Speaker 1: Get ready for twenty sixth day of August twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: allegedly according to that thing we call a calendar. This
Speaker 1: the o'celly effect. And you hearing us, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: I'm broadcasting live on a Monday. Most of you don't
Speaker 1: care because you catch the podcast. So whatever day it is,
Speaker 1: welcome to it. And here we go. I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring on Albert Lanier. Now. Albert has been on the
Speaker 1: show many times betteran journalists. We've had him do commentary
Speaker 1: on a wide variety of topics, sometimes things that are
Speaker 1: in the news, sometimes that are things of historical interest,
Speaker 1: media analysis. Even it's been interesting, I mean, unsolved mysteries,
Speaker 1: dead singers. Okay, we've gone into the wide world or
Speaker 1: the wild world of independent writing and how that works.
Speaker 1: Even a little discussion about Telsea Gabbard now and then,
Speaker 1: which she's come up in the news recently. And boy,
Speaker 1: we could talk to him today about the interesting changes
Speaker 1: and currents out there in the potus race. Right. We
Speaker 1: could ask him what he thinks of RFK, and we
Speaker 1: could ask him what he thinks about a guy putting
Speaker 1: a dead bear in Central Park? Is it Central Park?
Speaker 1: One of the Parks anyway a dead bear and ten
Speaker 1: years later telling Roseanne that story. What does he think
Speaker 1: about the media and the way that those things get treated.
Speaker 1: We could go over all that, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to tonight. Instead, we're gonna talk to mister Lanier about
Speaker 1: his craft about writing. We've certainly discussed that a bit
Speaker 1: over time, because look, the tools of the trade have changed.
Speaker 1: There's a million substacks in the naked Internet, and he's
Speaker 1: got a couple of them. He has a YouTube channel
Speaker 1: as well. Okay, and just in case I forget to
Speaker 1: mention it later, if you go to writer Albert Lanier,
Speaker 1: that's the name of the channel, or if you take
Speaker 1: a look, it's at Albert Lanier. Okay, at writer Albert Lanier,
Speaker 1: excuse me, thirty four thirty four. I'll give you the
Speaker 1: links in the show notes to all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: also put him in the chat room so you can
Speaker 1: follow mister Lanier's work, or at least this part of
Speaker 1: his work, because again, independent writer. He's written for magazines,
Speaker 1: newspapers mostly you know, stuff in Hawaii where he's from, which,
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of wish I'd been able to
Speaker 1: talk to him about some of the Hawaiian stories that
Speaker 1: maybe have been going on stuff that was happening closer
Speaker 1: to home for him recently. But I haven't been able
Speaker 1: to get him lately, and then I am able to
Speaker 1: get him on this topic. So let's talk about writing
Speaker 1: and maybe how it's changed, how it's still the same.
Speaker 1: Is it still an art form? Are there any real
Speaker 1: writers left out there? Is my question, just like are
Speaker 1: there any real journalists anymore? It's getting strange, folks, it
Speaker 1: really is. Not only is the information strange in the
Speaker 1: information age, but the people that are delivering the information
Speaker 1: are getting strange in my opinion. But then again, that's
Speaker 1: just me and Elon Musk, who owns a whole platform
Speaker 1: for social media and information distribution. He had technical difficulties
Speaker 1: getting himself together to talk to Donald Trump, but RFK
Speaker 1: Junior had no problem getting together with Donald Trump to
Speaker 1: talk about things. Why am I bringing all this up?
Speaker 1: I don't even know. Let's talk about real things, okay,
Speaker 1: and some real brass tacks when it comes to what
Speaker 1: is it like to sort of a transposition, right to
Speaker 1: transition from the digital world into the new digital world
Speaker 1: and the age of all of this writing being shared
Speaker 1: everywhere and again, if you go to his YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: he gives you some instructional ideas about writing, describe some
Speaker 1: things that he's done in the past, etc. And other things.
Speaker 1: Plus oh podcast on substack right which you can find.
Speaker 1: And he's got a couple of substacks out there, but
Speaker 1: the one that I want you to follow is at
Speaker 1: Albert Lanier One believe it or not, and that it'll
Speaker 1: pop up the week. The week, oh excuse me, this
Speaker 1: is the week that is is another one, but at
Speaker 1: Albert Lanier One substack has the podcast. From what I understand.
Speaker 1: But then again, if you find Albert Lanier on a
Speaker 1: bunch of things, even the stuff that I've referenced in
Speaker 1: the past, I would advise you to read it. It's
Speaker 1: worth a read. And I also notice a couple of
Speaker 1: people that have subscribed to my stuff subscribe to his
Speaker 1: stuff over here, over there, et cetera as well they
Speaker 1: should Anyways, mister Lanier, I know that introduction sounded strange,
Speaker 1: but you are a veteran journalist who is now in
Speaker 1: a completely new environment with new tools, etc. So you
Speaker 1: know what is what is new, what is the same,
Speaker 1: what is old? But first, how are you doing tonight?
Speaker 2: I'm okay. And the way that you kind of just
Speaker 2: stated that as the kind of at the intro right
Speaker 2: there is basically once occurred to me. I'm celebrating now
Speaker 2: my thirty of anniversary, and I have to admit, originally
Speaker 2: I didn't plan to do a show or be interviewed
Speaker 2: on the podcast or radio show or anything. I was
Speaker 2: just commemorating my anniversary thirty years as a writer as
Speaker 2: a professional writer. I was a freelance writer and journalist
Speaker 2: for twenty two years. I retired from that twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: I'll get into that, hopefully in about a minute or
Speaker 2: two kind of the differences, but I think you've kind
Speaker 2: of articulated part of what's occurred. If I have to
Speaker 2: bring up a motif or a or anything about being
Speaker 2: a writer, for me, it has been not simply change,
Speaker 2: but also transformation. So it's a different experience. If I
Speaker 2: had to describe my career as a writer overall, the
Speaker 2: first twenty two years writing for publications, and I call
Speaker 2: it publications, writing writing for newspapers, writing for magazine for
Speaker 2: twenty two years as a freelance writer and as a journalist,
Speaker 2: and then the past seven or eight years has been
Speaker 2: online only, so it's been writing digitally, so I'm writing
Speaker 2: for my own outlets. I wrote a blog on medium
Speaker 2: dot com for about over four years, and then I
Speaker 2: recently been on substack. I set up my original substack,
Speaker 2: that is the Week that is in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: and I kind of wrote an article, and then I
Speaker 2: kind of had other things crop up and I was
Speaker 2: taken away from that. And then I came back to
Speaker 2: it unexpectedly last year and I wrote a few articles there,
Speaker 2: and then this year I started a brand new substack
Speaker 2: called Final Cut, which is all about the movies. And
Speaker 2: I've been here talking about my return to writing about movies.
Speaker 2: So it's to describe the thirty years that I've had
Speaker 2: as a writer. The first twenty two years I've been
Speaker 2: writing for publications and the second I've been writing for
Speaker 2: the online world digitally. And what I realized recently is
Speaker 2: that these are two very different experiences. These are two
Speaker 2: very different aspects, and I think the difference. One of
Speaker 2: the differences is in twenty twenty four, I cannot do
Speaker 2: what I did in nineteen ninety four. When I started
Speaker 2: in the nineties, there was such a thing. The Internet
Speaker 2: didn't exist. As the portal, as the as sort of
Speaker 2: the business center for writing for writers of many types
Speaker 2: and for writing it for other things. There really was
Speaker 2: no Internet, certainly not an internet as we know it
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four, right, And so in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: when I was writing for newspapers and magazines, local newspapers,
Speaker 2: local magazines in honolug Way, I had to go and
Speaker 2: get on my at a word processor at the time,
Speaker 2: and my word processor in take twenty minutes for that
Speaker 2: to print my piece out and then stick it in
Speaker 2: a Manila envelope and meal it out. I can't do
Speaker 2: that in twenty twenty four. The way that I write
Speaker 2: things in twenty twenty four is I take out my
Speaker 2: phone that I'm talking into right now, I go to
Speaker 2: my email. Well, actually yeah, I'll go to my email
Speaker 2: I and then I go to substack because I write
Speaker 2: on substack primarily. And I write my piece and go
Speaker 2: over my piece and then upload that, and then I
Speaker 2: have to start the process of sending that to Facebook
Speaker 2: and all the other platforms, and then I have to
Speaker 2: do videos on YouTube. Writer Albert Lanier being one of
Speaker 2: them on YouTube. Well, actually it is the one that's
Speaker 2: it and so doing the promo video for that. In fact,
Speaker 2: I just did yesterday. I just did a promo video
Speaker 2: on YouTube and a promo video on TikTok for my
Speaker 2: thirtieth anniversary article on Final Cut on Substack, which is
Speaker 2: called the discreete and Subtle Charm of Film Going. So
Speaker 2: it's really about watching movies. It's a smuggled, circuitous way
Speaker 2: of writing about film because my Final Cut is about movies.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't write a piece about being a writer
Speaker 2: for thirty years when I'm doing a you know, a
Speaker 2: substack about movies. So I really kind of did it
Speaker 2: circuitously and you know, smuggled it into writing about movies.
