Pages

Thursday, January 5, 2012

ABC's 'Pan Am' TV Show Article

ABCs Retro 60s TV Show 'Pan Am' Makes the Going Glam
"Pan Am" is a fun-to-watch early 60’s retro perspective of the times in full color, in a day when TV shows and movies were actually filmed in black and white. But is the show an airbrushed colorized version of the day or Reality TV 60s style?

Once upon a time in the early 1960's, Elvis Presley dared to shake it up in movies like Viva Las Vegas; the Fab 4 began the Beatles British music invasion; the Space Race was launching; the Jet Age was taking off; Americans adored JackieO.......(scrrrrrratch.....oh, wait.....um) Jackie Kennedy that is; and Walter Cronkite declared on the nightly news "And that's the way it is on this day…..". Read More

Backstory

YAY - this was my very first published article on Yahoo! Voices!! It was an assignment picked up from their Assignment Desk and was a struggle to write correctly. I used to do some technical writing -- stuff like company procedures, how-to desk instructions, and the usual office correspondence. Most of the writing was cryptic, heavy on the bulletized lists and workflow charts -- like, not much in the way of complete sentences. 

So writing for Yahoo! following their format and style requirements via The Yahoo! Style Guide, along with my rusty complete-sentences grammar was a challenge. Plus, the assignment asked for an "engaging, bloggy" voice - grammar and my bloggy voice persona just didn't seem to cooperate. 

Then, I'd asked for a review within a LinkedIn Writing group, a "Rate My Writing" subgroup and one of the reviewers pointed out a goof. Because the article was published as an "exclusive" and I was a newbie - I couldn't edit it post-publication. So I had to go through the edit request cycle and in the process, the editor decided that the "Pan Am" show pic I'd used from their photo gallery wasn't usable and deleted it. 

Max bummed - I went in search of a publicly available media kit photo for the show and found a site for the ABC TV shows. It was a most excellent find because I’m not credentialed media -- but they allow free public use with an easy request form. 

So the article ended up with a better pic than the one I had before - YAY again!