Goodbye Magazines

Is it time for writers to give up on magazines? A growing number, including myself, think it has. In a nutshell many feel they’re not worth the hassle and the low pay.

                  When invented in the 19^th century magazines were cutting edge. They were a step up, so to speak, from newspapers. They provided a more in depth look at various subjects. They educated people about Some specialized on certain subjects. For example when the electric railway industry blossomed a century ago trade journals were created for it providing useful news and information. They were also a place where novels were serialized and provided an outlet for short stories. Today, for the most part, this is long gone.

                  In the 20^th century one thinks of such great magazines as Punch, National Geographic, Life, Mc Calls, to name a few. Here in Canada we had Saturday Night. Macleans and Chatelaine. Magazines were a must read. Today magazines, like newspapers, are under siege from t.v. and the Internet. Simply put magazines are not keeping up, although they certainly are trying.

                  From a writer’s point of view magazines have gone from good to bad to horrible. Where to start? Well the pay hasn’t increased since about the 1960s or maybe the 1970s and yet demands on writers have. Most magazines now want all rights and some are demanding a waiver of moral rights and they aren’t paying for these extra rights. Prior to this writers could make badly needed extra money by selling an article to one magazine and then turning around and selling it to one or two or even more other magazines. The acquisition of all rights kills this. Most contracts in the past were negotiable today they’re take it or leave it.

Some publications pay on publication, which leaves the writer stuck if they don’t run it, as two such publications did with me. Try going into a store and taking something, like a stove or even a bag of chips, and saying I’ll pay for if I use it. Some magazines are now passing on some of their costs to the writer, without increasing the pay, like, for example, demanding that you cover them in the event of a lawsuit.

                  Then there are the insane things some magazines do. Writer’s Digest, which proclaimed itself the leading magazine for writers, for years had a one or two page rambling form rejection. This continued after one writer did an article on the check list form rejection.

                  Too many magazines talk down to writers, like calling the writer by their name, but signing their reply with something like “The Editors” or “Editorial Staff”. Another way is for some to use a condescending tone, treating a professional writer like an idiot.

                  And how do you deal with this? I queried a magazine I’ve written for several times proposing to do a piece on the 100^th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. The editor told me it would be more appropriate for their online site, whose editor told me it would be more appropriate for the print magazine. Scream!

                  Then there was one editor who wrote an article for a major writer’s magazine complaining about the poor writers he was dealing with. However, when I checked out the magazine I found they paid poorly, demanded all rights and paid on publication. In my view the editor got exactly what the magazine deserved.

                  This isn’t to say that writers’ are perfect. We aren’t. Even the best of us make mistakes, as do the best editors. And there are too many amateurs, in the negative sense of the word, who are willing to write for free, who fail to study the publication and who can barely put two sentences together.

                  What is badly needed is a good shakeup to bring magazines kicking and screaming into the 21^st century. Pay needs to be substantially increased, contracts need to be made more equitable to the writer, writers need to be treated with respect and a system of cultivating new quality professional writers needs to be put in place. Until that time comes writers will continue to abandon magazines and content will suffer.

Drawing The Line

Legend has it that at the siege of the Alamo in Texas Colonel William Barret Travis drew a line and asked all those who were with him to cross it, while the rest could leave. Only one man had the courage to hang back and leave. As journalists we all must know when to draw the line and when to hang back rather than cross it.

Hopefully one line where we’ll hang back is when a potential employer wants us to work for no or very little pay. I used to hear a lot about these work houses where writers were invited to bid on a project with the obvious objective to pay the writer as little as possible. Hopefully they have gone away, but somehow I doubt it.

There are others who will ask writers to work for nothing, while everyone else gets paid. Here’s a link to Harlan Ellison http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE on paying the writer. Ellison rightfully says that too many amateur writers who are willing to write for free undermine the professionals.

Hopefully we’ll hang back on employers who treat us shabbily, who demand all rights for little pay, who pay on publication and who demand that we reimburse them in case of a lawsuit. Generally speaking these are amateurs and if we’re trying to be professional we should ignore them.

