I didn’t initially plan on having a writing career, despite coming from a literary family. But after eight years as a songwriter/musician/singer and traveling all over the Western world, I felt I had something to share in life experience, so I bought a Mac and read all those books at Barnes ‘n’ Noble on how to break into professional writing. I published a few CD reviews in a free New Jersey newspaper, then got a couple of first-person pieces in The New York Times, one about being hired to do an Elvis impersonation at a Korean wedding, the other about trying to get my elderly dad to give up driving. So I knew I could do this.

I liked writing in the first person, but I’m also knowledgeable about cars, and made auto reviews my specialty. I introduced myself, clips included, to some top people at different major print media, and sent postcards to them whenever I was on vacation and around the holidays. My name is really short, and I just kept it in front of them: Josh Max, Josh Max, Josh Max.

None of these cards read anything but “Hello,” though. If I was at the beach, I’d draw a cartoon of myself on the sand waving, for example. I didn’t ask for anything except via email, when I had what I thought was a good story. Finally, an editor at Newsweek told me to come in for a meeting to talk about some car and bike articles. When I got there, she said, “It was the postcard that did it.” But I also had some solid publishing behind me, so I wasn’t just some flake bothering them. I also have a very understanding wife who believed in me and supported me until I broke through. I just wanted a column of my own, and a writing career, more than anything in this world.

After four years of freelancing for the Times, Newsweek, Forbes.com and other media outlets, I became a full-time columnist at the Daily News — PC, phone, press pass, business cards – the works. I test-drive and review a different new car each week — everything from Kias and Toyotas to Model T’s, Bentleys and Ferraris — and do about 10 motorcycles a year. I’ve had about 400 test cars in the last seven years. Here, I’ll answer some key questions about how I keep my column humming along.

How do you get assignments like test-driving the Goodyear Blimp over Manhattan?

The blimp story was something I approached Goodyear about on a whim. They don’t offer rides to the public, but they were receptive to my pitch, so I leaned on ’em over the course of a few months. The timing wasn’t right — it was the middle of winter when I first contacted them — and then I didn’t hear back for quite a while. But I kept sending hello emails. When the ride finally happened, it happened quickly: “Are you available on Sunday?” So I drove out with my camera to an airfield on Long Island at 8 a.m., and soon I was in the air. I had only wanted a ride, and they ended up letting me drive the thing.

How do you come up with five articles a week?

I start the soup Monday, after meeting a 12 noon deadline for all stories that will run the following Tuesday, eight days later. Then I pick the car that’s going on the cover of “Your Drive”, and brainstorm the other four stories based on leads. The leads come from press releases, but everyone helps — colleagues, family, friends and strangers. People write to me, saying, “You should check out my friend’s car — it runs on vegetable oil!”, or “I got a ticket for doing something that’s legal.”

I also am a member of I.M.P.A. — the International Motor Press Association — and get releases from people in the auto industry who peruse IMPA’s mailing list. I actually get very few direct pitches from the auto manufacturers themselves, which surprises me. I usually have to go and check their Web sites to see what’s coming up. I also look for short stories I can expand with an interview, more information or a different take. I drive 300 or so miles a week, all over the city, the surrounding states and in other parts of the country, and generate leads based on things that happen to me. Since I also shoot some of the photos for my section, sometimes the story will be photo-based, and I’ll write the article around it. Other times, the story is the story and I’ll shoot to illustrate it. I would say out of the five weekly articles, two to three are ones I think up, and the others are from leads.

After deciding what the articles will be for the following week, I let the design people and the publisher know, and start roughing them out. As the week goes on, each story gets more and more into focus, I add more seasoning, more color, more flavor, fact-check it and by Friday, all five are more or less cooked. Then I leave them to boil over the weekend without opening the lid. Monday at 8 a.m. they get the final go-over, and by noon, they’re served to the copy desk. Repeat.

I’m still a working musician, too; my wife Julie and I just finished recording “The Maxes Sing Al Hoffman”, a big-band CD of the music of my great Uncle Al, a hit New York-based songwriter of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, and got a publishing deal out of it, which is great. I’m also in the middle of writing a memoir, “Confessions of an Ex-Seeker” about living in an Indian ashram for five months and other adventures that brought me to where I am today. I’m really good at multitasking — I have to be. And every now and then I leave the house on a motorcycle and don’t come back all day.

It’s been an unbelievable learning experience. Working for a newspaper at the volume I do, you really learn to get to the point quickly and to chop what doesn’t serve the story. You also let go of thinking your words are gold — the story is the star, you just get out of the way and tell it.

How do you reconcile writing about cars in an era of increasing awareness of global warming?

I don’t reconcile it or justify what I do; I am perfectly aware that these machines are helping to blacken the skies all over the world, though burning coal is an equal culprit (so I read). That said, you’re going to see some enormous changes in the auto industry in the next few years, and to whoever manufactures a cheap, solid car that doesn’t pollute and runs on water, air, sunlight or peanut butter is going to make billions of dollars. That’s going to happen very soon, and I am going to tell people to go and buy the good ones and skip the lousy ones. My section also usually contains at least one and as many as three tests of alternative or hybrid vehicles each week. In just the past two months, I’ve reviewed vehicles that run on ethanol, hydrogen and air. I also, for a variety of reasons, turned vegan six months ago.

What advice would you give a writer who wants a column?

When I was first starting out, there was a free alternative weekly I thought I would be great for my first person stories, and the editor was receptive. But every single story I sent him was rejected for one reason or another. He liked the stories; he just didn’t love them. After seven attempts, he finally sent me a note saying, “Maybe you should try elsewhere.” It was nice of him. Most guys would just stop emailing you back. I sent him a thank you and went on my way.

Then one night I had an amazing New York adventure that lasted from 2 a.m. until noon the next day. I went home, wrote 3,000 words and sent it to him. He put it on the cover of the paper the following week with an illustration, and ended up buying, over two years, all the articles he’d previously rejected. He’d forgotten he had already read and rejected them.

Rejection sucks, no question about it, but the proper response is the same as it is during the days when I was living between far-and-few paychecks: “Get to work.” My late father, whose gravestone reads “50 years on the writer’s rockpile”, said, “You have to eat, sleep, s–t and write, and that’s it.” Everything else comes second.

Point your cannon and keep firing until your ball goes through the wall. Be as obsessed with being a great writer as you are with sex or money or music or whatever it is that runs your life day and night. Refuse to be interrupted. Give editors unbelievable stuff they can’t get anywhere else, give it to them on time and be easy to work with, and you’ll find work.

How can we get your job?

Kill me.

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Josh Max writes the “Your Drive” column for the Daily News.

MTV recently reported that “Pierce Brosnan and Nicolas Cage will star in Roman Polanski’s next project, The Ghost. The film is an adaptation of Robert Harris’ novel about a ghostwriter hired to write the memoirs of an ex-prime minister.” Who are these ghostwriters and how do they get work? We spoke with Madeleine Morel, who represents ghostwriters exclusively, and with more than 100 ghostwriters in her roster, she haunts bestseller lists. Established in 1982 shortly after Morel moved to America from England, 2M Communications Ltd. is a literary agency specializing in non-fiction titles. Morel matches ghostwriters and professional collaborators with high-profile authors, and she frequently works on a confidential basis.

“We are especially skilled in the following areas: parenting, multicultural issues, memoir and personal growth, pop-culture, health and beauty, cooking, relationships and psychology, and business,” Morel says of her preferred genres.

Houses Morel has worked with include: Avery, Avon, Atria, Ballantine, Broadway, Chronicle, Clarkson Potter, Crown, Doubleday, Free Press, Grand Central Publishing, HarperCollins, Meredith, Penguin Putnam, Regan Books, Rodale, Simon & Schuster, Simon Spotlight, St. Martin’s Press and Wiley. In addition to 2M Communications Ltd., Madeleine is also a partner in Lowenstein-Morel Associates, a literary agency that specializes in developing nonfiction books, particularly in the multicultural market.

This spring two books of Morel’s collaborations reached the New York Times bestseller list including Stolen Innocence by Elissa Wall and Lisa Pulitzer, and a second book which, Morel says, “I can’t tell you the title because of the confidentiality clause, but it’s a medical book aimed at women written by Maggie Greenwood Robinson, author of the bestselling Biggest Loser.”
We spoke with Morel on the phone to discover what it takes to make a bestseller written by a ghostwriter, and what makes a good ghostwriter, as well.

How do you turn a ghostwritten book into a bestseller?
What turns a ghostwriter into a bestselling ghostwriter is [when]: the author is a major celebrity; they’re on every TV and radio talk show; they’re covered by all the periodicals or, they’re someone like Elissa, caught up in the eye of a media storm. In other words, someone with whom the public is really familiar. Since I’ve been doing this, I’ve helped put eight books on the Times bestseller list; collectively the authors with whom I work have put close to 50 books on the list.

How did Stolen Innocence come about?
HarperCollins signed up Elissa Wall after seeing her on television and then came to me to find a ghostwriter and crash the book through. It was a complicated book because the author was in the witness protection program during the trial, making access even more difficult.

What made Lisa Pulitzer a perfect fit in your mind to write Stolen Innocence?
Lisa has an uncanny ability to capture someone’s voice; she had already written a No. 1 Times bestseller on the Scott Peterson case, and she makes women feel very comfortable. She was working with a girl who was forced into marriage at the age of 14 and was completely traumatized by the incident. This book needed a delicate touch.

How fast do ghostwriters generally turn projects around?
Right now, I have two projects where the editors want the books delivered in a month to six weeks. Some ghostwriters can do two to three books a year; others are more deliberate and write one book a year. However, publishers are demanding books be written in even shorter time frames to coincide with media events — be they TV shows, movie premieres, court cases, Mother’s Day etc. As a ghostwriter, you have to have stamina to deal with the increased stress inherent in these short deadlines.

Do you have a stable of ghostwriters you turn to?
I have well over 100 — they have all been previously published by the major publishing houses. I don’t rep anyone exclusively because I work with so many. In this respect, I’m different [than] everyone else — I function more like a talent agency. It also means that when an agent or editor comes to me I can offer them four to six writers from whom to choose because I have many writers in different fields.

If someone comes to me for a specific project and I don’t have the right match, I will contact other agents or editors in the field and we split the commission on their writer equally. Conversely, agents come to me increasingly when they represent nonfiction writers who are so prolific that they can’t keep them busy. If I find their writer a job, we again go 50/50. I am really only interested in people who have already been published. I do keep a B list of people not previously published for smaller jobs. I don’t like doing the small books because it takes about the same amount of time as a big book and it pays less.

What about new additions to your roster?
I’m always looking for really qualified new writers; however, I don’t like getting involved with ghostwriters who find me on the Internet unless they already have a proven track record. I no longer sell and am not interested in selling.

Are your writers generally from a nonfiction background?
Pretty much, yes. I occasionally take a person from fiction. Fiction is so arbitrary in terms of taste. To sell it, the editor needs to see at least 150 pages of manuscript – this can be expensive for the putative author, since they have to pay for the work. I prefer to stick to nonfiction: agents can sell on the strength of a full-blown proposal and a sample chapter. Since I’ve never worked in fiction, it’s not my strong suit.

What about credit for the ghostwriter?
Sometimes the writer will get cover credit. Most importantly, the industry people know which books are written by someone else and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Agents are looking for writers with a platform — and even if they don’t get cover credit, they all receive credit on the acknowledgment page.

Any tips for ghostwriters looking to break into the biz?
There’s a real art to ghost writing. Number one, they have to have no ego, and they have to be able to capture the primary author’s voice. Get your name out there, write as many articles as you can online or in magazines. Once writers have a good resume of articles, they have a much better chance of landing a book contract. Initially, they might start with the smaller, independent houses, but if they are sufficiently aggressive, they can move upward. I would also recommend that writers specialize in a particular field — I find it much tougher to place writers who’ve written a little bit in many different areas. Writers have to decide on their area of interest and expertise and concentrate on it. Right now, I’m working on everything from a book with a stripper to a title with a famous American religious leader.

