WordCount/by Michelle Vranizan Rafter

Who says freelance writers can’t make a difference? Loretta Tofani has.

On May 8, Tofani received the $25,000 Michael Kelly Award for a series investigating unsafe working conditions in China that she wrote as a freelancer for the Salt Lake Tribune. She was one of four journalists nominated for the prize and the only freelancer.

Tofani previously won a Pulitzer Prize in 1983 at The Washington Post and served as The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Asia correspondent based in Beijing. But she’d left writing and opened up a shop in Ogden, Utah, selling Chinese antiques when she traveled to China on a buying trip and encountered the substandard health conditions in Chinese furniture factories.

The visit prompted her to apply for grants to spend 12 months in China documenting how Chinese workers risk their health and sometimes their lives making products for export to the United States and other countries. That investigation became the series, “American Imports, Chinese Deaths”, which the Tribune published in October, 2007.

Tofani writes about how she stumbled onto the story in this article for the Center for Investigative Reporting, which helped fund her research.

The Michael Kelly Awards is a $25,000 prize given by Atlantic Media Co. to honor Kelly, an editor at The Atlantic and National Journal who was killed in Iraq in 2003.

In addition to Tofani, this year’s other nominees include:

Kelly Kennedy, Army Times – for a series on an infantry regiment in Iraq hit hard by casualties.

Joshua Kors, The Nation – for stories on the mis-diagnosis of injured soldiers returning from Iraq, which have already received multiple other awards.

Blake Morrison, Peter Eisler, and Tom Vanden Brook, USA Today – for stories on the Pentagon’s failure to respond to the problem of roadside bombs in Iraq.

If you’re old enough, you remember when reporters wrote stories on IBM Selectric typewriters. Switching to a PC was huge.

Well, that’s nothing compared with the changes happening in the news business now. Print is out. Digital is in. Newspapers are suffering, online publications flourishing.

While some people lament these changes, others see opportunity. One of them is John S. Carroll, former editor of the Lexington Herald-Leader, the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times. Carroll spoke of the changes facing the news business to journalism students at the University of Kentucky on April 1, 2008, saying, “The current period in journalism is, in fact, historic. It is epochal. It is remarkable, perhaps even unprecedented. I’m speaking, of course, of the passage of journalism into the digital age.”

He told journalism students that they’ll be working with tools unlike any imagined by earlier generations:

“You will have new tools for finding things out, and tools to send your stories to the entire world at the speed of light,” he says. “Journalism has always been a one-way bulletin from journalist to public. Now it is a conversation with millions of participants, which gives us access to new facts and new ideas.”

And he expressed hope that new media will continue in the journalistic tradition of:

“enriching the national conversation, keeping the old media honest and creating entirely new languages of journalism. I also hope that they’ll find ways to make more money and thereby to employ reporters in meaningful numbers.”

Read the complete text of John Carroll’s speech here.

A common question for freelancers with blogs is how to increase traffic. It’s a great question - and I’m the first to admit I don’t have a lot of answers.

I’m slowly building traffic to this site by:

¤ Posting a message on the online bulletin board of the freelance writer group I belong to whenever I put up a new post.

¤ Included an RSS feed button at the top of my blog, to encourage people to sign up to get new posts automatically mailed to them. See it up there in the top righthand corner?

¤ Using tags with common search terms on all my posts so they’ll get picked up by search engines like Google. I wrote more about this in a post called What Freelance Writers Should Know about SEO.

¤ Including the URL for this blog in my email signature.

¤ Including the name, description and URL in my LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn has a relatively new feature called Status that lets you write a short answer to the question “What are you working on?” so your LinkedIn connections can see what you’re doing. When someone looks at your LinkedIn profile, your Status sentence shows up at the very top, right under your name and job description. I use this feature to let my connections know about new blog posts. When I update my own “What are you working on?” description, the information appears on the Home page of all of my LinkedIn connections, so they can see what I’m up to - and hopefully, go read my blog.

Darren Rowse at ProBlogger offers some really good common sense tips in this post, 10 ways to improve blog traffic in 30 minutes or less. Among them: post your best stuff on the days of the week when you know you get a lot of traffic, and take time to respond to comments, so you’re building a rapport with your readers. Read Rowse’s other tips in the post.

Kathy Sena, a new online writer/editor friend, writes a blog called ParentTalkToday. In her email signature, instead of just listing a link to the blog, Sena also includes a line about her most recent blog post, which she rewrites every time she posts, and writes in a different color. The idea is for people to be so intrigued by what she’s written they follow the link to her blog. Here’s what it looks like:

Kathy Sena . Writer/Editor
Specializing in parenting, health, lifestyle and women’s issues
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Phone: 310-XXX-XXXX
Fax: 310-XXX-XXXX
Email: XXXXXXXXXX@XXXXX.net
Web: http://www.kathysena.com
Blog: http://www.parenttalktoday.com (Today we’re talking about keeping too many balls in the air…)

If you’ve got other tips for driving traffic to your blog, please share!