Hanging back from other lines very much depends on our own values. As a Christian I won’t write for pornographic publications or those which deny the reality of climate change or who are outright anti-God. In writing I won’t take God’s name in vain or use Christ’s name as a swear word. I also won’t use such words as nigger, Paki, fagot or fatso as they are very disrespectful. In fact I generally avoid swearing, except if I were to quote someone. However, I don’t consider the term “bull shit” to be swearing or using the word “shit” instead of euphuisms like “pooh” or “defecation”. To me these are fluffy nonsense.

As webmaster of Peter’s Place Of Freelance Journalism I take bigger liberties than as a writer. Why? For one thing my site is aimed at all journalists and not just those who consider themselves Christian and for another if I limited it to just those media that upheld to certain restrictive values I’d probably end up with just a few hundred links instead of a few thousand. So therefore I include links to pornographic publications, those that promote freer sexual values than I hold, to publications that pay on publication and demand all rights. I also link to media promoting other faiths, including atheism.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some media where I’ll draw the line and hang back from. There are. I will not knowingly link to media that out and out promote satanism, racism, pedophilia or are anti-environment.  I also will not knowingly link to any extremist media.

The bottom line is all of us as journalists must know our own lines to hang back from otherwise we fail both ourselves and our audience.

Peak Oil Part III

There is a tragic story of a town house being on fire. The smoke detector went off the parents got up and went downstairs where a fire has started. The parents come downstairs with their young son. The child, seeing the fire, gets scared, escapes and runs upstairs and ducks under the bed and is killed in the fire. The media is like that child. We see the triple issues of peak oil, environmental degradation and depression, get scared and run and hide. And journalists aren’t the only one, politicians, businesses and individuals just don’t want to deal with this.

Your typical non specialized news media have general news reporters and specialized reporters for such things as sports, business, crime, health, entertainment and politics (federal, provincial/state and local). Totally ignored and considered optional at best is the environment, which includes energy. (In all fairness energy is also included in business, but there it is treated strictly in terms of money and growth.) Heck lotteries receive far more coverage than energy and the environment. Yet our economy and our very lives depend on a healthy environment and good supply of clean energy.

News tends to be framed in terms of whether it is good or bad for the economy, it’s impact on congestion, the number of jobs it will create and whether it promotes growth or not. Energy use is usually ignored and the environment, if considered at all, tends to be secondary to economic growth and jobs. Journalists, like most everyone else, put economic growth and job creation ahead of everything else, including our very lives. Basically short term thinking with no thought or care to the consequences of our behavior.

A good example of this is that auto shows are covered in depth, while bicycle shows, if covered at all, tend to be covered only briefly as form of recreation or entertainment. Another example boat shows also are covered in depth and while boats are recreation they’re big business. New and wider roads are primarily viewed in terms of their impact on congestion and on growth as well as how much they will cost. The underlying assumption is they’re good. The long term impact on energy and the environment is totally ignored.

I saw a technology piece on t. v. recently telling how, among other things, that we will soon be able to have our refrigerators communicate with us to tell us we’re out of milk, for example. The implication was that this was a good thing. No questioned otherwise or what its total impact would be.

When we want to journalists can do an excellent job of investigative reporting. Take for example Paul Bliss of CTV, who uncovered the Ornge scandal. Ornge, for those unfamiliar with it, is an Ontario air ambulance service and the scandal basically involved overspending. Bliss did an excellent job of uncovering and reporting on this. Now where are the Paul Blisses on energy and the environment?

In all fairness good reporting does take time, space and money. However, it also takes good imagination. If we change our priorities the time, space and money are there. It would mean cutting back on sports and entertainment, including stories about lotteries and recreation. Notice I said cut back, not cut out.

A good first step would be for the major media outlets to assign a reporter to cover energy and the environment. Another first step would be to start asking the hard hitting questions that need to be asked of things, like should we be doing this or that and what are the energy and environmental costs of doing or not doing something rather than just looking at the short term economic costs and benefits. It should also be a requirement for journalists to take courses on science, energy and the environment.

