About this Blog
Momfidence! cheers on commonsense parenting and sighs at the rest. How to worry less, wing it more. A.k.a. parenting by the seat of my mid-rise mom jeans.
About Paula SpencerI'm the author of Momfidence! An Oreo Never Killed Anybody and Other Secrets of Happier Parenting, and a mom of four in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (where you can't even buy Oreos at the two wholesome groceries nearest to my home). 
A rare foto in which all six Spencers face the camera! by Charles Harris
Some Kindred Blogs
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Who? Me? A Parenting Expert? A Writer?March 29, 2007
Can't help it but keep thinking about how curious it was that Newsweek refused to ID me as the author of Momfidence, when the subject of my "My Turn" essay was exactly the basic theme of my book (and my Woman's Day column).
When people write op-ed pieces in newspapers, they get the full ID linking their ideas and the full body of their work so the reader can go find out more if they want to--and it enhances the credibility of what they're saying, too. Not in Newsweek. They seem to want to make it look like we are all the same anonymous citizens. For example: The woman who wrote about her mom's Bunko games is a prolific LA freelance writer. This guy who wrote about being an unlikely marathoner is a prominent gay journalist. Not even Amy Krouse Rosenthal, a funny author My Turn-ing about truth and lies in her work (titles unmentioned) gets more than a "Krouse Rosenthal lives in Chicago." Like me, they're all just ID'd by the city they live in. Which is weird! I'm not saying professional writers shouldn't write personal pieces, only that they shouldn't be masqueraded as joe citizens. Even for the Joe Citizen who writes a "My Turn," I'd like to know more about who they are or what they do than the town where they live. My fellow members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and I have sometimes regarded snagging a "My Turn" spot as a high honor. And certainly it's high profile, but if they're not even going to ID you as the writer you are, or offer a website address or something, it's slightly less lustrous. Every other magazine gives a writer a proper bio line, after all.... |
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