Don Fry (aka Donald K. Fry)

Don Fry (born 1937) is an American writer, editor, scholar, and writing coach who has taught thousands of people, especially journalists and food writers, to write better. He has pursued three careers. He began as a scholar of Old and Middle English literature at the University of Virginia and Stony Brook University. He changed fields to journalism education in 1984, joining the Poynter Institute of Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida, a journalism think-tank and mid-career school. And in 1994, he became an independent writing coach, working with newspaper editors and reporters.^[1]

Biography

A native of Raleigh, N. C., Fry learned to write from Phyllis Abbott Peacock at Needham B. Broughton High School. He earned a degree in English literature (1959) from Duke University. He aspired to become a Navy seaplane pilot, but astigmatism ended that dream. Fry served as a communications and gunnery officer on U.S.S. Massey (DD-778), an Atlantic Fleet destroyer (1959–1962). As a graduate student at University of California at Berkeley, he discovered Anglo-Saxon poetry, admired its underlying culture, and chose it for his teaching and research. Fry earned a Ph.D. in English (1966) from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in early medieval literature.

He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Virginia (1966–1969), then moved to Stony Brook University, becoming a Professor of English and Comparative Literature (1969–1984). He encouraged his students to question assumptions and write clearly for non-specialists. Fry chaired the Program in Comparative Literature, and the Arts and Sciences Senate, and served as Provost for Humanities and Fine Arts (1975–1977).

Don Fry (aka Donald K. Fry)

Fry became an Associate at the Poynter Institute in 1984, and later headed the Writing and Ethics faculties, and edited the Institute’s annual publication Best Newspaper Writing (1985–1990, 1993).

Most of his journalism publications taught editors how to help their writers. With his colleague,Roy Peter Clark,^[2] Fry systemized the techniques of coaching writers, invented at the Boston Globe by Donald Murray. Fry and Clark published their methods in Coaching Writers: Editors and Reporters Working Together (St. Martin's, 1991). They expanded their coverage to multimedia in a second edition: Coaching Writers: Editors and Reporters Working Together across Media Platforms (Bedford-St. Martin's, 2003).

In 1992, Fry assisted Allister Sparks in founding the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism in Johannesburg. He helped the new leaders of South African journalism define their relation to the new post-apartheid government. He introduced explanatory methods to journalists throughout southern Africa, who mostly just reported facts.

Fry became an independent writing coach in 1994, spreading advanced methods of writing and coaching worldwide, especially to South Africa, Scandinavia, and Singapore. He taught and consulted on writing and editing problems, including the Associated Press, Boston Globe, Indianapolis Star, Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, St. Petersburg Times, Straits Times (Singapore), Toronto Star and Sun, Washington Times, New York Times Regional Group, American Press Institute, Den Journalistiske Efteruddannelse (Århus and Copenhagen), Institutt for Journalistikk (Frederikstad, Norway), Pressinstitutet (Stockholm), Computerworld, International Data Group, Washington and Lee University, and the University of Virginia, among others.

He remains an Affiliate member of the Poynter faculty.

Fry and his wife Joan have one son, Jason Fry, a freelance writer in Brooklyn.

Works

Academic Works

Fry began his academic writing with his 1966 dissertation, “Aesthetic Applications of Oral-Formulaic Theory: Judith 199-216a,” which established terminology and techniques for analyzing the artistry of formulaic poetry in England before 1066. He later published articles from this dissertation that influenced a generation of scholars studying Anglo-Saxon poetics.^[3]

Fry wrote three books on Beowulf: The Beowulf Poet (Prentice-Hall, 1968); Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh: A Bibliography (Virginia, 1969); and Finnsburg Fragment and Episode. (Methuen, 1974). He also published two reference books on Old Norse: Norse Sagas Translated into English (AMS, 1980) and Medieval Scandinavia, An Encyclopedia (Garland, 1993, with Phil Pulsiano). Fry has published more than 65 articles on medieval literature, Latin, archaeology, classics, and music.

Journalism Works

Fry has published over 100 articles on newswriting, coaching, ethics, and management. In 1985, Fry read Oliver Sacks’s collection, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and applied Sacks’s methods of analyzing deficits to coaching writers.^[4] Fry would interview authors about their writing processes, helping them unearth problems and solve them.^[5] Fry published two editions of Coaching Writers with Roy Peter Clark. He also edited Believing the News (Poynter, 1986), which explored the effects of television news on newspaper ethics. With Mario Garcia, he edited Color in American Newspapers (Poynter, 1986), which defined the state of the art in color printing. Fry and Clark published Ways with Words. A Research Report of the Literacy Committee. American Society of Newspaper Editor (1993, with Frank Denton), on the effect of story structure on reader comprehension. This research showed the so-called “Inverted Pyramid,” the traditional form for journalism, to be the least understandable structure. The most effective form, the “Stack of Blocks,” involved a predictive beginning, a middle segmented into sections arranged in logical order, plus an ending giving a sense of closure.

