OCTOBER NEWS ROUNDUP: Industry Updates for Journalists, Authors and Content Marketing Writers

Welcome to the ASJA Industry News Roundup. This is a monthly briefing of news stories and industry happenings that may impact freelance writers and business owners. The articles cited below were all also listed in October issues of the ASJA Weekly. 

This is a new venture, so thanks for your patience as we discover its best form to take. Without further ado, here is the October roundup:

Reporting, Access and Press Freedom
Local and freelance journalists are struggling for access to press conferences and politicians, especially as public officials question the legitimacy of freelancers, says this Poynter article. In a different article on the challenges independent local journalists and publishers are facing, Poynter also interviewed the authors of a study out of Syracuse University’s Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship. Meanwhile, California’s Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act creates tax credits for local newsrooms based on how many journalists they employ – or don’t lay off. This includes part-time reporters. Learn more here and here, courtesy of Nieman Lab.

AI, Ethics, and How to Be More Searchable

Who doesn’t want to be more findable by potential clients? Josh Bernoff writes about how to make yourself easier for AI searches to find, and how he accidentally optimized himself for GEO (general engine optimization). Bonus: You might just catch the names of some ASJA members in this article. And from the Content Marketing Institute, how do you make your content discoverable now that blue links are no longer king? (Clearly, we still think they have some value.) 

Let’s talk about trust and ethics. What would you do if an AI company wanted to purchase your reporting notes to help develop large language models (LLMs)? Read about one freelancer’s experience, courtesy of the Columbia Journalism Review. And in the age of AI, how do you build trust in your content? It’s not enough to simply disclose the use of AI.
(But if you’re interested: I used AI to organize the October Industry News articles into topics. For a couple of articles, I pasted the text and asked Claude: “What’s the basic point here?” AI didn’t write anything that appears here, tempting though it was.)

The Craft and Process of Writing

Writing a memoir or thinking about it? Key to any memoir is pacing, knowing when to stretch things out and when to condense them. Writing a travel memoir? Stay away from the itinerary formula. Instead, focus on a value word and write from that perspective. (Side note: This article references writer Sue Monk Kidd, who co-authored a wonderful travel memoir, Traveling with Pomegranates, with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor). – from JaneFriedman.com.

Courtesy of Writer’s Digest: If you’re working on something personal or painful, it might help to create a “container,” or ritual to get in the zone, such as lighting a specially designated candle for your writing time. 

On the flip side, if the goal is to write funny, this article offers some good tips, including “use hard consonants.” And get weirdly specific. Speaking of, here’s a bid to keep on writing those weird stories. The article is focused on fiction writing, but we can translate it to apply to nonfiction. 

One more thing: Don’t ask an editor to give your manuscript a soft touch. That doesn’t help you. So says Mr. Bernoff. 

Holly Leber Simmons is a content marketing writer and journalist who writes compelling, person-driven stories. She specializes in — but is not limited to — working with higher education institutions and associations. With more than two decades of experience, Holly has been a daily news reporter in Chattanooga, TN; an Associated Press writer in Brussels, Belgium; a B2B editor in New York City; a content director in Washington, DC, and more.