The 5 stories writers should be reading this week

Two of the most popular social media sites hire writers to produce content, proving you can never, ever, have too much content. Plus, Henry Miller’s 11 writing commandments, the overuse of “straw” language, some campaigns for writing more letters, and more. It’s the Week in Writing:

Social sites hiring writing staffs. Everyone is a content curator these days, so when Tumblr hired two staff writers this week, it only made sense. That they were hired to cover Tumblr was not all that strange either, it seems. The New York Times reported on the trend of social media sites like Tumblr and Facebook adding writers and editors to produce original content. According to the Times, “By creating in-house content, social websites can increase the amount of time that users spend on their sites, thereby increasing their value to advertisers.” Read the story here.