Upcoming Stuff

I'm going to be contributing to an upcoming installment of the OBJECTS project. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be included in Significant Objects. Keep an eye out for it! 

Have a Great Weekend

#florida in #winter

24 Likes, 3 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "#florida in #winter"

Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #4

This is the fourth post in a series in which I explore my Forbes blog traffic. Since I've made a living for years by prompting people to click, I'm using this to document some of the ways in which this works. The answer, by the way, will always be as elusive as the human soul.

Regardless, simply put, I fucking killed it in February. Which was nice, because last month, I really shit the bed.

In January, I had 51,135 views.

In February, I had 193,011 views. 

What went right? (I wrote another post about all this stuff on my Forbes blog yesterday, as well.) Basically, I'd been working the business of vice beat for years, and I never really felt like I could get a handle on it, so this last month, I was like, fuck it, I'm going to do it, and by doing it, I'll figure it out. So my commitment to myself was that I had to post once a day every weekday. Which I did. Thankfully, a short month. It's kind of like running, I suppose. You don't figure out how to run longer by thinking about it. You figure out how to run longer by running. Seems obvious, but do you practice it? Sometimes, thinking about shit is an excuse.

The most popular post was "Playboy Is Naked Again and It Is Awesome" with 85,978 views. Second most popular was "What Diversity? Kate Upton Covers Sports Illustrated Issue" with 33,912 views. Third most popular was "This $85,000 Gun Has a Piece of the Statue of Liberty in It" with 12,875 views. Fourth most popular was "A Male Porn Star Discovers Leaving Porn Is Harder Than You'd Think" with 9,535 views. And fifth most popular was "This Female Photographer Shoots in Strip Clubs" with 7,905 views. Sensing a trend? Never let them tell you sex doesn't sell. I'd like this lineup of top posts to be more diverse -- although, let's not frown at sex and violence. I'd like to see more posts about guns, booze, smoking, gambling, and rampant drug use. And over-the-top cars. And prisons. Let's shoot for that in March.

What went wrong? Here are a few posts that really shit the bed: "This Fashion Brand Wants You to Make Love, Not Walls" with 81 views, "Why Is This Model Wearing a Garbage Can Lid on Her Head?" with 158 views, and "How to Quadruple Your Blog Traffic in 30 Days" (meta!) with 133 views. I'm not sure what exactly went wrong here, but I would say that in general my headlines need work. They're too flat. Why is this? I need to deliver more hot takes and write more about things that I have some sort of passionate response to when I find them. All of these titles are boring. Boring is the enemy. Kill boredom. Toss it in a wood chipper. Die, boredom, die.

The front page of a site that gets 50M+ uniques a months is where you want to be.

Come back in April to find out how I did in March. I call it blogging for dollars, and that's how we roll in 2017. 

Final monthly stats:

Pageviews: 230,163

Total Monthly Visitors: 193,011

One-time Visitors: 186,854

Repeat Visitors: 6,157

Comments: 42

Posts: 20

Current Recency Score: 83.928%

Oh, and my repeat visitors are an embarrassment. My bounce rate is to the moon. Must. Fix. That. 

Read It and Don't Weep

Over on my Forbes blog, I wrote a kind of impassioned post about blogging for dollars, and also about women, and of course about writing. 

Read it, won't you?

"Then I realized something that's taken decades of therapy to penetrate my thick skull. You can't think your way into things. You have to do your way into things. So at the start of February 2017, I decided: I still don't 'get' how to do this beat, but I'm just going to do it, and I'm willing to bet that by simply doing it, even though I think I don't know how to do it, I will figure out how to do it."

#neverquit

#neverquit pic.twitter.com/cZrJamUY3Q

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) February 14, 2017

See Moonlight

Didn't see this until Friday. Wow. Just breathtaking. Gorgeous, and heartbreaking, and true. It's three stories in one. It's everybody's story in one movie. It's a poke in the eye of white people everywhere. It's complicated, and simple, and beautifully written. I cried multiple times. I got my heart broken. It is one of the best movies ever made. Hurry up. It's hard to explain. Just see it. It'll open your heart, and your mind, and your spirit. 

