Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the fourth installment, NYU grad student John MacDonald leaves his post-college job writing grants for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program to start fresh in NYU’s graduate program. He struggles with the decision as to whether he should pursue a career as a rockstar or rock journo, ultimately deciding neither is the right option.

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I suppose there are two ways to tell this story. In the first, our protagonist jumps skillfully from bedroom rock critic to NYU graduate student, from fanzine intern to New Yorker intern, from penning 300-word CD reviews to 1,500-word Brooklyn Rail features, from diffidence to confidence. The second is a little more interesting. Here, the 24-year-old faces a grueling grant-writing gig and what we’ll call the “post-graduate plateau.” Not a quarter-life crisis, but the unshakable sense that if he doesn’t leave Philadelphia, he’ll be joking with the same buddies, drinking at the same bars, and collecting the same paycheck until he’s bald and truculent. This story isn’t about writing at all. It’s about moving on and moving out, going to the Big Apple.

Of course, the genuine article is a mix of the two. Ever since I wrote my very first CD review (yes, Coldplay’s Parachutes) as an Oberlin College freshman, I’ve known with near certainty that I wanted to do this for a living. I just didn’t know precisely what “this” was. Was it rock ‘n’ roll or writing about rock ‘n’ roll, distortion pedals or word processors? At Oberlin, it was decidedly the former. While I hopped from band to band, rock-writing for the Oberlin Review was a way to step on stage without leaving my dorm. And my tenure as the Review‘s arts editor covering film and theater was just an extension of that. I had no intention of putting my guitar down.

At 24, my life had begun to feel settled and sluggish. I needed to move on for reasons that had nothing to do with my job or my writing. I wanted to know more, read more.

As the summer of 2003 approached, bringing with it graduation and one of the worst job markets in years, I went dutifully to alumni networking events. I nibbled brie at roundtable discussions and chatted up travel writers. I smiled and took notes. But I expected little in the way of employment. And I certainly had no intention of going back to school — for journalism or anything else. Most alums told me I didn’t need to anyway. I was just leaving school for Christ’s sake.

So I flung myself out of Oberlin and Ohio, drove around the country for two weeks, and landed in Philly. I flung myself through jobs at a record store, a bookstore, and a self-publishing house — all while managing an internship at the Philadelphia Weekly and writing weekly music reviews for www.prefixmag.com — before landing at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.

Mural Arts has more than 2,700 murals to its credit — making Philadelphia the mural capital of the world — and I wrote many of the grants to get them painted, often two or three a week. After only a year and a half, the job had taken its toll. If non-profits are notorious for exhausting their employees, then Mural Arts managed appalling new heights. At the same time, I had a creeping sense that my relationship with the city was running its course. At 24, my life had begun to feel settled and sluggish. I needed to move on for reasons that had nothing to do with my job or my writing. I wanted to know more, read more.

So I started thinking seriously about grad school. But my initial focus wasn’t journalism; it was on the subjects I wanted to write about — pop culture, mass media, music — things I thought j-schools didn’t cover. I looked at media studies programs at Georgetown and the New School, but then I realized something. In my NYU application essay, I beamed about how Mural Arts “extended my range as a writer” and gave me an “appreciation for the hectic atmosphere” of a fulltime journalist — great stuff. But the reality was much simpler. I learned to value writing as a skill — as something I could do quickly and competently. Even if I wasn’t writing about music or theatre, I could rake in a paycheck every couple weeks. I still wanted to know more and read more, but now I wanted to write more… and better.

Once my writing became an end unto itself, j-school was a no-brainer. I applied to the handful of programs that focused on cultural journalism, NYU and Syracuse University among them. Then I left my girlfriend, my friends, and my band, and moved north. I convinced myself that I was a better writer than a musician (something I said to myself endlessly in the shower), that if I didn’t leave now, I never would, and most importantly, that I could do more than write about music; I could be a professional. A year later, and without many freelance opportunities or a staff job on the horizon, only this last assertion remains doubtful. But like I said, this isn’t a story about dramatic ascents or sudden stardom. I had no grand design and I still don’t. I graduate in December with a master’s degree in journalism from New York University. That’s all I’m sure of.

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John MacDonald is a graduate student in the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at New York University. He lives in Brooklyn. He can be reached at jmacdonald324 AT gmail DOT com. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the fifth installment, former up-and-coming women’s magazine editor Kate Dailey talks about leaving her job for j-school. Will her decision to further her education broaden her career opportunities?

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This time last year, I was living the dream — the food and nutrition editor at Women’s Health. I was an up-and-coming editor at an up-and-coming women’s magazine: traveling to conferences, lunching with writers, distributing my ever-expanding cache of exotic oils and organic snacks amongst my coworkers like a well-shod Robin Hood.

Too bad I was miserable. I had little interest in nutrition and, due to some bureaucratic machinations, was 50 percent of our magazine’s Emmaus, PA office — a lonely gig in a lonely town. Where my coworker went home at night to a gorgeous home, a gorgeous daughter, and a gorgeous husband, I spent my nights with a sullen roommate, frozen Indian dinners, and Veronica Mars. I was expected to be in New York often, and the constant bus ride between the two locales, the endless search for cheap hotel rooms, and the chaos of keeping two separate offices was taking a toll on the quality of my work and whatever waning enthusiasm I had for it.

[My boyfriend] had hot tips, I had hot muffins. This was not the type of journalism I had dreamed of while reading the biography of Nelly Bly in fifth grade and Virginia Heffernan’s Slate columns in college.

At the time, I was dating a dogged, talented, relentless reporter/writer for a news magazine. One day, he called me as I took a cab back to our New York office. I had just left a particularly lovely lunch — the publicist for a new brand of fiber-rich baked goods had taken me to Ono, where we sat outside and gossiped about the natural food industry, and she sent me home with a huge gift basket full of treats.

The boyfriend was out of breath, talking quickly, loud traffic on the other end of the phone. After doing extensive digging on an insider-trading story, he told me, an assistant US attorney was finally ready to talk. “It’s off the record, but he’s giving me everything,” he said. “Names, documents — I have to get to City Hall before 4, but he’s giving me everything.” It was at that point I realized — he had hot tips, I had hot muffins. This was not the type of journalism I had dreamed of while reading the biography of Nelly Bly in fifth grade and Virginia Heffernan’s Slate columns in college.

I left my job in the fall, totally demoralized and heartbroken. Still, it was a new beginning, and I was ready to finally write the pop culture stories and cultural analysis I wanted to write (the psychology of hold music, and the increase of male nudity on prime-time cable), but never had the time. Now, I had all the time in the world, plus the motivation of impending poverty, but I didn’t have the confidence — or maybe the contacts or the discipline — to make it happen.

Grad school seemed like a good way to break through all of these barriers — and because I didn’t have any real plan, telling people I was waiting to hear from Columbia sounded like more of a life plan then telling people I was underemployed, hanging out in my underwear, and sleeping too late in my Philadelphia apartment. Both answers were have been true, but the first had a bit more panache.

Besides, graduate school had always been in my plans — shuffled off into that vague, nebulous “later” that usually never comes around. I was the least educated of all my friends — doctors, lawyers, PhDs — and since I’m a snob, this bothered me. I loved school, but I couldn’t picture going back for three or four or seven years only to emerge with a PhD, a load of debt, and no guaranteed job prospects.

