Bad advertisements make me wish I used an ad-blocker.

Take noisy online advertisements. They wake up my sleepy family, disturb co-workers and interfere with telephone calls.

Thanks to them, my computer speakers are switched off a lot of the time. I miss useful audio cues.

An ad-blocker might be handy dealing with video commercials and those annoying animated things that dance across the screen.

But I'm not going to block ads.

Advertising pays for the best stuff online. Without online advertising, we would have to pay for everything we read, hear or see on the Internet.

There's nothing illegal or immoral about blocking ads. Ad-blocking isn't killing the internet.

But it is damaging. It means publishers invest less in writers and other media. It means there are fewer jobs.

I'm a journalist. I earn a living because people pay me to produce words.

There are three ways I can get paid:

1. Commissioning: People pay me directly to write.
2. Copy sales: Readers buy a print publication or subscribe to an online title or go through a pay wall.
3. Advertising: Advertisers pay me when somebody reads my words and, at the same time, looks at an advertisement.
   

If you want to read online and you block ads, then subscribe to online pay wall sites or start commissioning copy because these are the only two options over the long term.

If my posts, comments, tweets and Facebook messages about newspaper pay walls seem contradictory, it is because I'm conflicted over the issue.

I'm a journalist. I've worked as an editor and a publisher. For the last 30 years I earned almost my entire income from journalism. Most of it came from newspaper publishers, so I've personal vested interest in the industry's profitability.

As a journalist I want projects like Rupert Murdoch's pay wall at The Times to work. It means I'll get paid.

If he can get online readers to subscribe, journalism will have a healthy future and I don't need to find a new career.

That would be a good thing.

People will pay for good material. I work as a freelance for Communications Day, a daily PDF subscription newsletter.

Its business model works because the newsletter covers a narrow niche in-depth. Telecommunications people are willing to pay someone else to sift through the day's news; then summarise and interpret it.

My conflict comes because as someone who has grown up with computers and the internet I'm not convinced Murdoch-style pay walls can work for everyday newspapers.

I don't subscribe to the 'information wants to be free' idea. That's nonsense. Information doesn't want anything. But there is a resistance to non-free information.

Many people aren't willing to pay for online information, news or entertainment. If they are the overwhelming majority, then pay walled online newspapers will struggle to make money.

This is a problem because there isn't enough advertising money to pay journalists to gather and write news.

Publishers can make more money from more obtrusive advertising, but that turns readers off.

So publishers are caught in a vice. At the moment, pay walls and subscriptions seem  the best route out of this mess.

The only other answer is for quality online publishers to find a way to charge advertisers a premium when their marketing material appears alongside good editorial. The problem here is to get premium rates without selling the editorial integrity.

This isn't going to happen. So at the moment I'm hoping the pay wall will work while looking for another way to turn online traffic into money.

Any better ideas?

What to do when an interview subject talks like a robot

Interviews are the best way to quickly collect information for any kind of writing.

As a freelance journalist I interview two or three people every day.

I like writing interviews because other people's words are livelier and more interesting than long passages of descriptive prose.

Most interviews go well. The best interviewees know their stuff and express their ideas clearly. And they sound human. That is, they talk like real people and use everyday language.

Some interview subjects are anything but human. They sound like bloodless automatons.

Some people hide behind jargon and officialese because they feel safe that way or because they, wrongly, think it makes them sound smarter. They may be nervous or not confident using their own words.

Another explanation is media training. Some interviewees learn or prepare 'canned' statements designed to stay "on message". In some cases there is a communications professional standing in the wings.

They sound like they are reading from a prepared document. Sometimes they are.

I've three techniques for helping interviewees to sound human:

1. Let them get the canned statements off their chest first. Take notes – this could be all you get. Then ask them questions which get them to say the same things again. They'll be far more likely to speak like humans second-time around. If this doesn't work, I've found even Daleks run out of resistance when you go back for a third try.
2. Play dumb, get them to explain jargon. Some interviewers fear this because they worry it makes them look stupid. Don't worry; you can look smart when your copy appears explaining difficult ideas in understandable English to the rest of humanity. If it really bothers you, say something like: "I understand what it means, but my readers aren't familiar with the term".
3. Put them at ease. This may sound like a black hat strategy, it isn't. Often interview subjects are tense before the interview. Once they think they have delivered the key message in their corporate language they often relax. When this happens chat about their words, go over points casually– but keep your eyes and ears open. If you use a microphone leave it running.
   Once the show is over, interview subjects drop back into human form. I've had interviews where the best words came travelling down in the lift or even while unlocking my car to drive home.
   

Americans use more commas than the British*.

You often find long, asthmatic, comma-packed sentences in American newspapers. They don't make for easy reading.

I prefer using plenty of full stops — periods to Americans — and sparing the comma. I only use commas where they aid understanding. Writers often underrate the comma's use as an aid to sense.

It can be hard keeping track of who does what to whom in long, comma-laden sentences. Breaking sentences into smaller units of meaning makes your writing easier to follow.

Some Americans put commas between all clauses and sub-clauses. British-trained writers avoid them between short clauses at the start of sentences.

Americans use commas before and at the end of a sequence of items. In Britain the final comma only gets used when one of the sequence items includes an and.

Some experts report American writers are slowly moving towards British patterns and commas are now less common on both sides of the Atlantic.

When training younger journalists, I used to joke about Americans using lots more commas than the Brits because they are so much richer and can afford the extra ink.

*Australians and New Zealanders follow the British pattern.

Winston Churchill said: “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”

He was right.

Short words are best because they don’t get in the reader’s way. They are familiar. This makes them easy to understand and easy to spell.

They are also easier to pronounce

Most short words come from Anglo-Saxon, not Latin. They tend to describe real world objects and actions rather than abstract concepts.

Short words get straight to the point.

Elmore Leonard wrote this as the last of his ten rules of writing.

If it sounds like writing, rewrite it

Leonard is an author. A first-rate author who writes fast-paced novels with great dialogue and plenty of action.

While Leonard is an artist, his advice also applies to journalists and anyone else who writes for a living.

What he means, is make sure you writing doesn't sound like an undergraduate essay or a piece of high school homework.

When I started as a journalist, newspapers and magazines were still put together using hot metal type. At times I catch a faint metallic smell reminding me of those days.

I also remember the clack of typewriters, telephones with bells, the newsroom clash of egos, the mumbling from the subs desk and the questions from the proof-readers. I've never been a smoker, but years spent working in newsrooms probably did as much damage to my lungs. And the pub lunches waiting for contacts to spill the beans and deliver an exclusive punished my liver.

Of course I miss the shabby glamour of the old days. Journalism was fun then. It can still be fun.

The one thing I feel newspapers really lost when moving to modern digital systems were the clipping and photo libraries, the librarians and the other custodians of knowledge who just knew how to find stuff fast. Google did for them.

Google does a great job, but I miss chatting with an intelligent human being then seeing a Manilla folder of clips and photos arrive on my desk an hour or so later.

It comes as no surprise to read Crikey's half of Australian news is spin. After reading Nick Davies' Flat Earth News and spending the last 30 years of my life as a journalist, I'd expect a higher percentage.

Newspapers no longer invest in journalists and news gathering. It's that simple.

I've heard publishing executives explain 'content' – they rarely think about news – can be picked up for free. And some think money spent on reporter's salaries is going down the drain.

One problem with publishers allowing industry relatively cheap access to the pages of once-proud papers is it cheapens the value of advertising. If a $5,000 investment in PR can get editorial on the front page, that lowers the value of newspaper advertising.