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William Zinsser: On Writing Well
Journalist and writing teacher William Zinsser says in his book, On Writing Well: “I’m occasionally asked if I can recall a moment when I knew I wanted to be a writer. No such blinding flash occurred. I only knew that I thought I would like to work for a newspaper.” Zinsser, who was born on…
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Straits Times began with call for press freedom
The Straits Times is marking its 168th anniversary today with a cornucopia of gifts. Lucky readers stand to win among other things a trip for two to London while another lucky pair will go to Munich to test-drive the latest BMW. The birthday bash behoves a golden goose of a newspaper which as the only…
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Rabbit Redux: From hot metal to cold type
From hot metal to cold type to online, newspapers have undergone two revolutions since the Cold War. The news used to come hot off the press, the words set on stone. It was a noisy business.
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Cheong Yip Seng: Inside The Straits Times
There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Those lines from Julius Caesar certainly apply to Cheung Yip Seng, who loves Shakespeare. His musician father brought the family over on a ship from Penang to Singapore, where in 1963 Cheung, then 20 years old, got a…
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Joseph Conrad and Singapore newspapers
I was pleasantly surprised to see the Straits Times mentioned in Joseph Conrad’s first novel, Almayer’s Folly. It’s at the beginning of Chapter 4: That year, towards the breaking up of the south-west monsoon, disquieting rumours reached Sambir. Captain Ford, coming up to Almayer’s house for an evening’s chat, brought late numbers of the Straits…
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Harold Evans on Murdoch, sub-editors, copy editors
Anyone who loves newspapers and magazines will enjoy reading My Paper Chase, the memoirs of Harold Evans, whose wife, Tina Brown, edits The Daily Beast. The son of a railwayman, he became the most famous British newspaper editor of his time. He edited the Sunday Times for more than a decade before being appointed editor…
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Free because we blog, tweet, in an attention economy
Singapore’s Straits Times and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post are the only English language newspapers I know that do not allow their stories to be read online for free. Even the Financial Times allows some of its stories to be read for free. Not the Straits Times. All you can read for free on…
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Lynne Truss.com
Eats, Shoots & Leaves author Lynne Truss now has her own website! So what? Every writer has a website now. Hello! This is big news, reported by Reuters. However, after visiting http://www.lynnetruss.com. I don’t think any punctuation mark can do it justice. It deserves an emoticon. Like this: 😦 Truss may well riposte, “Talk to…
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