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Continue reading 16 countries converge on Slovakia   It’s been almost a year since this blog started – coincidentally around the time I was lucky enough to be able to attend the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) congress in Japan. This year’s event will be hosted jointly by Austria and Slovenia, September 10-14. To get in on the action, neighboring Slovakia is hosting a pre-congress tour September 7-9.
The work of Better Farming’s journalists has earned a finalist position in the Canadian Association of Journalists’ 2007 awards competition. Robert Irwin, Don Stoneman and Mary Baxter’s article, “Faith in Arlan Galbraith: Ontario’s Pigeon King” was among five articles selected as finalists in the competition’s magazine category. It can seem like an insurmountable wall – making that first breakthrough with a new editor to get a story published. Journalist and former Chatelaine editor in chief Kim Pittaway offered some practical how-tos to farm writers looking to bring agriculture stories to an urban audience at a professional development session in Guelph yesterday. Stories, above all, must be engaging to the reader. To an editor, says Pittaway, stories that are positioned just as a “good story” to do are called spinach stories – they’re good for you but nobody really wants to read them. “If as a writer, you’re passionate about a story like that, think about how you can take it from spinach to spanakopita,” she says. “Make it tasty and engaging”. The key to landing that first big break lies in a good pitch. Pittaway advises trying to get voice or face time with an assignment, feature or associate features editor, not the editor in chief. It’s all about connecting. That’s the key behind telling a good story, according to panelists at the latest Eastern Canada Farm Writers Association (ECFWA) professional development seminar: the best stories connect with their audience and the best writers know the needs and wants of their audience. |   | |||||
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