Speaker 2: But that's what's different is I now go to a
Speaker 2: side I write everything myself. Now here's something that people
Speaker 2: probably don't understand. We're living in an era now, I
Speaker 2: would say when you talk about changes, and I think
Speaker 2: it was a nice way to introduce it. The changes
Speaker 2: are now because of the growth of things like AI.
Speaker 2: I don't know about chat, GPP, per se, but AI
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence. Now people like me and writers we have competitions,
Speaker 2: and the competition is no longer humans, it's artificial. It's
Speaker 2: robotic possibly.
Speaker 1: So here's a couple of things.
Speaker 2: It's computerized, it's digital.
Speaker 1: But so here's a couple of things to consider, right,
Speaker 1: is that, first of all, there are still what they
Speaker 1: call online publications which kind of function like the old
Speaker 1: heart copy magazines used to function, but they are dwindling quickly.
Speaker 1: You know, the online presence of some of the old
Speaker 1: dinosaur media is out there, sure. And then there's some
Speaker 1: stuff that never existed in hard copy form that you know,
Speaker 1: you may indeed still have that process, except your emailing
Speaker 1: instead of putting it in the Manila envelope. And there's
Speaker 1: still an editor, et cetera. But now there is this
Speaker 1: lack of a sort of clearing house. Not only do
Speaker 1: you lack the editor because now you're your own editor,
Speaker 1: but you also lack the clearing house, which was helpful
Speaker 1: although it did control some of what you could write.
Speaker 1: You know, your editor didn't want to print certain portions
Speaker 1: of what you wanted to put out whatever, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: get it out there. You had to argue with them,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But you know, so you gained that freedom,
Speaker 1: but you also gained the freedom of not having this
Speaker 1: singular place where people were already going all the time.
Speaker 1: You have to build that following yourself. So now it's
Speaker 1: as if there's a million magazines instead of you know,
Speaker 1: the leading ones at the newsstand, it's now there's you know,
Speaker 1: instead of just a couple of leading newspapers in your area,
Speaker 1: there's a million of them online, and there's apps that
Speaker 1: feed these things to people, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: now you do your own promotion, and even the guy
Speaker 1: who does the best promotion might not gain the audience
Speaker 1: that he could have gained with with somebody that has
Speaker 1: a pre existing following. Right, so you're in a position
Speaker 1: where you're way more independent. You can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: I mean, some publications might have not given you the
Speaker 1: job of reviewing movies, but you could give yourself that job. Now,
Speaker 1: can you get people to come and read it? And oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, can you figure out a way to
Speaker 1: monetize this? There's one hundred ways to do that. You know.
Speaker 1: You could do the buy me a coffee method, right,
Speaker 1: which is, you know what if you kick in a
Speaker 1: little bit or you support me on Patreon, And different
Speaker 1: writers have had different levels of success or lack thereof
Speaker 1: by doing that. Some of them have even decided, Look,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to publish a book anymore. I'll publish
Speaker 1: my book online as a blog or as a multi
Speaker 1: part series coming through Patreon, and the people that want
Speaker 1: this can buy it as it's being written even and
Speaker 1: they can purchase it by being a supporter, and you
Speaker 1: can continue to be monetized that way. Now I know
Speaker 1: nothing about your monetization. If you made even a penny,
Speaker 1: you know, since going out and writing post retirement, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I would say that, well, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well what I would say is this, I worked as
Speaker 2: a freelance writer. It's funny you talk about money. I
Speaker 2: was recently on a writing group today and I wrote
Speaker 2: a post from this group and I was telling people there.
Speaker 2: In the years that I've been online, Facebook, ex, Twitter,
Speaker 2: what have you, and I've dealt with writers at times,
Speaker 2: or people who want to be writers or anything. The
Speaker 2: number one question that I've been asked is not how
Speaker 2: do I get published, or how do I perfect a
Speaker 2: good pro style for a novel, or how do I
Speaker 2: get a style that will get me get my ideas
Speaker 2: for freelance articles accepted by magazine editors. It's how do
Speaker 2: you get paid.
Speaker 1: As a writer.
Speaker 2: That is the number one question that I have been
Speaker 2: asked over the years of are done. I never asked
Speaker 2: about other things. If people have asked me questions, this
Speaker 2: has come interestingly enough from authors. People who are self
Speaker 2: published authors usually or say they are. That was the
Speaker 2: interesting surprise to me because I've never written a book.
Speaker 2: I've been a freelance writer. And to quote someone like
Speaker 2: Harlan Ellison, I don't take a piss without getting paid,
Speaker 2: you know, you know, to quote Harlan again from the
Speaker 2: documentary let me see, God, I can't remember the documentary
Speaker 2: something about dreams. I apologize for that quotes, but it
Speaker 2: was a documentary about Harlan Nelson. I know it is
Speaker 2: on YouTube and you can watch the video there called
Speaker 2: pay the Writer. Just as a suggestion to people, I
Speaker 2: don't want to just promote my stuff.
Speaker 1: And Harlan Ellison is a great case study here because
Speaker 1: Harlan Ellison existed in a completely different universe for writers.
Speaker 1: He was a creative writer, but he also participated in
Speaker 1: you know, some people might not be familiar with his name,
Speaker 1: but because I'm a I'm a Star Trek fan, I'm
Speaker 1: aware of his contributions to that exactly right, and he
Speaker 1: was he was actually really you want to talk about
Speaker 1: being pissed. He was angry about what they did to
Speaker 1: his script. Uh, you know, to get it produced on television.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because he existed in a time where yeah,
Speaker 1: you could demand to get paid.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Uh, even some of the best script writers right who
Speaker 1: have that skill, Uh, some of them are not able
Speaker 1: to get paid. But you know, what they have the
Speaker 1: freedom to do that they didn't back then is to
Speaker 1: actually produce things on a less than a shoe string.
Speaker 1: They can have things self produced. A couple of guys
Speaker 1: with a couple of skills and the right software can
Speaker 1: turn around and make somebody script into something workable that
Speaker 1: can be shopped, that can be sold even directly or
Speaker 1: even put out as a piece of marketable content. And again,
Speaker 1: just like you as a writer, you can sell it
Speaker 1: yourself in a way limits what is available as far
Speaker 1: as you know, the big money and being paid easily,
Speaker 1: but it also expands your ability to get seen and
Speaker 1: heard by others. And Ellison, again, this is a creative writer,
Speaker 1: not a guy who's doing information or journalism or anything
Speaker 1: like that. And he's one of the best known names
Speaker 1: but there are a million guys out there. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, there are people creating Star Trek stuff
Speaker 1: that is like they're like fan videos at this point
Speaker 1: where they've created further Adventures of Star Trek authorized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I will know about screenwriting. Sure, the money
Speaker 2: in screenwriting isn't from writing your own original scainplay or
Speaker 2: your script and it gets produced, that's fine. It's when
Speaker 2: you were a writer for hire that's where the real
Speaker 2: money is.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So I would say to those people were, although I'm
Speaker 2: not a screenwriter, if you want to write in la
Speaker 2: or via being a screenwriter for the majors, which are
Speaker 2: called the Hollywood cerials, you want to try to become
Speaker 2: a script doctor. You want to try to become a
Speaker 2: writer for hire. That's where the money is because you
Speaker 2: come in, you do a pass or you come in
Speaker 2: and do a polish on a script, and that's where
Speaker 2: the money is. And I could, I could appreciate this
Speaker 2: as a ghostwriter. So it was also a ghostwriter.
