SHEDDING INK
Writing Samples
Sure, he knows how to write movie reviews and act all
sarcastic on a sports blog; but what else can he do? Here's a small
collection of my best published works. Of course, if you haven't
already, I really do encourage you to read some of those movie reviews, just
to get another take on my style of writing.
If you need a top notch writer to write, well, just about
anything, shoot me an email at dan@sheddingink.com
or give me a call at 972-834-6606.
Pegasus News
I wrote a bunch of movie reviews for this site back in 2006,
but those are over in the Movie Reviews section of Shedding Ink, so
here's a concert review instead.
Spank Me
Again - June 1, 2006
While
no longer as impressive as in their mid-90s heyday, the Asylum Street
Spankers, Austin's favorite genre-defying, no-longer acoustic-only
blues review, still makes for one hell of a good
show—wherever they are these days...
Hoover's
This was my first full-time gig out of college, mostly writing
and editing company profiles for a business information publisher,
along with the occasional feature article on the front page.
Company of
the Day: Deutsche Telekom (PDF) - April 1, 1999
Most
of the feature articles I wrote at Hoover's were for a series called
"Company of the Day," in which a particular company in the industry I
covered was in the news that day, and I was assigned the task of
explaining why while trying to link to as many other company profiles
as possible. In this case, Deutsche Telekom was making a bid to buy
Telecom Italia, and the scene was ripe for the picking.
Warner
Bros. - Company Profile (PDF) - April 19, 2001
This
is an example of a company profile at the time I worked there, and this
is mainly what I did at Hoover's—research a company and write
up a description of its business, history and strategy going forward.
Endless
Summer Movie Scorecard (PDF) - August 25, 2000
I
mostly covered the Entertainment industry at Hoover's and for the
summer of 2000 I tracked the box office hits and misses for the big
studios. It was a fun diversion from my usual responsibilites and even
landed me an appearance on CNBC's Power Lunch,
quickly exhausting several of my 15 minutes of fame.
Company
of the Day: Clear Channel Communications (PDF) - May
6, 1999
Another feature article, this one
concerned Clear Channel's deal to buy Jacor Communications. In those
days, consolidation in the media business was as common as an Amy
Winehouse mug shot is today, so I decided to take a slightly musical
approach to this piece.
FierceMarkets
After moving to Washington, D.C., in 2002, I signed on with
this business publisher writing two newsletters everyday—
FierceBroadband and FierceEnterprise—received by tens of thousands of subscribers. Please excuse all the broken
images and links on these pages, but I wanted to maintain the original
newsletter format for these samples and the images that went on these
pages are long gone.
FierceBroadband
- July 24, 2002
Some corporate
malfeasance almost lightens up the mood of one acquisition after
another in what was left of the broadband industry at the time.
FierceBroadband
- August 6, 2002
A new CEO
tries to resuscitate AOL and the Adelphia story comes to a sorry end.
FierceEnterprise
- July 11, 2003
The ongoing
saga of Oracle's bid to acquire PeopleSoft seemed to have no end in
sight in the summer of 2003.
FierceEnterprise
- February 19, 2004
A dot-com
arrives to the IPO party after everyone else has gone home, and SCO
prepares to sue Linux users. How did that work out?
Sci-Fi Now
This was a fun gig I had covering the movie
beat for a science-fiction website.
What A
Tangled Web We Weave - January 30, 2001
Once
upon a time, fans were actually in an uproar over Spider-Man's organic
webbing. Two out of three great movies and a couple billion dollars
seem to have stamped out the debate.
The Collegian
My first serious writing gig was as a humor columnist for my
junior college newspaper. Don't worry, I'm much funnier now. Older
looking, too. Yikes.
Something's
fishy: anglers go 'pro' (PDF) - March 31, 1993
I
had no idea there was such a thing a professional fishing back then,
but I sure wasn't going to let the ridiculousness of that fact get in
the way of a good column.