On Writing

Fry has taught thousands of editors how to help and improve their writers, as well as authors how to write better, easier, and faster. In 2008-2011, he wrote a blog on “Writing Your Way, in Your Own Voice,” which Writer’s Digest will publish as a book in March 2012. Fry teaches writers to create their own writing process based on magnifying their strengths, and changing or compensating for their weaknesses.^[6] He developed techniques for creating a writing voice, defined as “devices used consistently to create the illusion of a person speaking through the text.” Since 1995, he has taught in the Greenbrier Symposium for Professional Food Writers, coaching foodies on structure, description, and courage.^[7] Fry posts a writing tip on Twitter (@donaldkfry) every weekday.

Selected Bibliography

Books

• Fry, Don. Writing Your Way, In Your Own Voice. Blog (2008–2011), www.donfry.wordpress.com; forthcoming from Writer’s Digest, 2012.
• Pulsiano, Philip; Donald K. Fry; et al., Medieval Scandinavia An Encyclopedia. (New York: Garland, 1993).
• Fry, Don; Roy Peter Clark; and Frank Denton. Ways with Words. (Reston: American Society of Newspaper Editors, 1993).
• Clark, Roy Peter and Don Fry. Coaching Writers. (New York: St. Martin's, 1992). 2nd ed. (Bedford, St. Martin’s, 2003).
• Garcia, Mario R. and Don Fry. Color in American Newspapers. (St. Petersburg: Poynter Institute, 1986).
• Fry, Don. Believing the News. (St. Petersburg: Poynter Institute, 1986).
• Fry, Don. Best Newspaper Writing, annual. (St. Petersburg: Poynter Institute, 1985–1990, 1993).
• Fry, Donald K. Norse Sagas Translated into English. (New York: AMS, 1980).
• Fry, Donald K. Finnsburh Fragment and Episode. (London: Methuen, 1974).
• Fry, Donald K. Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburh A Bibliography. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969).
• Fry, Donald K. The Beowulf Poet. (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968).

Articles

• “Old English Formulas and Systems,” English Studies 48.3 (1967) 193-204.
• “Old English Formulaic Themes and Type-Scenes,” Neophilologus 52 (1968) 48-54.
• “Variation and Economy in Beowulf,” Modern Philology 65.4 (1968) 353-356.
• “Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene 1-113,” Speculum 44.1 (1969) 35-45.
• “The Ending of the Monk’s Tale,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71.3 (1972) 355-368.
• “Caedmon as a Formulaic Poet,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 10.3 (1974) 227-247.
• “Anglo-Saxon Lyre Tuning Pegs from Whitby,” Medieval Archaeology 20 (1976) 137-139.
• “Polyphemus in Iceland,” The Fourteenth Century, Acta 4 (1977) 65-86.
• “The Art of Bede II: The Reliable Narrator as Persona,” The Early Middle Ages, Acta 6 (1979) 63-82.
• “Formulaic Theory and Old English Poetry,” International Musicological Society Report of the 13th Congress Berkeley 1977. (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981). 169-173.
• “Bede Fortunate in his Translator: The Barking Nuns,” Paul E. Szarmach, ed. Studies in Earlier Old English Prose. (Albany: SUNY Press, 1986) 345-362.
• “The Shocking Pictures of Sage: Two Newspapers, Two Answers,” Washington Journalism Review (April, 1987) 35-41.
• “The little trial that couldn’t, Chapter MCXXVIII in the continuing libel debacle,” Quill (May, 1987) 24-29.
• “Flunking Out of the Newsroom,” Washington Journalism Review (September, 1987) 41-43).
• “Red light, green light, GO!” APME Ethics Report (1989) 41.
• “’Writing short’ means writing for readers, not for each other,” ASNE Bulletin (September, 1992) 18-20.
• “You can’t change a plunger into a planner,” ASNE Bulletin (March, 1995) 29.
• “The future belongs to the trained,” IAJ Journal 1.1 (July, 1995) 13-17.
• “Coaxing out the hidden rules,” The American Editor (December, 1995) 27.
• “Writers should avoid the perverted pyramid,” The American Editor (May–June, 1999) 24, 31.
• “Want to Live Forever? Write Your Own Obit,” (March 27, 2006)
• “Reinvent Yourself after a Buyout,” (March 7, 2008)
• “How to Handle Quotes from Inarticulate People,” (February 24, 2009)

References

1. ^ "Poynter: About Us - Donald Fry"
2. ^ "Echicoin: Editor/Designer Portfolios"
3. ^ Foley, John Miles (1985). Oral-Formulaic Theory and Research: An Introduction and Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland. 
4. ^ Oliver W. Sacks, The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales.(New York: Summit, 1985)
5. ^ Kelly Daniel, http://asne.org/kiosk/editor/01.april/daniel1.htm
6. ^ Sherry Ricchiardi, http://ajr.org/Article.asp?id=1513
7. ^ Serving Up Inspiration at the Greenbrier Symposium for Professional Food Writers. Dorie Greenspan, “Food writers of the world unite at The Greenbrier Professional Food Writers' Symposium,” Bon Appétit (April 10, 2008),

External links