Writing for the Web

How to Be a Good Wife

The August 26 Tyee has published my article "How to Be a Good Wife," based on a 1913 guide for Vancouver newlyweds.

A purely Web-based story like this poses some challenges: Sentences and paragraphs have to be short. Subheads have to catch the attention of visitors who are scanning the page rather than reading line by line. And the story still has to appeal to visitors who prefer to print out the text and read it on paper.

As a regular contributor to The Tyee, I'm biased. But I think it's about the best thing in Canadian online media at the moment.

Canadians Wired, But Not for News

Even though we Canadians are heavily online, not many of us use the Web as a news source. And if we do, we're likely to go straight to CBC (or MSN) for news. Max Colchester offers a thoughtful analysis of our reticence at The Tyee: We're Wired, But Not for News.

As one who increasingly relies on online news sources from CBC to Al-Jazeera and BBC, I was surprised to find I'm in such a small minority.

What Makes A Successful Blog?

D. Keith Robinson a Seattle Web designer, has a concise list of qualities needed for A Successful Blog.

He doesn't offer any shattering surprises, but it's good to see well-organized common sense.

What to Believe on the Web?

More disinformation than ever seems to have found a home on the Web, and bloggers are among the most notorious vectors for rumors, lies, and idle conjecture. A good place to check such rumors before passing them along is Snopes.com's Urban Legends Reference Pages. Their assessment of gutter fighting by American advocates of Bush and Kerry is especially useful these days.

Another Article in The Tyee

Even from a safe distance, the Lonesome Lake fire in the west Chilcotin was impressive enough to make me write about it, and the resulting article is now online at The Tyee.

We thought the fires of 2003 were bad, but so far this summer has been worse in terms of areas burned and money spent fighting them. It was a real pleasure to go for a walk in the rain this morning...the first rain we'd had in Vancouver in weeks.