About WGP
Writers Getting Paid is a site all about the tips, tricks, secrets, and strengths of writers who've figured out how to make a living doing what they love. I interview my friends and colleagues who get paid to write; and I share all of their insights here with you. [More...]
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I'm a writer and photographer based in San Francisco. Check out my work at MattBaume.com.
Journalism Archive
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How TJ DeGroat Escaped the Blog-Post Ghetto for Social News Networking
Posted on March 25, 2010 | View Comments“I would have stayed in journalism, but I just didn’t find it a good job.” My friend TJ DeGroat is explaining how he went from writing for the Christian Science Monitor to managing online community for a social news website. Not too long ago, he... -
The New Yorker’s John McPhee: Reporting Must Lead to Books
Posted on March 24, 2010 | View CommentsThis is required listening: narrative non-fiction author John McPhee, one of those amazing old-timer-reporters (he started at the New Yorker in 1963) discusses his writing process in a recent podcast. The whole interview is a delight — he talks about, among other things, when he... -
Lit Agent Ted Weinstein: Successful Authors do More Than Just Write
Posted on March 23, 2010 | View CommentsTed Weinstein has some scary things to say about writing. “There’s less pay,” he warned me when I reached him by phone last week to talk about making a living as a writer. “People’s attention is divided. And per-column inches, the revenues are dropping.” The... -
Don’t Fall For Free: Harlan Ellison and How Unpaid Amateurs Mess Things Up
Posted on March 22, 2010 | View CommentsJust a quick post about delightful curmudgeon Harlan Ellison. This video, in which he tears someone’s request for a free interview to shreds, is required viewing: “I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it.” Oh, that Harlan. He seems fun. I kind of... -
How Blogs Forced a Rethinking of the News Industry — and its (temporary) Death
Posted on March 19, 2010 | View CommentsSome great comments appeared on my post about the changing nature of the news industry. JC Hewitt pointed out that a radical rethinking is called for, and I absolutely agree — provided that there’s still an industry left to rethink. JC suggested, “look at the... -
Reporting OF THE FUTURE: Take Google Wave. Please.
Posted on March 19, 2010 | View CommentsI visited the Googleplex in Mountain View last night for an interesting presentation by the Wave team. It was part of Hacks & Hackers, a group of journalists and engineer-types who try to find neat ways to work together (rather than at odds with each... -
SFist Editor Brock Keeling Can’t Wait for the Future, is Full of Surprises
Posted on March 18, 2010 | View CommentsSFist editor Brock Keeling doesn’t even need to pause to think about it: “Best time,” he replies instantly to my question about whether now is the best or the worst time in history to try to make a living as a writer. “The future is... -
Journalist’s New Clothes: Dress Yourself Up Like a Paradigm Shift
Posted on March 17, 2010 | View CommentsThere’s a half-interesting, half-exasperating article from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard about the changing business of funding journalism. On the interesting side: the author (founder of photo agency VII) has a lot of optimistic things to say about the impending changes in the journalism industry.... -
An Argument Against Writing Movie Reviews
Posted on March 16, 2010 | View CommentsIn my conversation with Eve last week, I floated the idea of picking up some work here and there writing movie reviews. It’s something I’ve done fairly frequently and fairly well — albeit for free — and Eve shot me down pretty quick. “The market’s... -
Eve Batey, Founder of SF Appeal, Recommends Pitching with Prototypes
Posted on March 13, 2010 | View CommentsI started off by talking to my friend Eve Batey, who I met back in 2004 when we were both writing — unpaid — for SFist. When she took over editorship of that blog, I found that it was a pleasure to work with her,...