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Andy Heidel is a blogger for GalleyCat.

In 2003 on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright talked his way into a berth with the elite Marine unit tasked with leading one of the charges up to Baghdad. Wright spent the next two months with a 23-man platoon from the First Reconnaissance Battalion, racing in Humvees ahead of the main invasion force and serving as ambush bait to locate Iraqi army positions. He observed the Marines’ exhilaration at surviving enemy attacks and at doling out as much as they got, their frustration at equipment that didn’t work and at the decisions of certain officers who sometimes seemed determined to get them killed, their desolation when their actions felled Iraqi civilians, and the intricacies of their relationships with each other, with the military, and with the war. The three-part series published in Rolling Stone the following summer, titled “The Killer Elite” and edited by the magazine’s current managing editor, Will Dana, won that year’s National Magazine Award for reporting.

In the summer of 2003, G.P. Putnam’s Sons commissioned Wright to pen a book about the experience. Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, Wright’s first book, quickly became a bestseller. Over 200,000 copies have been sold so far, and the work has been compared to Dispatches, Michael Herr’s acclaimed grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War. The book was showered with awards, including the PEN USA award for best nonfiction book of 2004, Columbia’s Lukas Prize for nonfiction, and — perhaps the most meaningful to Wright — the Wallace Greene Award from the Marine Corps Heritage Society. The Christian Science Monitor called the book “exceptionally compelling,” the Financial Times called it “an adrenaline rush of intelligent prose,” and The New York Times called it “nuanced and grounded in details often overlooked in daily journalistic accounts.”

HBO Films snapped up the movie rights to Generation Kill, tapping The Wire‘s David Simon and Ed Burns to produce, and hiring Wright help Simon and Burns craft what has become a seven-part miniseries. Billed as “the ultimate road trip,” the miniseries begins July 13.

Wright started his reporting career in the mid-90s manning longtime Hustlercolumn Beaver Hunt. Today he is a Vanity Fair contributing editor. His first-ever piece for that magazine, about a Hollywood agent turned right-wing documentary filmmaker, won this year’s National Magazine Award for profile writing, and Wright is currently adapting the piece for Fox Studios. mediabistro.com caught up with Wright to find out how he turned his Iraq assignment into writing’s triple crown — an award-winning article, an award-winning book, and now an HBO film.

How did you get a book contract for Generation Kill?
I arrived in the Middle East in January 2003 [two months before the invasion] and filed some stories for Rolling Stone. During that period, a book editor contacted me. He knew my work [from Afghanistan reporting Wright had done for Rolling Stone the previous year]. He said, “If anything interesting happens, keep me in mind because we might be looking for an Iraq War book.” When I got back and published the three Rolling Stone articles, I did contact him.

[In the meantime] I had a nominal relationship with a film agent — nominally an agent, no contract or anything — at ICM. ICM had no interest in the first “Killer Elite” article, which I had sent them. They were not interested until I sent a follow-up email saying that there’s a book editor who maybe wants to do a book with this. At that point, ICM said, “Oh yeah, this is great.”

They put me in touch with a book agent named Richard Abate [then at ICM, today at Endeavor]. As a lot of writers will testify, the agency did nothing until they figured out that I actually kind of already had interest. It’s not like they were out there pounding the streets for me. But Abate really kicked ass.

“When I did my last phase of corrections, I spent a 14-hour phone call with the copy editor, manually reinserting the most vile passages that the editor wanted cut. He’s a great editor, but still to this day, I don’t know if he realizes that that’s the book that he published.”

What did Abate do for you?
He had me write a book proposal to the publisher that was already interested. They made what Abate thought was a really low offer for the book. The reason was — this is an interesting fact for any writer who’s thinking about writing a book — my first contact with the publisher was a conference call with an editor and their head of marketing. It was to their marketing woman that I had to sell the worthiness of this book, not the editor. In my proposal, I pointed out that, at the end of the book, there were all these troubling things we encountered in Baghdad and that I would discuss the fact that the Iraqis I met in the first week of the occupation suggested that there might be a civil war between Sunni and Shi’a. And the marketing department of this publisher thought that my book seemed far too negative. I remember her saying back in July of 2003, “But the war is going really well. You’re being too negative.”

So what next?
My agent then went to Putnam, which came in with a higher offer. They really seemed interested in the book, and I didn’t talk to their marketing department. They just seemed really stoked. [We went with Putnam because] their offer was higher, but they also just seemed more interested in it.

Did you run into any challenges during the editing process?
My editor wanted me to remove some of the profanity and some of the more scatological references. He actually marked those to remove. When I did my last phase of corrections, I spent a 14-hour phone call with the copy editor, manually reinserting the most vile passages that the editor wanted cut. He’s a great editor, but still to this day, I don’t know if he realizes that that’s the book that he published.

Why were those passages so critical?
The scatological humor is critical, because that is the humor that prevailed. It’s also critical because, if you’re in a combat zone, on the front lines, or behind the lines, as we were, your life is reduced to these elemental things. One of them is: How can you go to the bathroom? Where can you go? So the humor itself speaks to the realities of these guys. To have removed that wouldn’t have just sanitized the book for aesthetic reasons, it would have sanitized the reality that these guys operated in.

How did the HBO miniseries come about?
In July of 2003, I went into HBO and I pitched them. I’d sold my book, but I hadn’t written it.

How did the pitch go?
HBO had my three-part Rolling Stone series, and they had my book proposal. HBO had everything, but here’s the irony: When you go in to pitch your own article, the first thing they ask you is, “Well, what’s the movie?” And you want to say, “You’re holding the articles on your desk. You’re the moviemaker. I’m just the lowly reporter.”

But I had already figured this out. I’d already figured out my answer. They really like short, pithy answers. I said, “My movie would be the ultimate road trip. It’s really not about the war. It’s about these guys going from Kuwait to Baghdad.” And then the second level of my pitch was, “It’ll be like ‘Jackass Goes to War.’ ” And they loved that.

I understood that you just have to say something that they like, because marketing departments rule. In the movie industry, people want to be able to see the poster. They don’t want to see the movie; they want to see the poster.

“What really improved my reporting was being unplugged from the 24-hour news cycle and not knowing what I was supposed to be thinking about. It was a lack of awareness of other reporting that improved my reporting.”

How did you get the idea to pitch HBO?
For years I would publish an article and get calls from people in Hollywood who were interested in maybe having a discussion about turning it into a film. Nothing had ever happened, but I’d had many of these meetings in the past.

So you met with HBO. What happened next?
The project didn’t really go very far. It wasn’t until a year later that an HBO executive called my agent and then had a meeting with me. He said, “We had trouble figuring out what to do with this. We have a new idea,” which was to have me meet with David Simon and Ed Burns. This was about January 2005. They were then doing The Wire. But they had previously done The Corner, a miniseries based on the book they wrote of the same title, about a drug corner in Baltimore. The idea was these guys had already adapted reporting into a miniseries, and they had this awesome show.

I flew out to Baltimore, sat down with David Simon, and asked him, “What do you want to do?” And he said, “We want to make your book.” I was kind of stunned. Several people had called me after I sold the book to HBO — suddenly all these other people wanted it even though I couldn’t sell it, really, but I had all these meetings with people, and they wanted to take it and do their own thing. Everybody wanted to use the book as source material but then create a new story. David Simon said, “We just want to make your book.” And then he said, “I don’t really want to do this unless you’re going to be very involved in the process.”

How involved were you in creating the miniseries?
First I was just going to be a consultant, but as it turned out, I worked as a co-writer on the scripts. I spent about 15 weeks living in Baltimore and writing with David and Ed. I would meet with one of them every day. We wrote some of it, literally, in a trailer on the set of The Wire.

What did you learn from working with the creators of The Wire?
What I really learned from David and Ed is believing in the primacy of your source material when adapting it into a miniseries. They both had so much confidence in the material, and they both had a cocky, sort of “fuck-you” attitude to the idea that we would have to alter our narrative of the war to conform to people’s expectations of it.

For example, in the book, in one of the later chapters, we were leaving a town called Baqubah, and we got ambushed on the way back, a small minor ambush, and Colbert [the team leader in Wright’s Humvee] opened up on the ambushers and was very confident that he’d killed the guy that shot at us. When I wrote that in the book, I almost started to write something like how it disturbed me that I’d probably just witnessed a human being being killed. But the truth was that, at that moment, I was so tired, and I was so sort of pissed off that we’d just been shot at, that I couldn’t care less that there was probably some guy dead or bleeding to death in a ditch by our Humvee — because he just shot at us.

In writing that passage, I probably did start to type the first half of a sentence softening the fact that I felt nothing, or maybe hiding that fact. But I remember that moment of writing that passage, and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m going to write what I felt. Nothing.” When I wrote the book, I almost stopped myself from revising. I decided to go with my first instinct. Because my first instinct in writing about this war was often more honest than my later instinct.

I think that David and Ed had the exact same methodology in dramatizing this. For instance, when the guys use racist language, we didn’t go back and try to explain to the audience, “Actually these guys probably are not really racist because they get along really well.” We just decided to use the language and depict them, and hopefully people in the audience will understand that maybe their language is at variance with who they really are and how they relate to each other.

What surprised you the most about the whole process, from magazine article to book to HBO miniseries?
I have to say, I really thought I was going to die in Iraq. I became convinced that I was going to get shot. Sounds a little crazy, but that’s the truth. Having just lived through those three weeks, that was a big surprise.

There was a lot of reporting on the invasion of Iraq. Your Rolling Stone series distinguished itself by winning the National Magazine Award for reporting, and Generation Kill has been one of the more successful books about the invasion — and certainly the first to be made into a movie. What was different about your reporting?
People have always said, ‘Your reporting on Iraq was different.’ I’ve always said, ‘Well, I was a magazine guy, and I was with this small unit, and I stayed with them for two months, and I took really good notes.’ It was very intimate, and it was a great unit to be with.

There’s another factor in why my reporting was different. I didn’t have a sat-phone, and I didn’t have Internet. [Marine officers required Wright to give up his sat-phone as a pre-condition to embedding with the unit, to ensure their location would not be divulged.] While I was doing all my primary reporting, I had no idea what the dominant stories were. What really improved my reporting was being unplugged from the 24-hour news cycle and not knowing what I was supposed to be thinking about. It was a lack of awareness of other reporting that improved my reporting.

What did you learn from that experience?
It’s led me to wonder if perhaps that’s a problem with the current 24-hour news cycle reporting that everybody’s locked into, where every reporter is constantly having to look over their shoulder to make sure they’re getting — or creating — the dominant news story of the day.

It’s not just [a problem with reporting a particular] story, but [with generating] the dominant take on the war. That dominant take is often totally wrong. It negates the instincts and work and perceptions of the reporter who’s on the ground.

Years later, I do suspect that our impressions of the war are increasingly being driven by editors and producers who are back home and not doing the reporting, and their perceptions of the war are often shaping what reporters are saying.

Your book stood out because you wrote very intimately about the people in the unit you were with — the dramatic, the mundane, but also stuff they might have preferred “stayed in the family,” as it were. And yet, you still have good relations with those individual Marines. How do you reveal, as you did about one Marine, for example, that they have a David Spade-like nasal whine and are partial to Barry Manilow and Air Supply, and not have them want to punch you in the face the next time they see you?
If you’re accurate, it’s much harder for people to react negatively. They can be unhappy with it, but they have to agree, “It is true, I did sing ‘Copacabana’ while we were rolling up past the Gharraf canal that day.”

What’s interesting in that example is that [the Marine in question] was okay with [what was written in the book]. But later on, I gave some interview, and I paraphrased that and said he had terrible taste in music. I editorialized, and he’s always been pissed off by that. So I’ve found that it’s best to describe people in details without characterizing it, without saying what you think it is, and just say what it is. And you know when you’re writing it, some people will think [Barry Manilow] is ridiculously bad music, but as soon as you say what you think of it, you’re in more dangerous territory.

