Dick Weiss has retired

Dick Weiss, one of the best writing coaches in the business, has retired (graduated, he says) from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, taking a generous buyout offered to help cut staff. P-D columnist Sylvester Brown Jr. passed along this advice from Dick to journalists, which might be helpful in these tough times for our business: "Don't let the bean counters and handwringers trim your sails. You aren't here simply to increase circulation and drive revenue. You are here – as my faith tells me – to repair the world." I was privileged to catch Dick's session Saturday night at the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference in Boston. He closed with this valuable advice for writers: "You have to love that story enough to make it happen. No one will love it for you." You can find more valuable advice from Dick at his web site: http://www.weisswrite.com/

You also can read more about the Nieman conference here (be sure to read the sidebar with Chip Scanlan's advice on writing endings: http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=93107

I also commend to your attention Curt Hazlett's "Make Sense of Numbers in Writing about Business." OK, it's about math, but it doesn't taste a lot like medicine. And if you're not sure about the difference between percent and percentage points, or about the distinctions among average, median and mean, check it out:

http://www.businessjournalism.org/content/7384.cfm

And if you've ever used Wikipedia (or another Internet source you haven't vetted), read this column by John Siegenthaler: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm