplay at the time. No cleverness intended.

In his post, Joe points out that social media, for all the revolutionary fervour it generates, is really just another tool in a communications package. You should read it, if only becuase Joe is a great writer and one that I have long admired. Anywho, he caught me on the right day. As I was about to enter an update on Ping.fm, to hit my Twitter, FB and Linked In all at the same time, I realized that social media can be a) a bit overwhelming and b) a bit silly sometimes: how many goddamn profiles do I need?  I know as a freelance writer they’re a great tool, but it’s easy to forget that you can’t just ‘social media’ the day away and expect that to be a marketing strategy. Old-fashioned networking, meetings, laborious reading of newspapers and job postings, reaching out to friends and old colleauges and just plain advertising all have to be rolled into a social media strategy. You can blog your heart out, but it doesn’t really matter if no one knows where your blog is, or that you bother to put so much effort into it. So, thanks Joe, (and the ever-helpful mediabistro) for reminding me that yes Virginia, old-fashioned business tactics remain as important, if not moreso, than ever.

PHOTO: Flickr Creative Commons

Good article: Debunking Six Social Media Myths (Businessweek)

While the news about the economy in general continues to be grim, the news in regard to the media economy is pretty much catastrophic. Earlier today, my friend who works at a regional weekly newspaper told us about a three-person layoff at their small office (including one of her bosses) and her feeling that newspapers were “pretty much toast” right now. Soon after, I found this article on The Wrap, via MediaBistro, with some pretty grim statistics of its own. The headline doom-and-gloom story continues to be the New York Times, becuase of news like this:

• The New York Times Co. said Wednesday that fourth-quarter earnings plunged 48 percent and online sales fell for the first time as the recession depressed spending by advertisers. –The Huffington Post

It’s a pretty scary time to be a writer, that’s for sure. As I’ve written on here before, I just hope that being a freelancer in this kind of economy is a good thing, not a horrific thing. But who knows? Not many thought it would get this bad, this fast, in the first place. Yikes.

Photo: Flickr Creative Commons

There’s an aspect of my writing life that I often just don’t understand — people not returning my phone calls. Now, if I were a scoop-getting investigative reporter calling about your involvement with a certain Mr. Blagojevich, I’d certainly understand not getting a call back. But when I’m calling to get your opinion on whether red is an “in” colour for jackets this year or not, I don’t get it. It’s free advertising, people. You call me back, answer my questions, I put your name in the story and presto! You’re in a magazine and you didn’t even have to pay for it.

Some people get it. And I love those people. They’re always the first to call me back, always the first to help me out or get me what I need. And guess what? Those people, those brands, are the people I go to whenever the opportunity presents itself because I know I won’t have to chase them and that they won’t string me along. They get twice the press (from me) than other people.

I know people are busy. I get it. I am too. But a two-minute call back is just two minutes. And it’s free. And nowadays, what’s better than free??

-KB

Harold, basking in his moment in the spotlight. Next thing you know, he'll be asking for champagne and caviar.

As many of you may know — friends that is, or other fans of Harold — my turtle Harold was treated to an article in Toronto’s daily newspaper, The Toronto Star this weekend. It was very exciting.

Since many people have expressed their curiosity as to how Harold achieved such notoriety, it went down like this:

When I saw that the Star had started the Condo Pets column, I thought ‘hey, I live in a condo and I have a pet’ so I wrote in to the email address listed and pitched Harold as the topic of a future column. That was the PR part of it.

The column’s author, Janice Bradbeer, replied and said they would indeed like to feature Harold in the column, as they hadn’t done a turtle before. She sent me an e-interview to fill out, which I did joyously and wrote far too much. Hey, I always do the interviewing, not the interview-filling-out. Which brings me to another point: It was really interesting to be on the other side of the media equation.

It really is a bizarre experience reading your own quotes in a story. I now understand why people will often ask me ‘Did I say that?!?’. Because when your quotes are pulled from the greater point you may have been making, it just sounds weird, even though it’s perfectly correct. It makes you feel a little self-conscious.