Speaker 1: See, And that's h And that's why I brought this up.
Speaker 2: To write about I've been paid to write uh materials
Speaker 2: which I can't talk about for other people.
Speaker 1: Right, And I want to I want to I want
Speaker 1: to pass this off exactly, and I want to pass
Speaker 1: this off to you after I get through with something,
Speaker 1: because you brought up the you know, the chat, GPT
Speaker 1: and the AI, and it is touching every aspect. Every
Speaker 1: kind of writer out there, one way or another, is
Speaker 1: now confronted with this problem. Right. We had the recent
Speaker 1: strike where they talked about this where you know, scripts
Speaker 1: could literally be turned out, you know, by these AIS, right,
Speaker 1: and then we also have you know, these news organizations.
Speaker 1: There's been discussions about maybe they're turning out articles. There
Speaker 1: are entire say, academic papers being turned out which are
Speaker 1: effectively book lengthd pieces on history, totally turned out by
Speaker 1: AI because they're being fed a bit of information and
Speaker 1: now the writer almost being taken out of the equation.
Speaker 1: It seems like no matter what kind of writer you are,
Speaker 1: you're not only faced with this sort of atomized industry
Speaker 1: where indeed you have the ability to go out and
Speaker 1: do a lot of things for yourself, but you no
Speaker 1: longer have the establishment areas that supported the writers very well.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, you have competition from the
Speaker 1: non human competitor which can now take over. Like I
Speaker 1: guarantee you you can go to chat GPT no offense
Speaker 1: to you and have them write in one of these
Speaker 1: movie reviews, right, and you can just give it the
Speaker 1: movie and tell it write me a movie review that
Speaker 1: is whatever you want. You want it to be positive, negative,
Speaker 1: in depth. You tell it what to do and it'll
Speaker 1: spit out something based on what it can you know,
Speaker 1: source right, and it'll turn around and probably spit out
Speaker 1: a review for you in ten seconds. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's going to be better or
Speaker 1: anything else like that, but.
Speaker 2: I've also it'll probably be a bad, lame review, but
Speaker 2: probably hey it's shad GPT.
Speaker 1: But there you go on a review.
Speaker 2: You have to read my stuff in the retro review.
Speaker 2: I have a retro review section where I review reluctantly,
Speaker 2: but I review older films, films that are either barely
Speaker 2: barely known, a little known, or completely unknown, and I
Speaker 2: try to tell the ones that films that are less
Speaker 2: lesser known or completely unknown. You can take a look
Speaker 2: at my retro review session, which is written by a
Speaker 2: human being, namely yours truly. I write the reviews not ai.
Speaker 1: Al right and what's great, and not ail exactly, not an.
Speaker 2: Exactly that's at Alaner dot substeck dot com exactly.
Speaker 1: So what's great about this though, is that now again
Speaker 1: there's another upside. Whereas if you turned around and you
Speaker 1: really narrowed your niche, okay, if if Albert Lanier decided
Speaker 1: to write retro film reviews and chose a particular genre. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are guys that are making a really good living
Speaker 1: actually doing retro reviews of television shows. I mean TV
Speaker 1: shows that have not actually aired in first run now
Speaker 1: for you know, fifty years. There are guys out there
Speaker 1: doing Twilight Zone reviews and original series Star Trek reviews
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And in the movie section, there
Speaker 1: are people out there doing more obscure like obscure horror
Speaker 1: movie reviews, believe it or not, and that niche from
Speaker 1: the human which you're never gonna get, you know, the
Speaker 1: the really textured stuff from these sort of niche projects.
Speaker 1: Some of them have some of the most devoted followers.
Speaker 1: Like I said, there are guys, probably twenty guys on
Speaker 1: YouTube alone that just do retro reviews of like Star Trek.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just now getting to Deep Space nine,
Speaker 1: which was done in the nineties, right, and they're doing
Speaker 1: retro reviews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've seen, I've been I've been on a
Speaker 2: channel or two where they went through Star Trek episode, right.
Speaker 1: And some of these guys have so many views to.
Speaker 2: Get into that, but I don't want to because I
Speaker 2: don't want to get into the old new Treking.
Speaker 1: No, No, not not at all.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not trying to drag you into it. All
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that, but you could drop
Speaker 1: the Trek thing. We could go for horror movies if
Speaker 1: you wanted to. You could get into a section of YouTube.
Speaker 2: And I'm I'm on I'm on as, I'm on Twitter
Speaker 2: and I'm on horror Twitter, and I see I've seen
Speaker 2: people who clearly have podcasts or accounts and they bring
Speaker 2: up all these obscure either completely unknown to little known
Speaker 2: movie right. And so I appreciate that because as much
Speaker 2: as I know about movies, there are a lot of
Speaker 2: movies I haven't seen and don't know and so forth.
Speaker 2: And I'm rather upfront about that.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, for instance, I picked up on.
Speaker 2: It though I was a film critic at one time.
Speaker 1: Right, Like, for instance, I picked up on a string
Speaker 1: of reviews recently that that mainly focused on the Trauma films. Trauma.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember them, they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of well known, but they will. Yeah, the Toxic.
Speaker 2: I like that. I like that. That's what they should
Speaker 2: be called.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, that's.
Speaker 2: A good name to a perfect name for a horror
Speaker 2: movie company.
Speaker 1: Right, the Toxic, the Toxic Avenger and such, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Lloyd Kaufman read his book. He did a
Speaker 2: book about how to make a movie when I was
Speaker 2: living in LA. Yeah, read his book. It's actually a
Speaker 2: pretty good book. I recommend it. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's in print anywhere, but i'd recommend that. Maybe Rebel
Speaker 2: without a Crew. I think Robert Rodriguez's book, Yeah, the
Speaker 2: First Person.
Speaker 1: There are some.
Speaker 2: Recommend that I think of another one recommend and sorry.
Speaker 1: There are some great writers out there though, that are
Speaker 1: actually doing reviews and in depth studies on stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Low budget horror movies that were out there, I mean,
Speaker 1: well beyond you know, the Texas Chainsaw A Massacre was
Speaker 1: one of the most successful low budget horror movies of
Speaker 1: all time. But yeah, and influential as well.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many movies that tried to steal
Speaker 2: something from that movie.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And Rick Baker has a whole career based
Speaker 1: on that, you see, and there you go. You could
Speaker 1: go out from there into the you know, into the
Speaker 1: sci fi horror genre, and you could just go from
Speaker 1: niche to niche there. You know, for a couple of
Speaker 1: months you could focus on on you know, Rick Baker,
Speaker 1: and then for a couple of months you could go
Speaker 1: to Clive Barker, and then for a couple of you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and you could go through.
Speaker 2: Chuck Well.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is not what people are doing. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I know. I'm throwing out things here though that
Speaker 1: if you do it and you focus on it, and
Speaker 1: you do it well as a human would do it,
Speaker 1: not like the AI would do it, I guarantee you,
Speaker 1: you can cultivate an audience that is pretty large. I
Speaker 1: mean some of these people. There's a guy, for instance,
Speaker 1: uh named Steve Shiers on on on YouTube now he
Speaker 1: goes into politics and all kinds of stuff. But one, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that guy, I think shadow twice. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he's what you're talking about. And he's a very mainstream yeah,
Speaker 2: very guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mainstream liberal kind of guy, uh, you know, for
Speaker 1: the most part. But you know, and and he's got
Speaker 1: his opinions on Star Trek boy, I'll tell you that. Uh.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I told you, I told you about the
Speaker 2: whole old new thing. Oh yeah, I tell you. It's
Speaker 2: it's intense. But but what's interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting to me is that that guy basically
Speaker 1: can do this for a living. This is his full
Speaker 1: time job, absolutely, and it's because he has such a
Speaker 1: large following and people can build those things. It can
Speaker 1: be done, of course, you know, it's just like anything
Speaker 1: else and that used to be entertainment or content or
Speaker 1: whatever in previous decades. Uh, you know, not everybody makes
Speaker 1: it to the top, and there's a lot of steps
Speaker 1: on the way on the ladder down. But the point
Speaker 1: is that even with the artificial stuff that is going
Speaker 1: to be generated here, uh, there is still room for
Speaker 1: real creativity, even in things that you know, you might
Speaker 1: think have already been gone over, that somebody's already done.