May 7 UPDATE: I’ve added 1 last freelance writer blog to the blogathon list, bringing the total to 23, or 24 counting me. MVR

The WordCount May blogathon is six days old and I’m excited to say that 22 freelance writers have taken up the challenge of blogging every day this month. A few signed up late, so I’m listing them here, and also to the original list that ran on May 1.

Leah Ingram - The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal), all about living frugally and green.

Dara Chadwick - Fit in Real Life.

In honor of the blogathon, I’ve revamped the links section of this blog. I streamlined the categories, and will be adding names of all the freelance writers participating in the May blogathon, as well as others whose work I know or like.

I also updated the Clips page to include stories that came out this month, including pieces in Oregon Business, IncTechnology.com, and YourSecurityResource.com.

Next on my housekeeping list is a design update - but don’t hold your breath!

They say you are what you eat. I say, you are what you read.

If you want to be a reporter, you have to read the news. That used to mean reading a newspaper every morning, or even two or three. Now you can get your daily dose of news online. I’m agnostic on that point, as long as you read.

To be a good writer, you’ve got to read good writing. I read The New Yorker because I love the story mix, You never know what you’ll get from one week to the next, but there’s a 99.9 percent chance you’ll be captivated by a story on a subject you never realized could be so fascinating, or even existed.

Right now I’m reading two of my favorite authors. One is Anne Lamott, the dreadlocks-wearing, born-again, liberal writer from California’s Marin County who gained attention in 1993 with “Operating Instructions”, her hilarious, soulful account of the birth of her son and their first year together. I’m listening to Lamott’s book “Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith” on CD. Listening to Lamott’s voice is like listening to a sermon: soothing and spiritual and good in small doses, a perfect companion for afternoon carpool rounds.

The other is Susan Straight, an ex-newspaper copy editor and current college professor who lives in southern California’s dusty Inland Empire. I first discovered Straight when my old book group “I’ve Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots”. I’ve also read “Highwire Moon”, which was a National Book Award nominee. Now I’m reading “A Million Nightingales” and it promises to be as good as the others.

It’s a coincidence that I’m reading both of these authors at the same time. Apart from gender and geography they don’t have a lot in common. But each does have a distinct and authentic voice. They sound so much like themselves. Because their books read so well, they make achieving that seem easy. But getting to that place requires enormous effort and practice.

First the good. This year’s National Magazine Awards were announced a couple days ago. National Geographic won three, followed by Vanity Fair, which amidst the uproar over its suggestive pictures of squeeky-clean tween queen Miley Cyrus, grabbed two. Conde Nast Portfolio, the glossy monthly that debuted a year ago, took home one - not bad for a rookie.

Now the bad. Given by the Magazine Publishers of America, the Ellies are considered one of the high points of the year for the magazine industry. While magazine publishers don’t have as much to worry about these days as newspapers, these aren’t exactly the industry’s salad days. Ad spending in consumer magazines is expected to grow a mere 3.6 percent this year, compared with a 14.4 percent jump in online advertising, according to this report from TNS Media Intelligence, a custom researcher.

Some one-time venerable magazines are on their last legs. Nikki Finke reported on her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog on May 2 that TV Guide’s editorial staff has been gutted and the magazine is in danger of being folded. It’s hard to believe. In my magazine journalism classes in grad school, TV Guide was always held up as the epitome of magazine journalism success, with a bigger readership than any other publication in the country, with the possible exception of Reader’s Digest. According to Finke, TVG now has about 3.5 million subscribers, not counting the people who click on the TV Guide channel to see what to watch.

And now the ugly. Sex magazines by and about college students. I won’t post live links to any here -sorry, I’m just not that kinda gal - but you can read all about it in this article from 2007 from the New York Times.

My muse visited again the other night. I don’t know why she comes in the middle of the night, or when I’m in the shower or walking the dog. When she arrives, it’s usually to hand me an idea, sentence or opening paragraph for a story that I’d been searching for. If I’m in bed, it’s impossible to roll over and go back to sleep. When she arrives it’s not all dreamy, like on fairy wings, but in a Mustang convertible going from zero to 75 on the highway. My mind races, jumping from whatever it was that woke me up in the first place to the other things I’m working on that day or the stories I’m thinking about pitching next, the laundry I have to do, and all my other chores.

I know if I don’t do anything I’d wake up the next morning and not remember the idea or sentence or inspiration that work me. So at 3 a.m. I turn on the light and reach for the red-covered journal I keep next to my nightstand. And write.

