Brick

DETROIT — Six days after return­ing home, two of the June 23–26 colum­nist conference’s field trips burn in me, tours of the Motown His­tor­i­cal Museum and the new heart-of-downtown home office of Quicken Loans. Hitsville U.S.A. The museum, infor­mally called “Hitsville,” is in the two orig­i­nal houses in which Berry Gordy cre­ated the Motown record­ing …

This col­umn also was pub­lished in the July 2011 newslet­ter of the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists. Once again, an NSNC colum­nist con­fer­ence astounded its audi­ence with infor­ma­tion and fun. The June 23–26 ses­sion in Detroit catered to would-be and pub­lished book writ­ers, gave fresh tips to free-lancers (and in “cus­tom con­tent” not just columns), …

Roger Ebert receives the 2011 Ernie Pyle Life­time Achieve­ment Award from the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists A ver­sion of this Brick is pub­lished at columnists.com. DETROIT, Sat­ur­day, June 25, 2011 — Fol­low­ing is the accep­tance speech of Roger Ebert for the NSNC’s Ernie Pyle Life­time Achieve­ment Award. Ebert’s phys­i­cal con­di­tion pre­vented him from accept­ing in per­son, …

“Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lin­coln?“ – Attrib­uted to Tom Lehrer DETROIT, 8:47 a.m. EDT, Fri­day, June 24, 2011 — Hear ye, hear ye, (swat news­pa­per) I am Ben Pol­lock, pres­i­dent of the National Soci­ety of News­pa­per Colum­nists. I hereby call the 35th annual NSNC con­fer­ence to order! [Swat paper? The …