SAMPLE OPENING PAGES
of
Gordon Burgett's
"How to Get Your Magazine, Newsletter,
Journal, and
Newspaper Articles
in Print 75% of the
Time"
Being a superintendent or principal gives
you some local clout with the town (and perhaps county) newspaper editors, who
may feel some pressure to put what you write on their pages (for good or bad).
Educational association newsletters or journals might also give you a preferred
nod in considering your idea or text, but that's about it. For the rest, you
need a process that increases your writing and publishing ratio far above the
average write-it-and-send-it-in system used by the casual sometime journalist
or writer.
That's what this report provides, plus some
serious questions you must ask yourself before you put your words in public
display.
How do I know what I'm proposing will work?
Because I'm a former sixth-grade teacher turned college instructor turned
university dean who conquered educationese
sufficiently to put 1,700+ freelance articles in print, as well as 27 books,
including my Writer's Digest's Sell and Resell Your Magazine
Articles. I've also been an editor who received your missives and
decided whether to inflict them on an unsuspecting public readership!
So let's give you some tools that put your
words in public view in article format. (I have another report in this series
about books: “How to Profitably
Self-Publish and Sell Your Own Book(s) to Your Educational Colleagues.”) Let me also
draw from a four-hour workshop I have offered probably 1,000 times since 1982
called "How to Sell 75% of Your Freelance Writing"), adapting it here
to your unique situation as educational administrative leaders. For specifics,
check
www.gordonburgett.com/seminars.htm.
What
exceptional tools and advantages do superintendents and principals bring to the
article-writing world?
Literacy, for starters. You can't rise to your present position without knowing basic sentence
structure and at least how to direct the tools of logic and persuasion into
some effective way. Lest that sound modest, that puts you ahead of at least 70%
of the others who want your print space. (But let's not go too far: keep those
secretaries and in-office proofreaders close by, so the final prose you submit
for print is at least close to the Mother Tongue.)
And something to say, at least if it's
education-related. It's
impossible to be at the hub of the local educational structure and not have
valuable things to share with others. The value of those messages will differ
with the audiences you care to address. Town readers want to know about their
kids and grandkids and what you are, aren't, or could be doing to make their
learning and growing years best spent. Education journals want to know if the
theories work and specifically how you are testing or changing them. Newspapers
love numbers—the
percent of your third graders toking thrice daily or
the most recent results of the test (any test)—and
"student-does-good" human interest shorts. While the newsletter for
the National Association of School Hedge Trimmers wants to know precisely what
the brass thinks about your staff hedge trimmers, their key role in creating
learning policy, their retirement plan, or almost anything positive and
potentially lucrative (to its association members) that you can provide (in 300
words).
You are the top brass and what you say (if
said well) will get a favorable nod for print space in many publications—if it is clear, worth the
time to read, and expands the readers' knowledge or understanding. That nod
grows as the length of the article decreases. Your biggest problem is much less
finding willing publishers and readers than it is saying what you want to in
the least amount of print time. If print words were real estate, the larger the
circulation, the higher the rent you'd have to pay for the copy inches your
article occupies. Top space priority goes to ads. Everything else fights for
the white holes in between. The quicker you get to your message, the clearer it
is said, the higher your chances of seeing it in black and white.
You also have obvious visibility. People know you, have a notion
what supers and principals do, realize you are near the top of your chosen
field, and as long as what you say makes sense, doesn't offend (at least
grossly or too quickly), and sounds intelligent, they are willing to assume
there is value in your words.
Power is involved too, particularly to others near the top
of their fields or somehow linked to the local power grid. You may be the
newest, youngest jefe of the most remote and
smallest district or school in the state (which puts you near the bottom on the
state educational ladder), but in your bailiwick you are the king pin. There
you must be listened to.
So those are reasons local editors will give
you space, if not for your own words then at least to share the crux of your
ideas or "news." Extend that outward and it still gives you some leverage.
You are a "somebody" who cannot simply be dismissed.
Why
do you want to put articles in print anyway?
"Aren't you already busy enough
wrestling with gang lords, sleuthing on the janitors, and attending
meetings?" asks the unwashed public. Don't articles take time to write,
rewrite, edit, and tinker with, after finding a publication willing to use
them? Alas, they do.
And there can be a quick and steep downside.
These are the first two pages of the report.
For more, see a summary of
its contents plus more information about other reports.
Want to look at the Introduction
or Chapter
1 of
What Every Superintendent and Principal Needs to Know?
Or read sample
pages of other reports...
Then if you want to order the book or a
report...
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