Chip on Your Shoulder

Craft Lessons from Writing Coach Chip Scanlan

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BOB MONG

My feeling is that anything Chip gets involved in is going to be done with the highest quality and with great attention to detail. I am a now, and since I first met him 25 years ago, a huge fan.
BOB MONG
President of the University of North Texas at Dallas and College of Law 
Former Editor-in-Chief, Dallas Morning News

I first met Chip Scanlan in Cincinnati where we were judging the 1994 Ernie Pyle Awards. We both loved this contest, because it honored gritty human interest reporting. It also had stood the test of time. Plowing through the stack of entries, including some by famous journalists, Chip handed me an entry from an unknown young woman from the News and Observer in Raleigh. “You’ve got to read this,” he said. Her name was Lisa Pollak, and her work jumped right off the pages when I began reading it. The bubble over my head said: “This guy Scanlan can sure spot good writing.” As it turns out, Lisa won the Ernie Pyle that year and it was no fluke. Three years later at the Baltimore Sun she won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Suffice it to say, I stayed in touch with Chip, inviting him to The Dallas Morning News from time to time to coach our staff on good writing techniques. My feeling is that anything Chip gets involved in is going to be done with the highest quality and with great attention to detail. I am a now, and since I first met him 25 years ago, a huge fan.
BOB MONG
President of the University of North Texas at Dallas and College of Law
Former Editor-in-Chief, Dallas Morning News

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