If a budding reporter were starting out on an assignment to do exactly what you did, what would you tell them about how to report on the ground, going from Kuwait to Baghdad with a platoon of Marines?
Get as close to one person as you can. Don’t worry about the big story. Just find one person who will let you follow them around and who will be your guide into this world.

Don’t let your editor tell you what the story is, but also try to understand that your editor ultimately has to sell the story to his boss.

Also, I told the guys, “This whole ‘on the record, off the record’ thing? The truth is anything that you say or I see is going to be hard for me not to use if it’s really good. So if you really don’t want me to write something, don’t tell me.” And it’s actually the truth. Because, as much as I have affection for these guys, at the end of the day, my loyalty was to the story, not to them. And I had to tell them that right up front.

One other thing: reporters often want to show off how smart they are. So when we reporters go into an alien culture like the military, and someone is like, “This is an M77-K2. Do you know what this is,” a lot of reporters like to show their subjects that they’re knowledgeable: “Well actually I do know what that is, because I wrote an article about it.” What I find is always better is, even if you think you know, let your sources tell you what the situation is. Don’t try to impress them with your knowledge. It’s better to be ignorant and let them educate you.

Finally, when I disagree with my subjects, I often tell them. A lot reporters, faced with the military, assume they’re conservative and Republican and pro-war. They’ll try to act like they sympathize with the troops and agree with them. If I disagree with my subjects, I’ll actually exaggerate the disagreements openly. I’ll be like, “Well, I’m actually like a communist.” They respect that more. It also leads to debate. It’s always healthy to debate with your subjects.

So how do you like how you’re portrayed in the miniseries?
[Actor] Lee Tergesen does a great job, because he’s comic. In the book, when I go into the first person, it tends to be a little bit comic. I wanted to have the first-person narrative to validate that I was an eyewitness to what I was reporting on, but I didn’t want to be the pompous reporter. The things that happen to [the character in the miniseries] — he has to swallow his chewing tobacco, he gets tied up in his MOP [chemical warfare] suit — that’s from the book. Lee does it in the film, probably with more slapstick than I did it, but to great effect. I thought he was dead on.

Tips on how to get your article turned into a book and a movie:
1. Get a foothold at an agency. Even if you can’t get an official contract with an agent, an informal relationship can create the opening you’ll need down the line.
2. Get popular. If your agent isn’t already rustling the bushes on your behalf, scrounge up some interest — any interest — to whet their appetite.
3. Pitch early and often. Before Generation Kill, Wright had had a number of meetings with Hollywood folks about potentially turning other articles into movies. Though those projects went nowhere, the meetings taught him how the game was played, and he was ready when it came time to pitch HBO.
4. Know your tagline. When pitching a movie studio, realize that marketing reigns supreme. Have a one-sentence summary of what the movie will be about and know what your movie poster tagline is going to say.
5. Trust your gut. To have something to sell to book publishers and movie producers, you first have to have a compelling story. Listen to your editors, but at the end of the day, trust your own instincts about what you’ve seen and heard, and write your story as it was, not as you — or anyone else — think it should be.

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

There is a certain personality type that pursues a job as a foreign correspondent in a war zone. After all, there are foreign correspondent jobs in Paris. But for Richard Engel, NBC’s Middle East correspondent and the only television reporter who’s continually covered the Iraq conflict since it began, it’s clearly less a job than a calling.

Especially when you consider, upon graduating from Stanford, he picked up and headed to Cairo with only some small savings and a passion for finding the story. Born and raised in Manhattan, Engel has now lived in the Middle East for 10 years. After a three-year stint covering the Palestine uprising against Israel, he was freelancing for the BBC and ABC in 2002 when he signed with NBC, and he’s been there ever since.

By most accounts he’s a thorough and dogged reporter; he speaks and reads fluent Arabic (in addition to Spanish and Italian) and has been known to go house to house to report a story. As Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz wrote, “Among the small circle of journalists who risk their lives in the region, Engel commands considerable respect.”

Despite eluding death enough times to know his reserve of luck may be depleted, you get the feeling there’s no where else he’d rather be. Here, he shares some of his thoughts on working, living, and surviving in war.

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Name: Richard Engel
Position: Sr. Middle East Correspondent
Resume: “Reporting from the Middle East since 1996”
Birthdate: September 16, 1973
Hometown: New York City
Education: Stanford University
Marital Status: Single
Favorite TV show: MTV Music Countdown
Last book read: “Biography of Ibn Saud, founder of Saudi Arabia”
Guilty pleasure: “Blackjack”

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What is your typical day like — if you even have one?
There are really two kinds of days. There are the times when I’m with the military and I would say, maybe that’s about 30 percent of the time. On an embed, you’re living on the soldiers’ or marines’ schedule. You’re up very early and you go out on patrol with the troops, sometimes they come back for a break in the middle of the afternoon, they go on more patrols in the late afternoon and generally get to bed pretty early, or sometimes we’re filing late in the evening. When you’re with the military you live with the troops, sleep on cots; sometimes on a big base, they’ll give you a trailer. Other times it’s just sleeping in a very abandoned building that the soldiers have turned into a combat outpost or a forward operating base.

When I’m back at the bureau, which is not in the Green Zone despite what many people still assume — it’s just in a hotel in Baghdad — we try and go out into the streets. I go out every single day. Now that things area a little bit safer, we’re venturing out more. I was at a hospital today. Yesterday I was at a mosque, and I was doing an interview with someone and I went over to his house to have an iftar, the Ramadan break fast meal with him. So when we’re here in Baghdad, we go out and do meetings, do interviews to stories, go out in the city, and then come back and file from the bureau. Violence in Baghdad is down considerably so we are venturing out more, still with security, but for awhile it was very difficult. The violence was so intense. I mean, literally, you’d go out and drive past bodies in the streets. You’re not seeing that anymore. There is a bit more freedom of movement now than there used to be, but there’s not really a typical day. It depends on what you’re doing. If you’re doing a story on doctors, you spend time with doctors. If you’re doing a story on Blackwater, then you try and talk to the police and embassy officials. It depends on the story you’re chasing.

And to what do you attribute the reduction in violence?
I would say it’s four things. One, there are more troops on the ground — or more American troops on the ground. Two, the troops on the ground, and this is according to military — not only [the top US Commander in Iraq] Petraeus’ office but also field-grade officers, you know, commanders who are in the field — they like the new security plan more. They think it makes more sense. The new security plan not only has more troops on the ground, but it has the troops spread out throughout the city much more than they were before. The troops used to be concentrated on big bases from which they would patrol; now they’re spread out in the city in dozens of smaller bases. And the idea is like oil — you drop oil on a piece of paper, and then there’s oil spread out until they’re all interconnected. The concept anyway. So that strategy appears to be more effective. That’s two things. Three: The Sunni tribes, or some Sunni tribes, have decided to fight with the Americans and fight against Al Qaeda. And four, Muqtada al-Sadr has decided to call a truce and cease fire for the time being. So you have four things coming together all at the same time, which are all very fortuitous and all have an impact in reducing the violence. The question is, How long will it last? And no one can give me a clear answer on that.

In the beginning, the challenge was just having the energy and the time to report all the stories. You could just walk down the street and collect them like leaves that had fallen off of a tree.

You’ve had a few close calls yourself. Is that always on your mind?
No — I’m not obsessed about it, but I’m not letting my guard down yet. Right now we’re in a situation where it does feel safer and we’re putting our toes in the water, but I know that that water is very deep and you don’t want to go too quickly too fast. So I am cautious, and I think as a result of having been here for about five years — this will be my fifth Christmas coming up soon — you get cautious. So I go out every day; I’m not paranoid about it. I spent all day out today and yesterday, so it’s not like I’m just sitting in here under my blanket, because otherwise what’s the point in being here?

Do you feel like you have enough access there to report the stories effectively?
It’s not ideal, but it’s … I think if you read the newspapers and you watch the television and you read the magazines and you read the analysis, I think you will get a fairly accurate vision of what’s going on in Iraq. So I think that journalists have done a very good job in covering this war despite the hardships. Is it perfect? No. I think there’s often too much punditry and Washington stories written about Iraq, and I think the stories written from Iraq are the ones that have more merit — but that’s also because I’m writing from Iraq.

How do you feel like the job has changed over the past five years? Can you say if it’s more difficult, or less difficult because of your experience?
It’s not even the same job. Each year has been totally different. The first year was invasion. And then there was exploration. People ask me, “Do you get bored? Aren’t you getting sick of it by now?” Not at all. Each period has been totally, totally different. Saddam Hussein was in power when I first came to Iraq. So we’ve gone from Saddam’s in power to Saddam’s being hanged by an elected Shiite government of his former enemies. We’re not even on the same planet as we used to be. And each period has had its own challenges. In the beginning, the challenge was just having the energy and the time to report all the stories. I mean, they were everywhere. You could just walk down the street and collect them like leaves that had fallen off of a tree. There were stories because this country had been closed for decades. And then tension started building and then — bang — it snapped. And for the last two years, it’s been a civil war period phase. At least the last year and a half. Now, are we in a truce or a holding pattern or at a turning point? I don’t know. We’ve entered a new phase of the game right now, but I’d be foolish to say where I think it’s going. I don’t know how long this period of calm will last. I hope it lasts for a long time.

And how do you sift through the information you get — like from the Iraqis or the military? I’ve spent some time overseas in developing countries, and I think it’s really hard to get information from people.
Well, I know a lot of people. I’ve been here a long time. I get called, I know people, I have dinner with people. Getting information is not the problem. Getting accurate information, I don’t know. It’s hard to confirm things. I mean, I’m on the phone or out all day long — which is all I do. I don’t do anything else.

I guess I didn’t really mean getting the information; I meant how do you know what’s accurate? How do you sift through peoples’ agendas?
You just call lots of people, speak to lots of different people. Certain things are straightforward. There were two women killed yesterday in Karada. There’s no debate about that. I was there. I saw the blood on the streets. I saw the glass. I saw their hair on the pavement and it’s covered in blood. And I spoke to seven witnesses who all told me the same thing. Did the car try and stop? Yes. I could see a skid mark on the street. I was able to look at it. I’m not a crime scene investigator, but this was pretty clear cut what had happened. Other times, it’s more complicated when you’re talking about political agendas and the reasons things happen and the political maneuvering within the Iraqi government and the long-term objectives of people like [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki and [former Iraqi Prime Minister] Allawi. Then it becomes more Byzantine.

The fact that you know Arabic seems like it would be an incredible advantage. Are people surprised that you know it?
Most Iraqis I speak to, yes, they’re very surprised. Most people I speak to assume that I’m from Lebanon or Egypt or my parents were from the region or something like that. I frankly think it is the critical advantage and I would recommend to any young reporters to do that immediately — that that would be the critical thing, is the language.

And how do people generally receive you as 1) an American, and 2) a reporter?
Usually you can break away from that. Obviously when I show up to a scene with a camera, it’s clear what I do for a living. But it’s not that I’m perceived as some sort of American presence. If you show up and you’re speaking in Arabic and you talk to people, and you ask them questions and you greet them in a way that makes them comfortable and implies that you know where they are — because when you interview someone on the street, they talk language that’s very local. They’re referring to names of streets where an event happened or particular neighborhoods, so if you’re familiar with the names of the streets and the names of the shop owners who own the streets and you know what happened there three weeks ago, it doesn’t make you perceived as such an outsider. You can just talk to them and have more of conversation on terms that they’re comfortable with.

