I’m Not Newsworthy or Famous, but Someone Wrote an Article About Me

I write about me, not other people

Photo by Raul Varzar on Unsplash

Writing isn’t a good job for people who need total control.

If you’re scribbling in your journal or working on a rough manuscript draft, it's one thing. Still, if it’s something like a professional article or book, you’ll have to deal with editors, publishers, readers, clients, and other writers at some point.

If you’re a best-selling writer or celebrity, you may have more control than most, but if you’re a content or freelance writer, once you let your article out into the world, your control diminishes.

An aggregated article about me.

I like to keep up on what old articles of mine are being published or shared, so I often do a Google search on myself and was surprised to find a piece on Newsbreak.

I’ve been quoted in articles, tagged, and even interviewed, but never a whole article about me and my relationship with my mother.

It’s titled, “Daughter on having an unusual mom: ‘She doesn’t believe in me.’ The author pulls from an old Your Tango I wrote and fully attributed it, but also sneaks in some information from some of my more recent pieces.”

The author has summarized my life experience for another article, and I’m not mad about it. It gets my name out there and gives me credibility.

Content writing isn’t the same as journalism.

I’ve been assigned articles where I had to write a piece about someone and use other articles as sources. This type of writing is known as content aggregation, where you build on the work of others.

A regular contributor on a media site doesn’t always get to choose the articles they’re assigned to write.

When you write an aggregated article, it doesn’t carry the same weight as an article you did investigative for or a piece where you conducted interviews.

When I had to do an aggregated profile on someone, I reached out to the person and tried to get a quote or two that I could use to make it feel a…