Need to Interview Writers for Article
For an article for a writers’ magazine, I’m looking for writers who have gone through the following sticky situations, who would like to share what happened to them and how they solved the problem. I’m also looking for other sticky situations, though I may have enough here for this short article:
* A key source insists on seeing a copy of your article before it goes to the editor or goes into print.
* It’s your magazine’s policy to let sources review the manuscript, and your source has covered the article with so much red ink it looks like he sacrificed a goat on it…and his changes are ridiculous and incorrect.
* You receive nasty reader e-mails and letters in response to an article you wrote.
* You get a copy of the magazine you wrote for — and see your name is missing or misspelled.
* You get a copy of the magazine you wrote for — and a major source’s name is misspelled.
* You didn’t use a source who gave a terrible interview, and now he’s asking when the article will come out.
If you’re interested in participating, please contact me at lindaformichelli@gmail.com with “Sticky Situations” in the subject line. Thanks in advance for your help!
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Mar 4, 2009 Help us!
>You get a copy of the magazine you wrote for — and see your name is missing or misspelled.
I’m a novelist, but I do write non-fiction articles (usually travel or “how-to write fiction” topics), and so I’ve had my share of weird experiences with magazine editors.
In the oddest and most memorable case of “what the heck was the editor thinking?” my co-author and I wrote a short article on collaboration. When the article finally appeared, the magazine not only misspelled both of our names (granted, both my first and last names have an unusual spelling, but my co-author has a nice “normal” American name) but the biographical blurb accompanying the article was made up out of whole cloth and listed us, bizarrely enough, as a “mother-daughter writing team.” Which we both found hilarious, because we are not in the least related, and we’re not *that* far apart in age!
regards,
Karin Welss
(writing with Marian Gibbons as award-winning historical novelist Michaela August)
You forgot editors that let sources rewrite you… Sure, I will talk to you. jkellaw@aol.com
By the way, I have started a blog on how to cope with this mess. http://hopeycopey.blogspot.com.
Riss me, diss me…anything…
I don’t mean to sound rude but these are meant to be sticky situations? Really? Um… most writers I know regularly refuse requests for copy approval i.e. to see articles before they go to press. I’m sure everyone has had their name or a source’s name spelt wrong before (get over it), and I’m sure we’ve all had to drop sources before now (you tell them sorry, it got edited out).
And I can’t think of one publication that actively encourages sources to review articles – surely that’s against everything journalism is supposed to be about. Maybe it’s different in America (I am rather disturbed by the comment above about editors letting sources rewrite you). If so, I think that’s a shame because you’re turning it into an advert without labelling it as such. Articles are meant to serve the people reading them not the people they are about. In fact most of the publications I write for forbid writers from showing articles to sources. The most you can do is read their own quotes back to them.
Surely an actual sticky situation is a source cancelling or not being available when you need to speak to them right before a deadline, or someone you’re interviewing for a real life piece changing their mind about doing the story or being made an offer by another writer/publication or you doubting whether the story is actually true after all, or not being able to find something or someone the editor has asked for in the brief, or realising the story they want isn’t possible and you need to change the angle, or a story with legal problems of some kind?
If the things in your list were the worst things any of us had to deal with it would be a very easy job.