Columbia’s MA program was only ten months, the coursework was fascinating, and it seemed almost tailor-made to help me land my dream job. I’m taking a two-semester seminar on arts and culture reporting (one of the four MA concentrations, along with business, politics, and science), as well as journalism theory and classes in the greater graduate school — film criticism, feminist theory, history, etc. I’ll learning from the best in the business and, at the very least, will walk a way with an expensive but impressive Rolodex.

Since I’ve left my old job, I’ve been contacted about a few interesting, well-paid service gigs that would put me right back on the rock star track. They weren’t exactly what I wanted to do, but I would do them well, and thought I could advance up the masthead quickly. I was nervous about taking almost two years off — the ten months for school and the ten months I spent getting my act together in Philly — especially because in my mind, everyone wants to be a cultural critic, and who am I to waste time and money pursuing some ambiguous, perfect career?

But I ended up lonely and miserable at my last job because I took the safe, less satisfying gigs when I should have been living poor and hungry in New York. And after a weekend at Columbia’s new student orientation, I left more invigorated and excited about my career and my potential than I’d been in years. So why shouldn’t I get to do exactly what I want?

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Kate Dailey is moving into her first New York apartment this weekend. Classes start Tuesday. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Have you ever walked down the aisle of your local bookstore and said to yourself, “Wow, I could have written that book?” The truth of the matter is you can. It seems like everyone has a nonfiction book idea but only a few know how to take that idea and transform it into a published book that sells. In order to sell your nonfiction book you’ll need to start with a book proposal that will get an agent or publisher to bite. Over the years, I’ve written numerous book proposals and helped countless agents and authors craft book proposals that have led to lucrative sales. After speaking with hundreds of agents, publishers, and authors about what makes a great proposal, I’ve culled their insider secrets and techniques for writing a “bulletproof” book proposal into a new book Bulletproof Book Proposals. Whether you’re in the process of writing a proposal or just starting out, here are some useful tips to help you shoot your idea into an editor’s heart.

Define your idea

We think we know a bad idea when we hear one. It’s been done. It’s boring. It’s far-fetched. No one cares. How do you know whether your idea is a good one? The bottom line is that it needs to hook your audience. You should distill your idea into a simple hook and convey it in a few short sentences. If your idea takes too long to explain, simplify it. If you’re pitching a diet book and your diet plan is complicated with a myriad of different strategies, your hook is too long. The hook for The Reverse Diet is very simple: You eat breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast. That’s easy to explain and to understand, whether you’re an agent, an editor, or a reader.

Create a tell-and-sell title

Ask any agent or publisher, and they’ll say that the most critical element of selling your idea is a powerful title. It’s the first thing your audience considers when they encounter your book in a bookstore or online, and the first impression an agent or editor will have. “A title is of tremendous importance throughout the life of a book,” says agent Michael Psaltis with Culinary Cooperative/Regal Literary. “When I first call editors to pitch a book, if there’s a great title, I know that the editor will remember it and look out for the proposal when I follow up and send it along.” Clever, powerful titles go a long way in a crowded marketplace and can sell your book in just a few seconds. Some powerful titles on the shelves now include: He’s Just Not That Into You, Bad Cat, Why Do Men Have Nipples, and The 4-Hour Workweek. Brainstorm as many titles as you can and test your ideas on your friends, family, and anyone you know.

Craft a powerful opening

It’s essential that the first few paragraphs of your proposal seize the attention of your reader and make them want more. The trick is to do this without over-hyping your book. Avoid words like “super” or “fabulous.” You will have ample chance in the rest of your proposal to demonstrate the brilliance of your idea. In the overview, the idea must stand by itself. Extravagant language is a turn-off, since editors are experts at analyzing proposals, and overstatement suggests a lack of confidence. “I was always look for a pitch that accurately portrays the idea rather than overstating or hyping the concept,” says Amy Hughes, former editor at Dutton Penguin and now an agent with McCormick & Williams. “The overview should be a clear, concise way to summarize the content and main backbone of the book.”

Justify your book

If you’re self-publishing a memoir or your family history, chances are your audience will be your friends and family. But when you’re writing a book proposal, you need to spell out who is going to buy your book. When possible, give specific numbers, as editors like hard statistics. One of the easiest ways to start is Google. If your book is targeting “dog owners,” your Google search will probably lead you to the American Dog Owners Association Web site. There, you can find statistics about the number of dog owners — in other words, the number of potential buyers of your book. I consulted with Steve Greenberg, author of the upcoming book Gadget Nation: A Journey Through The Eccentric World of Invention, on his proposal. We including concrete facts about the number of inventors and people seeking patent applications, since those people would be part of the core audience buying the book.

I write an actual press release for the book, assuming it’s about to be published. Editors and agents love this.

Compete to win

The more competition the better. If you’re writing a joke book, it’s good news that there are a lot of joke books on the market. If you’re writing a true crime book, the fact that people are interested in reading about true crime can help sell your idea. The presence on bookstore shelves of many competitive titles means there’s a market for the general subject of your book. The hard part: ensuring your book will offer readers something different than the titles it’d be competing with.

Create a buzz

Most authors dream of being featured on Oprah or The Today Show. But let’s get real: the odds of that are slim. In your proposal, convince the publisher (specifically its publicity department) that your book can stimulate press coverage. Even if you don’t wind up on Oprah, media outlets are essential to spread the word about your book. In all of my proposals, I include a sample press release for the proposed book. I write an actual release for the book, assuming it’s about to be published. Editors and agents love this. Why? It gives them a clear idea of how the book can be sold to the media and garner publicity.

Sell yourself

The biography in your proposal is more than just a rough draft for the bio that’ll appear your book’s jacket flap. Editors and agents rely on it to establish your credibility as a source of the ideas or facts that you will present in your book. First and foremost, the bio should answer the question, “Why should the reader trust you — the author?” Your proposal’s bio should confirm that you are indeed an expert on your topic. Types of information you should include are: educational background; relevant networks or organizations you belong to; lectures, performances, or appearances you make; any previously published work (books and periodicals). Get your foot in the door as an expert by being quoted in your local newspaper. Reporters often seek local experts whom they can call on to gather information for a story. Become the expert they call, and you’ll solidify your expert status, come proposal time.

Deliver punchy chapter titles

One of the first things you’ll see in most nonfiction books is a table of contents. This is essentially a chapter outline. Editors and agents want a proposal’s chapter outline to be clear and easy to follow. What they really like to see is clever chapter titles and subtitles. In my first fitness book, The World’s Fittest You, the overall concept revolved around the word “fittest.” So, to punch up some of the chapter titles, I re-used this word: “Becoming The World’s Fittest You” and “Fit Fitter, Fittest.” Don’t be afraid to go over the top with chapter titles — it’ll help differentiate your book.

Provide a sample

Good sample chapters are critical to any proposal. Editors and agents seek a smart idea that can be sold to a targeted audience but, ultimately, it has to be executed through strong writing. In your proposals, you should submit between 35 and 75 pages of sample text. It doesn’t matter whether this comprises one, two, or three chapters. The important thing is to display what the book will read like and how good it will be. The sample must demonstrate how you write, the tone of your book, how it reads, the kinds of connections you make, how you reason, and whether (if it’s supposed to be humorous), it’s actually funny.