Do you find the people are welcoming to you?
Oh yeah, very much so. Absolutely. In general the people here are incredibly nice and welcoming. The problem is getting people right now who are willing to talk and have their faces shown because so many people feel threatened, and that has been the real difference. In print, you can use a false name or bring them into your place or talk to them over the phone. I need to interview people on camera in their place of business or in their homes. In this society right now, that puts people at tremendous risk and we do sometimes, we will agree, “OK, we’ll shoot you in your home, but not expose the outside where we are. We will come in with the camera in a bag so nobody sees that we’re coming in to interview you.” We’re working on a story right now on doctors. It took me three days to find a doctor who would be willing to let me interview him and have his face shown on camera. And it is an incredible act of bravery that he’s letting me do that. He has no interest in doing that. We’re not paying him anything. He just wants to have his story told and he’s willing to do it.

There was an article recently where former military spokesman Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, who’s generally in favor of openness between the military and the media, said that journalists don’t spend enough time getting to know the troops. What do you think about that?
That is a problem. Oftentimes on embed, because of the restrictions or our need to file, sometimes we’re asked to go in and do an overnight embed. It’s worthless. You need to spend three, four, five days, a week with them, get to live the situation. You need to spend time with them; otherwise you’re just running in, grabbing some sound bites and leaving, and you don’t do a service to them, you don’t do a service to the viewers. It’s unfortunately sometimes a necessity of the business with deadlines, but he has a point.

Is there is an issue at all with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
I think we all suffer a little bit from it, from post-traumatic stress. [There’s] this theory that every person goes through four stages of covering the war in Iraq. First stage — I’ve mentioned this before, it’s been written about quite a bit — but stage one is, “I’m invincible, I’m Superman. Nothing can happen to me.” Stage two is, “This really is dangerous and something might happen to me.” Stage three is, “You know what? This is really very dangerous. I’ve been here so long; something is probably going to happen to me.” And stage four: “I’ve been here too long, I’m pushing my luck. I’m going to die out here.” And depending on where you are psychologically, I think that is reflective of your post-traumatic stress. And I’ve been all over the charts, from one to four — I usually settle in around three.

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Julie Haire is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

In this age of movie mega-hits, it’s difficult for any independent film — let alone one without big-name stars — to get made and find an audience. Writer/director Adam Rifkin hopes the front-page issues explored in his new film, Look, an feature shot entirely from the point of view of security cameras lurking everywhere, hits home with movie-goers when it opens December 14 in New York and L.A. The small-budget film was financed and distributed via a new company called Liberated Artists, the brainchild of former AOL CEO Barry Schuler and producer Brad Wyman, who made the Oscar-winning film Monster. Rifkin earned cult film status with The Dark Backward before writing Mousehunt starring Nathan Lane and Small Soldiers with Tommy Lee Jones. Below, he tells us how Look, which is about the things people do when they think no one is watching, scored on the all-important film festival circuit.

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Where did the initial idea for Look come from?
The spark came about four years ago when I was driving through Los Angeles and got a ticket from a red light camera and got a photo in the mail from the police department of myself singing to the radio, making an idiotic expression, looking embarrassing. The idea that a photo was taken without my knowledge and sent to my home address was a little unnerving and it got me thinking: How many times a day do cameras I’m not aware of take my picture? Today, the average person is captured 200 times a day, more in big cities, and the numbers are growing exponentially. I thought this could be a really cool way to shoot a movie that I’d never seen it done before. I really wanted to throw a bucket of cold water on the public’s obliviousness to just how many surveillance cameras are out there and to use the film as a means of starting a conversation. Everybody wants to live in a safer society but at same time everybody is concerned with their right to privacy.

You shopped Look to film festivals like CineVegas, where it won the Grand Jury Award, Chicago International, where it was an official selection, and Fort Worth, where it won a special jury prize. How important are festivals to success in today’s overcrowded movie market?
Film festivals are a great way for independent films to get seen by audiences and buyers. You can make the greatest film in the world but if you have no place to show it and nobody sees it, it just sits on a shelf in your basement. Festivals are how lots of films get discovered. When we screened the film at CineVegas and it won, which was fantastic, we suddenly got inundated with offers from other distribution companies, big ones, but we turned them all down. All the plans submitted to us were completely in the box, nothing particularly creative — they were just going to feed the pipeline a product. We believed starting a new company, working together, and really being passionate about nurturing a success out of the film was essential, especially because the film is different, because the film has no names. It’s a lot easier to distribute a film if Will Smith’s face is on the poster.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of films compete each year on the film festival circuit, hoping for a shot at the big time. How did Look break out of the pack?
Hopefully, the cream always rises to the top. But that isn’t always the case. I’ve seen wonderful films get turned down at film festivals and never get seen. That said, you’ve got to keep trying. If you make a film that’s great and it doesn’t connect, you gotta make another film — and another. You can’t ever quit.

Walk us through the film festival process. How many did you submit to and who were you competing against?
We submitted to four and got accepted to all of them and now the movie opens December 14. The neat thing about festivals is you’re competing with all kinds of films. You’re competing with the kid who made a film in his backyard with his home camcorder for $50 and you’re competing with big budget independent films like I’m Not There, starring Cate Blanchett and Richard Gere. Film festivals are a great way for creative films to find their audience. You wouldn’t necessarily see a movie like Underdog [which Rifkin wrote] at a film festival because it’s such a populace film. Film festivals are a great way to introduce a film that’s artistic to a crowd of people who appreciate something different.

Big Brother is an easy target, but in this day and age it’s Little Brother who’s more of a threat.

That said, how do you market your film so that it resonates with festival judges as well as a wider audience in middle America?
We believe Look is a film that will not only appeal to cinefiles but anyone who’s a citizen of any civilized country because this proliferation of surveillance cameras affects us all. If you’re walking down the aisle at any Wal-Mart you’re on 40 different cameras. So it’s not just a film for urban movie geeks. It was also very important to me that the characters be real people that any of us could relate to: a mini-mart clerk with big dreams, a department store manager trying to score with all his saleswomen, a high school teacher trying to be a decent husband, and a lawyer struggling with a sexual dilemma. I didn’t want the characters to be so quirky or so outrageous that people wouldn’t be able to connect with any of them. There’s a number of different story lines that interweave and I hope everybody will relate to at least one of them.

How do compare your experiences making this film with the big budget Disney film, Underdog?
I love working on big studio movies. There’s lots and lots of money to play with, lots of very nice hotels to stay in, lots of delicious catered food, and lots and lots of time, which is fabulous. Also, big budget movies often open the first day on 3,500 screens. It’s a really exciting way to make a movie. Look is a very independent film that cost about the budget for lunch on Underdog. The crew was really small and everybody was there because they believed in the project, believed in the script, and believed in the opportunity to do something different. Nobody was in it for the payday.

What did you learn about the use of surveillance cameras while making this film?
True story. During research, I visited a bunch of malls and department stores to see how their offices worked and how the cameras looked. I’d always assumed the people behind surveillance cameras were trained professionals, responsible individuals who take their job as security experts seriously. I found out that’s not always the case. One mall security office, which had dozens of cameras, was run by a bunch of high school kids and dropouts who weren’t always zooming in on shoplifters — they were also zooming in on girls’ boobs. They showed me their highlight reel of the funniest things they captured people doing and if they found something particularly egregious they’d post it on YouTube. As a private citizen, I was unnerved. As a filmmaker, it got me very excited. Big Brother is an easy target — the issue of the government invading our privacy. But in this day and age it’s Little Brother who’s more of a threat. Because everyone has a cell phone camera, everybody has access to YouTube and in a second a world audience can have access to any piece of video.

What do you want people to take away from Look?
I hope they think about it and talk about for long time. Whenever they’re in an elevator or a department store I want them to remember the movie, turn around, and see the camera peeking at them. Every time I show the movie I get emails, calls, and text messages weeks later from people saying “Damn you, I can’t go to the bathroom any more without being paranoid someone’s watching.”

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Tips on scoring an audience for an independent film:
1) Make the best film possible.
2) To generate buzz and help find a distributor, shop it to as many film festivals as you can.
3) Explore innovative, out-of-the-box marketing ideas and traditional and online media markets.
4) Consider the issues your film explores and pitch reporters who cover those issues instead of concentrating solely on entertainment writers.
5) If all else fails, try, try again.

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Dawn Shurmaitis is a freelance writer whose stories have appeared in Salon, New Jersey Monthly, and numerous newspapers. After seeing Look, she regretted every indecent act she ever committed where cameras may have been watching.

New York Fashion Week: Any tricks to staying fresh through what much of the fashion media experiences as an eight-day all-nighter?
Four hours sleep [nightly], obscene amounts of junk food and the only trick to staying fresh is being completely in love with what you do, which I am. In fact, during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, work is like being with a bunch of kids at camp. We love it!

Describe the different niches filled by The Daily and the monthly Fashion Mini version.
The Daily is the insider treat for the fashion show guests — the media, designers, models, photographers and buyers. Our consumer magazine, Fashion Mini, with its newsstand distribution and subscriber base, also invites bona fide fashion lovers to experience the fashion insiders’ world. Now we have a fast-growing readership base in cities like LA, Dallas, Houston, Miami, places where there is a passionate fashion reader and consumer. Ever since 2004 we also deliver fashion news every day to about 200,000 faithful readers, via our Web site FashionWeekDaily.com. In September we introduced Daily video on our site, which we update constantly, and we launched a new blog, Chic Report — very visual, cheeky, scoopy, and full of surprises.

You grew up in Romania — what spurred you to come to the United States?
Growing up in Romania during the communist years in the 70s, the greatest possible dream a young person could have was to come to the USA, since this country symbolized freedom and opportunity. It’s a privilege for me to be living in the USA — I still feel this very poignantly, even after more than 20 years here. A lot of my friends and colleagues who came here from Romania took jobs in the press, like I did, because freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and a free press were — and always will be — the most important things in the world to us.

Former employees have characterized you as “fiery” — how does that serve your work?
I am passionately, head-over-heels in love with what I do. I consider myself very fortunate to be going to work every day thinking, “isn’t this something, another day in our newsroom!”

In 2000, you told New York you didn’t consider WWD a competitor — what distinguishes the publications these days?
WWD is the leading trade newspaper, covering all the minutiae of business. The Daily and Fashion Mini are glossy magazines for the fashion elite and for fashion-loving readers. Together with up-to-the-second fashion news, we deliver a highly entertaining experience, full of photos, color, lots of quotes, lots of reporting, original stories and a great sense of fun.

“Have you ever seen a house organ be this funny, cheeky, and cover shows from outside the tents?”

How does The Daily‘s online output differ during high fashion season? Also, how does content shake out between print edition and online edition — are stories repurposed?

Every day on average we run about 20 or so items online, with about 100 pictures and several new videos each week, year-round. Naturally during the Fashion Week season (New York, London, Milan, Paris) we ramp up our coverage — we usually have about 100 new videos that month [February or September]), then, literally, thousands of photos, runway, front row, parties, etc. We have 50 people on staff nowadays for all of our publications, so we are able to cover all this — print and online — pretty much without repurposing content. Some of the print features will be repurposed, not out of necessity but because there is a lot of demand for the Dailies during fashion week from readers who are not able to access the magazine, and the Mini also sells out pretty fast, and so we offer some of those stories online after they run in print.

A recent New York Times article reported that you aim to grow the Mini‘s guaranteed circulation from 25,000 to 75,000 this year — how do you plan to do that?
We’ve already increased the circulation of the Mini to 50,000 and we aim to hit 75,000 in ’09 as planned. We have increased our newsstand draw and our controlled distribution.

You also said a weekly TV show inspired by Fashion Mini is “likely to happen this year.” Would it be a reality show?
Yes, it is likely. As of now [mid-January, when this interview was conducted] it is not going to be a reality show, but we are actively working on it and are not allowed to announce details yet.

The Daily‘s parent company IMG also produces Fashion Week events and has a modeling agency arm. Back in ’03, when US made a play for The Daily‘s place with Fashion Week readers, then-editor of that offshoot Joe Dolce accused The Daily of being “the house organ” of show producer/IMG division 7th on 6th. What’s your response to those who still wonder to what extent The Daily can report on its sister divisions during Fashion Week?

