New Yorker Twitter Proposal Genius Dan Baum
14 May
Thanks to one of our readers for the heads-up on this story about Dan Baum, a writer who detailed his hiring and firing by The New Yorker on Twitter. I’ve always said that if you’re going to burn a bridge, burn it trendy!
Of more interest is Dan Baum’s website, where he generously offers .pdfs of proposals he’s written for various national magazines.
Here are the proposals that worked
Here are the proposals that failed
Two things I hope you take away from reading Baum’s proposals:
1. You write the piece in order to get permission to write the piece.
Notice how many facts Baum already has at his command in these proposals. So if you’re pitching a story about Twitter, you can’t just say, “Twitter is really hot right now so it would make a good story.” Better to put a number on the hotness (there are X million people on Twitter). Even better to make some calls and find the fact that won’t immediately show up in a Google search (people are joining Twitter at a rate of X people a minute). Better still to contextualize that more pointed fact (at a rate of X people a minute, Twitter achieved in three weeks the user base it took AOL three years to build).
2. The difference between a proposal that sells and one that doesn’t is that the proposal that sells sells and the one that doesn’t doesn’t.
If I mixed up all these proposals and asked you to pick the ones that turned into paid stories and the ones that didn’t, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Even if you’re an excellent writer like Dan, you only control part of your destiny. There are countless other factors—editorial mandates, competitive works, the Coriolis effect—that determine the outcome. Do your best—and by all means learn and grown and all that—but most of all get yourself out there and pitch. Quality matters, but it’s also a bit of a number game. Act accordingly.
[For the impatient, the whole thing -- including the Twitterchunked breaks -- is here.]
From the conclusion of the saga:
The biggest disappointment was learning that, after all, it’s not only about the work on the page. / That the writing life is not a pure meritocracy, or a refuge from office politics. All that crap still matters. / Even at the top of the heap. Perhaps especially at the top of the heap. / Who knew?
I’d been thinking the word “duh” the whole time while reading this; that conclusion sealed it for me.
While Bauer is clearly a good writer, and highly valued by the periodicals he’s written for, he seems never to have done anything else. Otherwise, how could he be so naive as to think that getting along with people in a way that they’re used to getting along — “that crap” — should somehow not be a requirement for ANY job, including freelancing and “staff writing”? What makes the NYer and David Remnick so different from (say) the editors at Rolling Stone and the Wall St. Journal in this respect?
What makes them different is that Bauer brought his own expectations to the relationship and professes amazement that his expectations aren’t being met. Because, y’know, all those other people’s expectations may be crap but his own aren’t, right?
(Apparently RS’s and the Journal’s (and Playboy’s, etc.) editors and he are on the same page, so good for him on that score.)
To his credit, he does report that he made the following mistakes: [enumerations follow]. But then he insists that these wouldn’t have been mistakes if only other people had held the same values and behaved the same way as he himself.
Duh.
I’m sort of embarrassed for the writing profession that he’s apparently getting accolades for having tweeted all this, irrespective of the merits or faults of what he’s tweeting. Will be interesting to see others’ comments.
P.S. I apologize for the thread-jacking; my previous comment doesn’t really bear on the issues of how to prepare proposals that work (or don’t).
Obviously something touched a nerve, though.
I’m interested in them because they live in my hometown. And Rolling Stone has some of the best writing right now. I’d kill to be in that magazine, but I’ve never gone for non-fic. I wonder what it would take to go that direction? An inside gig to something steamy and current, I bet.
As a relatively novice article-proposal writer this is an education! Sure, many of us have read Baum, what a fascinating backstage look at the process. A couple years ago I proposed my very first feature article to Jay Dixit the senior editor at “Psychology Today”. It was about seniors–even geriatrics–who were taking courses at St. Thomas in St. Paul through a unique program making virtually any undergrad course in the catalogue available for twenty-five dollars a semester. When Dixit wrote back asking for the story I figured this was way too easy. Of course I was right. It was way too easy. “Psych Today” didn’t run it, and I’ve been trying to break through somewhere with vari0us stories ever since. Great post.
Just reading through some of Baum’s proposals. I thought every single one was terrific. However, this detailed, very in-depth approach seems contrary to the sprightly, intense query “grabber” I deduced from reading “An Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Magazine Query”. Is the approach different if you’re writing for a specific editor?
I’ve just skimmed this and will be back later to take my time and take it in.
Thanks for doing these! I need to learn this stuff, and use it. I have a few pieces just about ready to go now.
Also insightful: on his web site (http://bit.ly/WB3Vp), Baum posts an example of his first draft of a story and the polished version, eleven drafts later, that he sent to The New Yorker. He works with his wife in the editing stages, and it’s fascinating to see the changes.
@Doug: Thanks for pointing that out. I’m going to use that the next time I teach creative nonfiction.
Yes, threading through the before and after on the Baum article is quite a learning experience. (Although I’m reminded of one of the reasons I dread what’s happening to the newspaper industry–how difficult it is for me to follow anything over 400 words digitally.) Also, as much as I love the “New Yorker”, I wonder if writing in the New Yorker “voice” may remove the individual personality of the writer (unless you’re Tom Wolfe in his prime). Maybe this is an inevitability for any publication.
Hmm…. Wondering if Dan Baum removed his very instructive proposal examples. Or am I not navigating properly? Anyone know?
@ Dennis Lang: You’re right, it look like he’s removed them. I tried the Google cache, but that didn’t work, either–you can access the page, but not the PDFs. Too bad–those really were insightful. But you can still read the various drafts of his tsunami article (as I linked above).
Thanks Doug. Yes, after visiting Dan’s site, apparently he’s starting a consulting service for proposal writing in September. I guess he decided to remove the freebies. Appreciate your follow-up.