Friday, December 12, 2014

Help get a student through the door

I don't typically come here asking you for money (except when I'm flogging my damn book), but today I urge you to consider contributing to the Maryland Delaware District of Columbia Press Foundation's Reese Cleghorn internship fund.

Internships at publications are a double advantage for students: They gain invaluable practical experience in reporting, writing, and editing, and a successful internship is often the surest route to permanent employment (or to such permanence as journalism offers these days).

The Cleghorn internship is a paid internship, and the number of internships offered each year depends on the contributions to the fund. I have written a check again this year (all right, I'm a trustee of the foundation; it's the least I could do). I suggest that you consider what it was like when you were starting out in the business, how much you benefited, or would have benefited, from such an internship, and how much you are able to help give the rising generation a boost.

Your check is an investment in the future of the enterprise, which badly needs promising students with proper grounding in the craft. Here is a link to the contribution form. The mailing address is 60 West Street, Annapolis, MD 21401. 

Monday, December 1, 2014

A Cyber Monday suggestion

We pause for a brief commercial message.

While you are online, marshaling your forces for Christmas shopping, allow me to suggest that The Old Editor Says would be an excellent choice for that student, that aspiring writer, that editor, that stickler, that annoying know-it-all on your list.

A slim volume of fewer than seventy pages of pithy sayings, it distills three decades' worth of editing lore and wisdom, and it is cheap.

The Old Editor Says has been received favorably by Stan Carey of Sentence first, Steve Buttry of The Buttry Diary, Dawn McIlvain Stahl at Copyediting, and Mignon Fogarty, who invited The Old Editor to do a Grammar Girl podcast.

Available in print form or on Kindle.

We regret intruding with a commercial message, but there is no one else to flog that damn book.

We return now to regular programming.