Hook an agent

Once you’ve written your proposal, you need to get it into the hands of a publisher who can ultimately buy it. To do that, you’ll need a literary agent to champion your proposal to a publisher. When you query agents, send them a letter that boils down your proposal into a one- or two-page letter. All the material for your letter should be pulled from your proposal. “A query letter should succinctly state the overview of the proposal and your assets as an author,” says Hughes. It’s an abbreviated version of your overview — not the entire proposal. For instance, your lead paragraph should be pulled from the opening paragraph of your proposal. If your proposal opening is strong then you’ll have no trouble hooking an agent and eventually getting your book published.

Eric Neuhaus is the author of Bulletproof Book Proposals and co-author of The World’s Fittest You and Iron Yoga. He currently consults with agents, editor authors to help craft book proposals and concepts as well as write and doctor manuscripts.

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground. They range from a writer who gave up a plum women’s magazine editor spot to pursue graduate training she hopes will lead to work as a cultural critic to an overachieving undergrad who breaks TV industry news and has his own news radio show, all on top of the government degree he chose to pursue instead of journalism coursework.

In the sixth installment, Ohio University senior Meghan Louttit discusses the importance of journalism experience. She realizes that potential employers are more interested in what she’s done than the grades she has received, and alters her schedule accordingly.

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I am one of those freaks who has known practically her entire life that she wanted to write. At the age of four I was writing my own books — three pages stapled backwards about my bike and my imaginary pet bunny. I spent 13 years in school with that goal in the back of my mind. However, my schooling was mostly an endless pursuit of academic perfection: the A. This was my immediate concern, and honestly, it wasn’t too difficult.

But the desire to write eventually pushed its way into the forefront of my brain, and by my sophomore year of high school, I decided that journalism was the best way to combine my love of writing with my increasing desire to make an impact.

In 2004 I graduated from Springfield Local High School in Ohio with a 4.2 GPA. I didn’t expect college to be much different.

The type of journalist I become isn’t going to be decided by text books or lectures, but largely by the amount and quality of my experiences in the field.

I chose Ohio University mainly because its journalism program had been consistently ranked in the top 10 in the country. That fall I left my family and friends, and moved to school practically alone, excited to explore my newfound independence and my chosen career. Everything was going fine until the middle of my sophomore year. Two things happened: I started fulfilling my dreaded economics requirements, which proved to be even worse than I had expected, and I was appointed a managing editor of the online magazine I had helped start a year prior.

All things considered, it probably shouldn’t have been a surprise to me when that summer, while I was interning with FoodNetwork.com in New York City, I received a phone call telling me that I had lost my scholarship. This meant that my GPA had fallen below a 3.3 — miserable by my standards.

It was clear that the time had long passed when I paid strict attention to my grades. This amounted to a cataclysmic shift in my way of thinking. Somewhere along the line, Speakeasy, my internships, networking and my weekend travels had become more important than the “A”. It wasn’t a conscious shift, or even that I had lost interest in my classes. Without considering it, I was devoting more and more “free time” to Speakeasy, and where there was no time, I made it.

I suppose after losing my scholarship I could have panicked, dropped my outside activities, and spent every waking moment on schoolwork. Maybe I’m too stubborn. Instead, I began devoting even more time to Speakeasy. I was too passionate and too excited to concern myself with the consequences of my choices.

I have not regretted that decision for even the shortest of moments and I frequently encounter situations that affirm it. During interviews with FoodNetwork.com, The Columbus Dispatch, mediabistro.com, American Express Publishing, and the Scoop08.com, my Speakeasy experience impressed potential employers more than anything else I included on my r_?sum_?.

To be fair, I did end up paying more attention to my grades, and through that — and not having anymore economics classes — I’ve been able to regain my scholarship for my senior year. I will also be advising Speakeasy and I have been diving headfirst, as usual, into the Scoop08.

But perhaps the best reassurance is that I am not alone. During an online journalism seminar last year the class was discussing issues on campus that hadn’t been covered by student media. Some argued that student media is a difficult creature because students have so many things on their plates already, and that asking them to spend every waking moment on research for one story isn’t a fair expectation. A friend of mine immediately spoke up and said that that’s true, but in order to be a good journalism student, you have to be willing to let your GPA slip a little. Most of the class agreed, as did I, smiling at what the high school version of me would have thought.

Ironically, the best thing that the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism has taught me is that my education isn’t based solely on the time I spend in the classroom, and the type of journalist I become isn’t going to be decided by text books or lectures, but by the amount and quality of my experiences in the field.

So begins my senior year — starting off with two scholarships, 16 credit hours, a part-time job, Speakeasy, and my Scoop08 duties.

I guess I should learn to shower every now and again, too.

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Meghan Louttit is a journalism student at Ohio University and is a former intern at American Express Publishing and mediabistro.com. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We’d love to add more voices to this series. If you’d like to share your take on pursuing journalism in and out of school, email us.]

Study a magazine contract closely, and you’ll notice they usually ask freelance writers to guarantee the article they submit won’t violate anyone’s privacy. “Between MySpace, YouTube, and the blogosphere,” you might think to yourself, “who has privacy anymore?” Notwithstanding the explosion in self-revelation on the Internet — employees blogging about bosses they hate, patients writing about their bouts with life-threatening illnesses, and all those sultry narratives on nerve.com, just to name a few examples — the law still recognizes that each individual has some rights to preserve their own privacy, and that the media can’t publish information willy-nilly about the average person — or even public officials and celebrities, in certain situations — without their consent. Violate those rules, and you could find yourself in court.

Here are tips on what you can and can’t do when writing about other people.*

Know the law
There are three main areas of privacy law: private facts, intrusion, and false light. “Private facts” means you can’t reveal otherwise unnewsworthy private information that a “reasonable person” would consider offensive — without the consent of the individual in question. “Intrusion” concerns how you get the goods. Anything an average person would not be able to see or hear in a public place without using an amplifying device is considered private. A voluminous argument between two lawmakers on a Senate floor would generally be considered public; a whispered conversation in a corner of that same Senate floor generally would not, even if you can pick it up using a high-powered microphone. “False light” is a cousin to libel in that someone feels your story has made them look bad. It’s different from libel, however, because the facts of the story are usually true. Media attorney James Chadwick recalls a case where a California newspaper published a story about bongo drummers causing a nuisance by playing on public streets. Alongside it, they ran a file photo of a man walking down the street carrying a drum. It turns out the man was an accomplished musician who had never played on the street. He complained that the newspaper had put him in a “false light” because it made him look like he was one of the drummers annoying local residents.

The technicalities of what is and isn’t permitted under privacy laws vary from state to state. Many states don’t consider it intrusion if you tape an interview without telling your subject, for example, but California and several others do. To make sure you stay on the right side of the law, get familiar with the laws of the states in which you work. Resources for this include the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ Practical Guide to Taping Phone Calls and In-Person Conversations in the 50 States and D.C. and its Open Government Guide.

Tagging along has its limits
If you watch police reality shows, you could get the impression that journalists are allowed to follow cops any place they go. But actually, government officials’ rights to enter private property generally don’t extend to the journalists along for the ride. If you’re doing a story on how police in your town handle domestic abuse and you accompany officers on a 911 call, don’t follow them into a private home unless the occupants invite you in. Stay on public property, or “you could be sued for intrusion,” says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Don’t substitute observation for documentation
Let’s say you want to write about how the president of your local hospital frequents strip clubs. You’ve seen him go into the local Crazy Horse several weekends in a row, but the newsworthiness of this otherwise private hobby is debatable, especially if you don’t have any evidence that it affects his management of the hospital. Think twice about going public based on your observations alone. Now assume the official has just been through an acrimonious divorce. His ex-wife testified extensively during the divorce hearings about his penchant for pole-dancers, and her testimony is part of the case’s public record. This would put you on safe ground. “As long as you fairly and accurately report the contents of an official proceeding, then you cannot be liable for that, even if it’s private,” says Chadwick, the current vice-chair of the Media, Privacy, and Defamation Law Committee of the American Bar Association.

