What I learned From Guest Speaker Jennifer Moody

Jennifer Moody is a professional journalist who has been working for the Democrat Harold since 1995. She is not only a versatile journalist who can cover anything from fires to school board meetings but is also an excellent speaker.

Learning to write feature articles is not easy but Moody gave some excellent advice in reference to the difficult task. First she said, "Feature writing is as important as the straight news, it fills in around the edges."

Moody suggested finding your own style when writing. Realize that there is no right way to write a feature article, it can be hard hitting or punchy. The three most important parts of the article says Moody is "Be accurate, fair and keep yourself out of it as much as possible because unless it is labeled opinion or commentary your voice has no part in it!"

She goes on to talk about the importance of convention (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and how surprising it is that readers measure your intelligence by the mistakes you make in any of these areas.

When asked how she limits the size of the story and amount of issues in the story she said, "You don't write about the bakery, you write about the piece of pie." This advice was of great importance to me, because I never know where to trim the article, especially when tackling stories that could potentially veer off into ten other features.

Moody is absolutely a seasoned journalist and it shows in her writing and her ability to find the story. What is most impressive though is the way her stories draw in the reader and hopefully one day I will be able to be as excellent a journalist as she is.

At a glance:
Who: Jennifer Moody
What: Writer for the Albany Democrat Herald
About: Three ideas learned from Moody

Assignment: Learning to write from an excellent writer

Amber Naslund is a communications and branding strategist who consults, writes, and speaks in service of helping people and organizations make change happen. I knew she would be one of the many excellent writers for me to learn how to become a more desirable writer.

After reading two other articles written by different authors, I chose to write about the article "Wanna Write? Read Voraciously" by Naslund because it was written in a simple and clear to read style.

The three key points I learned from Naslund were:
1. To read alot, and not just one book, but blogs, magazine articles, business book, fiction, biographies, whatever suits you.
2. Writing is an active discipline, so you have to make time to write and keep writing, never stop.
3. Read a book a week, because it will allow you to identify good and bad writing, and learn how to spot words that are easy to read and words that are better not to write.

Naslund is one of the writers that I believe to be easy to read because you never have to guess her thoughts. She gives a great deal of information in a short article and her links are helpful to the reader.

With Naslund there is definitely a sense that she believes in what she writes and is a very passionate person.


At a Glance
Amber Naslund
Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra on Twitter) is a communications and business strategist and the VP of Social Strategy for Radian6. She's a writer, professional speaker, community and social media strategist, and has worked with businesses of all sizes to solve business problems through better communication.