Speaker 1: It's a weird area. So as a writer, I'm just wondering,
Speaker 1: you know, what it is you see there, because obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, you could do you could do one hundred
Speaker 1: different things as a writer, and with somebody who honed
Speaker 1: certain skills as a journalist, who owned certain skills as
Speaker 1: a movie reviewer. There's a lot of different ways for
Speaker 1: you to go right. But like I said, I think
Speaker 1: people fail to understand how there is a great deal
Speaker 1: more freedom and an app parallel running alongside of that
Speaker 1: is that there is you know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: there's more of an opportunity. Anybody in the world can
Speaker 1: be seen by the world. True, but while they get
Speaker 1: seen or heard is yet another question. It seems to
Speaker 1: me like, you know, even if you can successfully do
Speaker 1: something and do it well and put it out there,
Speaker 1: it used to be if you can get it out
Speaker 1: there and it's well done, it will succeed. Used to
Speaker 1: be kind of like the idea here, and that was
Speaker 1: in the music business, that was in the filmmaking business.
Speaker 1: That was in you know, if I create a TV
Speaker 1: show and I film a pilot, I can sell the pilot,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, or I can sell a script.
Speaker 1: But no longer is that the case. You could do
Speaker 1: something very well, put it together, get it out there,
Speaker 1: and if you don't catch the right traction or you
Speaker 1: don't get the right attention, it might fall into obscurity
Speaker 1: or it could be caught on even if it's not
Speaker 1: that great. I see some stuff doing extremely well that
Speaker 1: doesn't deserve to Okay, let's be honest.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like surfing in a sense. Yeah, you got
Speaker 2: to catch away, you know, and you hope you don't
Speaker 2: wipe out. Yeah, that's what you got to be able
Speaker 2: to do. And you're speaking to what I've said to
Speaker 2: some people, I think to some online and what I've
Speaker 2: said was one of the differences between when I started
Speaker 2: in the nineties and there are a number of differences
Speaker 2: and the way it is now because it's funny because
Speaker 2: it celebrating my anniversary this month. Was the Facebook page
Speaker 2: for a society professional journalist for freelancing, and I'm on
Speaker 2: there and they asked me to do a post about
Speaker 2: the differences between nineteen ninety four and two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, and because I've kind of chimed in
Speaker 2: and I've written some things there and so I did
Speaker 2: that post and that was nice. And so what I
Speaker 2: note about the difference is I think I've said a
Speaker 2: little of this earlier. But in the nineties it was
Speaker 2: about the work I was a freelance writer, and I
Speaker 2: was a freelance journalist, and I was a local and
Speaker 2: regional freelancer. And back then it was about as it
Speaker 2: had been for a long time. It was about the writing.
Speaker 2: It was about the work you produced articles writing for magazines.
Speaker 2: I'll take that as an example. I wrote magazine pieces.
Speaker 2: My job was to write the pieces, you know, and
Speaker 2: to break it down simplest way not to break it down.
Speaker 2: It is about the story. So you have to get
Speaker 2: the story, do the interviews and the research and get
Speaker 2: the facts. Then you write the story, and then you
Speaker 2: send the story, and then you wait for the story
Speaker 2: to get published so that you could get the check
Speaker 2: while you're onto the next story. So it's all about
Speaker 2: the story. You get the story, you write the story,
Speaker 2: you set the story, and wait for the jack and
Speaker 2: you're on the next story. Now the story isn't unimportant.
Speaker 2: It is important, but it's no longer. The story isn't
Speaker 2: the end like it was in the nineties and the
Speaker 2: early two thousands, at least in my experience, it's the beginning.
Speaker 2: So when I write something, it's a start, it's not
Speaker 2: the end. Because when I was writing for magazines, since
Speaker 2: I use that as an example, no magazine that I
Speaker 2: wrote for ever said to me, oh great, yeah you're done,
Speaker 2: it's going to get printed. We need you to go
Speaker 2: to bookstores so that you consider it a table and
Speaker 2: signed copies of your article and talk about your article
Speaker 2: to the people at the story. That didn't happen. You
Speaker 2: didn't promote magazine articles that way. Certainly didn't promote newspaper
Speaker 2: stories that ways. Can go and promote books. I know,
Speaker 2: I know they still have signings bookstores sometimes that they're
Speaker 2: still bookstores. But see that didn't happen for me as
Speaker 2: a magazine writer. Well certainly not newspaper journalists. Well, I
Speaker 2: have to go into the mode and market. So if
Speaker 2: people ask me, hey did you, oh you wrote this article,
Speaker 2: where can I find it? I tell them what magazine
Speaker 2: or what newspaper you have to promote and market? It
Speaker 2: wasn't your job. Your job was to write. You're a journalist.
Speaker 2: You're a writer. Your job is to write the article. Right.
Speaker 1: When I do an article, sorry.
Speaker 2: Make videos on YouTube and TikTok, I have to put
Speaker 2: it on Instagram. I have to go. Even now I'm
Speaker 2: going to put it on LinkedIn. I have to go
Speaker 2: and do it. On Facebook, and I have to do
Speaker 2: it on x Twitter. I have to do all that.
Speaker 2: So when I do an article, now, I write the
Speaker 2: article and then it takes me sometimes because I spread
Speaker 2: everything out. So I'll do Instagram today, and then I'll
Speaker 2: go and do my YouTube video. Maybe I'll do YouTube
Speaker 2: and TikTok. You know that one piece that I wrote
Speaker 2: will take two or three days to promote, not entire
Speaker 2: entire days, but spread out right. And I do that
Speaker 2: to keep myself safe so I won't go nuts or
Speaker 2: or I won't get exhausted because you have to go
Speaker 2: and promote and market. And so when you talk about
Speaker 2: the differences, it used to be about from my perspective
Speaker 2: as a freelance writer, it was about the work. I
Speaker 2: know it's different for authors too, because of the growth
Speaker 2: of self publishing. It's not you know, when you could
Speaker 2: get a book published, even if it's a small publisher,
Speaker 2: you know you didn't have to do all the cartwheels,
Speaker 2: and you didn't have to do all the tightrope walking,
Speaker 2: and you didn't have to do all the all the
Speaker 2: of spinning around in order to get this book out.
Speaker 2: When you self publish a book, now you're in charge
Speaker 2: of that cover. You're in charge of how many copies
Speaker 2: you're going to print out. You're in you know, you've
Speaker 2: got to make sure that that it did. You've got
Speaker 2: to make sure that you're out there promoting that. I mean,
Speaker 2: you could hire people to promote it, but you've got
Speaker 2: to have the money. So it's going to cost you
Speaker 2: money to print it. It's going to cost you money
Speaker 2: to promote it. Positive cost you money to get someone
Speaker 2: to edit it. You know, it's going to cost you money.
Speaker 2: And you still have to work.
Speaker 1: Right, So we're.
Speaker 2: Living at an age now where the writer, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the things I've told other writers, the
Speaker 2: days where you as a freelancer, you as a journalist,
Speaker 2: you as any other type of writer, could just write
Speaker 2: and keep working and focus on the work are over.
Speaker 2: From my perspective. I realize this back into twenty eleven
Speaker 2: when I was started to do shows like this, when
Speaker 2: I started to do podcasts, radio shows, all kinds of shows. Right,
Speaker 2: I realized the old days are vanishing. Now I've got
Speaker 2: to get out there and do it, and it takes
Speaker 2: more effort, It takes more, it takes a greater amount
Speaker 2: of work to do that well, there's another difference is
Speaker 2: thirty years that I've seen. That's part of the difference.
Speaker 1: That's one of the huge differences. But another one is
Speaker 1: this the visual aspect of it. Okay, when you wrote
Speaker 1: those articles for magazines or whatever, you didn't have to
Speaker 1: be the photo journalist too. See there was another guy
Speaker 1: that did the photo journalism, or they had stuff on
Speaker 1: file already, the publication already had it, so they would
Speaker 1: plug in a picture they had already of the subject
Speaker 1: or you know, or the place whatever. Like say you
Speaker 1: see a newspaper story, they have a file photo of
Speaker 1: the storefront. If it's about a place, right, they have
Speaker 1: a file photo of the street. They have a file
Speaker 1: phot of the individual. Maybe it was taken last year
Speaker 1: that you're writing about. They might already have the visual aspects.
Speaker 1: Now today you have to take your visual aspects and
Speaker 1: package it in with your writing and spread that around
Speaker 1: so that it catches people's eyes. Look, if you put
Speaker 1: things up on Instagram and you don't have a photo
Speaker 1: to go with it, you know it's going to get
Speaker 1: less attention. So a visual image is helpful. Even if
Speaker 1: it's a cartoon that goes along with it. It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you have a visual image to go along
Speaker 1: with it, that's part of your marketing now too. That
Speaker 1: used to have nothing to do with you as a writer.
Speaker 1: Usually there was actually a job called photojournalism, you know,
Speaker 1: where there were people that that's what they did. They
Speaker 1: got pictures of the news of it. They got pictures
Speaker 1: of the newsworthy people. Now in the nineties we saw
Speaker 1: the explosion of the paparazzi and the people that were
Speaker 1: constantly following people around and they would get, you know,
Speaker 1: the rare photo of somebody kind of you know, had
Speaker 1: a character, or maybe they caught somebody was drunk somewhere
Speaker 1: and they got them on video, or they got them
Speaker 1: on you know, in a photograph, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and they were constantly hounding people. Now that was a change,
Speaker 1: but it used to be the guys like that would
Speaker 1: try and get these photos and they might sell some
Speaker 1: of them to some publications. Again as a freelancer, they
Speaker 1: might sell them to be file photos for an article
Speaker 1: to be determined later. They might sell stuff again if
Speaker 1: it was a news event, maybe they got pictures from
Speaker 1: the scene as it happened, whether it was a car
Speaker 1: wreck or it was you know, a house burned down,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. They might have gotten the event as
Speaker 1: it was occurring, captured part of it, wore correspondence. There
Speaker 1: were people like that that literally went out into the
Speaker 1: battlefield along with soldiers and took pictures of, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff that was happening. He'd like say, in Vietnam, we
Speaker 1: saw stuff from the battlefield. You know, wild thing. That
Speaker 1: whole job is pretty much gone. Now people have their own,
Speaker 1: you know, their own phones with them. You as a journalist,
Speaker 1: you as a writer of any kind, you're called upon,
Speaker 1: why don't you add in the photos? And you need
Speaker 1: them to actually distribute your stuff. So this whole thing
Speaker 1: is a completely different animal from what you started with
Speaker 1: in the nineties. Or am I am I wrong? I mean,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's true is no good writing.
Speaker 2: I know, and as you just noted, it's just a
Speaker 2: very different it's a different reality. What I miss is
Speaker 2: there are a couple of things I miss. One of
Speaker 2: the things I missed about being a freelance journalist and
Speaker 2: a freelance writer is I miss just focusing on the
Speaker 2: work and just caring about the article and just having
Speaker 2: to turn in the article.
Speaker 1: I mean, you.
Speaker 2: Mentioned before about you know, editing, and you have to
Speaker 2: be your own editor. You have to do everything. When
Speaker 2: I do my articles on final cuts for every article
Speaker 2: now I include pictures because you know, I'm dealing with
Speaker 2: film and I can go and write about film and
Speaker 2: that's it. It can be just plain text, but film
Speaker 2: is a visual medium and you need something visual that
Speaker 2: people can look at. And and again, one of the
Speaker 2: things I missed is not having all the responsibility. Right nowadays,
Speaker 2: I have all the responsibility because of subtext, and also
Speaker 2: with my blog. When I wrote my blog, that's when
Speaker 2: I learned about it. Again, I think you could just
Speaker 2: focus on the work. You know, your job was to
Speaker 2: write articles. And again I kind of miss not having
Speaker 2: to do everything else. And I think what prepared me
Speaker 2: really for this world occasionally enough, was, you know, coming
Speaker 2: back here to Wai and writing on the island of
Speaker 2: Muloti for the Muloti Dispatch, where I had to do
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of things because there's only a couple
Speaker 2: of us running that small town newspaper, you know, having
Speaker 2: to take photos, having to take the reader of that
Speaker 2: camera and put it a chip and put it on
Speaker 2: the reader, upload the photo, write the captions, write captions
Speaker 2: and items about other stories, write your own stories right,
Speaker 2: and also on the small paper. I also on Sundays
Speaker 2: we were there looking at the mastaff. We were looking
Speaker 2: as writers looking at this and looking to see there
Speaker 2: any mistakes. So we're copy editing as well. That was
Speaker 2: my experience when I was what thirty eight, and I
Speaker 2: had a long time ago which I never had. I
Speaker 2: think that helped prepare me for this world that we
Speaker 2: see with substack and blogs and websites and all this
Speaker 2: as I'm not lost in the weeds now, and I realized, oh,
Speaker 2: that really prepared me because it allowed my mind to
Speaker 2: be flexible and react because these are jobs I never had.
Speaker 2: When you write for newspapers of any sort, you do
Speaker 2: not write headlines. I don't know if people understand that
Speaker 2: you're the writer. Your job is not to write headlines.
Speaker 2: You may write a title and send it in, but
Speaker 2: that's not your job. I have to write headlines for
Speaker 2: everything that I do and everything else. You're doing jobs
Speaker 2: that as a journalist and as a writer, you didn't
Speaker 2: do before. I don't know if there are guys. I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are guys who have done the things I've
Speaker 2: done in my past as a freelance journalist, as a
Speaker 2: writer for newspapers and magazine and are are doing stuff
Speaker 2: online now, and you know, you have to adjust. And
Speaker 2: I think having worked at that small newspaper on another
Speaker 2: island helped me adjust when I look back on it,
Speaker 2: because I had to do all these other things and
Speaker 2: I'm going, now I go and I do substack and
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a variation of that. Well, that's
Speaker 2: what's easier because the technology is all there.
Speaker 1: And now, see, here's a curious question I have for you,
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking back to, you know, when when I
Speaker 1: studied journalism and like high school and you know, I
Speaker 1: was on the junior high school and high school newspaper
Speaker 1: and that, and then I wrote for some local publications
Speaker 1: in New Jersey a little bit myself. Right. But here's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is I studied other media and other
Speaker 1: h let's just call it news media, because that was
Speaker 1: mainly where I was interested. I found that, you know,
Speaker 1: at one time, radio used to have to carry their
Speaker 1: own tape recorders. I found that, you know, TV guys
Speaker 1: in the early days of TV, a lot of times
Speaker 1: it was, yeah, a little team of guys because the
Speaker 1: cameras were so heavy. But if they sent out a
Speaker 1: remote group, you did a lot of that work yourself.
Speaker 1: You had to prepare and bring this stuff in and
Speaker 1: bring it to them raw, and you knew how to
Speaker 1: do a bunch of other things. Now, as the mediums progressed,
Speaker 1: and as newspapers got bigger and you got away from
Speaker 1: the very local, small operations, then there were a whole
Speaker 1: lot of jobs. There was a guy he might have
Speaker 1: just been writing headlines and doing some editing. He might
Speaker 1: have been a copy editor and a headline creator. Then
Speaker 1: there was a guy they called the editor, and he
Speaker 1: was the editor in chief, and he was the guy
Speaker 1: who was supposed to oversee everything, you know, And there
Speaker 1: were various jobs. But as this stuff shrank, it almost
Speaker 1: went full circle. Even when I looked at TV recently,
Speaker 1: the local Fox affiliate, I actually got in an interaction
Speaker 1: with some of the local TV affiliates, right, and they
Speaker 1: sent out reporters that you would see on TV, you know,
Speaker 1: the remote reporter. They didn't come out with a team.
Speaker 1: They came out in their own car. They set up
Speaker 1: a little stand and had either a phone or a
Speaker 1: tablet with them, and boy, they were filming their own footage.
Speaker 1: They would film their own interviews, whip out a microphone
Speaker 1: and talk to people on the scene, take their stuff,
Speaker 1: run back to the station themselves, okay, and that thing
Speaker 1: would be on the air two hours later. And I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it going you know, it seems like it
Speaker 1: all went full circle to where there was a whole
Speaker 1: lot of jobs and there was you know, ten guys
Speaker 1: doing a job at one point. Whether it was a
Speaker 1: newspaper or a broadcast outlet, it doesn't matter. And as
Speaker 1: the digital came in, as the internet age came in,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff where it expanded into all these
Speaker 1: different specialty jobs in the news business, in the information business,
Speaker 1: in the newspaper business, in all of it, all of
Speaker 1: those jobs shrank in order to compete with the fact
Speaker 1: that online you were now responsible for everything yourself, so
Speaker 1: they didn't need the huge overhead to create ten times
Speaker 1: the material. So everything went full circle. You started out
Speaker 1: having to do everything yourself, then you got a team.