“I almost read [non-media savvy subjects] a Miranda warning.”

Information self-published online is fair game
Remember the days when you had no idea what your neighbors and co-workers ate for breakfast, much less whether their preferences ran to leather or lace? With the explosion of blogs and YouTube, not to mention the breathless confessions on MySpace and other social networking sites, legions of otherwise private individuals are divulging what previously might have been their deepest and darkest secrets. The good thing for journalists is that, once a revelation is in the public sphere, it’s fair game. If you’re doing a story about eating disorders among stay-at-home dads, for example, you’re free to use any material published online by your subjects — assuming, of course, that you didn’t need to a password or other key to access the information and that you’ve validated that the entries on John Doe of 123 Main Street’s “Ex-Anorexic” blog were in fact written by John Doe of 123 Main Street. “If other people know about it, and certainly if you put it up on the Internet, you’re not going to be able to sue for right of privacy,” says Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Center.

Get consent — preferably on tape
The key to reporting private information that hasn’t previously been disclosed and isn’t otherwise newsworthy is getting the subject’s consent. Any time you speak to a subject, clearly explain that you’re working on a story for publication and that you’re interviewing them for inclusion in that story. Anything shared after that is technically on the record. The less media-savvy the subject, however, the greater the pains you should take to ensure they understand that what they share with you could end up in print. “I almost read them a Miranda warning,” says Dale Mahardige, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who teaches journalism at Columbia University. A best practice to protect yourself, should your subject recant later, is to make a habit of tape-recording your intro and the subsequent interview. Use a standard spiel such as: “This is Jane Doe, interviewing Bob Smith, on January 1, 2007, about his bout with cancer for a story for Cancer News Weekly.” By implication, anything Bob shares with you afterwards is something he’s consented to make public. One caveat to this rule: Children and other people not considered legally competent cannot give consent. When interviewing minors and legally incompetent individuals, get consent from a parent or guardian instead.

Don’t follow invasive media trends
Statutes protecting privacy generally rest on the standard of what a “reasonable person” would consider private. Historically, that’s meant things like a person’s health history, particularly regarding cancer and AIDS, sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and use of drugs and alcohol. The increasing exhibitionism on the Internet (S&M Blog anyone?), not to mention the outrageous revelations of private citizens on tabloid talk shows (tune in to The Jerry Springer Show any day of the week), could eventually change that. The things the average person wants to keep secret today might be considered banal tomorrow. But that hasn’t happened yet. Judges are still using traditional definitions to determine if a detail of a person’s life should be considered private, so you should too.

Truth: not a defense
Journalism professors and editors repeatedly entreat writers to fact-check and get it right. However, getting it right isn’t enough when it comes to private matters that are not of public concern. Instead, you have to ensure that you have consent to divulge the information or be able to prove that the information was already divulged publicly. A private fact that someone has kept private is off-limits, even if it’s true. Similarly, a photograph that records a true event is not fair game if you did not take it in what the courts consider a “public” place. For example, in some states, a married celebrity who’s carrying on an unacknowledged affair could legitimately sue you for using a powerful telephoto lens to see into the window of his house and snap pictures of him and his paramour in a compromising position. If a person standing in a public space couldn’t have observed the tryst with (ahem) a naked eye, it’s private.

Ask about your subjects’ concerns
If you’re doing a story on a sensitive topic that features private individuals, especially ones who are not media-savvy, go the distance and “try to understand what matters in that person’s life, what might be very personal to them, and what information, if revealed, might be harmful,” says Bob Steele, the Nelson Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute. That way you’ll be clear about what they feel comfortable discussing and having published and what they won’t. At the same time, with these frank conversations, you might luck out and discover that something you thought they’d want to keep secret — like sexual abuse, for example — is a subject they’re actually willing to discuss for the record.

Be judicious with sensitive information
This has more to do with judgment and ethics than it does with the law, but remember that when you’re reporting on a person who’s not used to being covered in the media, your subject might not recognize the ramifications of what they’re telling you. Lisa Collier Cool, an award-winning freelance writer and former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, has written extensively about health issues for national publications. She remembers doing a story about a woman who had gone through a serious illness. The woman mentioned that her husband had had an affair while she was sick, and she wanted that detail included in the story. Cool realized that revelation could be harmful to the couple’s children sometime down the line. Since the detail wasn’t critical to the core of the story, Cool pointed out to her subject that she thought including it was unwise. “Sometimes people don’t always fully think about how things they say might seem to others in print,” she says.

Replace a reluctant subject
Cool recalls pitching another story to a national publication about a woman who had been struck by lightning — inside her home. Cool had read about the incident in a newspaper, but when she tried to interview the woman, the subject kept rescheduling their appointments. Cool realized the subject was backing out of the story, which left her on the hook since the magazine was expecting her piece. But instead of pressing forward with a reluctant source, Cool scrambled and managed to find two other women who also had been struck by lightning indoors and wrote about them instead. “If [your subject] gives you trouble at first, which is the honeymoon period, how good are they going to be during the not-so-fun period, like the fact-checking?” said Cool. Your best bet will always be to find someone who’s on board with participating in your story.

For further information, review the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press’ First Amendment Handbook for a summary of the issues in privacy law. Also check out the Privacy section of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Legal Guide for Bloggers and the bullet points in a column by Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute.

E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: *Since we’re talking law, we must make clear: This article does not constitute legal advice, but aims to offer informative tips. Take the time to educate yourself in depth, and if you have concerns stemming from anything you’re working on, consult a lawyer.]

“How much should I charge?” is a common question we hear on the mediabistro.com forums. Writers who are moving into corporate writing after having worked as journalists reasonably want to know what’s a fair price to charge for their work.

The thing to realize is: There is no going rate. Not for press releases. Not for white papers. Not for any kind of corporate writing. Every project varies in its complexity, and prices ultimately depend on how many hours you put in. Nevertheless, there is a fairly simple way of figuring out how much you should charge. Follow these tips, and you’ll be well on your way to naming a reasonable figure.

Know your hourly

rate

As a freelance journalist, you’re probably used to getting paid by the word. Not so in the corporate world (or the worlds of the nonprofits or government agencies who hire writers). There, you almost always get paid either by the project or by the hour. Either way, you’ll need to know what your hourly rate is. A project fee will simply be your hourly rate multiplied by the amount of time you think the project will take. More about that later.

So what’s your hourly rate? Simply put, it’s how much money you intend to spend (and save) in a year, divided by how many hours you plan to bill that year. When calculating your income needs, though, remember that you’re not an employee. You’re a business. Think beyond what salary you want to make. Consider all your additional business expenses: health insurance, business or self-employed taxes, conferences, travel, office supplies and equipment, phone bills, business cards, marketing Web site, and so forth. Tack those on to the salary you want to draw, and you have the total income you need to make.

