WBC17: Professional Wine Writing Tips: The Dirty Work – Checking Facts, Asking Questions, and Finding Sources

It is easy to write a blog post but hard to write a news story, much less an investigative piece. Learn how to go about the grunt work of writing to improve your product, as presented by Wine Business Monthly editor-in-chief Cyril Penn.

Transcript

6. Portlandia Season 3, Episode 6
7. Past and Future of Blogging
8. Wine Business Blog What matters most in wine blogging is authenticity. Being yourself and emphasizing whatever makes you different.
9. The Dirty Work – Checking Facts, Asking Questions, and Finding Sources:
10. What is Fake News? • Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional print and broadcast news media or online social media. – Wikipedia • Fake news is often associated with websites that are clickbait, they have outrageous headlines that generate traffic. That’s fake news. • Fake news” is neither straightforward nor easy to define • Fake News is also now a catchall pejorative for information Donald Trump finds unfavorable, and he has even claimed to have coined the term, but he certainly has helped popularize it. • Journalists as stenographers = Fake News – according to Cyril.
11. Journalists as Stenographers?
12. Avoid Monkey-See, Monkey-Do Journalism • Maintain Integrity • It’s a cliché, but be authentic. what’s different about you? Tip: write like you’d talk. If it’s about wine, avoid too many superfluous descriptors • Exaggerate and Simplify Headlines but Don’t Get Carried Away • Everybody Who Was in the Room Should Agree Your Account of What Happened is Accurate • Use Attribution – this is very important! • Use more than one source, don’t rely on one primary source –(happens too often) • Have another Set of Eyes Read Your Work You can’t check your own work – you’ve been looking at it too long so you no longer see the spelling errors and – Spellcheck isn’t a substitute for a brain. • Always Show Your Work
13. Always Show Your Work
14. Pick up the Phone! • I am amazed – and again – I’m dating myself, but picking up the phone is becoming a lost art. I even had a young hire at wine business – somebody who graduated from a fancy school and was brilliant – who had worked as a copy editor – but who turned out to be uncomfortable picking up the phone. That person was working as a journalist but preferred emails or texts only and literally had a phone phobia. That person has since switched careers and I think is very happy. It’s become a lost art. • Never assume something is true just because you read it on the internet.