So, Harold got his time in the spotlight, and I got to learn what it’s like to be interviewed and quoted in a story. All in all, a successful experiment in pet PR!

Larry will write for you for super cheap. In fact, he just needs a free lunch and some kind words.

So, we’re watching Almost Famous the other day and it gets to the part where, in 1973, Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres asks William if he wants to do a story for on Stillwater for the magazine. He offers him $700, then ups to $1000 when he mistakenly assumes William’s silence means he’s holding out for more. Funny, yes, but Matt (my boyfriend, also a writer) looked at each other and laughed for a different reason — his fee is not that different to what freelance writing rates are today. In fact, getting $1000 for a feature is still quite a good rate unless you’re dealing with the big boys. Of course, Rolling Stone is one of the biggest and I’m sure the pay their writers well, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

If you want to really see freelance writing rates in action, check out Craigslist’s jobs section. The posts almost always offer completely laughable rates, or offer it for “someone who wants to build their portfolio” aka, write for free. There’s someone on there who’s taken to chastising people for these low offers and I get a kick out of their crusade.

The thing is, writers don’t get much respect. And it kind of sucks. Aside from too much competition in the market and too many people willing to work for next-to-nothing, there’s a general lack of understanding in as to the value of good writing. People always want to cheap out on the writing. And unfortunately, it shines through and through in the work, whether it’s a brochure, a website, or an article.

What do you do, though? Well, it would be nice if other people stopped writing for free or shit pay, but that’s not going to happen. I just try to only write for people that compensate me accordingly — which they tend to once they realize that a crappy writer isn’t worth the battle. There are only so many hours in the day, and you need to make enough each hour to make ends meet. Tough gig, this freelance writing.

Banff National Park. Photo: Kelly Nigro, Flickr Creative Commons

I’m writing a children’s book on Alberta right now. Since I’m literally chained to my desk, I thought I’d share the love:

Did you know:

• That Alberta has the second-highest proven concentration of oil reserves in the world? Only Saudi Arabia has more.
• That Alberta is named after Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, Louise Caroline Alberta?
• That Alberta has a dinosaur named after it? The Albertosaurus
• That it takes two tonnes of oils sands to make one barrel of oil?
• That the Canadian government was less than candid when it recruited Brits and Europeans to come homestead in Alberta at the turn of the century. It promised “virgin farmland” and “ready made farms”, but forgot to add that the winters are brutal and the climate very dry. The British and Europeans? Not so impressed.

I find myself increasingly concerned about the economy lately–not just becuase it’s bad for everyone when recession hits, but more selfishly, for myself, a self-employed writer.

Granted, I do not run a restaurant located next to the GM plant (thank goodness) or hold stock in Bear Stearns, but nonetheless, I find myself worrying about financial security as the nation’s purse strings collectively tighten.

But should I be more worried or less worried than my salaried peers? I’m not sure. When there’s less budget to spend, do companies layoff staff and move to contractors or they keep staff and get rid of the contractors?

My friend Jim Carroll, a trends and innovation expert, told me this winter that his research indicated that young people increasingly feel that working for themselves is more secure than working for a company. And recently, he wrote about the increasingly independent nature of professionals.

“60% of engineers and architects are expected to be working on a contingent basis by 2012,” he writes. “That’s a huge number — and is indicative of our onward march to a massively nomadic workforce.”

Reading Jim’s posts always make me feel better–he’s been incredibly successful and is an enthusiastic proponent of working for yourself. (He’s been doing it for almost 20 years.) He has also reminded me about the global nature of today’s marketplace and that people like me really stand to benefit from it. So, with Jim’s advice in mind, I remind myself that unlike many of my peers, I am used to hustling for work, being interviewed and chasing after assignments. Nevertheless, it’s a bit nerve wracking.

Do you work for yourself? Are you worried about financial stability as the economy dips? Is it better to work for yourself in recession (as a service provider, not a restaurant owner) or secure yourself a salary? Comment away!

Photo: www.SocialTechnologies.com

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