Other steps walk, bicycle and use public transit to get to and from work and on our jobs as much as possible. Where a car or a van is still required car share. Use motor vehicles that are as energy efficient as possible. Do what we can to make our homes and places of work as energy efficient and as easy on the environment as possible. All this helps our pocket books as well as helping ensure we’ll still be able to eat, drink and breath tomorrow.

We, as journalists and as a society, need to start putting life ahead of short term gain and pleasure, and we need to do it very soon.

Here’s a link to an update on an earlier blog on newspaper paywalls. Some newspapers are now removing them as being counter productive:
“Paywalls Come Tumbling Down”

Peak Oil Part II

When I was a child I read a children’s story about a circus train. The giraffe chewed a hole in the roof of one of the passenger cars. The giraffe and all the other animals in that car got out and up on the roofs the train. They danced and played until they came to a tunnel. Then one by one they were forced back through the hole of the car they had come from. This being a children’s story no one was hurt. However, in the real life story of hitting declining oil production millions of people will die and many others will be very seriously injured.

Just think of how VERY oil dependent we are. Phones, computers, food and beverage packaging, rugs, storage boxes, medicine, clothing, furniture, pens, etc. are all made with oil. (Plastic comes from oil.) We use mechanized agriculture, which uses pesticides and fertilizers. We use oil for transportation. Even the lowly bicycle needs oil for lubrication and manufacture. Yes we do recycle far more than we used to, but it takes more energy to recycle things than it does to simply reuse them. For example a glass bottle can be reused an infinite number of times unless it broke, versus a plastic bottle than can only be used once.

So you can see by this that it will be VERY difficult to get off oil (and natural gas and coal). But get off it we will. We won’t have a choice. We should have started 20 years or more ago. Actually we shouldn’t have wasted as much oil and gas as we have, but we did.

So what will a post peak oil world look like? It depends on how quickly we face up to the problem and start reducing our energy use. The longer we delay the worse it will be.

The worst case scenario would be billions of people starving to death, losing most if not all of our technology, modern medicine, communications and transportation, losing clean running water and electricity. Our homes and businesses would be heated by wood, if at all. Our food would be locally grown, some of it where the suburbs now are, and we would be an agrarian society, dominated by feudal lords. However, it would be cleaner and quieter than today.

Another possibility is that we decide to deal head on with the problem and rapidly reduce our energy demand, which may allow us to continue to heat by oil and gas and keep at least some of our technology and modern medicine, communications and transportation, as well as electricity and clean running water. This would buy us time while we develop alternative and more efficient forms of energy.

Since the first part of my look at peak oil was posted I’ve learned about two realistic alternative fuel possibilities. One is using thorium in place of uranium for nuclear power plants. It’s very common and is safer than uranium and cannot be made into a bomb. I understand that it could be used in Cando reactors without much problem. (See Thorium Video I and Thorium Video II")

Another alternative fuel possibility is something called sun-gas. Basically it uses parabolic mirrors for high heat in a chemical reactor to make solar fuel cells. (See http://Sun-Gas I) These would produce about 20% less greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas. (See Sun-Gas II) Since it would be fuel cells solar power would be both storable and transportable. Sun-gas may be rolled out as early as next month in some western American states.

So what to do? Here are steps you can take both individually and collectively where you work, play or worship. You can start talking and thinking about it. Write your elected representatives to ask them what they’re doing to prepare. Write businesses to urge them to reduce their oil and natural gas use. Urge your place of worship to start dealing with the issue. Start growing at least some of your own food. It’s healthier and you know where it comes from. Walk, bicycle and use public transit whenever possible and if you’re already doing it do so more. If you have a motor home get rid of it the same goes if you have more than one car. Reduce heating oil, natural gas and electric use. Add insulation to your house or business. Learn new skills. Reduce using plastic as much as possible and start reusing things.

And if things don’t get as bad as I and other fear they could using less energy and making yourself and your business reduces your costs and your impact on the environment.

I know this is scary (It is for me.), but forewarned is forearmed. In time we’ll make it.

