Chi Trib stunned to learn bloggers can write

This one (reg. required) was linked on Romenesko … it’s about how some people are blogging their way into mainstream media jobs. (Hint: dish on celebrities and you’ll attract a lot more eyeballs than, say, dishing on news of interest to newspaper editors.) This stuff is old news to me… the writing and interviewing I did online when a long way toward winning over the guy who hired me at the Merc.

So why blog old news? Of course: to get back on the topic of the nitpicking that we love best by parsing this quote cited on Media News:

I don’t think a blogger is going to transition from having 100 people a day in their audience straight to [a position as a] contributing editor for Vanity Fair, but there’s an easier progression than in the past

Note the bracketed stuff inserted into the quote and ask yourself: is that even remotely necessary? This is a pet peeve of our executive editor — she hates inserting stuff people didn’t say into direct quotes. Now I realize it’s tantamount to treason to speak well of a newsroom executive’s edict, but this is one pet peeve I wholeheartedly agree with. Most of the time, as with this citation, it’s clumsy and a little dumb-looking. But other times reporters will insert their interpretation of the quote into parentheses and when I’m reading, I’m thinking: precisely how in the hell do we know this is what the source means? Our marching orders are to paraphrase anything that is not a direct quote, and rewrite the sentence to get the bracketed info outside the quote marks. Spread it around, it’s a good idea.

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