Today, we are republishing an older post by Paul, in which he explains why he writes for 10,000 Birds. If I understand him right, he hopes to contribute to the protection of the environment by highlighting the beauty of his local birds and their potential benefit for the locals.
This is true (I hope), and one of the reasons I write as well. Others are to share my experiences and photos, and frankly, to have a reason to write and a readership to share this writing with.
But in this post, I want to answer a much more specific question: Why do I write for 10,000 Birds and not another site?
In fact, when I started writing about birds, I did so on a local website specializing in the birds of Shanghai. I asked the owner of the site about guest posts, and he was happy to accept them.
But then. I sent him a post. It took him four months to edit it, and he did so with vigour, stating his background in journalism in Florida: “What does the reader want?”, “Where is the story?”, “How does the reader benefit from reading this?”, etc.
A bit later, I sent him another post. Same story. Wait four months and then have a post published that probably would have been more suitable than mine for publication in a local Floridian newspaper – but it did not feel much like mine anymore.
At that point, I decided to reach out to 10,000 Birds and stop writing for that Shanghai site. Happily, they accepted. And I realized that at 10,000 Birds, things are different:
The regular authors alone decide on their content, which is why each author has her/his own style (“a feature, not a bug”). They also decide when to publish each of their posts. For guest posts, we do some very minor editing (to align the contribution with our format), but do not edit for content (if there ever was a post denying the holocaust or praising Putin or Netanyahu, we probably would, but only after the publication – and so far, this has not been necessary yet). And guest posts typically get published right when they are approved by the guest author, unless she/he has a different preference.
So, freedom to write about birds in your own style and about your own topics, and no waiting times before publication (hopefully attracting writers who would not pass the marshmallow test).
And that is why I write for 10,000 Birds.
Me too!
Me too! Having written for magazines all life, it’s fun writing for a medium where my words and my photographs can be published almost immediately. It’s also good to be able to use my own photographs. In the UK there’s always been a general perception that writers can’t take photographs, and vice versa. We don’t have photo-journalists. As a result my articles are generally published using photographs from other sources, which can be irritating.
However, I do miss having a good sub-editor to read through my words and write good headlines.