Have you ever seen a house organ be this funny, cheeky, cover shows from outside the tents, put models on their covers that aren’t from IMG? We are completely and proudly an independent publication. We are fortunate to be a part of a company that respects our editorial independence and I believe that this is obvious to everyone who reads our publications and Web site.

What do you seek in a fashion reporter? What must he or she know how to do/be capable of in order to excel at The Daily?
We expect a lot of our writers, reporters, editors: a passion for the subject, more than anything; great competitive spirit; great writing talent; huge sense of humor; the ability to ask smart and funny questions even from the people who stare them down forbiddingly; fighting the good fight against publications who try to steal our exclusives, yet always being collegial, friendly and remaining through all this a quality person, a person of integrity. I know it’s a lot, but that’s what we expect, and we get this from our staffers. We don’t like mean people and we are good to each other around here. Our coverage reflects that.

What’s your take on the surge in online fashion content?

I love that there is so much fashion content online — it inspires us and also inspires the readers and young generation. It makes fashion as important as it should be. Also, for someone who fled a communist country, like me, the internet is the perfect expression of freedom, it defies censorship, it gives everyone the ability to speak up and be heard, and as such I consider it the most important invention of humanity since the wheel.

IMG recently acquired Tennis Week, which now more closely resembles The Daily in layout, format, and voice — what are IMG’s objectives with it?
In one year since we’ve acquired Tennis Week we increased both the readership and advertiser base enormously, and we’ve re-launched an accompanying Web site that is now the hottest magazine site in the sport. With live video, live scores, live audio, constant stream of news, scoops, on and off court reports, it’s incredible fun to watch and even more fun to produce. We’ve adapted our unique voice and style and look to tennis, and it’s worked very well for the magazine as well as the site.

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Ways to keep the fashion scoops coming

Strike a different tone from others on the same beat
WWD is the leading trade newspaper, covering all the minutiae of business. The Daily and Fashion Mini are glossy magazines for the fashion elite and for fashion-loving readers,” Niro points out. “Together with up-to-the-second fashion news, we deliver a highly entertaining experience, full of photos, color, lots of quotes, lots of reporting, original stories and a great sense of fun.”

Give readers all the info they crave
“Naturally, during the Fashion Week season — New York, London, Milan, Paris — we ramp up our coverage,” Niro explains. “We usually have about 100 new videos that month [February or September]), then, literally, thousands of photos, runway, front row, parties, etc. We have 50 people on staff nowadays for all of our publications, so we are able to cover all this — print and online — pretty much without repurposing content.”

News is news, no matter who it’s about
“Have you ever seen a house organ be this funny, cheeky, cover shows from outside the tents, put models on their covers that aren’t from IMG?,” Niro asks rhetorically to disabuse notions of skewing favorable for a parent company. “We are completely and proudly an independent publication. We are fortunate to be a part of a company that respects our editorial independence and I believe that this is obvious to everyone who reads our publications and Web site.”

Stare down intimidators and imitators
As Niro tells it, Daily reporters need “the ability to ask smart and funny questions even from the people who stare them down forbiddingly; fighting the good fight against publications who try to steal our exclusives, yet always being collegial, friendly and remaining through all this a quality person, a person of integrity. I know it’s a lot, but that’s what we expect, and we get this from our staffers.”

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Rebecca L. Fox is mediabistro.com’s managing editor.

When Ethan Riegelhaupt’s daughter picked up a call from The New York Times one morning in 1997, he thought it was circulation trying to sell him a subscription. Luckily she insisted that it was Times corporate calling. It was about a job.

Since then, the seasoned pol has been crafting speeches for the Times‘ top executives, and working hard to communicate the paper’s innovations within the company as head of speechwriting and internal communications.

Riegelhaupt began his career in politics on the 1980 as the New York issues director for Ted Kennedy’s presidential campaign, as “Lion of the Senate,” is among the most fiery speakers stumping for any of the major candidates this season.

Though he is new-school in his use and enthusiasm of new media (he’s on Facebook and has a stellar Times Quiz ranking), Riegelhaupt is decidedly old-school about communications professionals remaining silent partners in the PR process.

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Name: Ethan Riegelhaupt
Position: Vice president, speechwriting and internal communications
Resume: Prior to joining The New York Times in 1999 as VP of speechwriting and internal communications, he had his own public affairs consultancy, EMR & Associates. Prior to that, Riegelhaupt was chief of policy for the office of the public advocate, Mark Green, New York City. Also a lawyer by trade, he served as general counsel and corporate secretary to the New York Convention Center Operating Corporation and Convention Center Development Corporation (Jacob Javits Center). He aserved in the administration of New York State governors Mario Cuomo in a variety of positions, and was a VP at Robinson, Lerer, and Montgomery.
Birthday: July 22, 1953
Hometown: New York, NY (born in Queens, primarily grew up upstate New York and Framingham, Massachusetts)
Education: Colgate University, JD Brooklyn Law School
Marital status: Married
First section of Sunday Times: Week in Review or Book Review
Favorite TV shows: The Wire, West Wing, Meet the Press
Last books you read: People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks; The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa, War Made New by Max Boot, and Unstoppable by Chris Zook. (“I have a wonderful local bookstore, Arcade, in Rye, New York.”)
Guilty pleasure: Rotisserie basketball and baseball; last year joined the original league founded by Daniel Okrent, Peter Gethers and their pioneer roto-colleagues.

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Where did you begin your career?

After graduating from law school and passing the New York State bar, I began my career working on Senator Ted Kennedy’s 1980 Presidential campaign staff as the deputy director of issues in New York — the back story of how this actually happened needs to be told over cocktails.

How did you make the transition into full-time speech writing?

Being part of Mario Cuomo’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 1982 was an important first step. When I initially joined the Administration, I was the program associate for regulated industries and had supervisory responsibilities for banking, insurance, and a variety of other departments. A few years later, I was appointed executive director for the Council of Fiscal and Economic Priorities (New York State’s long range planning unit).

During this period, I assisted Governor Cuomo with his major addresses. One of the nation’s great orators and a brilliant writer, the Governor thoroughly enjoys a rigorous debate (I use present tense, as he continues to tour the world speaking) about what a particular speech should achieve and how it could change the national narrative.

I learned the value of working for extraordinarily ambitious chief executives, who had the inclination to aim high. I also came to appreciate the difference between contributing to a speech process and taking responsibility for it — speech kibitzers throughout the land take note.

After spending about six years in the Administration, I was about to move into the private sector to take a position in either public relations or investment banking. One morning, I called the Governor and asked what he thought I should do and he suggested that I stay around and supervise his speech staff. Now I would learn all about responsibility.

What was your biggest triumph on the campaign trail? Your biggest mistake?

Success: Working on Mario Cuomo and Mark Green’s winning campaigns for Governor and Public Advocate were my major triumphs, but I will get a little more granular.

I was always an issues director during campaigns. I was supposed know about half dozen paragraphs worth about every imaginable and unimaginable topic, from organic dairy farming and Medicaid and Medicare to the state of New York State’s relationship with Kazakhstan (always a little convoluted).

In this capacity, I also drafted platforms, and dissected the policy proposals of the opposition. The 1982 gubernatorial campaign in New York provided a good example of how these skills were employed effectively. The day after Cuomo, then Lieutenant Governor, defeated Mayor Koch in the primary, my phone rang off the hook with desperate offers of assistance. Soon thereafter, I asked folks in Albany to take a look at the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Lew Lehrman’s economic strategy and determine how it would affect New York State property taxes. Fueled by the desire to make amends, a group of savvy analysts — in their free time, of course — contributed a very useful report and it turned into a very effective campaign issue.

Candidates and elected officials are always disappointed that their finely-crafted speeches are not the lede story in either The New York Times or the Washington Post. This is because there was no effort to break news, which is what newspapers do for a living.

Mistake: Spending too much time in the headquarters inevitably clouds the visions of issues people. To be effective, you need to leave your desk, and spend time in the field and find out what the voters are actually thinking about. (By the way, this also applies to private and public sector speechwriters; too often headquarters can be one big echo chamber). It broadens your perspective and allows you to offer better analysis and counsel. This is significantly easier to do now with all the technology at your disposal.

How do all the new technology tools affect how you do your job?

There short answer is a lot. The technological corollary of not getting out of the office enough is not becoming intimately familiar with what the entrepreneurs and scientists of Silicon Valley and Alley have been inventing. If you are writing and thinking about the new digital era, which we all are in one way or another, you must have a hands-on appreciation of what you are trying to say. Having a monthly subscription to Wired and regularly reading the Techcrunch and Gizmodo blogs is useful. Touching and feeling the stuff is critically important, especially for those of us who grew up in the pre-Internet era.

Taking my own counsel, I joined the Times‘s Facebook network. While my college-age daughters were horrified, I’m proud to say that they both did “friend” me. I also conducted podcast interviews — developing a much bigger appreciation for radio announcers, helped create a multiplatform newsletter focusing on the interest of our advertisers, and spend a lot of time talking to the research and development folks. (Our guys won the Hack Day competition sponsored by BBC and Yahoo! in London last year.)

What did you learn from Mario Cuomo about how speeches are dissected and reported in the media?

The media will cover a serious speech if it changes the way that we think about a particular issue or recommends an important solution in a vital area. News begets news coverage. Candidates and elected officials are always disappointed that their finely-crafted speeches are not the lede story in either The New York Times or the Washington Post. This is because there was no effort to break news, which is what newspapers do for a living.

Moreover, reporters like to be inspired and an enthusiastic audience will affect their stories. Along the way, if you happen to appeal successfully to the better angels of our nature, you can significantly enhance the coverage. What absolutely will not work is a white paper posing as a speech; long, dull lists of policy recommendations do not make good copy. The speech should also have a compelling rationale, tight logic, and strong supporting themes.

How important are the other things, and do you teach them, such as body language, pacing, lighting, and wardrobe?

Successful presentations are 75 percent speech and 25 percent delivery. You need to understand your speakers’ styles and what makes them more comfortable and happier. This necessitates thinking about the different components of the speech environment. The podium and lighting are critically important. You also want to ensure that additional elements, such as video and PowerPoint are going to work flawlessly. And then there is the teleprompter.

You also need to have a good sense what the audience is expecting. The speaker is invited into the audience’s “home'” and has certain expectations. This is especially true for commencements. Too often, speakers forget what a special day this is for the students and are then surprised by the somewhat indifferent response.

Overseas events present the added challenge of simultaneous translation. That’s a challenge for those speakers who look for immediate audience response for affirmation, which they all tend to do. Fundamentally, when preparing for a speech, it is necessary to take a holistic attitude towards the event. If the speaker is relaxed, and has a good rapport with the audience, it’ll be much easier to achieve your goals.

The word “integrated” gets bandied about a lot in communications. How can a speechwriter be sure their work is integrated with the other parts of the PR plan?

It is all about adhering to your main corporate themes and reinforcing them in all your communications. (This is where boring is good.) I work very closely with our senior vice president of corporate communications, Catherine Mathis, and my staff, executive director of employee communications Judy Jones and manager of internal communications and public relations Stacy Green, to ensure that we use external and internal speeches, our internal Web site, and a steady stream of employee emails to support our long-term strategic communications plan. (Yes, you can do all this without sounding like a 1950s corporate drone or a Soviet-era apparatchik.)

Do you adjust the messages and plan as you go?

While closely adhering to the main components of a strategic communications plan is essential, we live in a volatile world and communicators must embrace a degree of intellectual flexibility. Think about what was happening in the presidential election last September or the prospect of the New York Giants winning the Super Bowl just a month ago.

An effective speech should reflect the changing economic, technological, political, and cultural landscape. You need to take a postmodern Renaissance mindset — okay, a tad oxymoronic — and reflect what is currently happening: the macro political/economic stories of the week combined with a few Access Hollywood headlines. The audience knows that the speaker has come to tell a story, but it is also looking for this individual to make an intellectual and/or emotional connection. This usually requires at least acknowledging the main headlines of the news cycle.