Personal Essay Seeks Home With Non-Rejecting Publication

Image via Drawception

Know anyone who wants a nonfiction essay?

This one is up for adoption and needs a home.

Declined by Brevity.

Email:

Dear Susannah Breslin,

Thank you for sending us your brief essay 'It Was Hard'.

Although we do not have a place for your work in the issues for which we are currently reading, we wanted you to know that our readers read your essay closely.

We have been blessed with a large number of excellent submissions lately, and we hope that you understand that we can only publish a small fraction of the material we receive.

We wish you the best of luck with your writing,

Sincerely,

The Editors
Brevity

1/10/2017 (1 month, 13 days ago)

ICYMI

"To date, he has produced and directed over 500 adult movies. But, this isn’t your father’s porn. Equal parts freak show, horror movie, and Russ Meyer-on-crack, his X-rated visions are deranged, demented, mind-boggling expeditions into the dark, unexplored continent of human sexual perversity. Fascinating, horrifying, and amusing—oftentimes all of those things at the same time—Powers’ celluloid world is one populated by midgets, bald chicks, and crazed men outfitted with monster-sized papier-mâché phalluses which spew torrents of goo onto the naked bodies of supine women, movies in which everyone has sex all of the time, and in which, most of the time, no one appears to win." -- They Shoot Porn Stars, Don't They? 

Don't Let the Boys Win

If you're a girl, and you blog for a living, don't just aggregate. Originate. Sometimes it seems like the boys have more balls. They brag about their FOIAs, and they win their Pulitzers. You should be digging up the new stuff, too, not just regurgitating that shit that's already out there.

That's Lois Lane

Send an email

It takes you 10 minutes to write an email with 10 questions in it. Find someone who interests you, write 10 interview questions, and then push SEND. You just might learning something new that you can add to your story. 

Get on the phone

The other day, I made a call to request permission to use some photos. I ended up doing an interview with the head of the company. Phoners really aren't that hard. Do one a day. A down-and-dirty call can take as little as 15 minutes.

Leave the house

Get out of your apartment/office/house at least once a day. Look around in the world for something you'd like to cover. One time I did this, and I found a guy who was looking for a job from his living room window. 

Yum

Snack 👾

6 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "Snack 👾"

Forbes Blog Monthly Stats #3

Last year, I started and then stopped a transparent blogging traffic series in which I examined the numbers associated with my Forbes blog, SIN INC, where I cover the business of vice (guns, sex, alcohol, gambling, etc.). That series -- you can read #1 here and #2 here -- went on hiatus for some reason. Now it's back. It may or may not shed light on "blogging for dollars" for you, if that's something you do.

I'm going to focus here in on January 2017, which I hope is the last month that my traffic on the blog there will suck. I had put a pause on blogging on the Forbes website for a few months prior, in order to work on another project, but this month, February 2017, is really banging so far, traffic-wise, and I look forward to detailing that next month.

Let's talk about January. So January 2017 will be, I hope, the last time I post the minimum number of times required, which is five, at least for me. Historically, I've not infrequently procrastinated until the end of the month, and then posted during the last five days of the month. What a bum. Thankfully, in February 2017, I started posting five times a week, every weekday, and that's been working great. I'll detail how that happened in next month's post.

In any case, I did a post on a firearms coloring book that I thought was interesting. I enjoyed interviewing the woman who created it. That post got 2,833 views, which is not that great, but whatever. I also wrote a post about a new Playboy Club that's coming to New York. That got 1,806 views, which is way meh. Since I sometimes work as a copywriter, I like to write about ads, and I wrote about the Mr. Clean sexes up the Super Bowl phenomenon. That got 6,018 views, which is better than the others. A post about an autographed copy of Playboy signed by Not My President really shit the bed with 724 views. I also watched the new Warren Buffett documentary and extracted five tips for women. That got 6,000 views. So, in all, not a great month, but lots of room for improvement.

Thoughts: My headlines aren't strong enough. Thankfully, the Forbes CMS has a funny little widget that reviews your headline, grades it, and helps you make it better. I didn't post more, but I'm working on that this month. And I offered little in the way of "hot takes." The closest thing was the Buffett post, because part of my point to women was good luck turning into Buffett if you weren't born a white male, because that's what Buffett points to in the documentary as the equivalent of winning the "ovarian lottery." But the post should've been stronger in tone and funnier.

