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Terrific piece in The Boston Globe today by Christopher Shea, reporting on design firm Pentagram’s online tool that allows you to find out what typeface best describes you.

It’s in the spirit of Meyers-Briggs and other personality typing tool. You can access the test by clicking here. You’ll need to type in the word “character” (without quotation marks) as your password.

I came up Corbusier Stencil, a typeface with only capital letters and numbers. “If you like to impose yourself over something or someone but always do so with good reason and impeccable judgment, the Corbusier Stencil is your type,” the voiceover tells me as my results are announced.

After taking the short, four-question quiz, what do you come up with as your typeface and does it describe you well? Or as well as any of the personality tests you might have taken in the past?

From poet Taylor Mali on what teachers bring to the table.

(Thanks, Laura, for the link.)

Image by Bright Meadow via Flickr

In today’s Los Angeles Times, “On the Media” columnist James Rainey looks at the diminished pay freelancers face: Freelance writing’s unfortunate new model – latimes.com.

He writes:

“What’s sailing away, a decade into the 21st century, is the common conception that writing is a profession — or at least a skilled craft that should come not only with psychic rewards but with something resembling a living wage.

“Freelance writing fees — beginning with the Internet but extending to newspapers and magazines — have been spiraling downward for a couple of years and reached what appears to be bottom in 2009.

“The trend has gotten scant attention outside the trade.”

In an earlier post on True/Slant, I cited Samuel Johnson’s observation: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” (Read “Blockheads Writing for Free” here.)

Now, based on Rainey’s citations of some freelancers in the field, that’s becoming a more difficult task than ever.

But, he points out, some writers have taken extraordinary steps into getting paid. Tina Dupuy, one humor writer he notes in his piece, took to YouTube to shame a publication into paying her. (Tina Dupuy is a fellow True/Slant contributor. You can view her YouTube offering here and its results here.)

If operators of  print and online sites know that they can get nascent freelancers to contribute for free, they might ask themselves whether that approach  really result in better writing and a better publication.

Getting content for free or squeezing freelancers trying to make a living is not a sustainable business model, at least not one that will result in a quality product.

Will cameras be allowed in to cover health-care debates in Congress?

Who knows?

(Thanks, Bob, for the heads up on the clip.)

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from Late Flurry of Ad Dollars Fans Recovery Hopes – WSJ.com:

“A year-end flurry of ad spending helped moderate steep declines at some newspapers and magazines, and has fueled an uptick at others, raising hopes for a recovery in 2010.”

…

“‘By no means are we out of the woods,” Mr. [Bill] Wackermann [a publishing director at Condé Nast] said. “But the fact that we’re seeing positive digits in March is a good sign.’”

Read the full story by reporters Russell Adams and Shira Ovide here.