Speaker 1: Then as the business changed, the team went away. Now
Speaker 1: you're back to doing it all yourself. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me like almost all of it except the huge,
Speaker 1: huge corporate groups. You know, CNN doesn't just send out
Speaker 1: one guy.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to I think that's a good
Speaker 2: way to look at it. You know, it's funny. I
Speaker 2: when I look back at my thirty years now, I
Speaker 2: went to college and in the nineties, late eighties and
Speaker 2: then early nineties, right, and I went to college to
Speaker 2: study and study literature, and so my career track, really,
Speaker 2: if you could call it that career track, was to
Speaker 2: be a novelist and short story writer. I had no
Speaker 2: interest in being a journalist. I had done that in
Speaker 2: high school and I was really not interested in doing
Speaker 2: it unless I needed a job or something. I thought
Speaker 2: a well, hip pocket, I'll have that as a hip pocket,
Speaker 2: professionally hit pocket job. And the goal was really to
Speaker 2: I don't know, take two or three years or five years,
Speaker 2: I don't know how many, but do a few years
Speaker 2: at a job, save some money, and then quit and
Speaker 2: start writing manuscripts and try to get novels published. And
Speaker 2: because I didn't really think I would be a working
Speaker 2: writer in my twenties, I was never an idealist. I
Speaker 2: was a pragmatist, very pregnant. And what happened was I
Speaker 2: became a working writer in my twenties because I was
Speaker 2: working in radio. I was a board up because I
Speaker 2: had done radio in college, the news at a college
Speaker 2: radio station another campus, and I was playing all these
Speaker 2: rockneys at Beetlestone stores. And I'm looking for another job
Speaker 2: in radio because I left that job. I'm looking for
Speaker 2: another job in radio, and this idea of freelance came
Speaker 2: to me. I don't know where it came from. It's
Speaker 2: like an unsolved mystery. I still don't know. And that's
Speaker 2: what got me to start writing to be a writer.
Speaker 2: I wasn't looking to be a writer at the time.
Speaker 2: I thought I would be a writer closer to thirty,
Speaker 2: or try to be. And I try to get a
Speaker 2: novel published, and I try to get a short stories done,
Speaker 2: and maybe you know, some other kinds of writing. Those
Speaker 2: primarily what I wanted to do. So I never really
Speaker 2: expected to be a freelance writer or a journalist. I
Speaker 2: wasn't looking to be a journalist, frank thing. I study literature.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to deal with journalism. So life never
Speaker 2: quite goes the way you intended to go, really works
Speaker 2: the way you thicket's going to work. And that was
Speaker 2: the way for me, and that was what happened to me.
Speaker 2: As a writer, right, you know, I was intending to
Speaker 2: be a novelist, a short story writer. I ended up
Speaker 2: being a journalist and a freelance under Well.
Speaker 1: The crazy thing to me, the real crazy thing to me, Albert,
Speaker 1: is that you know what, if you were twenty years
Speaker 1: old today, okay, and had the same kind of aspirations,
Speaker 1: absolutely none of what you thought back then would make
Speaker 1: sense today. None of it. Not your fallback position, none
Speaker 1: of it you can't think about. I'll fall back. I'll
Speaker 1: just be, you know, a journalist. I could write for
Speaker 1: a local newspaper, you know, as a backup. Oh no,
Speaker 1: you won't work in radio as a board op maybe,
Speaker 1: But would you be able to do that and do
Speaker 1: any writing? Probably not, not with the way the radio
Speaker 1: business is. I mean, seriously, none of those mediums exist
Speaker 1: the way they did. They still exist, but none of
Speaker 1: those job descriptions are like that. It's all so different.
Speaker 2: It's a different world. And that's why I said earlier,
Speaker 2: I said twenty twenty four, I can't do what I
Speaker 2: did in nineteen ninety four, not at all, not even close.
Speaker 2: It's tremendously changed. It's a different I must well be
Speaker 2: on a different planet, as opposed to a different time
Speaker 2: because it is so very different. And I thought, when
Speaker 2: I retired in twenty seventeen, I'll just write an occasional
Speaker 2: piece and it'll be easy. And I realize it hasn't
Speaker 2: gotten easier, it's gotten harder, and so, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's harder for journalists too, because you're not protected. Like
Speaker 2: I had no idea what people thought about me the
Speaker 2: twenty two year that was a freelance journalist. I had
Speaker 2: no clue. I didn't know because you didn't have the
Speaker 2: interactivity of the Internet the way that you do now
Speaker 2: that I have no clue what anyone would say unless
Speaker 2: they came up to me at an eventae that I
Speaker 2: read your article and I liked it or I didn't
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: Well, either they would have to either they'd have to
Speaker 1: find you at an event, or they'd have to write
Speaker 1: a letter to the editor that might get published a
Speaker 1: month later. And yeah, so look to kind of to
Speaker 1: kind of put a bow on this whole thing. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: we're talking about your career and how you know, not
Speaker 1: not your career particularly, but the career choice has changed,
Speaker 1: for sure. We talked about that plenty, But I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: in general. You know, how is it that you look
Speaker 1: back on this, how do you feel about it? You know,
Speaker 1: what is it that you'd like to say? And also
Speaker 1: again I want to point guys that you can go
Speaker 1: and check out his substack and his YouTube channel. Uh,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have stuff coming up. I'm sure that's gonna
Speaker 1: not necessarily talk about this, but also you have the
Speaker 1: the final Cut, right, which is gonna You're gonna continue
Speaker 1: with the movie reviews and all of that. And I
Speaker 1: heard you.
Speaker 2: Guys film essays, all kinds of film content. I wasn't
Speaker 2: sure I was going to have reviews there, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I've done.
Speaker 1: A few there, so right, and I'm I.
Speaker 2: Have my anniversary d Sinners. That's there about watching movies
Speaker 2: called the discreet and subtle charm of filmgoing, and yeah,
Speaker 2: you know it's you know it, Oh geez, thirty years.
Speaker 2: For me, the twentieth anniversary actually meant more to me
Speaker 2: personally because at one point I was wiped out financially,
Speaker 2: which I don't really talk about, but I went through
Speaker 2: financial hard times and when the twentieth anniversary came, that
Speaker 2: really meant something to me that that personally is the
Speaker 2: most gratifying because Strangely, the tenth anniversary that I had,
Speaker 2: I didn't celebrate. I just because I quit the business
Speaker 2: for like four months. Because I never intended to be
Speaker 2: a freelancer. Like I mentioned before, I was going to
Speaker 2: be a novelist, short story writer, and I felt I
Speaker 2: became a freelancer because I needed to work. I was
Speaker 2: looking for radio gigs and again got the idea and
Speaker 2: needed work. I said, Okay, I'll try this freelance stuff.
Speaker 2: And I went basically overnight, kind of overnight, from being
Speaker 2: an out of work radio guide to being a working
Speaker 2: freelance writer. There was that fairly quick a transition, kind
Speaker 2: of sudden, and you know, it's like not leaving a
Speaker 2: slot machine that pays off. You know. I just kept
Speaker 2: working and working and working. One of the things I
Speaker 2: tell anybody in terms of being any kind of a writer,
Speaker 2: I don't care what kind of writer you are, screenwriter, novelist,
Speaker 2: short story writer, journalist, whatever work is important. You have
Speaker 2: to work, you have to be able. It's funny because
Speaker 2: I was doing this. I think I mentioned that in
Speaker 2: one post on this group that I was on on Facebook.
Speaker 2: But another aspect that I talk about, which I guess
Speaker 2: is controversial to some is like I mentioned before, I
Speaker 2: get the question I've got asked is how do you
Speaker 2: get paid? You have to be able to sustain yourself financially.
Speaker 2: If you're going to be a professional writer, full time writer,
Speaker 2: even a part time writer, you have to get paid.