Here are some links to useful sites:

Sectors Of The American Economy Most At Risk From Peak Oil

Winning The Oil Endgame

Former BP Geologist On Peak Oil

Preparing For A Post Peak Life, part of postpeakliving.com. There are three videos totalling about 60 minutes. The first 8 minutes of the first video explains things in a nutshell. There information on peak oil on this page. It is run by André Angelantoni, whose biography can be read on the site.


Part three will look at specifically how journalists are part of the problem and how we can be part of the solution.

Peak Oil Part I

There’s an old saying with regards to falls from great heights that it’s not the fall that kills you, but the sudden stop at the end. Well for roughly the past 65 years we’ve been falling without realizing it and we’re about to reach the sudden stop at the end. What I’m referring to is the era of cheap oil, which is about to come to an abrupt end. Notice I did not say the end of oil, but the end of cheap oil.

Originally there were an estimated two trillion barrels of oil in the ground. Of this we’ve used roughly half. No problem you say we’ve still got at least 50 years before we have to start worrying. Wrong. What we’ve used is the easy to get at and cheap to produce oil. Think Saudi Arabia, Texas and southern Alberta. It costs roughly $10 a barrel or less to refine. Compare this to off shore drilling, the tar sands and the oil shale, which cost roughly $70-$80 a barrel or more to refine.

Peak oil also means peak production. Production is believed to have peaked about 2008 and has now plateaued. Currently we use between 80 and 83 million barrels of oil per day. That is about where production is at. It is expected to start declining as early as next year. (see The Guardian ) And we will never use all the remaining oil because it will be too costly to extract in terms of both money and energy. As one person so aptly put it, the human body is made up of roughly 70% water, but all we need to do is to lose 15% of that and we die.

Here’s a short video on Peak Oil - How Will You Ride The Slide? The comment above comes from the comments to this video.

There are some who say that new extraction technologies allow us to get more oil from existing wells. That is certainly possible as an article in the May, 2013 issue of The Atlantic shows the Kern River field in California was estimated to have just 47 million barrels of recoverable oil left in 1949 after 50 years of extraction. By 1989 945 million barrels were removed and an estimated 647 million barrels remained. By 2009 1.3 billion additional barrels of oil had been extracted and an estimated 600 million barrels remained. The field will inevitably run dry, but the question is when.

Others point to oil shale and claim that could save the day. Well the Bakken field in North Dakota deplete fast and estimates I’ve seen say this field could peak between 2017 and 2020. Unlike conventional or offshore fields shale oil fields do not plateau, but immediately start dropping once they reach their peak of production. So they could at best give us roughly an additional 5 or 6 years before the consequences of peak oil truly set in.

There is also the possibility that methane hydrate (crystalline natural gas) could take us off oil and coal and thus save our economies. However, there are major problems with this. It is found in low concentrations on the continental slopes. Since it is in a form similar to dry ice that means it has to be mined rather than drilled. Then there’s the problem of transporting it to shore. Finally it’s very costly.

The Japanese have been working at this for the past twenty years and estimate that it will take at least another ten years to finally bring this to production. So assuming they are right that would still leave a gap of as much as ten years between when oil production starts to decline and when methane hydrate starts to take over.

Again I refer you to the article in The Atlantic on this issue.

One thing that will definitely delay the consequences of the permanent decline in oil production is a new great depression. As I’ve discussed in previous blogs (see The New Great Depression) we’re facing a debt bubble, which is about to implode and will begin to happen this year. It will trigger a world-wide depression that will, unfortunately, be worse than the 1930s depression. If the depression suppresses oil demand deep enough and long enough it could delay the fall in production by perhaps as much as twenty years.

Let’s say that the depression reduces world demand from the current 83 million barrels a day of oil to 63 million barrels over 15 years. In 15 years time as global economies recover and oil demand starts to rise again we could find that we now have a permanent maximum production of say 70 million barrels of oil a day and declining. If we haven’t begun to take serious steps to wean ourselves off oil we will once again be facing very serious trouble.

