The fun stories, the good news stories are needed, too

DUNDEE, New York - For most of the summer, I have been chasing stories for the Elmira Star-Gazette, the Ithaca Journal and Mountain Home magazine (out of Pennsylvania). All have been fun stories and/or stories where I knew what I was writing/photographing/publishing would be well appreciated.

Over the past weekend, I went to the Finger Lakes Wine Festival where I managed to find some friends pouring wine for their amigos (who own a winery) and voila! I was able to publish a photo of them, which promos their friends' winery quite nicely.

Plus, of course, they liked seeing themselves in the newspaper.

LINK: Monday's Wine Festival article in Star-Gazette
Then Tuesday morning there was a feature I had written about a local guy who is raising alpacas.

His hobby turned into a business that now has his entire family hard at it with a entire production of making yarn and products for sale.

He's living the dream which I chronicled and also gave a helluva boost to his business.

Right after it was published, I received several emails from people asking me for good directions to the ranch and little store. Multiply that times the circulations of the two newspapers and the family is in for a windfall.

It deserves it.

LINK: A passion for alpacas...

The experience this summer has taken me in a time machine back to when I started in the news business, writing hard-hitting, expose-type stories mixed in with features just like these. Looking back, the softer pieces may have made a bigger dent in the cosmos than any 'gotcha' story I ever wrote.

It's fun to make people happy.

I once took a photo and wrote a story about a local boy scout leader whose son had attained Eagle Scout - no small feat when your dad is the big kahuna of the troop. I can still see them standing there, posing for the photo. And the next day, when the photo and story were published, the dad came in and bought 50 copies of the newspaper.

One proud papa.

Professional journalists will often scoff at such stories, but know in their hearts that they count for a lot.

Nice to be reminded of it after all these years.

CSUS Writers hitting journalistic home runs left and write

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The columnistas in the column writing class and the magazine writers in magazine writing at CSU, Sacramento are doing a great job this semester, with several getting promises of publication and/or contacts in the industry.

Alysha Garrett

But in column writing this past week, there was a special event, kind of a journalistic convergence, involving a writer (pictured to the left) who has twin career aspirations: to be a professional writer and a professional model.

And so in the course of writing an excellent column for the class, she ran across a female model (whose photo she used as an illustration in her column this week) with whom she seemed to share a lot of values and ideas.

Why not, she thought?

So Alysha Garrett submitted her modeling portfolio to the model's company. One email later and voila: she is now connected to the modeling agency of Natural Model Management of Los Angeles.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is a link to the writer's blog which fills in all the details and has a very cool illustration that helps explain why Barbie and Ken never have food in the Barbie house or camper: The Young Adult

First columnist presentations set a high bar for balance of class

SACRAMENTO, Calif., USA - The first three presentations in the column-writing class at CSU, Sacramento today set a high standard for the balance of the students to reach.

Laural Kolar, Leia Osterman and Ronnie Nurss profiled Dave Barry, Heather Armstrong and Rolf Potts, respectively, all offering interesting insights into the writers and the way they go about their very different styles of using media. The students also fielded questions quite handily that came from classmates.

Dave Barry

In the presentation on Dave Barry, one video showed Barry's response to Marquette University censoring a quote of his that was hanging on the doorway of Marquette PhD student: "As Americans we must always remember that we all have a common enemy, an enemy that is dangerous, powerful, and relentless. I refer, of course, to the federal government."

That bit of humor, in 2006, sparked a firestorm of criticism against the university for its actions. Barry's responses in the video were as funny as his column.

In the presentation on columnist/blogger Heather Armstrong, the students learned that this stay-at-home mom, through her very successful blog, gets many thousands of hits per day and continually updates her work.

Heather B. Armstrong

She also has video featurettes and advertising which pay for most of her costs. Part of her particular schtick has to do with being really outrageous - something her readers have come to want from her work.

Rolf Potts, a world traveler, provided a third columnist model, not just for writing, but for a vagabond lifestyle that most people can only dream of. There were more than a few sighs in class as he described his life, one that has always been non-traditional.

Rolf Potts

Perhaps the most amusing part of that presentation was a video - and discussion of Potts' 'No Baggage Challenge' in which he travels internationally sans luggage.

His cargo pants were filled to overflowing though.

The class presentations continue on Monday with presentations on columnists  Jayson Stark, Dan Walters, Laura Snyder and Seth Kugel.

Next Wednesday, Sacramento Bee columnist Bob Shallit will speak in class. This past Monday, former Bee writer Dan Weintraub spoke about his new venture, HealthyCal. Weintraub was preceded by Bee finance columnist Claudia Buck.

Here are links to the work of Barry, Armstrong and Potts.
Dave Barry
Heather B. Armstrong
Rolf Potts