The News & TeleGraff

On Writing

I've been reading a lot of the memorials to David Halberstam this week. Halberstam is one of the Crimson's Pulitzer Prize alums and so his picture hangs in the hallway of 14 Plympton Street. Jack Shafer's piece on Halberstam had a quote that I really liked. Halberstam, when told by the Times to generally write his stories to 600 words, wrote, in digust, to J. Anthony Lukas, his fellow Crimson editor and Pulitzer Prize winner:

"There are only two kinds of stories in the world: those about which I do not care to write as many as 600 words, and those about which I would like to write many more than 600 words. But there is nothing about which I would like to write exactly 600 words."

I have to say that I agree with Halberstam. In my career, I've often said that there are two forms of writing I really like—blogging and long-form pieces. Luckily, so far, that's been precisely what I've been able to do. I think, also, that this is one of the big challenges facing newspapers today—the length their articles run are not of particular use to anyone. Most articles are too long for average readers but not nearly in depth enough for interested readers.

DC Gossip

I made a brief appearance on Good Morning America last weekend to talk about gossip in Washington and how the arrival of TMZ.com migth reshape life in Washington.

It's a terrible clip of me—the wind was blowing outside and the sun was setting in my eyes and I look awful, but it was my first time on GMA. Here's the written article if you'd rather read than watch.

I Guess It's Real Now

So I'm hard at work writing as the April 20th deadline for the first draft of my book approaches. I'm spending nearly every morning writing from Tryst, the hipster coffee house in Adams Morgan about 15 minutes from my apartment. This morning I finished up the education chapter and made some progress on the conclusion.

Last night, though, in the mail I got the Fall catalog from Farrar, Straus, Giroux and right there on page 34, right next to Nadine Gordimer's new work, is the finished product:

Now all I have to do is finish it.