Synopsis

Journalists! Stop Reading Press Releases! Get Out of the Office!

Creativity. Imagination. There’s no place for these things in just-the-facts journalism. Really? Who says?

In News to Me: Finding and Writing Colorful Feature Stories, Barry Newman offers 29 new essays, interleaved with a broad range of his fully reprinted articles, to explain how he gets his ideas, his material, and turns it all into engrossing, funny—and publishable—stories. News to Me is meant for journalists, journalism teachers, journalism students and aspiring journalists, as well as for general readers who want to know how the sausage is made. “I’ve never been an editor or a bureau chief, or a teacher or a critic,” Newman says. “I’m a machine operator. I bang keys to make words. Here, I’m an exhibit.”

Watch a trailer for the book here. Or go to Barry Newman’s website here.

About the Author

Barry Newman went to work for the Wall Street Journal in 1970 after a few years as a copy boy and news clerk at the New York Times. In 43 years at the Journal, he wrote more than 400 features for the front page from more than 65 countries and most states in the USA. He won the Overseas Press Club’s award for explanatory journalism and the National Press Club’s award for humor writing. His stories have been collected in several books, including East of the Equator, The Literary Journalists and Floating Off the Page.