Good speechwriters should also constantly look for new developments in their company/government/nonprofit — new products and services, new metrics and new achievements — to strengthen their arguments. They should pay close attention to what is happening throughout their organization to bolster and enliven their arguments. The strategy must remain the strategy, but there should be a consistent effort to add new supporting evidence.

Start with a joke, yay or nay?

Sure, crowds like to be entertained; we all do, but that should not be your first priority. It slows down the writing process too much. The humor should flow as the speech is being drafted. As you get closer to the event, you can better see where jokes can be used most effectively.

Are considerations different now that all speeches are reported nationally?

Actually they are disseminated internationally (proving Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat thesis), if they achieve a certain degree of significance. The Internet has transformed the playing field. All information, including speeches, is global and immediate. With popular new Web sites such as NyTimes.com and Boston.com (sorry for the commercial interruption), social networking platforms such as Facebook and MySpace, blogs, and phones with screens, an exceptionally good or awfully bad speech will be distributed far and wide. Then, of course, there is YouTube, which is giving everyone around the clock video access to a surprising number of speeches, especially in the political realm.

How important are internal communications to the Times?

Our executive committee, under the leadership of Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, and Janet Robinson, president and CEO, takes internal communications very seriously. They know that we are living in a complicated, transitional period for the media industry, and it critically important for everyone in our company to know what is happening.

To achieve this goal, we think both vertically and horizontally. We try to provide an opportunity for the senior executives to explain where the company is heading. We also provide vehicles, such as podcasts and panel discussions, for our colleagues to tell each other what they are doing and how different segments of our organization are meeting the needs of our audiences and our advertisers.

Given everyone’s time crunch, there is a significant emphasis on entertainment value. We want to do more than simply providing the text of a speech. We want to give our colleagues a multidimensional sense of what their senior executives are and what each other is doing.

Is there a difference between private and public sector speechwriting?

After having spent half my time in the private sector and the other half in the public sector, I have learned applies equally to corporate and public sectors.

Executive speechwriting has become a far more multidimensional responsibility. A successful speech has many elements. It is about applying your knowledge of public relations, crisis management, and your organization’s financial, advertising, and marketing operations. It is also about working closely with an increasing array of professionals — from your clients to those individuals who provide you with necessary information, (such as budget, legal. and accounting), to the event folks. While it is becoming a more complicated process, it is also more necessary and more personally satisfying.

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Jason Chupick is co-editor of mediabistro.com’s PR blog, PRNewser.

“It’s proven to be a dream come true,” says Maggie Rodriguez of her new gig, as co-anchor of CBS’ The Early Show. It’s a long way from her start as a “one-woman-band” at a Miami cable station, which had her lugging her own camera as she covered breaking news.

The station was Dynamic Cablevision, and Rodriguez worked there part-time while also employed at WLTV-TV, Univision’s Miami affiliate, as an associate producer and assignment editor. Her big break came in 1992, during Hurricane Andrew, when many reporters at WLTV literally weren’t able to get to work. According to Rodriguez, her bosses said, “Let’s give her a shot”, and put her on the air. Her stories were then picked up by the Univision network broadcasts, and she was on her way.

Rodriguez was born and raised in Miami, where she was anchoring (for WFOR-TV) when she got the call from CBS to move to New York. “I was in Miami, thinking I would stay there forever — because I met my husband there, we settled there, we were happy there — but then a wonderful curveball came my way late last year!”

Distance has not separated her from her Miami-based mother — the two talk each day to discuss that morning’s show. “Everything from my outfit to the questions I ask,” Rodriguez says.

It’s evident that her family is a source of pride for Rodriguez, whose parents fled Cuba to settle in America. “I’m very, very proud to be a Cuban-American, representing my community — and Hispanics — in such a high-profile way. I really am. Especially because I know that my parents worked so hard and overcame so much to give me the opportunity to go this far.”

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Name: Maggie Rodriguez
Position: Co-anchor, CBS’s The Early Show
Resume: Rodriguez began her current job in January of 2008, after joining CBS News as co-anchor of the Saturday Early Show in June of 2007. Previously, she was the main anchor at Miami’s CBS O&O, WFOR-TV (2000-2006) and an anchor/reporter at KABC-TV in Los Angeles (1994-2000). Prior to that, Rodriguez reported and field produced in Miami for the Univision Network (1992-94) and reported for cable station Dynamic Cablevision (1991). She got her start at WLTV-TV, Univision’s Miami affiliate, as an associate producer, field producer, and assignment editor (1990-91).
Birthdate: December 12, 1969
Hometown: Miami, Florida
Education: B.A. in Broadcast Journalism and Spanish, University of Miami, 1991
Marital status: Married with a two and a half-year-old daughter
First section of Sunday Times: The front page — “I read it every day. On Sunday, my guilty pleasure is (the New York Post‘s) Page Six. But the Times I devour cover-to-cover every day, Sunday included.”
Favorite television show: How I Met Your Mother
Guilty pleasure: Chocolate. Chocolate cake. Chocolate anything.
Last book read: I’m still reading A Thousand Splendid Suns

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You’ve made the jump to the ‘big dance’ — network TV — what did it take to get there?

It took 15 years of honing my skills. It took a solid foundation of news reporting and anchoring, coupled with all my life experiences. I was just ready. At 37 I was ready for this job — it was perfect for me.

Why do you think the CBS brass chose you as co-anchor?
They tell me they chose me because they recognized my experience, my versatility, and they could tell that I feel comfortable in front of the camera, which I do.

With your new job, and moving to New York, what has been the biggest adjustment for you in all this?
The biggest adjustment has been getting used to apartment living versus house living! In Miami, we lived in a large house — we had five bedrooms — and in New York, we’re renting a two-bedroom apartment that costs more, and is about four times smaller, than our house in Miami. So it’s tough — you’re living in cramped quarters — but in a way, it’s made our family closer. Literally and figuratively.

Your executive producer on The Early Show is Shelley Ross, who has been described as talented, and intense. How do you find Shelley’s style?

I agree that she’s both talented and intense, and I wouldn’t have her any other way. She is infectious. She doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk. She works as hard or harder than anyone on that staff. She’s exhilarating in her ideas and in her pursuit of furthering the story and making it better than you would see it on the other stations, finding a different angle. I learn from Shelley every day, and [working with her every morning is] one of the things I’m most excited about, because she helps me think outside the box and just reach for the stars when it comes to getting a guest or furthering a story.

I have found Shelley to be an asset. I have seen a change in our show since she got there and I directly attribute it to her energy, enthusiasm, and tireless work. I’m a huge Shelley fan. And I think that she expects a lot, because it takes a lot to be No. 1.

Why has it been so difficult, over the years, for both The Early Show, in all its incarnations, and for Good Morning America, to compete in the mornings against the juggernaut that is Today?
People are used to watching the Today show, and it’s very hard to break people of their habits, especially when the Today show is a perfectly good show. But I think that people are always open — in fact, hungry — for something fresh, and new, and better. And if you put the best show on TV in the morning, and word gets around, I firmly believe that eventually, people will tune in, and check it out. You have to earn it, slowly. It’s tough to break people from their habits.

What does The Early Show do differently than its competitors — why should a viewer take a time-out one day from GMA or Today or Fox & Friends and check out your program?
Well, hopefully, you will like the team. Hopefully you will like Maggie, Harry [Smith], Julie [Chen], Dave [Price], and Russ [Mitchell]. Hopefully you will see that we all get along well, you will see that we all bring something different to the table. You will immediately notice our experience — which we all bring to the table — and you will see that The Early Show is getting more and more exclusives with top newsmakers. You will see that we are tackling stories that are fresh and current and relevant, not doing the same old morning stories in the same old usual way. We’re thinking outside the box. And I really believe that you’ll see the energy and the enthusiasm and the hard work just by watching it. I hope, anyway.

We have a really aggressive team of producers and bookers who are out there, and they are fighting to get people to talk to The Early Show before they talk to anyone else. We got the son of Osama Bin Laden to do his first live interview with us. He had done the Today show, but he had only agreed to do that on tape. We got him to do it live. And he spent five minutes live with us, on TV. That’s just one example of many that I’ve seen recently.

Do you watch the competition? What do you think they do well?
I do, I TiVo all the morning shows — you have to know your competition. That’s just smart on my part, I think. I think anyone should know their competition.

I think they have talented people on their staffs. I’m a big fan of Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer. And to their credit, they are well-known names. They have that advantage. And the rest, I don’t think they do better than we do.

Tell me about your first job in television, when you were a one-woman-band.
I lugged a big deck, because I used three-quarter inch gear — so it was a big camera deck on my shoulder, the size of a heavy suitcase. You’re eager, so you’re decked out in your suit, and you’ve got all your makeup and your hair is done. And then you have this thing hanging on your shoulder, you’re carrying a tripod, and a camera.

I appreciate freedom of the press in a way that I think maybe other people don’t. And in a first-hand way, because I saw freedom taken away from my parents.

I think that all the other local crews felt sorry for me. Because they would watch me come in, carrying all this stuff … and setting it up … and I would shoot my own stand-ups. I’d press record, I’d run around, and I’d stand there, and record it … and I’d go back and I’d look at it … and half the time I’d discover I chopped my head off. Then I’d have to re-shoot it.

It was absolutely grueling. But there’s nothing that can replace that experience, because I know how to do everything. I have an appreciation for every single step of the process, because I’ve been there. It was invaluable, it really was, but thank goodness I only had to do that for eight months — it felt like eight years.

You are a first-generation American — your parents were born in Cuba. How has this shaped your perspective as a journalist?
I appreciate freedom of the press in a way that I think maybe other people don’t. And in a first-hand way, because I saw freedom taken away from my parents. As they left a Communist country, they left everything behind, their homes were seized, they had to start over and build their lives in a new place, and speak a new language because they didn’t have the freedom to express themselves in their homeland. So I have an appreciation for that that maybe others don’t.

I try to keep the focus and highlight issues that relate to the Hispanic community, because it’s my community. So I want to make sure that nobody forgets about it. And we’re obviously a major player in this country.

You speak English and Spanish fluently, and you speak Italian and French conversationally. How have you benefited personally and professionally from being multi-lingual?
I’ve benefited from being bilingual in the obvious way — I got to start my career in Spanish TV and successfully crossover to English television. But in small ways, speaking a little bit of Italian and French helps me when you go on stories and people speak that language … I feel that it helps me better relate to more people, and that’s always your goal.

You met your husband, a Telemundo ad sales executive, when you both worked for WFOR-TV in Miami. Do you talk shop at home a lot, or do you fear you’ll OD on the television business?
We talk about it all the time. He helps me more than anyone. My husband is my biggest fan and my biggest critic, and my mentor and my sounding board. Because he’s in the business, he ‘gets’ it. He has such a unique understanding of exactly what I’m talking about, and he helps me through it. It’s not all we talk about, but I consider it a blessing to be able to talk to him about it.

You keep journals in your spare time — what was your last entry about?
My last entry was when I had just gotten the job (as co-anchor of The Early Show) … and the next day, or two days later, they sent me to Nebraska to cover the shooting at the mall. And I was writing about it — I took my journal on the plane — and I was writing, I said, “I just got this job, and my first assignment as anchor of The Early Show is this…” And I remember that [NBC’s] Natalie Morales and [CNN’s] John Roberts and [ABC’s] Chris Cuomo were all on the plane with me. It was just very exciting. And I wrote, “I hope I nail this assignment.”

In our pre-interview correspondence, you mentioned that you wrote in your journal once about your daughter’s conception, which happened on the same day you anchored wall-to-wall coverage of Hurricane Jeanne [in 2004].

