Sadly, journalism has really reached a point of “edutainment saturation.”  When did we journalists walk away from that fire-in-the-belly reporting that launched such great historic moments (albeit bloody ones) as the French or Russian Revolutions, the downfall of Nixon, or just recently, the cruxifiction of Karlheinz Schrieber and Brian Mulroney.  Now, it always seems about getting the shock value.

Others in the industry are even less optimistic.  I found an article on soundscapes.info that in no uncertain terms says journalism is a dying art, and will not live to see any kind of future.  Personally, I’m not that pessimistic, but I think that as journalists, we need to return to a simpler, almost egalitarian way of doing things.  It’s not like I’m promoting technological xenophobia, but I do think there needs to be a curb somewhere in there.

For anyone with the testicular fortitude to read the condemning article on journalism’s future, here’s the link:

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/EDITORIAL/oped0701.shtml

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I myself am a case in point.  I come from the Eastern European school of learning (i.e. when you’re in class, your eyes are locked on the teacher at all times), but in recent times, I’ve had so many disparate things calling upon my attention that it isn’t always the case.  As a writer, I’m under constant deadlines.  So while my prof is giving us a lesson, my computer might be actively running searches through university archives for source material for me; or as a journalism residency student, I may be waiting on an important source to get back to me.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think this whole issue is relative to each person.  We’re all programmed differently, so we can all handle different levels of information.  I guess it boils down to whether or not you’re able to successfully process all that info.  If so, kudos.  If not, why are you wasting your time dividing your attention and not giving yourself the benefit of doing fewer jobs well with more focus?

 The University of Toronto’s psychology department did a study back in 2000, testing students and their ability to process under divided attention.  As a bit of a science nerd, I rather enjoyed it.  Maybe you will too:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=10868332&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google

Much has happened over the last week that I need to bring you up to speed on.  I’m still waiting for my final draft to be approved by my editing team, but the course my writing has been taking is about to change.  I spoke with my liaison last week, and she told me that everything in the literary world is gearing up for a change.  “What change?” you ask.  Well…

Up until now, I have defied the odds, and made it this far without an agent.  Literary agents are extremely difficult to acquire, and they don’t function the same way as a talent or acting agent.  But my liaison informed me that pretty much every big-name publisher is requiring authors to have agents, no exceptions.  She went on to tell me that she can’t guarantee that Random House will even look at my manuscript anymore.  So I found that rather discouraging at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that getting an agent really is a good idea.  It means I don’t have to try and sell my manuscript to insignificant, no-name publishers, but that soon, I might actually be welcomed into the bull-pen of literary heavyweights.

I’ve contacted three agencies so far, and been declined by one who stated that since she was going on maternity leave, she was not taking on any more clients “in the interim.”  But that’s fine by me.  Truth be told, she was my last choice anyway.  The other two I emailed were equally my top choices, and I am quite aware of the huge successes of many of the clients they have represented.  So when all is said and done, hopefully next week I will have some exciting news!

Cheers

In college right now, I have an entire class about ethics in journalism, but as a writer, I’ve been faced with the dilemma of ethics from the day I first put pen to paper.  In the literary field, especially in historic or biographical literature, citing your sources, and doing it properly is hugely import, and the law agrees.

In my social journalism class, we recently looked at the example of removing a blemish from a flower and whether or not that was ethical.  The truth is, I don’t know.  A few weeks ago, I handed in a report outlining what I believed where the do’s and don’t's of image doctering, and frankly, removing an unnecessary blemish from a flower falls into the fair game category.  I mean, unless it completely changes the context or perception of the image, I don’t see an issue, but I’ve got an ethical quandry for you now, blogfans, and that comes down to citing your sources: is it ethical to claim you got information from a source you actually didn’t?

Now hold the phone a minute, I don’t mean plagiarism!  But think about it for a second, you take a history book, like the recent New York Times bestseller Marie Antoinette, by Antonia Fraser.  It has a bibliography that’s thirteen pages long (my own is eight!)  Ms. Fraser has drawn on literally hundreds of sources that have drawn on other sources that have drawn on the original context or work.  So, is it ethical to bypass the middle man and simply quote from the original text?

The more I think about it, the more I’m of two minds on the subject.  On the one hand, I think that if you’ve got that original source material in front of you, why not?  Personally, I’ve read passages from Fraser’s book or Evelyne Lever’s highly popular Marie Antoinette: La Derniere Reine de France and then gone and read some of the very material she herself used.  Doesn’t sound necessarily wrong to use what’s right in front of you, am I wrong?

But then there’s the other side of the coin.  Say you don’t bother going to look that information up yourself, and decide to just use another author’s research and say you did look it up yourself, doesn’t that discredit and take away from the time and energy they put into it.  I have to say, ten years from now, I don’t know how I’d feel about someone taking my bibliography and saying they looked at all those sources without at least looking up the information to see from themselves.  There’s some food for thought.

Norcadia

     Much has happened since our last installment.  I finally received my much coveted copy of Francis the Good, but to something of a mixed reaction.  It was phenomenally helpful in that it provided me with details and juicy letters and other facts that I otherwise wouldn’t have had, but it was remarkably short (only 166 pages), and, as you could gather from the title The Education of an Emperor, it was literally about Francis’s education, which, I must say, was a little dull.

     Once I dissected as much information as I could and plugged it into the manuscript, everything began to come together.  I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be my final draft that I send to my editing team.  Granted, I think I’m still going to review it over the next couple of days to ensure that it’s in good form, but other than that, I think I’m done.  So, where does that leave this blog, you ask?

     Well, there’s a couple of places to go from here.  First off, I will still be posting information as I get it from my editors, the publishers I’m chatting up, and what kind (if any) of a publishing deal I’ll get.  The other juicy tidbit I’ll let you in on is the fact that I’ve start preliminary research for a third book.  I’m going to look at the collapse of the Austrian monarchy in 1918 at the end of World War I, but told from the perspectives of the three men whose lives were intimately involved with those last, fateful days: Emperor Francis Joseph, the infamous Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and the late Emperor Charles. 

     I’m very excited about getting into this next project.  I learned so much from my second book and I won’t make the same mistakes again.  I have an impressive array of source material, and I’m currently in good-standing with Charles’ son, Crown Prince Otto, so hopefully I can hit him up for another interview (I spoke with him before in regards to my current book).  Sounds exciting eh!  Oh, but sorry lads, my current book and my next one have already been copyrighted, so hands off!

     That’s all for now!  Happy writing and I hope to hear from people, Norcadia.