Next, divide your desired income by the number of hours you expect to be able to bill. Remember: billable hours are a subset of the total hours you work. Non-billable hours are the time you have to put in to grow and maintain your business: Hours you spend pitching stories, discussing potential projects with clients, attending conferences, billing, looking for story ideas, and so forth. Deduct those from your total hours worked. Also deduct the amount of vacation you want to take. And for good measure, the number of days you usually lose to illness or family emergencies. Take all those hours out, and you’ll see that your billable hours fall way short of 40 hours per week.

Divide the total income you need to make by the total number of hours you plan to bill to get the hourly rate you need to charge in order to make a living. You might be surprised to discover the number is higher than you expected. Putting this in black-and-white, though, will give you the confidence to ask your clients for a reasonable rate. “Clients sometimes look at your hourly rate, and say, ‘If you’re charging me $100 an hour, and you’re working 40 hours a week, then that’s $4,000 a week. That’s an awful lot of money. I feel like I’m getting overcharged,'” says Gwen Moran, a freelance writer and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Business Plans. “But what they’re not considering is all the overhead that goes into any business. If you’re charging $100 an hour, you’re only earning a fraction of that.”

Need help working through these calculations? Try the Hourly Rate Calculator at FreelanceSwitch.com. Tip: In the “Anything Else” field at the bottom of the “Calculate Your Business Costs” section, remember to include any and every other expense that the calculator didn’t explicitly ask for (including taxes). Moran suggests that, if you worked as a freelancer last year, check the deductions you took on your taxes for clues to your expenses.

Beware the na_?ve client

A red light should go off if you get approached by someone who knows you’re a writer and asks if you can whip up a press release in an hour or so. “That shows that they don’t really understand what they’re asking me to do,” says Linda Kallman, a freelance writer specializing in PR and marketing writing. Suss out how savvy the client is about what they think they need. If they seem at sea, consider passing at the project — unless you have the chops to help them develop a plan from scratch.

Experienced writers know that newcomers often lowball their estimates in the beginning. Accept that it’s part of the learning curve.

Determine the project scope

Not all projects of equal length cost the same to produce. The same tri-fold brochure could take five hours or 15, depending on the complexity of the material and how sophisticated and prepared the client is. To price a project, you’ll need to figure out how much more work, in addition to the writing, you’ll put in. Set up a phone call to go over the project scope with the client, and go through each of the following points. (And no, don’t charge the client for the scoping meeting. This part of the process is called “business development,” and it’s part of your unbilled overhead.)

Once you and your client agree on the project scope, write it down and get your client to sign off on it. Formally, this is called a Letter of Agreement, or a Statement of Work. It specifies the tasks you will complete and often sets deadlines for each stage. It saves everyone a lot of heartache down the line when memories get fuzzy. It is also useful in creating a series of line items that you can estimate individually and show the client, if they want to understand how you arrived at your overall estimate.

Decide on whether you’re going to bill hourly or by the project

Some clients like to pay by the hour. Others prefer to pay by the project. In either case, the client will usually want to have a sense of how much the project is going to cost overall. If you agree to bill by the hour, provide an estimate that details how many hours you expect the project to take and what the total price will be for those hours. Later, when you bill them, however, only bill for hours actually worked. If the amount of time required to complete the project isn’t clear, even after your scoping discussion, include some stopgaps in your agreement to reassure the client that an hourly approach won’t land them with a whopper of a bill. “If I’m not sure how long the project will take, I may give somebody a range,” says Kallman. “I may say I think it will take me 5-10 hours, but I will cap it at 10 hours. I will stop there, we’ll discuss where we are, and you can tell me how much more time you want to put into it.”

If the client prefers to pay a project fee, follow the same process but simply provide the final number. And bill the client that amount, irrespective of whether the project took more or less time than you projected.

Experienced writers know that newcomers often lowball their estimates in the beginning. Accept that it’s part of the learning curve. Over time and with experience, you’ll become increasingly comfortable with your estimates. “In the beginning, we all have a tendency to undersell ourselves,” says Moran. “It’s important not to beat ourselves up about that. Finish the project as gracefully as possible. Maintain the best relationship you can. Learn from the experience and move on.”

E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

While many freelance writers make consumer magazines their primary target, another set of publications often goes unnoticed. “If there’s a particular business you’re interested in or have knowledge of, writing for trade magazines can be a good way to marry that interest to an existing set of writing skills,” says Jennifer Korolishin, who has freelanced for such trades as Beverage Industry and The College Store Magazine. “[Trades] offer a way to pick up a story that’s relatively easy to work into your schedule. In many cases, trade publications have a small full-time staff and depend heavily on freelancers for their coverage, so trades offer a great deal of opportunity to freelancers, and because many prefer to assign stories rather than to accept pitches, they can offer steady work, which is particularly important if you’re trying to transition from a 9-5 job into full-time freelancing.”

Since many trades are monthlies or are published less frequently, there’s adequate lead time to work on stories. Writer Marie Leach made phone calls to sources for Vitamin Retailer while her one-year-old daughter slept, and then sent follow-up emails when time allowed. “I’m not out to be Bob Woodward or anything,” she says. “I just like writing and this was a perfect set-up, because it could be fit around my schedule and I could make pretty good money from it.”

As with consumer pubs, rates at trades run the gamut. Bill McDowell, editorial director at Plate, says freelancers at his magazine are paid $1 a word. On the flip side, trade magazine veteran and Real Estate New York editor Paul Bubny says payment per story can range from $300-$400 to around $1,200. “The big difference in payment has partly to do with the pub’s budget and partly to do with the experience of the writer,” he says. “Less experienced writers usually start out with shorter assignments, which pay less, may write for less-recognized magazines that pay less, and are not yet established enough to charge by the word.”

Leach, who received $500 per 2,500-word article for Vitamin Retailer, sees many advantages in writing for trades. “The stories certainly didn’t take that long to write once you had all the info, [which only takes a few hours of calling and email to assemble], and worked out to be like $100 an hour,” she says. “My other freelance gigs only pay a fraction of that and it’s more work. You really can’t beat it.”

Best of all, ample work is available. “[Trades are] not as glamorous as a comparable consumer magazine, so trade editors are hungry for good writers, good reporters,” McDowell says.

An insider voice leads to regular assignments

Kirk Landers is the vice president/editorial director of James Informational Media, publisher of Better Roads and Aggregates Manager. For Better Roads, which is geared toward governments and construction contractors involved in road projects, Landers uses the same two freelancers repeatedly. “The exposure of their excellent work in our publication has stimulated a lot of new business for them, and they’ve had to raise their rates for us in recent years to justify the time our work takes,” he says.

Reaching that status takes preparation, regardless of whether a writer wants to make greater use of sources from a previous beat (e.g. food writer, technology writer) or has passion for a particular subject.

“If I get my hands on someone who shows they’re willing to really take some time to study my magazine and study the target audience my magazine is going after, and is willing and capable to modulate their reporting and writing to fit that audience, that person is gold to me,” says McDowell.

Intimate knowledge of an industry is key. “Writers who can address a particular industry with some degree of authority and ‘insider’ familiarity aren’t that easy to mint,” says Bubny. “Frequently this employability survives turnover at the magazine, because the new editor is naturally interested in turning to writers who have proven themselves reliable.”

Know the niche readership

Just because an industry has several magazines covering its ins and outs doesn’t mean they’re all the same. “Every pub, if the editor is doing his job right, has a unique point of view and market they’re serving,” McDowell says. Many trade magazines don’t cover an entire industry, but a specialized niche.

