Model journalists; book theft; promotion tips: Newsletter 23 April 2025

Newsletter 91: Why all writers should think like reporters, a clever writer’s AI hacks, scientific proof that ChatGPT steals books, plus three people to follow and three very timely books to read.

Think like a journalist

I didn’t go to journalism school. I wish I had, though, because so many of the lessons I’ve learned about nonfiction writing over the decades are things that journalists know in their bones.

That’s not really a coincidence. A nonfiction writer’s job, whether you’re creating a strategy memo, a progress report, or a how-to book, is to find the truth and describe it in a way that resonates with an audience. That’s a journalist’s job, too.

So what can you learn from journalists?

• Be curious. It takes research to figure out the truth. That’s doesn’t mean stopping with a quick web search (or, horrors, asking an LLM). It means finding a diverse set of primary sources, analyzing data, and thinking of all insights as provisional.
• Distrust hearsay. Lazy thinkers take other people’s word for it. Smart thinkers use other people’s word as a starting point.
• Develop a main idea. Don’t say 12 things. Say one thing with 12 facets to it.
• Tell a story. Stories are how people remember things. That’s true whether you’re describing an event you observed or explaining which parts of your marketing program are delivering the best results.
• Don’t bury the lede. If I only read the first paragraph, I should understand your conclusion. That’s true whether it’s a story about tariffs or a chapter about AI tools.
• Include the human element. Even stories about data are really about people. Human readers relate to anecdotes. If there are no people in what you write, it will be awfully dull to read.
• Organize logically. The thread of your piece should be obvious; there should be a throughline from start to finish. The sequence of what you explain should make sense to a reader, since that’s how you communicate truth effectively.
• Use typographical tools to make writing easier to skim and navigate. These include subheadings, bullets, numbered lists, quotes, links, numbers, tables, and charts.
• Be brief. You get a limited time to tell your story. Include only what belongs.
• Follow up and extend. You found a truth. What else is true? What does it mean? How is it changing? There is no “done,” there is only “done for now.”

There’s lot more I could write, but I’ve written what matters.

News for writers and others who think

Alexandra Samuel, Ph.D. , one of the smartest writers using AI, describes her process. She’s living in the future, and the rest of us are going to get there soon.

With a clever experiment, the publisher Tim O’Reilly has scientifically proven that ChatGPT rips off his books (and almost certainly, everyone else’s) without compensation. He also suggests a licensing regime that makes more sense than “we have to steal, it’s the only way it works.”

On Jane Friedman‘s blog, Dr. Jennifer Dorsey explains how to prepare for nonfiction book promotion. It’s not about influence, it’s about smart connections — and laying the groundwork long before you need it.

Three people to follow

Thad McIlroy , expert on AI in the publishing business.

Dmitry Shapiro , agentic AI entrepreneur, ex. Google and Myspace (!)

Ed Greig , chief disruptor at Deloitte Digital

Three books to read

So Very Small: How Humans Discovered the Microcosmos, Defeated Germs–and May Still Lose the War Against Infectious Disease by Thomas Levenson (Random House, 2025). The ideas in this timely book should spread like the measles.

Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility by Patty McCord (Silicon Guild, 2018). A fascinating account of the creation of the unique corporate culture of Netflix.

How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Crown, 2019). The libretto for the operatic drama now taking place in America.