It's kind of hard to spend long hours trying to help people and then find out that the favorite game of the columnist is to sit back and second guess you and try to find something that you did wrong.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't usually comment on columnists' ideas of what I'm thinking. That's a dangerous game to get into.
Don't commit to being a columnist unless you're willing to do it right. Report your behind off, so you have something original and useful to say. Say it in a way that will interest someone other than you, your family and your sources.
They know that the column resonates in the community. They know that people like it, and yet they don't have room for one column once week that consistently got it right.
I used to write a monthly column for the 'New York Times' syndicate. But I stopped because I found it really hard to have one extreme opinion a month. I don't know how these columnists have two or three ideas a week; I was having difficulty having 12 things to say a year.
If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, 'Oh, I forgot that bit,' then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you've figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!
Whether it's long-form journalism or investigative journalism, it's no fun to just be the guy diagnosing the problem.
Report, report, report. Dig, dig, dig. Think, think, think. Don't stop being a reporter because you've become a columnist.
I'm trying to correct what is wrong in journalism today: wasting users' time.
I wanted to be a columnist so badly that I took a huge pay cut to leave Forbes, which wouldn't give me a column, and join Newsday, which wanted my column for its Sunday business section.
I don't know any other columnists, and I don't know what they do. I work the single! And nobody does what I do, anyway.