Julie Starr’s Evolving Newsroom is a great New Zealand website about journalism and what we once thought of as the newspaper business. Starr writes as much about the technology underpinning modern journalism as the nitty gritty of the subject itself. While I doubt we’d agree on everything, I count her among the people who ‘get it’.

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There’s no serious New Zealand counterpart to The Australian’s weekly Media section, which also appears online as part of the paper’s website. Given the section is part of Australia’s national daily newspaper, the focus is firmly on that country’s media, but there’s a huge overlap with New Zealand’s media industry and, anyway, the Australian does a good job of covering the big picture stories which affect us all. It’s not entirely unbiased — after all The Australian is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited — and often shows Fairfax in an less flattering light and pulls its punches over News’ properties, but overall the coverage is well balanced. While the print section is weekly, the online news is updated regularly throughout the week.

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Another great Australian resource is the online-only mUmBRELLA which covers media and marketing. The site takes a much more light-hearted approach than the Australian, which can be a bit heavy at times. It also tends to focus on short, snappy pieces with a healthy dose of reader comments. From my point of view there’s a lower signal-to-noise ratio. Nevertheless it’s on my daily read list and I love it, although I hate the typographic silly buggers with the name.

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As the name suggests the anonymous writer of Freelance Unbound is a freelance journalist. He worked in the trade press in the UK and does a little teaching as well. I like the site, partly because it moves smoothly between big picture ‘think’ pieces and snappy little items — there’s often some fun and plenty of good reader comments. There’s some great material covering the point where the world of traditional journalism collides with social media and other online communications tools. The site also has an excellent voice, although I suspect that’s just the author’s natural voice.

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Publishing 2.0 is an American site with a heavy focus on web publishing, it’s blurb says it is about “how technology is transforming media”. A lot of the material appears to be aimed at people managing traditional media companies – which in American tends to mean large corporation. Nevertheless there’s plenty of valuable ideas and news.

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So far I’ve carefully trying to avoid using the word ‘blog’. This isn’t because I’m some print era fogey in a state of digital denial. As far as I’m concerned it’s a term that conjures up the wrong image. But there’s simply no getting around the online journalism blog which appears to be written and edited by professionals exhibiting the very skills most bloggers seem to disdain. The site is primarily British, with correspondents from around the world. A lot of the material is aimed at showing switched on journalists how to use technology to improve their work.

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I don’t always agree with Martin Hurst who sporadically makes entries on his Ethical Martini site, but his ideas are usually worth reading. Hirst is an academic who teaches at Auckland University of Technology and specialise in media ethics.

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At school we were taught never to start sentences with “And”.

And yet newspaper journalists do it all the time. It’s one of the first so-called writing rules professional writers learn to break.

There’s nothing wrong with using “And” to begin a sentence or a paragraph. In fact, it can be a great way to smooth the flow of a series of short sentences that would otherwise appear too staccato for comfortable reading.

However, it works best if you only break this rule in moderation. Overusing “And” at the start of sentences quickly makes your text boring.

As Keith Waterhouse points out in the excellent Daily Mirror Style, if you write too many sentences starting with the word, your prose will read like the New English Bible.

I consciously limit my use of sentences beginning with “And”. As a rule of thumb I aim for only one “And” sentence start in a short piece. For longer stories, you can get away with using it a few times. But control any urge to sprinkle sentences starting with “And” through your copy.

Other conjunctions

The school rule didn’t just apply to “And”, starting sentences with other conjunctions was equally forbidden. As an aside, conjunctions are ‘joining’ words used to string phrases together – usually, but not always, to build more complex sentences.

There are plenty of alternative conjunctions to call on at the start of your sentences:

• “But” is a great way to start a sentence that disagrees with the previous one.
• “Yet” is a less-frequently used alternative.
• “Or” is a great word for helping text flow.
• Some people don’t like sentences to start with “However”. I would regard that as another rule worth breaking.
• “Although” is a possibility. In practice it can be better to shorten the word to “Though” at the start of a sentence.

More ideas

Michelle Pierce covered this subject rather well in Three Grammar Rules You Can (And Should) Break for Copyblogger.

Better writing

This is the second in a series of articles aimed at helping you to improve your writing. The material is based on my 30-plus years experience as an editor and journalist working on newspapers and magazines. If you could use my skills to help communicate your message, please visit my website: billbennett.co.nz