Keeping Tabs #19: Virtual workshops, a journalist’s mishap, Condé Nast gossip, and something new
A weekly dose of news, views and things I’ve learned
I’ve had a bit of a whirlwind week with work – it has been non-stop. I’m possibly just keeping myself incredibly busy to avoid stepping outside for even a second because the weather in Dubai is positively BRUTAL.
A few announcements for the community this week – and some recommended reading / listening.
Let’s dive right in!
📣 Subscriber wins!
📝 Last week I gave Scott Campbell a shout-out for his lovely piece on Saudi Arabia’s first tip-based tour, but this week it’s kudos for being appointed Contributing Editor at Condé Nast Traveller Middle East!
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recently became a content manager for Visit Dubai (and she’s looking for foodie deals to feature this August, in case you’re an interested PR).📚
’s latest novel – A Roar and A Drumbeat: Tales of Literary Adventures – is now available on Jashanmal.com!Have you got a win you’d like to share with the network? Please email me at me@katygillett.com!
And now my news…
🧘♀️ I’ll be hosting our first-ever Desert Prose virtual workshop on August 2nd with therapeutic coach Anne Jackson, who will be talking about self-care and staying sane when you work alone. It’s only open to paid subscribers, who will get an email soon with details on how to log on. It’ll take place on Zoom live, but you’ll also get a recording after if you can’t make it!
This will be followed by a talk about how to treat your freelance career like a business by fractional operations director Evelyn Kimani on August 14th.
🤖 I’m a big fan of Otter.ai for transcription purposes but it massively failed me this week when it mashed up quotes I’d asked it to pull from transcripts in an AI chat! I ended up putting words into people’s mouths while writing a feature – every journalist’s worst nightmare (or at least should be!). Thankfully, I caught it before it got published.
Mistakes happen to us all, so I wanted to share this. Also, I’ve said before that attaching transcripts to an LLM and asking it to provide verbatim quotes can be handy – so, take this as a warning and do remember to triple-check your quotes if you are doing this!
🌍 The Guardian beat The Daily Mail in the top 50 biggest news websites globally, according to Press Gazette, which ranked them based on Similarweb data from May. In good news for news (or at least I think it is), the former came six places ahead of the latter, ranking 12th and 18th, respectively (The Mail also noted a steep drop in traffic year on year). Fox News came in 15th position.
Interestingly, Yahoo News Japan came top, with 921 million visits to second-place Globo.com’s 795 million.
🐇 I may have launched a new Substack account this week (because I didn’t already have enough to do). This one’s a bit of a personal passion project – it’s called Down the Rabbithole and my aim is to make media literacy accessible to all. It’s free, so if you’re as keen as I am to help stop the spread of misinformation, please give it a follow!
🎙️ This podcast about the rise and fall of Condé Nast with New York Times reporter Michael Grynbaum was an interesting listen. Michael’s just released a book about the subject, called Empire of the Elite, and they touch on what they think might happen next to Vogue since Anna Wintour is stepping down as EIC.
✍️ Indie news outlet Prism has revised their pitch guidelines to allow writers and reporters to send ideas that centre around US imperialism and Palestine and they’re keen to hear from reporters in the West Bank and Gaza. The rate is usually $0.50-$0.60 per word. Here are their pitch guidelines.
🎨 Artist Amie McNee posted some advice from 1,000+ professionals this week on how to make money as a creative. It’s got some great advice in there, including my go-to number one: diversify your income streams!
🧒 Speaking of diversifying your income streams, I also wrote a kids’ activity book this week and will publish via Amazon KDP (under a pseudonym). It’s currently under review, so I can’t link to it, sadly, but it’s for families taking long-haul flights and has a bunch of silly “Would You Rather?” questions. It’s a bit of an experiment, as I watched a video on YouTube about how these books can be surprisingly lucrative, and I could just imagine my own kids laughing their heads off at this kind of thing. I’ll let you know how it goes!