This level of specificity means a blanket approach to querying isn’t likely to score assignments. “No editor wants to feel they’re lumped in with everyone else,” McDowell says. Would-be trade writers should eschew generic cover

letters offering services or pre-written articles. “Pre-written articles would not typically include late-breaking news and cutting-edge information since they may be several months to a year old,” says James J. Gormley, editorial director of VRM, Inc., publisher of Vitamin Retailer, of his journalistic pet peeve. “Also, they are not necessarily written with each of our magazines’ specific audiences and set of information expectations in mind — not to mention they would have to be chopped or expanded in order to meet our specs.”

Bubny recalls receiving a prospective article on how commercial tenants could “exercise their rights over evil landlords.” The editor just had one problem: Most of the magazine’s readers are landlords, and none of them are tenants.

Interested writers need to do their homework to find relevant titles, and then research them to help formulate their queries. “I know it isn’t easy getting copies of issues, but we all have Web sites and most of the sites have a pretty rich sampling of past articles,” Landers says. “Also, most of us post circulation audit statements on our Web sites and those can be extremely rich in audience demographics.”

“Don’t bluff your way in — the editors will spot a phony immediately.”

Writers new to trades hoping to pitch them should learn about the nitty-gritty of the target industry, especially if it’s rarely covered in news outlets. “Generally, it would really help if the industry novitiate would go through a half-dozen or so issues of industry magazines to get an idea of audience, topics, slants, and issues before pitching an idea,” Landers says.

Don’t underestimate your editor’s immersion in the subject

Don’t assume that just because its a trade magazine the editor won’t know his or her field in and out. “The first, and maybe most important, thing to keep in mind is that you should not underestimate the editor’s capacity for being quite familiar already with the ‘new’ subject matter you believe you’re bringing to the editor’s attention,” Bubny says. “The editor’s tolerance for this seeming naivet_? may be low, and he or she may not take you seriously enough to bother responding to the pitch, let alone give you the assignment. If you can actually bring something new to a pitch, great — but assume that the bar is going to have to be set very high.”

Attempts to fake your way through pitches on such specialized topics will probably emerge even more clearly for trade editors. “If you don’t know the subject, learn it and then pitch the magazines,” says Phil Hall, editor of Secondary Marketing Executive and Alternative Energy Retailer. “Don’t bluff your way in — the editors will spot a phony immediately.”

“Since trade pubs are uniquely targeted to a specific industry or specialty niche, the pitch should show a keen awareness of that niche or that controlled circulation readership and give the prospective assigning editor a confidence level that the article will deliver content that falls within a fairly narrow area of focus and interest,” Gormley says.

Use minimal ‘technical information’

Readers of trade magazines are “looking for utility and a certain return on their time investment,” McDowell says. “They’re not reading it for fun.”

However, that doesn’t mean that writing for a trade article should be a chore. “Trade magazine writing can be dry and repetitive if the writer allows it to be,” Bubny says. “The secret to not letting it get dry is to amass enough interesting material that you feel as though you have a worthwhile story to tell.”

Gormley seeks stories “that take what could be dry and technical information” but are written in a way that are “interesting, engaging, and, as much as possible, fun. Use the least amount of technical information that is needed for any given story.”

When writing for a trade audience, convincing them to keep reading is key, says to Landers. “If you want a trade magazine reader to read your second paragraph, you had best give that person a good reason in the first paragraph. So your lede has to make a promise that the reader is going to learn something they will value, and the rest of the article has to deliver.” As for colorful copy, Landers recommends “powerful verbs,” advising that extended analogies or anything else that “pads the distance” between facts could wind up edited out.

No need to be an expert if you ask the right questions

When writing stories for Vitamin Retailer?? Leach “wasn’t really bothered by the fact that I didn’t know anything about vitamins. After all, even when I was a general reporter, I had to write about things I didn’t know much about — and back in the archaic late ’90s, we didn’t have Internet at our desks so a lot of the time it was by the seat of your pants anyway. VR wasn’t any different, except I would be able to do lots of Web research on the topic to get at least a structural knowledge of things before posing questions to interviewees. That definitely helped.”

Receiving a story on a foreign topic was a challenge for Korolishin, even intimidating. For her, getting past that fear takes a “combination of asking the right questions and, really, practice.” While research and preparation help, so does not being afraid to ask for assistance. “I would sometimes say upfront, ‘I’m not an expert on this topic, so I may ask some very basic questions just for my own education, if that’s alright with you?'” Korolishin says. “Most people are pretty gracious about it, and it often worked to my advantage, as you tend to interview people for trade magazines who are very passionate about their work or their company or their industry, and they want to share that with you, so they’d help me understand an unfamiliar topic, which made the story better and added to my own storehouse of knowledge.”

Bubny, who has also edited trade publications on the natural products industry and outdoor apparel and camping goods, says there is no formula to writing a trade magazine article. “The commonality from one trade publication to another is that all involve business writing and reporting, and an ability to quickly grasp the fundamentals of the industry you’re writing about,” he says. “Once you get the hang of that, it’s a transferable skill.”

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A freelance writer and film critic, Pete Croatto lives in central New Jersey. He can be reached at petecroatto AT yahoo DOT com.

Welcome to our new series, J-School Confidential, filed by media experts in the making. Our rotating cast of emerging journos will take on that great media debate — to j-school or not to j-school — while chronicling their tales of learning the craft both in the academic settling and on the ground.

In this week’s edition, new Columbia grad student Beth Braverman assesses her place among her fellow students, revels in the camaraderie, and worries she’ll become the “bridge-and-tunnel student who never goes out.” And then there’s the whole getting a job thing, too.

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“Wow, I’m old.”

As I arrived on campus last Tuesday for the first official day of classes, this was the first thought running through my head.

In order to get to the Graduate School of Journalism, I had to navigate a campus swarming with incoming undergrads. As I mentally went over the readings for my first Evidence and Inference class, I caught snippets of conversations revolving around dorm life and meal plans. But even as the undergraduate students outside of the journalism building appeared young and immature, my peers inside seemed confident and experienced.

All of the 40-some students in Columbia’s M.A. program bring some real-world journalism experience, and my paltry five years as a local newspaper reporter and trade magazine editor seem to pale in comparison. My peers have broken major national stories, served as foreign correspondents in Lebanon and Iraq, and written for publications from The New York Times to the St. Petersburg Times.

We’re all on a level playing field going forward until, of course, job-hunting season begins — which is apparently now.

But despite the disparity among the resumes of incoming students, so far I have found my classmates utterly engaging and friendly. I’m sure that as the semester wears on, the inevitable cliques and alliances will form, but for now, everyone seems ready to make friends.

Already a few people stick out as quick to comment in class discussions, but I think others will join in once they get more comfortable with the group and with the classes.

There seems to exist a shared understanding that we’ve all gotten ourselves into this extremely intense training program, and we have to get along in order to help each other through it. Also, despite everyone’s background, no one really knows what to expect in the coming year, so we’re all on a level playing field going forward until, of course, job-hunting season begins — which is apparently now.

The dean told us during the first day of orientation to make an appointment and meet with career services as soon as possible. My own experience as a working journalist has shown me that publications generally do not advertise positions or start interviewing nine months in advance, but I definitely do not desire to be among the latecomers to the office. So I uploaded my resume — which can use some tweaking anyway — and requested an appointment.