I keep a journal for my daughter — ever since I found out I was pregnant I’ve kept a journal for her. And I think the entry that she’ll find most interesting, when she’s old enough to read it, is the story of how she was conceived. My husband and I had been trying for a long time to get pregnant — so we were being very strategic about everything. So I had to be at work covering Hurricane Jeanne. And we were on the air wall-to-wall. They gave us a very short break during which we stayed at the station and slept on a cot, or went to the hotel next door and slept for a few hours, and went right back on the air.

During my break, I chose to go home in the middle of the storm, dodging palm fronds, my car shaking from the wind, because I knew that if I wanted to get pregnant that month, that was probably my only window.

So I’m risking my life to get home — very important business to take care of! — I got home, and then I raced right back to work. And nine months later, my daughter was born, during Tropical Storm Arlene. So she was conceived in a hurricane, born during a tropical storm.

Any hint of a future broadcaster in the family?
No … she’s been on TV several times. Maybe she’ll be a singer — she’s very musical. But I don’t know that she’ll be a broadcaster. And that’s okay.

Who goes to bed earlier, you or your daughter?
I go to bed earlier. Is that sad or what? I’m the one with a bedtime. I always say to her, “Mommy’s got to go to bed, good night!” and she says, “Good night, Mommy.” And she shuts the door, and then I hear her and my husband chatting away in the living room, and I think, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

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Alissa Krinsky is a contributing blogger to TVNewser.

Eager to browse reviews of Barack Obama’s latest book? Or to find text and video of the candidate’s rousing victory speech after the Iowa caucuses? Forget CNN. Instead, log on to www.redroom.com, a new social networking site for readers and writers that welcomed the presidential candidate as one of its authors in mid-February. Writers of all levels and aspirations (like “leader of the free world”) come to the site to meet, discuss, debate, find encouragement, and even hawk upcoming work. Launched in December and spearheaded by San Francisco-based founder and CEO Ivory Madison, the “Red Room” already boasts more than 600 author pages — with another 500 jockeying for a spot. Ivory and her editorial board strive for a far ranging demographic (from French nationals and presidential hopefuls to the over-70 set) and genres that reach beyond mystery and memoir all the way to sports history and fine art criticism. With 5,000 registered members, Madison aimed to hit 1,000,000 pageviews in February. By late March, journalists and not-quite-published members will be able to secure their own corner of the room with Member Pages similar to the invitation-only Author Pages. Below, Madison talks about her hands-on approach to reading, writing, blogging, being a geek, and carving an on-line niche.

Where did you get the idea for the Web site and what’s it mean to be in the “Red Room”?
To be in the Red Room means you aren’t out there all alone. You’re part of a community, like mediabistro.com, with people you can ask for help and support. It’s also a place where new readers can find you. Writers need to promote their careers, and that means they need a Web presence. Many writers have been “meaning to” put up a site for years. Others have an outdated site, but it’s mystifying and expensive to get their Webmaster to update it for them. We wanted to create something affordable — it’s free — that made the technology so easy, the writers could update their own site, say with upcoming events or new pictures, in a minute or less. I always say to writers, if you can order a sweater online, you can use this Web site. The interface is that easy to use.

Where does the name come from?
Redroom.com was actually named in part after the literary tradition of the “Red Room” of the White House. When Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t allow female reporters at his press conferences, Eleanor Roosevelt held her own press conferences at the same time for the women. The conferences were so popular that the male reporters starting attending, and the president had no choice but to integrate his press conferences in order to get any attention. A tradition of civilized revolution on behalf of disenfranchised writers is carried on in the modern-day redroom.com.

Amy Tan wrote her first blog ever on redroom.com.

The site calls itself “the online home of the world’s greatest writers.” That’s a pretty bold statement. How can you back that up?
Well, you know, sometimes we couch it a little and say, “the online home of some of the world’s greatest writers,” but at the end of the day, I believe the vision we have will come true. I’m already astounded at the talented writers who have joined us, and the incredible blog posts you won’t find anywhere else. So far, we have at least 20 literary icons who I think are rather universally thought of as the world’s greatest living writers. How many do we have to have to make it official? Seriously, if you have any suggestions of who to invite, we take them.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites for writers. What sets you apart?
One thing that sets us apart is our social mission — we will be giving back to all the causes our authors support; while we do help writers market themselves, we also help them change the world through the nonprofit groups they believe in. Another thing that sets us apart is that we’re invitation-only and the content is moderated to create an appealing, entertaining atmosphere. And frankly, by entering the market at this juncture, we can use what we’ve learned from the evolution of online communities going back a decade. We have the luxury of learning best practices from both the writing community and the online social networking leaders.

Red Room is the online home of authors such as Alice Walker and Salman Rushdie. Was it hard to get such high-caliber authors on board?
It’s funny. Some of the most famous authors can be the most gracious, enthusiastic, and involved. Khaled Hossieni sends the most lovely notes to our staff. James Patterson is mentioning us in his newsletter. Amy Tan wrote her first blog ever on redroom.com; she has another Web site, but had never blogged before. Po Bronson gave me advice that led directly to the development of many of the features you see up there. Alice Walker and Salman Rushdie’s involvement was absolutely crucial in securing our early support. Fame doesn’t affect character or personality. The authors I mentioned have generosity and vision as part of their character. Some self-important barely published writers have turned us down, while Pulitzer-Prize winners have thanked us profusely … we never know until we ask. My advice to people is to ask kind, smart people for help, whether they are famous or not, and you’ll succeed.

Will writers ever be considered cool?
This shows what a geek I am. I think writers are cool. Always did. Still do. All my heroes are writers. I will say this: I don’t like when some writers think they are cooler than other writers. No one in the world is actually “cool,” so why not be the kind of writer who is supportive of people with similar dreams?

Red Room promotes numerous causes. Do you think writers should be political?
Our site provides a platform for writers to highlight the causes that matter most to them, especially those that support children, literacy, and positive social change globally. In the beginning, we’re donating our ad space to the authors’ causes, but soon we’ll have paid advertising — our business has an advertising revenue model so that the services to writers and readers can remain free — and each writer will be able to see how much money they’ve raised. And if you’re offended by the causes an author supports, get off their author page, because viewing it raises money for their causes. Every choice a person makes is political. What to write about and how is inherently political. Our philosophy is that the greatest writers transform individuals and whole societies.

Among many other things, including torch singer and attorney, you’ve founded a writing program where you were an editor and writing coach — even won an award for it. Can you teach someone to be a good writer?
Absolutely. It’s simple: Make them sit down and write. There is no amount of talking about writing, thinking about writing, reading about writing, or studying writing that substitutes for sitting down and writing. And I mean writing, not editing. Most advice I see about writing is really advice about editing or marketing, which drives me crazy. You want an example? “Have a great opening hook!” Well, that’s only going to come during the editing process. If you tell that to a writer starting a project, you’ll shut her down and she’ll never write it. The method I developed, which is the opposite of how most journalists write, is to teach people to separate their writing from their editing from their marketing. Those are three very different skills and they can all be taught in a very short time. Writing requires vulnerability and self-awareness. Editing and marketing require critical thinking and knowledge. That’s a whole other interview.

These days, it seems like everyone — from preteens to plumbers — has their own blog. Why do you think we’re so obsessed with information?
People have a need for self-expression; it help them process or clarify things. People also want validation from others, and to find others like them. Also, I always say, you know, an essay is a piece of art you created with your hands. So, remember that all kinds of people want to make a piece of art and say, “I did that.” And that’s great. Some of them, the real writers, it turns out they can’t not do that, they are obsessed with doing that, with translating their life into pieces of art they made with their hands. Do I sometimes wonder why someone would bother writing something so irrelevant? Sure. But that’s relative. The original blog entries we’re getting from our writers are so outstanding it makes my jaw drop. Really world-class essays, hilarious behind-the-scenes looks at writers’ lives, fun exchanges from old friends. Far, far better quality than I was expecting. But maybe that’s just my taste and someone else thinks that stuff is irrelevant.

On your “About Us” page everyone listed claims to be 29. Hmm. What kind of statement are you trying to make?

Most writers have this idea in their head that they will write their first, serious, award-winning novel before they are 30. I find this endlessly amusing because very, very few brilliant writers do this. Invariably, they don’t have the humility or hubris or whatever to do it until later in life. So, my entire staff really does have a novel or screenplay or something they are working on, and they were very happy to find out that I promised no one turns 30 before they get published. My graphic novel comes out later this year, from DC Comics, so then I can turn 30.

Red Room is geared toward writers and readers and yet you also offer video and audio podcasts. Why do they belong on a site devoted to words?

Our site is all about authors, whatever the authors want, and not just a list of their books. Authors want to tell you what they are up to, what they’re reading, show you the video from a great reading they did, have you listen to a podcast of an appearance they did on the radio, see their favorite still photos, see upcoming events. Soon, we’re rolling out tons of new features for readers and writers to have their own pages to scrapbook their favorite multimedia and books, and to showcase their writing. To find the community they need until they get invited to have their own author page. There was a neat blog comment exchange between two of our writers, Amy Tan and Belle Yang, in which Belle gave credit to Amy for helping her get her career off the ground 15 years ago. I want to see more of that. We aim to build something that helps make it happen every day.

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Tips for building a successful internet company:
1. Leverage your existing talents, interests and relationships into the online space
2. Forget about venture capitalists
Secure angel investors who believe in your vision and are in it for more than just the money.
3. Solve a problem for a large group of people that you like, and build something you wish existed for you.
4. Let your market drive your features and alliances

“Red Room gives a portion of proceeds to authors’ favorite causes, not ours, and sell through their favorite bookstores, not ours,” Madison says.
5. Make the technology so easy for users to understand and use
No one should feel excluded, and the design should be so attractive, it feels more like the real world than the Internet.

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Freelance writer Dawn Shurmaitis last interviewed director Adam Rifkin for MediaBistro. After interviewing Madison, she’s inspired to finally finish that novel — before she turns, ahem, 30.

Covering Tokyo since 1992, Julian Ryall says he’s “so happy” in Japan he’d be “mad to leave.” Originally from London, his background in international relations and his natural wanderlust fueled his interest in reporting abroad. Today he contributes regularly to The Telegraph, The South China Morning Post and The Hollywood Reporter (all in different time zones) and writes upwards of a dozen stories a week. Though he touts his inability to remember Japanese grammar rules, Ryall looks past the language and customs barriers to the beauty of being his own boss.

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Tell us about your background. Where is home?

I was born in London but moved to the rural southwest of the UK at the age of 11. I went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic to read politics, international relations, Russian and French (all of which I have forgotten). I spent a year at a university in the south of France, in the town of Aix-en-Provence, which I blame for not wanting to subsequently live in Britain ever again. I had to return to do a one-year master’s in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, where we had to complete the courses provided by the National Council for the Training of Journalists. A year in France had given me wanderlust, so I decided to travel for one year to earn some cash and pay off my student debts before returning to the UK to get back into the profession in the traditional way — [through a] local paper [or] agency, Fleet Street, possibly.

Why Japan?

I chose Japan because it was pretty much as far as I could get from Britain without ending up in a country with a similar culture and language to the UK, such as Australia. I never realized there were journalism opportunities where I arrived to teach; within two days I knew I was a terrible teacher and was looking around for journalism jobs. I wrote some freelance stuff before being in the right place at the right time when The Japan Times was hiring. That was 1992, and I stayed with them until I returned to the UK in 1998, intending to “settle down.” I joined The Times but knew after six months that I wanted to get back to Japan. I got back out here in 1999 and have been here ever since. I initially rejoined The Japan Times but went freelance in 2004 and have been very happy ever since. I live in Yokohama, which is only an hour south of central Tokyo.

Which publications do you contribute to, and how regularly?

I’m the Tokyo correspondent for The Telegraph [in] London, the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong and The Hollywood Reporter in LA. I write for them at least a couple of times a week, on average. It’s not as tough as it sounds as they are all in very different time zones.

