Writing for the Web

The Memory Hole

The Memory Hole is not for the squeamish; its latest coup is the publication of hundreds of photos of US military dead returning from Iraq to Dover AFB.

Most western media decided not to run the photos of the desecration of the bodies of the four "contractors" (=mercenaries) killed in Fallujah with such disastrous consequences. The Memory Hole has a veritable album of the photos.

And that's not all—the site has plenty of other shocking and disturbing material. It's yet another example of how the Web is transforming the nature of public discourse. Muckraking used to be a specialty of a certain kind of print journalist. Now, in the present Golden Age of Muck, everyone's got a rake.

Famous on Mindjack

Melanie McBride has just published an article about blogging on Mindjack in which I offer a paragraph of pontification. You can read it at "Linked Out: Blogging, Equality, and the Future."

Web Editing

I'm editing the text of a pretty big educational website, which has forcefully reminded me that editing for the Web is a specialty just as writing for the Web is.

This particular site will contain texts from dozens of different authors, and I've got to give it a single distinctive voice. In fact, it needs several voices: one for students, one for educators, another for the public whose taxes are paying for it all.

So I've been putting together a style guide, trying to establish a consistent set of usages. A long-quiet site, Edit-Work.com Web Style Guide, has been a great help. Established in the glory days before the dot-com bust, Edit-Work set some very useful standards. I'm grateful that it's still available, and it deserves attention from anyone who's serious about creating good text for the Web.

An Honour for the Father of Us All

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the World Wide Web and changed the world and our lives, has received the first Millennium Technology Prize. You can read about it at BBC News. Then reflect on what we might all be doing today if he'd been hit by a bus in 1988.

Web Writing Resources

Jonathan and Lisa Price, authors of Hot Text: Web Writing that Works, have a very good site. One of the best things about it is Resources -- Web Writing that Works, a long annotated list of sites relating to the subject. Very much worth a visit and a bookmark.

Fun to be an Online Teacher

I mentioned recently that Yvonne Hutchinson, one of my online article-writing students, had sold a story to the Guardian, one of the best newspapers in Britain. It was published today, and you can read "Empowerment can't come soon enough" on the Society.Guardian web page.

You have no idea how delighted I am for Yvonne, and how much I look forward to reading her future columns. Now if I could only figure out how to sell my own stuff to the Guardian...

The Guardian Looks at Blogs

The Guardian Online is one of the best journalism sites anywhere, and it covers the blogosphere better than most media do. Simon Garfield has just published a long, thoughtful article, New kids on the blog. Its emphasis is on British blogs and bloggers, but Garfield makes good points about American blogs as well. Very much worth the time to read.

Pretty Good Week for a Teacher

This semester, now almost over, has been rugged. I've been teaching three nights a week, Monday through Wednesday, plus a Tuesday-Thursday class at 8:30 in the morning. Very tiring, though the students have been fun and it's been interesting to tackle two new courses: an advanced communications course for our Tourism Management degree program, plus a Web Content Development course.

On top of that, I've been teaching Freelance Article Writing at trAce Writing School, which runs out of Nottingham Trent University in the UK. It's a small class, just seven students, but they've been hard-working and imaginative, and they've handed in some excellent work.

Yesterday one of them hit the jackpot.