Final monthly stats:

Pageviews: 66,116

Total Monthly Visitors: 51,135

One-time Visitors: 49,431

Repeat Visitors: 1,704

Comments: 0

Posts: 5

Current Recency Score: 35.967

In any case, come back next month for a far-more impressive tally. I'm also going to talk about finding better story ideas on what I've come to refer to as "the grey web." It's where everyone else isn't hunting for fodder.

Hire Me

Today is a great day to hire me. Here are a few things I can do for you.

I'm a writer

I'm an experienced journalist. I'm a veteran blogger. This week, my Forbes.com blog got more than 100,000 views. Need words? I have them. Plus, I'm fast and accurate.

I can sell

I've worked with some of the world's biggest ad agencies. I excel at creating engaging social content. Here's my portfolio.

I'll help you tell your story

I've developed reality TV shows and consulted on feature films. Check out the rest of my talents on LinkedIn.

To hire me, email me here.

Arrival

Amazing movie. Watch it. It is so great! Soon, I will have watched it three times in 48 hours. I cannot get enough. First time: I was bored. Man, this is uninteresting, I thought. I half paid attention, until something happened, and I realized, I need to pay attention to this movie. By the end, my mind was blown, and I was captivated. Second time: I was rapt. This movie is about life and death, love and loss, language and grief. It's just so wonderful. A real beauty of a thing. I can hardly wait to watch it again.

Sad!

Sad! pic.twitter.com/kfAl9aWGQk

— Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) February 14, 2017

On the BBC

I did a short interview tonight with BBC Radio 5 Live. I believe it will be archived here.

We discussed my recent post on my Forbes.com blog: "Playboy Is Naked Again and It Is Awesome."

Years ago, I visited a Playboy shoot. As I watched, a naked young woman lolled about on the bed, smooshing her boobs together with her arms and pointing her toes like a retro pinup from a bygone era. Today, Hef is 90, and the new Playboy is decidedly contemporary. The cover features March Playmate Elizabeth Elam looking natural, the cover headline reads "Naked Is Normal," and the Playboy Interview isn't with a modern-day Norman Mailer but Scarlett Johansson, the top-grossing actor of 2016, who pulled in $1.2 billion in global ticket sales. The other nude layouts throughout the magazine are somewhere between classy and, well, sweet. Gone is the greased up and surgically enhanced Playmate of yesteryear. This is the 21st century feminist next door.

The Week in Review

Last week, I posted some new content on my Forbes blog. Let's revisit it, shall we?

I found this job listing that shows how complicated life is when you're super rich.

I wrote about a new documentary on HBO that looks at life in solitary confinement.

These wine labels could be in a museum.

One word: strippers.

In which I inspire those who work from home.

The Smithsonian Speaks

If you've been following my Cher Ami investigation thus far, you know Cher Ami was a carrier pigeon who became a WWI hero after saving the lives of nearly 200 American soldiers, but in the wake of the bird's death, it had been revealed the bird was a hen, not a cock, as previously thought. Or had it? The exhibit label at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History declared Cher Ami was a boy, but the military said Cher Ami was a girl. So which one was it?

Perhaps there'd been some confusion, I considered. If the military said Cher Ami was female, wouldn't the Smithsonian, where Cher Ami stands on permanent taxidermied view, want to know about it and change their exhibit label? I reached out to the Smithsonian to point out this problem.

I emailed the director of the public affairs office at the National Museum of American History. I pointed out the Army said the bird was a hen, so why not change the label so visitors would know this war hero was not male, but female?

This was her response:

Dear Susannah:

Thank you for your inquiry. I do have a response from the Chair of our Armed Forces History Department.

"There are differing accounts as to whether Cher Ami was male or female, and due to taxidermy, there is no way to tell.