So

I love the first days of the month. It means I’ve closed the books on whatever I billed in the previous 30 days and I’m starting all over again. This month it also means the start of my blogathon, A Post a Day in the Month of May, which is already generating a lot of buzz.

Usually the first of the month also means I have some new stories out in various magazines and Websites.

This month, I’ve got a feature story in Oregon Business magazine about local manufacturers who’ve chosen not to move their factories offshore. It’s called “Made in Oregon” and you can read it here.

I also wrote a piece for IncTechnology.com about cell phone service price wars. Did you know you can buy all-you-can-talk service for $99 from all the major cell carriers? Read more here.

IncTechnology.com is also running a slide show I wrote called “No More Paper,” that explains how small businesses can cut down on the amount of office paper they use. I’ve written a couple slide shows for IncTechnology.com. Think of them as short stories told in 50-word increments.

You’ll think twice before sending a dirty joke to a co-worker after reading this story I wrote about dumb things that can get you fired, for a Website called YourSecurityResource.com.

5/07 UPDATE: I’VE ADDED THREE MORE TO THE END OF THE LIST. MVR

5/02 UPDATE: I’VE ADDED A COUPLE MORE LATECOMERS TO THE END OF THE LIST. MVR

NOTE: I’VE ADDED TWO LATECOMERS TO THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST. MVR

I’m ushering in May by kicking off a blogathon, where I promise to post something every day this month. I’m calling it A Post a Day in the Month of May.

I’m doing it to celebrate a milestone birthday coming up in a week or so, and the start of spring.

I’ve persuaded 19 other freelance writers to join me. During the course of the month I may write more about each one. For now, here’s a list of who’s joining me in my great birthday blogging adventure:

Janine Adams - Organizing tips galore.

Jane Boursaw - Covers everything about movies including reviews, trailers and industry news.

Diana Burrell - Diana is one half of the team behind the popular The Renegade Writer books and blog, which are both crammed with good stuff for writers.

Jackie Dishner - Writes about biking, but so much more. Her post today on biking and body image is amazing.

Marijke Durning - Writes about the newest in health and safety news, and a bit about life as a freelance writer.

Carolyn Erickson - Carolyn is using the blogathon to recharge her blogging batteries - good girl!

Amy Grisak - A good-looking blog about “seizing the moment,” with lots of posts about gardening, food, family life and more.

Roxanne Hawn - Covers the “true tales, brags and whines about my life with a rescued border collie named Lilly.”

Sandra Hume - A blog about Laura Ingalls Wilder! My 7-year-old son and I just read “Little House in the Big Woods” and I fell in love with it all over again.

Elizabeth Kricfalusi - “Miss Adventure” writes about adventure “in many different shapes and flavors.”

Trish Lawrence - According to Trish, “It’s mostly blather about my writing, gossip, and my opinions on things as opposite as Gossip Girl and James Frey.”

Sue Poremba - Writes for and about writers. Today’s post is about coming up with queries.

Sarah Ludwig Rausch - A mom of four and freelance writer: it’s worth visiting Sarah’s blog just to see the picture of her cute kids.

Meredith Resnick - Actually, Meredith has four blogs but I only picked one to link to for now, on “real world news and real world views” of adoption. Meredith, how can you keep 4 blogs going?

Dawn Weinberger - A fellow Oregonian, writes about life after her husband Carl’s successful liver transplant last year, chronicling “our journey of faith, hope and healing.”

Susan Weiner - “Coverage of investment-related topics by a financial writer-editor who’s also a CFA charterholder.”

Late entries:

Charmian Christie - Christie’s Corner takes a light look at food. Her motto: “Real food. Real life. It ain’t always pretty.”

Jen Miller - Writes about the New Jersey shore in support of her new book, “The Jersey Shore, Atlantic City to Cape May: Great Destinations: A Complete Guide.”

Claudine Jalajas - Writes about the joys and pain of remodeling her house.

Barb Adamski - A Canadian writer who blogs about lacrosse, “its past, its present, and its future.”

Leah Ingram - The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal), all about living frugally and green.

Dara Chadwick - Fit in Real Life.

Jennifer Willis - Thoughts from the spiral.

Starting tomorrow, May 1, I’ll be embarking on a month-long blogathon that I’m calling A Post A Day for the Month of May.

I have a big birthday in May, and to celebrate I’ll be writing a post every day of the month. I’m also trying to write much shorter, more spontaneous blog posts and this will be good practice. I’ll still be blogging about freelance writing, but with 31 days to fill, who knows what could happen.

If anyone wants to join me, let me know in this space. I’d love to link to other freelance writers and bloggers who feel inspired to do this.