One thing I have not done since arriving on campus is second-guess my decision to enroll. The curriculum promises to put strains on my time and skills, but it poses an appealing challenge that I look forward to meeting.

The syllabi for my classes appear in line with their online descriptions. They’re heavy on academic reading, but they bypass rudimentary journalism skills like how to write a lede or a nut graph.

One curriculum-related disappointment is that business concentration students do not get to pick their electives. Instead, our professors “highly recommend” that we take accounting this semester and corporate finance next semester. While I appreciate the reasoning for the mandate (and can certainly use the education in business basics), I would have enjoyed taking an elective more closely aligned with my personal interests.

Almost all of our professors are published authors and many of their works appear on required reading lists for their classes. I look forward to reading these texts in addition to bumping up our professors’ Amazon.com ratings.

Our professors have wasted no time getting started: We’ve already begun work on a group project for Evidence and Inference, and my business seminar professors expect us to have potential theses topics ready by the end of next week.

The commute from my new apartment in Astoria to Columbia has proven to take no less than an hour, regardless of what combination of buses and subways I take. This resulted in my tardiness for two classes in the first week of school, which mortified me but escaped the notice of anyone else.

The benefit of the commute starts and ends with a guaranteed two hours to catch up on classroom reading. To meet up with classmates for quick drinks on Friday took four hours from start to finish, and made me never want to do it again. I fear I may become that “old, married bridge-and-tunnel student who never goes out.”

So my goal for this semester is to better schedule my social outings to coincide with classes and maybe find a way to lure some unsuspecting classmates into the outer boroughs. Oh yeah…and to become a business journalist.

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Beth Braverman is a freelance writer and graduate student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She lives in Astoria, N.Y.

The heyday of the Internet seemed to turn traditional notions of copyright on their proverbial heads. The Web proved to be a powerful new publishing medium, and anyone who knew a scrap of HTML went wild posting things online. Gradually, copyright owners — whether writers, music publishers, or others — awoke to the fact that there was no meaningful difference between the Internet and other publishing media — and, therefore, that they should be paid for the use of their material online. Copyright owners started to stand up for their rights, and sites like the old Napster started getting shut down. Today, the pendulum continues to swing between both extremes: On one side, you have the freeze, where large, institutional copyright holders use sophisticated bots to hunt down Web sites using their works, then send notices to take the material down, sometimes even though the material is being used legitimately. On the other hand, there’s the continuing free-for-all, where everyone from large institutions to small businesses or individuals keeps using material without properly compensating copyright holders.

One byproduct of these developments is that the average person has become much savvier about copyright than they were five or 10 years ago. “Most people don’t think anymore that if you find something on the Internet that you’re free to copy it and put it on your Web site,” says Jessica Litman, author of Digital Copyright and professor of copyright and Internet law at The University of Michigan Law School. Another result, though, is the increasing need for writers and other content creators to be aware of copyright law, both to protect their own rights and help prevent them from inadvertently infringing on others’ rights.

To help meet that need, we’ve gathered tips to help ensure you’re aware of what’s legit and what isn’t when it comes to copyright. Today’s feature focuses on what you should know about copyright when you’re a content creator (Got a blog? Have a Web site that publishes user comments? Then we’re talking to you!). Check back tomorrow for our copyright feature focused on protecting work of your own. *

Know what is copyrightable
Simply put: A copyright grants commercial rights to the owner of an “original work of authorship” that appears in a “fixed form.” This includes everything from pieces of writing and songs to plays, images, and movies — even to architecture and software. The purpose of the copyright is to grant the owner the sole right to profit financially from all uses of the work. Someone wants to publish your article in their publication? They have to get your permission and, if you want, pay you. Someone wants to make a movie version of your book? Same thing. Someone wants to perform your play, song, or book? If you own the copyright and want them to pay, they’ll need to cough up the cash.

Common exceptions to the copyright rule include government documents and works that are considered “common property,” such as a height and weight chart. Another exception is a work whose copyright has expired and is therefore considered “in the public domain” and free for all to use. (Witness the round of movies based on Jane Austen books which have cropped up over the past decade.)

Plagiarism isn’t a copyright infringement, but it could hurt just the same
Copyright involves using someone else’s work and attributing it to them, but without the necessary permissions (and, possibly, payments). Plagiarism involves using someone else’s work and pretending it’s your own. It’s a subtle distinction, but it makes all the difference in the courts. A copyright infringement is a prosecutable offense, and financial damages can be recouped. Plagiarism is simply an ethical offense, and thus cannot be hashed out in the courts. But, don’t think that a plagiarizer won’t suffer penalties. Post someone’s article to your Web site without realizing you needed to get permission? They’ll either ask you take it down, or, worst case, bill you for a license. A pain, but not a career killer. Plagiarize by using someone else’s words, trying to pass them off as your own, and getting busted? See if you get any gigs after that.

A common misperception about fair use is that size matters. But size actually doesn’t matter. More important is the intent behind the usage.

When it comes to fair use, size doesn’t matter
“Fair use” is an exception to the copyright rule enabling people to use portions of works for the purposes of reporting on them, commenting on them, and parodying them, as well as for research and education, without needing to get permission to do so. The classic example is a televised movie review. If a TV station wants to broadcast an entire movie, they have to get a license. But if they just want to use a few clips in a review in order to cover the movie, they don’t need any special permission. Because of examples like this, though, a common misperception about fair use is that size matters. That is, that you don’t need a license if you simply use a small portion of a work. But size actually doesn’t matter in this case. More important is the intent behind the usage: Are you using the snippet because you want to report on, comment on, or make fun of the larger work? Or are you simply folding someone else’s creativity into your own, and thereby potentially enhancing the commercial value of your own work? Anthony Elia, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of Author Law A to Z, recalls a case in which an author included song lyrics in the chapter headings of his book — just a few lines here and there. The music publisher objected and threatened to bill the author a separate license for each copy of the book published. The author quickly removed the lyrics.

What’s tricky about “fair use” is that the law doesn’t contain hard and fast rules about what is and is not allowed. Instead, it simply lists a series of factors a judge would consider in evaluating whether the contested use of a piece of a work was fair or not. The Copyright Web site (a resource about copyright and an online copyright registration service) offers a nifty Fair Use Visualizer to help you evaluate whether your use of an item is likely to be considered “fair” or not. Use it as a starting point, but consult a lawyer if you want to be certain.

Publish clips on your Web site appropriately
Over the past decade, freelance writers have discovered that the Internet offers a great way to showcase their work: Set up a Web site, where you describe your areas of expertise, post scanned copies of your clips, and maybe even include thumbnail images of the covers of publications where your work appeared to reinforce your qualifications. You now have an easy way to show potential clients your work. Simple, right? Not quite.

By definition, your Web site is a promotional tool, which means everything on it is being used for commercial purposes (rather than journalistic ones). This means you don’t necessarily have the right to use all the elements that were included in the original article. You own the words you wrote (assuming you didn’t give up rights to them in your contract with the publication), so you can include those. But the photographs, charticles, and other “original works” that were part of the final article? Rights to those belong either to the people who created them or the publication. And unless those folks have given you rights to use them to promote yourself, you’re not legally entitled to put them on your Web site.

