Where there’s smoke, there’s ire

The Post’s real-estate editor surprised me by putting my condos/smoking article online late Tuesday afternoon, ahead of Saturday’s print publication date. (See mini-rant three posts ago about this self-destructive practice.) The next day, other editors surprised me more. Just after lunch, I wrote a friend, “My next story (in print Saturday) was buried deep on the real-estate page … suddenly it’s on the front page online, with my name! Being of a private inclination, I’m not sure this is necessarily good, but it’s getting a lot of comments ….”

A lot of comments indeed. Within hours, the number had climbed to more than 200. Then it was 340. Then it plummeted to 280 or 290. Comments police at the Post removed some, and all of the many by one person have disappeared. In any case, by late Wednesday, the story (and my name) were off the front page, and the pace slowed to nearly nothing until the story appeared in print yesterday. Right now there are 365.

Thursday night I mentioned all this to another friend, who said something about the attention. “They’re not talking about the story,” I said with a wry smile. “They’re bashing each other.”

Commenters at the Washington Post are a bit more civilized than at the New York Post, but these are too often ad hominem attacks. One commenter on my story wrote of another, “You are stupid.” Another put up a tirade against every major racial and ethnic group. (Eventually that one got removed. “Gotta love the diversity in that post,” someone wrote, which made me snort.) A few dozen comments attacked “libs” or Obama even though the article has nothing to do with politics. People on one side called people on the other side “whiny,” “selfish,” “idiotic,” “crazy,” “disgusting,” “neurotic,” “brainless,” and “bigots,” among other things, and one wrote, ” … if you did die, I am sure the rest of us would appreciate the peace and quiet.” Whew!

Should newspapers and other media police their comments sections? It’s an ongoing debate in newsrooms. The Washington Post’s ombudsman has weighed in, and I think there was an online chat about the issue. The New York Post seems to be a free-for-all. The New York Times is either well regulated or has more thoughtful and polite readers – probably both. Our Post surely feels like it’s dealing with a moving target.

Consider, for example, not this story, which quoted several people but focused on an issue, but the one two weeks ago in the Post Magazine about Page Melton Ivie – a story that focused on a person and secondarily on other people and issues. Big issues: After a notable reporting career, Page’s first husband is permanently in a childlike state due to medical calamity, and Page was resigned to caring for their children at home and him at an assisted-living facility. Years later she reconnected with an old friend, and they eventually married, which necessitated divorcing Robert, though he now lives close to the new family in the Midwest, where all of them visit frequently, and Allan has his own real friendship with his new wife’s first husband. (I was stunned to realize, when the article mentioned Page’s birth name, that I’d known her, and even Allan slightly, in college, though we were a few years apart.) A lot of readers, including me, found the article moving, a testament to open hearts and open minds and the tremendous power of love.

It was disheartening to learn that other readers – many – were horrified. They called Page terrible names, accusing her of not taking her wedding vows seriously and tearing apart her family for selfish, carnal whims. They said she was an example of a throw-away society and deserved to go to hell for bailing on Robert when the going got tough. Never mind that she didn’t do anything of the sort and in fact spent years finding ways to keep her family together and even expand it through a painful and draining ordeal.

Poor Page – or anyone – to be on the receiving end of so many hateful, ad feminam comments. A column a week later blasted those commenters, noting how easy it is to lob firebombs from behind the shield of anonymity and wondering how many people would say the same things if they had to attach their real names. Those of us who naturally shy away from public fora (a sexist old saying was that a woman’s name should appear in print only upon birth, marriage, and death; I amended that for myself to add three-point bylines) will hesitate even more to toss a personal opinion into the lions’ den, leaving it inevitably to the lions and the blowhards. Or, wait … is that too insulting? Leave a comment. Good thing this blog is purely an academic exercise for which no one has the address.

Copyright 2012 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.

The joy of teaching

I teach amateurs. That’s the point: “Getting Published” is a course for beginners, and most people who take it have never been published, at least not for pay. Maybe they’ve had just a short item in a company newsletter or a letter to the editor in the newspaper, but they have dreams and ambitions and questions, and they bring those to class to explore the options.

In the very first minutes, I tell them that some writers have an abundance of talent but never get published because they lack confidence or the basic knowledge and skills to connect with an editor correctly to sell an idea to the right market. On the other hand, some writers don’t have talent but get published regularly because they do have confidence and know just how to get the right editors’ attention with the right information. My aim, I say, is to draw out of these students their natural talent and add to it the nuts-and-bolts skills they need to research a story idea, write a terrific query letter, find and connect with the right editor at the right market, and construct an article that works so well that the clip helps win the next assignment in an even better market and for a bigger paycheck.

As you might expect, in addition to dreams and questions, students bring a range of talent. Most, frankly, aren’t very good. They can’t write, or they don’t grasp the concept of a query, or their style clashes with the markets they choose to pursue. Maybe they’ll develop after finishing the class. Many or most won’t stick with it, which is okay; I’ve taken enough classes (ballet and pottery come to mind) that were interesting and worthwhile but for which my modicum of talent wasn’t enough to propel me to continue. Taking classes pushes our boundaries a bit, tests our abilities and inclinations, makes us a little better at something, and that’s all to the good.

Every once in a while, through – every couple of years – a student comes along who’s a natural. Reading the first paper by such a student, a teacher’s eyebrows go up: Two paragraphs in, and I’ve used the red pen only to fix punctuation! The lead is a grabber, one sentence follows from another, use of similes and metaphors is sophisticated, vocabulary is a match for the market, quotes are appropriate, and attention does not wander from beginning to end. Wow, I think, we’ve got a live one.

One of my first classes at Montgomery College had such a student. He wrote about motorcycles. I know nothing about motorcycles, but his query and article were so good that I found them riveting. Something similar happened this semester. My only male student wrote about the pros and cons of a particular model of boat, then about a dangerous sailing adventure. I know nothing about boats, either, but these were so well written that I wanted to read more. The only red marks I made were to fix spelling, subject-verb agreement, and the occasional run-on sentence.

On the last day, I tell students I’ll look for their bylines. I always hope to see them, and sometimes I have. I never saw the motorcycle guy’s byline, but surely that’s only because I wasn’t looking in the right magazines; I have no doubt he’s been published somewhere. Same with the sailor: An editor will say yes soon, and he’ll know the joy of a bylined article. To a writer and editor, that is part of the joy of teaching.

Copyright 2011 Ellen M. Ryan. All rights reserved.