What to do about peak oil, how to cope and the post peak world may look like is the subject of my next blog post in about a month’s time.

Copyright 2014 Peter D. A. Warwick

Querying

Let’s face it querying is a crap shoot or, as one person put it, a moving target. I say this as editors don’t always know what they want. One editor will take a one paragraph query, while another wants a one page query. The fun part is when a junior editor wants queries one way and a senior editor wants them another. Also an editor might take queries on one subject one day and reject queries on the same subject the very next day. Occasionally an editor will actually admit they have no clue what they want. I once had one tell me that, while my query was good, they were rejecting it because it didn’t catch the person’s fancy, whatever that is. Another editor might have assigned me the story. Sometimes an editor will reject a perfectly good query that’s right on target for no other reason than it’s late in the day and they just want to go home or they might be under a lot of stress when your query is read.

I once picked up an assignment on the basis of one sentence in a letter of inquiry to a magazine I didn’t know too well. On the other hand I sent a well-crafted query with a unique angle to a magazine I knew very well. Initially the editor was very encouraging and invited me to call. When I did the editor turned me down because I did not work in their field, something the person already knew. It was a complete waste of time.

In all fairness to editors they receive A LOT of queries that are totally inappropriate. The potential writer may demonstrate they haven’t studied the publication by querying on a subject that has just been covered or that they never cover. The potential writer may simply not know enough about the subject they want to write on. Editors also receive a lot of queries that are too broad and not focused enough. The writer might propose an article on women’s health, for example, instead of narrowing it down to a specific aspect of it. I confess I’ve made all of these mistakes at times much to my regret and embarrassment.

While querying is generally a serious and maddening business sometimes it can be funny too. Back in snail mail days Writer’s Digest, which was supposedly writer-friendly, used to send out rejections that were hilarious. It was a form rejection that rambled on and on and on about why they hated using form rejections, but here’s why. This continued for a while even after they published an article about using check-list form rejections. I don’t know what they do now as I haven’t queried them or looked at the magazine in years, but hopefully they’ve grown since then. I still recommend Writer's Digest for beginners.

Bottom line is while querying is quite a bit of a crap shoot, studying the market, having at least a general knowledge of the topic you’re proposing will definitely increase your odds. Finally above all keep your sense of humor you’ll need it.

By the sorry for missing the November post, but it was web host renewal time and as they only sent me the invoice the day before they blocked access to my website I couldn’t post anything. Frustrating.

Help My Mind Is Blank - Writer's Block

Sorry for the delay in this month’s blog, but I suffered writer’s block. For the few of you who have never experienced it, it is where your mind goes completely blank when faced with a clean screen or sheet of paper and you have no clue what to write. (My wife says I have no clue about many things, but that is another story.) It can be especially frustrating when you’re totally on your own having to come up with both the subject and the words to say. In these times it can seem like your battery is running low and you need to recharge it, but there is no place handy to do it. And so you have to try to get every last bit of juice out it until you are able to get it recharged.
To recharge my batteries I often find either making a list of potential subjects to write about or reviewing what you and others have written can be a big help. Another is to read a newspaper or magazine. If you have the luxury, delaying for a day or two might be just what you need. Call a good friend you can bounce things off of and maybe the two of you can brain storm an idea to get you started.
It’s a bit easier when you at least have a general idea of what you’re writing, but just can’t seem to figure out how to start. I often find that just writing anything related to the subject at hand is better than staring at a blank screen or piece of paper even if it’s the worse piece of crap you’ve ever written. No one needs to see it, but you. It starts the creative juices flowing. Once you’ve written something it is very easy to change it.
Sometimes even that may be impossible in your present situation. In this case read something similar to what you’re going to write. Go over your research. Take a walk, play a game, go shopping or do whatever to take your mind off things and then come back to it. I’ve found this technique helps when you’re really stuck for words. I’ve been amazed what your mind can come up with once you’re fed it and allowed it time to think. I used to think I was procrastinating, but now I realize this is part of the creative process.
So best wishes to those of you, who like me, suffer from the occasional bit of writer’s block.