Speaker 2: And this offends a lot of people. They don't like
Speaker 2: hearing this because they think that there is some kind
Speaker 2: of purest idealized atmosphere, like it's pure oxygen or something
Speaker 2: like there is some kind of completely sure way of
Speaker 2: looking at writing and money is you know, money ruins
Speaker 2: that or it isn't necessary for you an alternative paid.
Speaker 1: I want to offer you an alternative explanation for that.
Speaker 1: If you don't mind, and it's kind of a weird one,
Speaker 1: bear with me. I think that in this age of
Speaker 1: creating content, what has happened is because some people are
Speaker 1: successful and they show their success, there are people that
Speaker 1: somehow think that that is across the board the way
Speaker 1: it works. Like a lot of people figure that because
Speaker 1: the guy like Joe Rogan is making a ton of
Speaker 1: money with the Joe Rogan experience, Okay, uh, that podcasting
Speaker 1: is easy to make money at Okay, it's just easy
Speaker 1: to do Uh, and there are people out there that
Speaker 1: see that. There are some online writers who have a
Speaker 1: lot of support, and they do get paid pretty well.
Speaker 1: Some of them are paid, you know, for their books
Speaker 1: and whatnot, and they get good book contracts and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. And a lot of people think,
Speaker 1: after looking at the one successful guy, that that's the
Speaker 1: way that industry works. There's a lot of people that think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he's got a website with me, he's got a website,
Speaker 1: he's got this, he's got that, he must be doing
Speaker 1: just fine financially. I'm not. It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1: You don't automatically show up and go here's my podcaster card,
Speaker 1: now pay me. You have to build your own way
Speaker 1: of getting paid creating any kind of content anywhere.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: It is the reality of these things, whether you're writing,
Speaker 1: or you're doing spoken word, or you're doing music. If
Speaker 1: you are not somehow finding a way to create a
Speaker 1: revenue stream, then guess what, you're not going to get paid.
Speaker 1: And if you can afford to do it for free,
Speaker 1: that's great, but most people can't not and put a
Speaker 1: significant amount of time into it. So you know, when
Speaker 1: I say i'm listeners supported, there are some listeners that
Speaker 1: think I must be doing really good because I have
Speaker 1: a website and I have this. No, that is not paying.
Speaker 1: Anybody can have a website. Anybody could start a podcast.
Speaker 1: You know. Anybody can start a podcast pretty much. There
Speaker 1: are plenty of free platforms. Anybody can.
Speaker 2: I just started what I never thought i'd do, a podcast.
Speaker 1: It takes five It takes five minutes to sign up
Speaker 1: on a substack. Okay, it is not what you have
Speaker 1: set up. Anybody could do that. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there's automatically a paycheck waiting for you. So you know that.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing. They see a guy like Rogan
Speaker 1: and they figure, well, that's the podcasting world. If you
Speaker 1: have any sort of popularity, you're obviously getting paid. Not true,
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work that way. It's just like you know,
Speaker 1: people you see on TV. Uh, you know, used to
Speaker 1: it used to be if you saw him on TV,
Speaker 1: they were usually doing pretty well. Uh. Not always the case,
Speaker 1: but a whole lot more of the case than it
Speaker 1: is today in this age. Just because you exist out
Speaker 1: there in content land doesn't mean that you're getting paid.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you're getting a living wage or
Speaker 1: you know, the guy who's working at McDonald's is getting
Speaker 1: paid better than you. In most cases, even when a
Speaker 1: lot of people think you're doing well, you know, even
Speaker 1: when you have sponsors, people go, oh, well you have
Speaker 1: a sponsor or whatever. A lot of people are getting
Speaker 1: paid on commissions. You know they're not even getting so
Speaker 1: you know they're getting pennies. So purview or let me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, medus address this and one of the reasons I
Speaker 2: used to get asked when I was a freelancer for
Speaker 2: twenty two years. I used to get asked, not every year,
Speaker 2: but a number of years, why haven't you written a book?
Speaker 2: Are you going to write a book or whatever? And
Speaker 2: my response to that is, I can't afford the pay cut,
Speaker 2: or you know I make more money, I'll lose money, right,
Speaker 2: And the reality is books don't make you money unless
Speaker 2: you're getting a good loyalty rate. If you're dealing with
Speaker 2: the track publisher, tragical publisher, small, big, whatever, you've got
Speaker 2: a decent royalty rate, it's selling well, and maybe you've
Speaker 2: gotten an advance so and not every not every published
Speaker 2: author gets an advance these days, so you get it.
Speaker 2: If you're getting an advance, plus you have a royalty,
Speaker 2: and royalty is okay, and your books are selling, you're
Speaker 2: able to survive. That's what you have to understand.
Speaker 1: Right, and and again you.
Speaker 2: Know, and and again again. From my perspective as a freelancer,
Speaker 2: I'm getting paid a lives, getting get paid a lump
Speaker 2: sump per article. So why am i? And so I
Speaker 2: I'm all about making money off of everything that I write.
Speaker 2: One of the things I tell writers is, whether you're
Speaker 2: freelance or not, you have to make a profit of
Speaker 2: for everything that you write. And that may not be
Speaker 2: something people want to hear, but you can't lose money
Speaker 2: on every writing project that you're doing because if you're
Speaker 2: spending more money, if there's money that needs to be
Speaker 2: spent on it, then you are making it. You're in
Speaker 2: the red and not the black, and it won't be sustainable.
Speaker 2: You have to find a way to make money off
Speaker 2: of everything that you're writing. And that's one of the
Speaker 2: pieces of advice that I have. And one of the
Speaker 2: things I also say is never write for free. Always
Speaker 2: write for a fee. No one should be writing for
Speaker 2: free in this day and age. I'm sorry, I know
Speaker 2: there are people who don't agree that people don't like this.
Speaker 2: If you want to be a foal, a part time writer,
Speaker 2: professional writer, or any kind of writer, you should be
Speaker 2: getting paid for everything that you're writing that's getting published.
Speaker 1: And also yeah, and also I would suggest don't be
Speaker 1: fooled by some of those upper echelon successes you see,
Speaker 1: because even in the case of authors, a lot of times,
Speaker 1: the reason why they're successful in getting paid so well,
Speaker 1: let's be honest, is that someone backed them out of
Speaker 1: the gate. If you have an investment, okay, in your
Speaker 1: podcast or you as a writer or whatever. Like in
Speaker 1: other words, if I had a PR guy that I
Speaker 1: hired for you and got you to go on you know,
Speaker 1: the bigger talk shows all right, and got you out
Speaker 1: in front of larger audiences all the time, like I
Speaker 1: made you a presence one of the talking heads that
Speaker 1: shows up because I'm a PR guy who's constantly getting
Speaker 1: you into that. Or I hire a PR guy to
Speaker 1: do that and I make Albert Lanier a household name.
Speaker 1: Then that means what you write is now more valuable.
Speaker 1: You create a podcast, it's more valuable because you have
Speaker 1: the advantage of all of that publicity. And guys like
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan started with that. They started with somebody pushing them,
Speaker 1: and he also got in at the right time, before
Speaker 1: this flood of like everybody and their mother can start
Speaker 1: a podcast kind of situation. He got in at the
Speaker 1: right time and he was also backed. But many of
Speaker 1: the authors who got those better book contracts got them
Speaker 1: because their name was constantly out there. They were being
Speaker 1: invited to the round tables, they were sitting on the
Speaker 1: Sunday shows, they were doing c SPAN, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: depending on their particular you know, Niche again, right, they
Speaker 1: might have been on the View, They might have been
Speaker 1: on many radio shows, pretty much doing a tour of
Speaker 1: all the clear channel radio shows. You know, they got
Speaker 1: on the Howard Stern Show and made a couple outrageous statements.
