Getting Serious: Professionalize Your Blogging - Ben Keene

Transcript

1. GETTING SERIOUS Professionalize your beer blogging Ben Keene, Editorial Director, BeerAdvocate
2. • Editorial Director, BeerAdvocate • Author of four books including The Great Northeast Brewery Tour • Freelance Journalist • Contributor, WorldHum • Acquiring Editor, Oxford University Press (NY) WHO AM I?
4. 1. GET A SUBSCRIPTION.
5. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE—AND THEIR AUDIENCE “I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you’re trying to be a writer because it’s the only apprenticeship we have.” —John Green ! Read widely, read often. ! Write for cash, not exposure. ! Who reads this publication? Why? ! What does the editor want? (Get guidelines.)
6. 2. GET THE EDITOR’S ATTENTION.
7. SHOW THE EDITOR THAT YOU CAN WRITE • Have a story with a kicker, not just an idea. • A good pitch demonstrates that you can write with style and fluency in the subject matter and sketches out the larger story. • Provide a news peg or a sense of urgency. • The best articles do one or more of the following: educate, motivate, inform, entertain, or investigate. • Don’t forget to introduce yourself. Why you? "Ideas are easy, stories are hard." —Patrick Symmes
8. WHICH PITCH WOULD YOU CHOOSE? • I’m in the midst of hitting a brewery in each of the 48 continuous states (plus DC) within one year. Along the way I have had some wonderfully beer geeky experiences (private tours of breweries, tastings of rare ales in the hills of L.A.) and met some fantastically interesting people (a brewer for Russian River, a San Francisco bartender during her last shift before opening her own brewery the next day.) Would you be interested in any of these stories? • It was actually while reflecting on an old, odd favorite that I had an idea for a story. The beer in question was The Bruery's Salt of the Earth, a gose made with truffle salt. I knew it would either be amazing or dreadful and was pleased to discover it was the former. Perhaps not surprisingly, their next gose--a collaboration with Libertine--uses that coastal California brewery's terroir--ocean water. That tops even Brooklyn's Six Point Jammer gose made with artisanal sea salt. And then there's Everybody's Brewing in Washington making Coco-a-Go-Gose using chocolate salt. All of these beg the question: since gose is clearly the new "it" beer, instead of emphasizing hop varietals where are brewers looking for star salt varietals? • I wanted to pitch an editorial for an interview with one of the UK's leading breweries The Kernel. Attached is the interview I conducted and pictures of the Brewery and master brewer Evin O'Riordain. Would be an honor to be published in Beer Advocate
9. WHICH PITCH WOULD YOU CHOOSE? • My name is XXX, I'm a local of Southeast Pennsylvania currently working on a book project about the craft beers in this region. While working on my own project I stumbled on to an idea for an article that I think would be interesting and a great fit for BeerAdvocate: A comparison of different beer labels with an eye toward what they tell us about the brewer's attitude toward beer. ... Please let me know if there is any interest on your end and how we may proceed. • A single wooden barrel, teeming with a chorus of gifted yeasts and bacteria, nurtured a series of sour beers that span the course of American sour history. It all started simply enough, in 1997. The second-hand wine barrel constructed of fine-grained oak sat quietly as “PH1” was scrawled onto its barrelhead. The marking, placed just under a formal “Seguin Moreau” wine and cognac cooperage insignia, casually identified it as one of the earliest barrels purchased for New Belgium’s nascent beer souring program. • Hello: I enjoy your magazine and often read it while I'm drinking a tasty brew at my local pub. I thought I'd pitch a story for you, of a local brewer named Dave Parker. Dave Parker could have been a woodworker, a chef, or just about anything else—but he decided to brew beer instead.
10. 3. GET TO THE POINT.
11. START WITH THE HEART • Solve a problem: Ask a question and have an answer. • Look for a pattern (sometimes called the rule of threes). • Find the larger lesson. So what? • Don’t get bogged down with chronological order. "Have a point. Know what that point is. Write to it." —Spud Hilton
12. AWARD-WINNING BEER WRITING LEDE: I’m at a craft beer bar in Brooklyn, sipping a $9 stout and looking for black people. “Juicy” is on the speakers, and Notorious B.I.G. grew up a five-minute walk from my barstool here on the dividing line between Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. This is a traditionally black neighborhood, but right now, at 10:30pm on a Thursday, the only people in the bar are me (white), the bartender (white), and a stocky guy with a beard down at the end mouthing lyrics and nursing a bomber of what looks like Hill Farmstead (he’s white, too). My search isn’t going well so far... NUT: Do most black people want to open a microbrewery at some point? Do any? The Brewers Association, the craft industry’s leading trade group, doesn’t keep records on the racial breakdown of its membership; nor does the American Homebrewers Association, its DIY-focused branch. Both organizations told me they weren’t aware of the existence of any such data. After digging around, neither am I. So, in the absence of statistics, I set out to answer a simple question: where the hell are all the black craft brewers, bar owners, bloggers, aficionados, and nerds? Why is craft beer -- the consumer side, and especially the business side -- so white?
13. 4. GET IT RIGHT.
14. "Everybody's first draft sucks." — Tim Cahill • Know the difference between journalism and marketing. • Do the research and legwork. • Look at the story from both sides. • Fact check and confirm quotes. • Adapt to edits and feedback. DELIVER YOUR BEST DRAFT
15. 5. GET IT IN ON TIME.
16. BECOME YOUR OWN MANAGER. "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." — Douglas Adams • Don’t miss deadlines. • Make productivity a habit. • Create a pitch calendar. • Budget time and resources. • Invoice promptly. • Don’t give up!
17. 6. Get to the next level.
18. 6. GET TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
19. “If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Revise. Good writing is rewriting. • Develop subject matter expertise. • Attend conferences. Network. • Set goals for yourself. • Expand your channels. • Join a writer’s group. (NAGBW, IACP, AFJ, SPJ, NWU, etc.) PERSONAL BLOG MAGAZINE ARTICLES BOOK CONTRACT HOW DO I DO IT?
20. WRITING A BOOK PROPOSAL. Satisfy editors and agents by including the following information: A brief summary An outline of the full book A sample chapter The proposed format and length Details on the market and competition A short author biography Ideas for publicity and promotion Your intended timeline (optional)
21. QUESTION TIME!