Welcome

I started this website as a blog in May 2012 after my husband was diagnosed with melanoma, and I blogged here actively, almost exclusively about melanoma, during his treatment. Most of the blog posts have been about our melanoma journey, but happily we don't have much to say on that subject these days.

By profession I'm a publication consultant and freelance writer based in Washington, D.C. If you want to see some of my work, see my portfolio on the Pressfolios website. Feel free to use the "contact" tab if you have questions or want to get in touch.

On the ‘biggest threat to journalism’ today

Ross Barkan’s July 17 opinion piece in the Guardian, The biggest threat to journalism isn't Donald Trump. It's declining revenues, raises some issues for me, some of which I have been kicking around for a while. The first, in particular, is like a blister that won’t heel because I just keep walking on it.

Message to Prospective Clients: Let's Be Clear

High on my wish list for news and feature editors advertising for freelance journalists is to tell us how we fit into their publishing plans. All too often, it’s difficult to tell from the ad or call for pitches whether this opportunity fits into our work plans.

Confronting the Pitching Demons

Sometimes when I think about pitching stories to new clients, I just get the willies. Sometimes, though, it verges on full-blown terror.

This has always been so – and for me, “always” means a long time. I first started freelancing early in my marriage to a newspaper reporter whose employers wouldn’t hire employees’ spouses. Working for the competition wasn’t acceptable either, so most of my first decade as a professional journalist was freelance. In those days everything was done by snail-mail, and how I dreaded opening the mailbox!

Not fake - just wrong

I won’t be surprised to see a complaint by the new President that reports of his administration removing LGBTQ, climate change, and other pages and content from the White House website constitutes “fake news.” It wasn’t fake – it was just wrong, at least as reported on People.com.

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Another article, on the Advocate website, didn’t report the erroneous allegation that the Trump administration or transition team took the pages and references down. It just didn’t report that, in the normal scheme of things, the orderly transfer of power to the new administration includes archiving the White House website under the departing president and, simultaneously, launching a new version produced by the incoming head of state.

journalism

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