I write for dozens of other places as well, although they are mostly magazines and it is usually on a monthly basis — the Japan Airlines magazine [Skyward], the American Chamber of Commerce magazine, Cosmopolitan, Review Asia, et cetera, et cetera. I’m also linked to an agency in the UK called International News Services and they ask me to provide copy on a fairly regular basis; it’s mostly trade and industry publications, so I’m working on a 2,000 word piece at the moment on safety issues in Japan’s nuclear power industry and completed one a couple of days ago on the cosmetics market for the mature sector of the market. Not wildly exciting, but they pay the bills.

The beauty of it all is that I never know what stories I’m going to be writing tomorrow and that never gets dull.

How did you get your foot in the door? Any interesting anecdotes about first starting out?

The Telegraph gig came about when their previous correspondent left to write a book last year. I had covered for him for a couple of years when he was away so it was a pretty natural and smooth transition. Similarly, I’d been writing for the South China Morning Post for several years, submitting features, when their correspondent left, so I took that on. And the Hollywood Reporter job came to me through a paper in Ireland that I wrote for; the features editor there knew that they were looking for someone out here as his brother is a senior editor in LA. So as you can see, complete chance in all three cases.

I think it’s just a case of having what you know is a good story, finding out the name of the person you need to pitch it to and doing it. Pick up the phone, tell the person that you’re sure he/she is busy so you’re going to send him/her an email with a pitch, and then send it straight away. Don’t keep them on the phone to explain it, but do make the effort to speak to them; it makes it harder to ignore the email.

Working overseas for a major news organization is a dream job for many of us. Does the dream match the reality?

When I was a kid, my dad — who is a London taxi driver — told me that I should do a job that I really enjoyed because I’d have to do it for a long, long time. He’s not the deepest of thinkers, but he was absolutely spot-on. I’m very lucky to do what I do — and I know that I owe a lot of that to my parents, who put up with me as a stroppy [Britspeak for “ill-tempered”] teenager and helped finance me through five years of university. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this now if it wasn’t for their support.

Yes, this is the best job I could ever hope to have. I can’t imagine doing anything different. I’d say that 90 percent of mornings, I wake up and think to myself, “Great, I’ve got to go to work!” How many people are lucky enough to say that about their jobs?
I’ve interviewed film stars and authors, football players and politicians, singers and ordinary people with extraordinary tales. The beauty of it all is that I never know what stories I’m going to be writing tomorrow and that never gets dull.

What are the best and worst things about your job? Your biggest challenge?
The toughest thing remains the language; I’m not a natural linguist and it comes hard, but I can get by. I know it should be better than this after 15 years, but I keep plugging away at it!

[Starting out as a journalist] takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off.

What unique challenges do you face reporting in Japan? Do you think it’s easier to do your job here as compared to Britain or other parts of Asia?
It wasn’t really a conscious decision to come to Japan — as I said, it was more a desire to get as far away from England as possible and to try something completely different.
The language remains an obstacle, along with some curious cultural differences between journalists here and where I was trained. Here, the press doesn’t really ask many questions and is rarely truly hostile. In the UK, the royal family is fair game for the tabloids; here they’re untouchables and any magazine or paper that writes anything negative about them sees its advertising revenues drop and right-wingers mailing bullets to the editor (I kid you not).

Dealing with PR types here can be a nightmare, even when you’re trying to produce a positive story about their company or organization. They’re more like gatekeepers of the company than promoters of the good things that it is trying to do. That’s frustrating.
On the plus side, us foreigners are cut an awful lot of slack here; the Japanese accept that we can’t be expected to know or abide by all their customs or niceties, so they just shrug when we make social or professional faux pas.

What is the hot story in Japan right now?

At the moment, the family of a British woman who was murdered one year ago is top of the news agenda. Lindsay Hawker was a 22-year-old teacher who was beaten for 36 hours by her abductor before being strangled. The guy, a Japanese [man] called Ichihashi, escaped from the police and has been on the run for one year. The police appear to be clueless and the family have traveled to Japan to try to raise the profile of the case again. It’s a tough story because they’re just ordinary people in a terrible situation.
I interviewed them yesterday and I have to go to a vigil this evening. Looks like it might be a late night by the time I send the story over.

How accessible is Japan to foreign journalists? Are sources at all hesitant to give information to foreign journalists vs. local journalists? Would this be different in Britain?
I actually think it’s quite easy once you have made good contacts in all the places that you’re going to need them. After all this time, I have the names and numbers of people at all the ministries, plenty of universities and companies, think tanks, etc. that I know I can go to for a comment. That makes life easier.

Of course, there is always the magazine that phones up from the UK and asks me to interview the emperor tomorrow without the slightest inkling that it’s utterly impossible. Things work differently here and there is often little appreciation of that. I also had a foreign desk reporter in the UK ask why I couldn’t get to Xian in the next hour or so and was stunned to find that it was in a completely different country.

What was your most recent story? And your favorite story?
I write on average 12 stories a week and, in my busiest week, once turned out 33 pieces. Hopefully I won’t have to do that again soon. This morning I completed a feature piece for the South China Morning Post about the British family out here to look for their daughter’s killer. And I guess the story that I still get a kick out of was the one where I went looking for the fabled World War II treasure of General Yamashita in the jungles of the southern Philippines. That was an adventure.

Do you pitch ideas to your clients, or take assignments? What is the ratio? Has that changed as you’ve worked longer there? How do you get ideas for your stories?
For the Post, Telegraph, and Reporter, I pitch a list of three or four pieces that I think they might be interested in. Sometimes they take nothing; usually it’s one or two. On exceptional days I’ll get three. They also come to me with stories they have seen elsewhere and want followed up and updated. Magazines usually come to me now as they know my name. Some of the big publishers have a database of writers in any given territory and that’s available to all their titles. So from a Cosmopolitan story, I might get a request from Fish Farming Monthly.

I think that often an editor finds it very hard to have a writer in a far-flung part of the world, so they hang on to ones who they can rely on. And I would say that being reliable — turning in what you’ve been asked to provide and on time — is almost more important than being able to write scintillating prose. Their sub-editors can do that for you and knock raw copy into their style for publication; you need to get the story to them in the first place and on time. Nothing drives editors to distraction more than late copy, in my experience.

In the States, I would email the appropriate editor with a short pitch and follow up with an email and/or phone call. Have you found a format that works better in Japan?
I’m not actually sure how it would work for Japanese publications as I already have my links with them and they’re all English-language publications — although they are sometimes translated into Japanese. I know the editors personally now, and they just email me with a story they want, a deadline and a word count.

What is the best way for an unknown writer to get an assignment?
In my experience, editors are always open to approaches to ideas for stories, but they have to be packaged correctly. The travel editor of The Times once told me that she received dozens of unsolicited stories every day — and that most of them were very poor. It was people who had been on holiday and thought they would write about what they had done. She told me that she read the first three lines; if it hadn’t grabbed her by then, it was never going to. So you get three lines.

I don’t dislike a cold call to an editor — just keep it very brief (as mentioned above) and tell them that you will send a fuller outline by email. Have a clear outline of what you want to do with the piece; offer photos to accompany it, if possible — and make sure you deliver if they take you up on the offer.

Can you give us an idea of your typical day?
OK, well, today I got up at 5.15 a.m., [slept on] the train into central Tokyo and went to the gym for an hour. Then I went to the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan where they have library facilities and a working room. It’s very convenient for when I need to work in Tokyo — plus it has a decent bar. I had a one-hour Japanese lesson from 9 a.m. and once again shocked my teacher at my ability to forget the simplest of grammar points.

Back in the workroom, I wrote the 600-word feature on the family who are searching for their daughter’s killer for the SCMP, I’ve been trying to pin down some movie companies about the titles they are sending to Cannes, with little luck so far. I have set up a meeting for 5.30 p.m. with a guy from the public broadcaster NHK to talk about a new show that they will begin in April; I’ll have to write that story pretty quickly, although it’s only short.

There’s a court case today involving a Japanese man who killed a British woman back in 2000 (another case, not the same as above) and I’ll have to find out how that went and then file a short-ish story, maximum 300 words. The family who have come to Japan are having a vigil in the bar where their daughter used to drink, so I have to go there with a photographer from 8 p.m. to talk to the parents and find out what the police told them today and the state of the investigation. (Update: The vigil with the family got a little rowdy, with dozens of Japanese journalists and TV crews in a very small bar. I’d heard a whisper earlier in the day that the father of the only suspect in the killing had committed suicide, so I pulled the father out of earshot of the other UK reporters and put it to him. I got some reaction and got a front-page exclusive for The Telegraph. By the time I got home, wrote the piece and then got to bed it was 2.15 a.m. Still, a good day.)

I have also spent much of the day swearing at my computer as it has apparently given up on me.

Do you work in an office or out of your home? How often are you traveling?

I split my time between home and the club; I generally start the week at home and get a lot of work done when there are fewer distractions. By Wednesday, I’ve got cabin fever and I need to bother someone, so I go to the club and get a lot less work done. But at least I’m sociable.

I do get to travel with work and these last couple of months have been pretty busy: I was in Hokkaido, in the far north of Japan, in early March, followed by 10 days in Vietnam and Cambodia and five days covering the film festival in Hong Kong. I was meant to be in South Korea in April but that looks to have fallen through.
I’ve managed to wangle a few good trips — North Korea in 2002, Iwo Jima in late 2006, the soccer World Cup in South Korea in 2002 come to mind. One of the beauties of being your own boss is that you can pick and choose the good stuff.

When did you know that you wanted to be a journalist? What, if anything, would you have done differently?
In the summer of 1982, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. I can still remember listening to Robert Fox and Brian Hanrahan of the BBC reporting from the conflict and thinking that was what I wanted to do. It seemed so exciting, so out-of-the-ordinary. And no, I don’t think there is much I would have done differently in terms of my career. But if we’re talking about my personal life, then how many pages do you have?

Any advice for journalists who are just starting out?
Choose a country that is under-represented in the global media coverage, go there and set yourself up as a correspondent. If you have the basic skills, it is easy as that. It takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off. It may take a while and you may end up doing something in the meantime that you never planned to, but it will be worth it in the long term. And if anyone is thinking of coming to Japan, you might be shocked at how much work there is available. I passed the notice board at the FCCJ this evening and there were five adverts for reporters or editorial assistants. Obviously, the language is a major bonus, but it’s not everything. I’m not sure what other advice I can offer, but I’m on jryall2@hotmail.com if anyone is thinking of taking the plunge and coming to Japan.

What next?
I’m here for the long haul; I’m divorced, but I have two young children — 9 and 5 — that I get to see every weekend and turn the house upside down with. To be honest, work is so good and I’m so happy in this culture that I would be mad to leave it and try to start over. I get back to Europe once a year to see family and friends, and that’s sufficient. My life is here and I’m very comfortable. And I know I’m very lucky.

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Ryall’s do’s and don’ts of being a foreign correspondent:
1. Set up camp. Choose a country that is under-represented in the global media coverage, go there and set yourself up as a correspondent. If you have the basic skills, it is easy as that. It takes a lot of self-belief and gumption, but it will pay off.
2. You get three lines. “The travel editor of The Times once told me that she received dozens of unsolicited stories every day — and that most of them were very poor. It was people who had been on holiday and thought they would write about what they had done�. She told me that she read the first three lines; if it hadn’t grabbed her by then, it was never going to.
3. Pick up the phone. “Tell the person that you’re sure he/she is busy so you’re going to send him/her an email with a pitch, and then send it straight away. Don’t keep them on the phone to explain it, but do make the effort to speak to them; it makes it harder to ignore the email.”
4. Follow up. “Have a clear outline of what you want to do with the piece; offer photos to accompany it, if possible — and make sure you deliver if they take you up on the offer.”
5. Don’t be late. “Turning in what you’ve been asked to provide and on time is almost more important than being able to write scintillating prose. Nothing drives editors to distraction more than late copy.”

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Jen Swanson is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared in Transitions Abroad, Weissmann Travel Reports, and Star Service Online.