We have differing accounts using different genders.  So, there is no genuine way to actually tell, as the US Army Signal Corps department did not gender the birds during their use as carrier pigeons during the war. What would be needed is the actual registry for Cher Ami as that may provide a definitive answer, but without the original document, we cannot say for sure. Cher Ami came to the Smithsonian from the Army Signal Corps Museum but our staff has not been able to locate the registration of the bird. There are other accounts that document Cher Ami as a 'he'

http://www.worldwar1centennial.org/index.php/communicate/press-media/wwi-centennial-news/1210-cher-ami-the-pigeon-that-saved-the-lost-battalion.html

http://www.homeofheroes.com/wings/part1/3b_cherami.html"

But this wasn't a matter of "other accounts." The military itself stated the bird was female.

Apparently, what I needed was proof.

Next week, I'll share what I learned as I continued to investigate this story.

Cher Ami or Chere Ami?

Last week, I recounted my ongoing investigation into the gender of a World War I carrier pigeon named Cher Ami, who saved the lives of almost 200 American soldiers in the Argonne Forest. According to the Smithsonian, where the stuffed bird stands on display today, the bird was a cock. But according to Wikipedia, an autopsy revealed Cher Ami was a hen. So which one was right?

I googled around to find out more. I landed on this page of the United States Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) website. Oddly, at some point since my investigation began, the page started returning a "Not Found" message. But you can find the original version of the page here, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

According to the CECOM page, Cher Ami was Chere Ami (see: the tab). A girl.

CHER AMI

Identification: N.U.R.P. No. 615, Black Check Hen

War Record: Delivered twelve important messages from the Verdun front to loft at Rampont. Average distance thirty kilometers. Average time, twenty-four minutes. Returned on last occasion with leg shot away, message tube containing important document hanging by tendon. Missile which carried away leg also passed through breast. Wonderful vitality of bird enabled it to recover quickly. In this seriously wounded condition, "Cher Ami" flew forty kilometers in twenty-five minutes, being liberated at 2:30 PM, arriving at loft at 3:00 PM. Point of liberation was Grand Pre.

General Information: "Cher Ami" was returned to the United States with other distinguished pigeons on the transport "Ohioan" on April 16, 1919. She lived only a short time after her historic flight, dying at Camp Alfred Vail, New Jersey, on June 13, 1919. Her body was mounted and placed in the Smithsonian Institution, U.S. National Museum, Washington, DC, where it is now on exhibition.

The French "Croix de Guerre" was bestowed upon a very few pigeons during World War I, 1914-1918. "Cher Ami" received this Croix de Guerre with palm (citation a l'orde de l'Armee) for playing an important part in the communications between the Forts of Verdun, surrounded by the Germans during several months service.

Armed with this information, I contacted the Smithsonian. Wouldn't they want to know the famous bird they'd identified as a war hero wasn't male, as their exhibit label claimed, but female?

Next, I'll share what the Smithsonian said.

Writing Prompts

I came across this writing prompt yesterday:

"Write a love story about two inanimate objects."

Let's give it a shot.

The Married Couple

The dead husband and the dead wife were hiding in their drawers. It was late, and someone had turned out all the lights. Inside the drawers, it was dark. It was impossible to hear anything -- not the soft whir of the refrigeration stopping them from rotting, not the absentminded whistling of the coroner who had gone home, not the endless buzzing of thoughts in their minds for there were none. The bank of drawers was like a condo overlooking a river when a hurricane is coming: windows shuttered, blinds drawn, toilets flushed. Time itself filled up the spaces where their dreams, and their feelings, and their memories used to be. Briefly, a neuron lit up, then flamed out, vanishing into the blackness.

Pull a Thread

A couple years ago I attended THREAD at Yale. It's a storytelling conference that exposes you to some pretty amazing journalists, political cartoonists, and stage performers. After I went, I was sort of annoyed by some aspects of it. I thought it was overpriced, and I thought it was ill-managed in a couple respects, and I got super annoyed when the leader said we weren't supposed to tweet during the sessions or some such thing. But now I see it was truly an invaluable experience. First of all: Yale. Second of all: listening to some really phenomenal storytellers share how they learned to tell great stories. Third of all: I ended up finding a fantastic mentor there. So if you're interested and you've got the dough, give it a whirl. Why not?