Kind of throws a wrench in the whole using-the-Internet-to-display-your-work thing. Here are a few workarounds:

Establish ownership of comments made on your blog
Technically, comments made by visitors to your blog belong to them. They are their “original” works in their “fixed” form. But you might reasonably want to use those comments in some derivative work somewhere down the line, like in an anthology. Follow the lead of sites like WashingtonPost.com, Technorati.com, and Craigslist.org, and post terms and conditions on your Web site that establish your right to use any comments posted as you see fit.

Get permission
If you want to use someone else’s work in your own, and you’re not positive you have claim to fair use, get permission. It’s a potentially long process, so start early. Copyright owners are not always easy to locate. Even once you find them, negotiations might take a while, since there are no set rules on how much it should cost to re-use a particular work in a specific circumstance. To find an owner, start with the database at the U.S. Copyright Office. It’s free if you do it yourself, but if you want to save time, you can pay the Library of Congress (where the Copyright Office sits) to do it for you. For other ideas on ways to locate a copyright holder, take a look at the online cheat sheet provided by Lloyd J. Jassin, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook.

*Since we’re talking law, we must make clear: This article does not constitute legal advice, but provides tips to get you started. Take the time to educate yourself in depth. If you have concerns stemming from anything you’re working on, consult a lawyer.

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E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.

Part I of this feature covered copyright concerns when it comes to using others’ work. Today, we’ve got copyrights tips to help you protect work of your own. We know we covered this part yesterday, but it’s worth repeating: Know what is copyrightable. Simply put: A copyright grants commercial rights to the owner of an “original work of authorship” that appears in a “fixed form.” This includes everything from pieces of writing and songs to plays, images, and movies — even to architecture and software. The purpose of the copyright is to grant the owner the sole right to profit financially from all uses of the work. Now, on to the essentials of guarding your copyright.*

Ideas aren’t copyrightable
Let’s say you have a great idea for an article that you share with a friend — maybe you even put it into an email to him. Then, he uses the idea to sell the very same story to a national publication, netting himself a fancy byline and a juicy fee for his trouble — not to mention making it impossible for you to sell the same idea to another publication. Copyright violation? Nope. Your original idea doesn’t constitute a “work of authorship” in a “fixed” form. Even writing it down in that email doesn’t prohibit anyone else from using the idea. The three sentences in your email are copyrightable, since they’re “original” and “fixed.” But that doesn’t give you the rights to the work your friend created, based on your idea. That’s his “original” work in his “fixed” form. Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to recoup damages from him, other than cross him off your list of friends and warn other writer colleagues about his nasty habits.

Know what rights you are selling
Freelance writing contracts used to be pretty simple. You could grant First North American Serial Rights, which gave a publication first shot at running your story in its print edition. After that, you retained all subsequent rights. Or you did Work Made For Hire, in which case the publication owned your work wholesale, and you could do nothing further with it. The advent of digital media has led to myriad new ways to distribute content, most notably through Web sites and digital collections like those found on CDs. At first, some publications acted as if their purchase of your story for their print edition gave them the right to also make it available online and in other places, such as a digital archive. Eventually, the courts affirmed that that was not the case, most notably in the landmark 2001 Supreme Court decision in Tasini et al v. The New York Times et al, a case initiated by the National Writers Union. The decision established that writers own the rights to electronic versions of their work. Publications responded by rewriting their contracts. Many now request rights to any possible use they can imagine down the line, such as perpetual inclusion on their Web sites, inclusion in an anthology, or inclusion in a movie. “Whenever possible, writers should insist on keeping everything they can,” says Jessica Litman, professor of copyright and Internet law at The University of Michigan Law School. Depending on how much leverage you have, consider pushing back and granting the minimum number of rights.

Register your work
The requirements around registration are another source of confusion for writers. On the one hand, you don’t need to register your work to own the copyright to it: According to the law, you own the copyright at the moment of creation. On the other hand, registering your work is a prerequisite to bringing legal action against an infringer. The timing of your registration is equally important. How soon you register your work will impact how much you can recoup. Register within three months of publication or before an infringement (whichever is later), and you’re entitled to statutory damages and lawyers’ fees, in addition to any money the infringer earned through the use of your work. Register after three months or after the infringement (also whichever is later), and, even if you find an infringer, you can recoup their financial gain, but nothing else.

It might sound like a hassle to register each article you produce, but you can save time and money by bundling a group of articles and submitting them in a single batch, all for the $45 fee the Copyright Office charges per filing. Make a practice of doing this at least once every three months. “For $180 [a year], it’s a lot of protection,” says Anthony Elia, a New York publishing attorney and co-author of Author Law A to Z. “It makes the difference between being able to proceed in court and the case not being economically viable in many cases.”

Instructions on how to register your copyright can be found on the U.S. Copyright Office Web site. Erik Sherman, a freelance writer and former chair of the Contracts Committee of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, also has a handy cheat sheet on copyright registration on his WriterBiz blog.

“You have to be aggressive, and you have to be willing to go the distance [to protect your work].”

Find online infringers and deal with them
If you want to ensure others aren’t using your stories without your permission, perform a periodic Internet search for your byline. You’ll be surprised where your pieces might turn up. Several years ago, freelance writer Mary Beth Klatt discovered that a restaurant Web site was featuring an article she had written for the Chicago Tribune about a chain of local taverns. She sent them an invoice, and after she showed them proof of her copyright registration, the Web site paid. But it wasn’t easy, and the outlet balked at first. “You have to be aggressive, and you have to be willing to go the distance,” Klatt says.

Billing infringers isn’t your only option, though. If you aren’t getting very far with the owners of the Web site itself, you can also contact the Web site’s ISP and make a “DMCA takedown” request. The procedure is named for the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which amended federal copyright law and struck a compromise with ISPs, who were concerned about being held liable for the activities of the entities using their services. The law says ISPs won’t be held liable for copyright infringements made by Web sites they host as long as they remove the material upon being notified of an infringement. So if a Web site is ignoring you, the ISP will likely respond swiftly. You can view an example of a takedown notice, and the Copyright Office maintains (sometimes referred to as DMCA agents) to whom you can send a takedown notice.

You can also choose to be friendly about the infringement. If a blogger has reprinted your article for the purpose of furthering discussion around it, for example, consider simply asking them to link to your article instead of reprinting the whole thing. “It’s worth distinguishing between someone who’s adding commentary around the piece, and people who are taking the content and throwing ads around it, hoping to make money around the work,” says Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Harvard-based Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Consider using a Creative Commons License
Traditional copyright licenses were fairly restrictive. Either you gave someone a license to profit commercially from your work, or you gave them nothing. Tech innovators saw the limitations in these rules. There was no easy way to give someone partial rights. Enter the Creative Commons. Founded in 2001, this nonprofit organization created in a new set of licenses that allows the owners of creative works to provide limited permissions that allow others to use their work without making special requests. For example, a “Noncommercial” license automatically gives others the right to re-use your work as much as they like as long as they aren’t making any money off it. A “No Derivative Works” license gives people the right to use your work as long as they don’t modify it. You can mix and match to accord others exactly the rights you’re willing to give up. For more, see the Creative Commons Web site.

To learn more about copyright issues addressed here, check out What Works Are Protected? and What Is Not Protected by Copyright? on the U.S. Government Copyright Office’s Web site. (And don’t worry, it’s written in plain English.)

*Since we’re talking law, we must make clear: This article does not constitute legal advice, but provides tips to get you started. Take the time to educate yourself in depth. If you have concerns stemming from anything you’re working on, consult a lawyer.

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E.B. Boyd is a freelance writer based in San Francisco.