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[[TomPaine#1]]
The economy's implosion has eviscerated the 'boutique' tutoring work that I've been doing, primarily for Asian Americans. Thus, I took a 'corporate responsibility writing assignment that was problematic in several different ways.
It paid next to nothing, number one. It required a high volume of text, number two. And its owners were all-too-typical CSR types--I'll hope that I needn't note, "present company excepted"--in that they were basically apologists for the capitalist nostrums that were causing the sorts of difficulties about which they loved to complain, number three.
I couldn't believe that I didn't get the ax after the four week probationary period. Instead, when I began to post up my fourth article about 'Depleted Uranium,' I had all my posting privileges revoked, with the promise of payment for November and 'get the hell out of here!' otherwise.
I never really figured out how to ply the waves here on OEN, but I'm going to give it a try again anyway. I've been creating plus-or-minus thirty thousand coherent words a week now for three and a half months, so I know that I can give myself deadlines and keep the vow to get things up, so to speak.
I'm as much a 'pinko' as one is likely to find on earth, but for my lack of a party affiliation. I find out interesting things, however, which I'll keep doing here at Op-Ed News, albeit at a much more leisurely--if, unfortunately unpaid--pace than I have recently been used to.
The compensation was paltry anyhow. It was one of those 'principle' deals of saying, 'by golly, I ought to get paid.' So much for that.
Anyhow, I'm going to start with the article that I barely had started on my CSR 'Fail!' It concerns Depleted Uranium and the work of Doug Rokke, one of the Gulf War vets screwed by the government in this situation.
I have a strong sense that even supposedly in-depth reporting lacks important background, history, and other underlying ideas critical to understanding what's happening in the world. Of course, this is even more the case with
Third, I will offer up the main topical events, people, conflicts that are the 'news' at hand. Even history can be news, especially when the writer ties it to the present, just as film or music can be the subject of serious news-beat writing so long as the correspondent can make the linkage clear between the cultural phenom and the events of the day. My work will be a combination of current upheaval, past situations, and cultural output of one sort or another. This section will answer the 'five W's' and generally tell a narrative story about something newsworthy.
The fourth bit will offer conclusions that citizens ought to consider, in the estimation of 'this humble correspondent,' which is to say, me! That journalism has ever been 'just the facts, ma'am,' is a highly dubious proposition, and to my way of thinking such an approach is tantamount to dereliction of duty. Fox gets this, even if they work for the thugs and the plutocrats.
The fifth section will be often be pretty brief. Here, I'll return to the philosophical point, explore the spiritual or moral upshot of what the four previous pieces present.
All of these components, to this humble correspondent, are a necessary part of both the educational and informational aspect of journalistic work. I'll hope to find a home of some sort here on Op-Ed News. In any event, I'd love to hear from anyone who would like to correspond.
"These are times that try men's souls," and this wordsmith would like to build a network somehow, some way.