Speaker 1: They sat down with Joe Rogan and smoked a joint,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Right, they got out there and they
Speaker 1: were constantly being pushed. They also have social media managers
Speaker 1: who you know, again, if you can afford to pay
Speaker 1: a few people, you can start off with a running
Speaker 1: start in any content creation. There's cheaper ways to do it,
Speaker 1: and there's a spectrum of ways to do this. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, for a couple hundred bucks for a couple
Speaker 1: thousand bucks for many thousands of dollars. If it's invested
Speaker 1: in it is still standard that way. There is still
Speaker 1: something to be said for having a group of people
Speaker 1: that take care of your promotion while you take care
Speaker 1: of your craft. You know, is it the actor's craft
Speaker 1: that gets them a lot of stuff? No, it's the
Speaker 1: fact that somebody's taking care that people don't forget about
Speaker 1: this guy, that they turn him into a household name
Speaker 1: or woman, right, that they keep their face out there,
Speaker 1: they keep their name out there, they keep them out
Speaker 1: there as a commodity. They make sure that articles are
Speaker 1: printed about them, etc. Et cetera. All of these things
Speaker 1: go on, and if you have the ability to invest
Speaker 1: in it, you can get a return if it's invested properly.
Speaker 1: But for the majority of us that are diy okay,
Speaker 1: really do it yourself, because we don't have a budget
Speaker 1: to hire pr people, to hire a publicist, et cetera.
Speaker 1: This is what you're going to get. And there is
Speaker 1: a huge population of people out there doing it themselves.
Speaker 1: So you know, there you go. That is something that
Speaker 1: didn't used to exist in the ecosystem as well. And
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting because you've actually gotten to see
Speaker 1: it all in a way, you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: height of the standardized corporate man.
Speaker 2: I think that's a fair thing to say. I think
Speaker 2: that's a fair I've seen a lot, and I cited
Speaker 2: at the beginning my initial twenty plus year twenty two
Speaker 2: years writing for publications. In the last seven or eight
Speaker 2: writing online for publications online, my own so one, I'm
Speaker 2: writing for me. I'm not writing for anyone else. In
Speaker 2: the past, people would ask me, what do you like
Speaker 2: to write about. I'm like, it's not what I it's
Speaker 2: not what I want to write about. It's what I
Speaker 2: want to write about that I can sell to an
Speaker 2: editor and publisher and a magazine so that I can
Speaker 2: write it and get paid. That's what it's about. Now.
Speaker 2: With the blog, it was a whole different world. For
Speaker 2: the first time, I'm writing things I want to write about,
Speaker 2: and so it's very different, you know. And with substack
Speaker 2: it's the same thing, except it's different because it's a
Speaker 2: digital newsletter as opposed to a blog, to different forms really,
Speaker 2: but today it's all about what I'm interested in and
Speaker 2: what I like and what I'm intrigued with. And in
Speaker 2: the past it was about what I was hired to
Speaker 2: write because I often wrote an assignment and what I
Speaker 2: was looking to write what I could sell in terms
Speaker 2: of writing, and I didn't have any problem with that
Speaker 2: because that was the job. You know. I used to
Speaker 2: define myself as a freelancer. Again, another controversial aspect for
Speaker 2: some people. They liked this. I used to call myself
Speaker 2: a hit man. I used to call myself a mercenary.
Speaker 2: I used to call myself a soldier of fortune. You know,
Speaker 2: that makes me sound like I'm one of the members
Speaker 2: of the A team to an extent, or what have you.
Speaker 2: But that's how I used to define myself as a freelancer.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm writing to get paid. I'm writing to
Speaker 2: make money. And one of the things that I tell
Speaker 2: anyone these days is professionals get paid. Amateurs get napped. Again,
Speaker 2: you don't need to make a lot of money. So
Speaker 2: I tell people. One of the things I tell people,
Speaker 2: the advice I give it recently is you have to
Speaker 2: get paid if you're going to be a writer.
Speaker 1: And I think that's I think that's a great way
Speaker 1: to cap this off. Anything you want to say in closing,
Speaker 1: We've been on for more than an hour now with
Speaker 1: Albert Lanier, veteran journalist again who's been on the program
Speaker 1: a few times but never really purely talked about the
Speaker 1: business of writing. And I guess we've kind of gone
Speaker 1: through a retrospective of his personal career as well as
Speaker 1: the change in the career itself of being a writer
Speaker 1: over the three decades. I mean, it just is what
Speaker 1: it is. A twenty something years there as a freelance journalist,
Speaker 1: but then another eight doing it online and in this
Speaker 1: new reality which has even changed during the time from
Speaker 1: when you started to now, you know, from twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: to today, it's a different thing. And you know doing
Speaker 1: these radio shows and podcasts, you've done that for a
Speaker 1: bit too, which is something you wouldn't have even bothered
Speaker 1: to do in the nineties most likely.
Speaker 2: Uh No, I never got interviewed until two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: Was the first interview I got interviewed on a show
Speaker 2: called The Newsmaker Show and radio station w l EA
Speaker 2: and Hornellsville, New York.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: I was interviewed by an ark I wrote for Honold
Speaker 2: Luliki about a wind power firm called the First Wind. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I was doing local radio. I was doing
Speaker 2: commercial radio and online radio, and I was doing all
Speaker 2: of that, and that was one of the things that
Speaker 2: told that indicated to me that this it wasn't the
Speaker 2: same anymore. Because I was going on radio shows, I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm just talking about an article or some other things
Speaker 2: I'm interested. I realized this is marketing, this is promotion,
Speaker 2: and so I might as well stick with this. And
Speaker 2: that's what I've done. Every year. I do a few
Speaker 2: podcasts and talk shows every year. I've done that since
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. And even though I retired, actually
Speaker 2: there's more of a reason for me to do a
Speaker 2: show like this, that's the thought. I thought I would
Speaker 2: have less reason new So with the blog, I realized
Speaker 2: you've got to promote, which hadn't really done on shows.
Speaker 2: And then with substack, I realized, you know, the stuff
Speaker 2: that you write when you get on a podcast or
Speaker 2: radio show or any kind of show you're listening. You
Speaker 2: have an audience that's listening, right, and you've got to
Speaker 2: reach that audience and try to get them to read
Speaker 2: your stuff. So now you're at a point where you
Speaker 2: have to get people to read your stuff. You have
Speaker 2: to get people to actually take a look at what
Speaker 2: you've written. It's not enough for you to write them
Speaker 2: write it because with a magazine or newspaper or anything else,
Speaker 2: they had a built in audience, right, and the audience would.
Speaker 1: Read it, you know.
Speaker 2: Now then have to create the audience. You don't have
Speaker 2: to go out there and sell what you're writing to
Speaker 2: an audience where they can become part of your audience.
Speaker 1: Right. So instead of the used.
Speaker 2: To be about the story, now it's about the audience. Right.
Speaker 2: It used to be about about getting the story, writing
Speaker 2: the story, and sending the story and then wait for
Speaker 2: another story. Now it's about finding the audience, talking to
Speaker 2: the audience, and getting the audience to read your stuff.
Speaker 1: It used to bet it used to be you benefited
Speaker 1: from the built in audience. Now you have to actually
Speaker 1: build the audience yourself, you know. So that's what it
Speaker 1: comes down to. But again I'll give you guys the
Speaker 1: links to uh, to the to the substack and also
Speaker 1: the YouTube. Uh the final cut is the thing about movies. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the week that is, I believe it. I
Speaker 1: always forget how that's worded, but that's another one on substack.
Speaker 1: Either way, if you find Albert Lanier's work out there,
Speaker 1: I advise you check it out. I've given you the
Speaker 1: links in the live chatroom at ochelli dot com, but
Speaker 1: also it'll be in the show notes with the podcast
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't hear the show live
Speaker 1: or bother with the website, and you're just getting it
Speaker 1: off your feed, which is all other things. Some people
Speaker 1: just get stuff off of their feed, right anyway, Another
Speaker 1: discussion with veteran journalist Albert Lanier and always happy to
Speaker 1: have you along. Thank you for doing this with me tonight, sir, well.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me unexpected. I was just gonna
Speaker 2: submarate my thirty denniversaries this month and leave it at that.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad I came on. I enjoyed talking about it,
Speaker 2: and I'm glad I was able to commemorate thirty years right, and.
Speaker 1: I think we did it justice by explaining, you know,
Speaker 1: there used to be a different world before this one.
Speaker 1: I love doing that. But anyway, guys, no matter who
Speaker 1: you are, where you are, when you are, remember I'm
Speaker 1: merely o'celly. All of you are indeed the effect, and
Speaker 1: keep listening to ocelly dot com Radio. We are here
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. If you're here in the stream,
Speaker 1: and there's always something different on.
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Speaker 2: This is James Corbin at quarter Report.
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