Dear BATW,
The new year is well underway and your board has been hard at work on some exciting projects. This month, I’m happy to introduce quite a few of them.
First up is our newly-introduced “Benefits” page in our members-only section. Through your membership, you can now access discounted travel insurance, hotel reservations and experiences — in addition to the growing library of BATW Zoom experiences. And at the bottom, you’ll find a highly useful list of pitch, submission and writers guidelines for a wide variety of publications currently accepting new material — an ideal resource for when you’re wondering where and how to pitch a particular piece. Special thanks to board member Amy Sherman who arranged many of these benefits for us and compiled the list of guidelines.
Second up is the launch of our mentorship/mentee program — we’re now accepting requests for mentorship as well as offers to mentor a fellow BATW member. This will be an opportunity for junior members to get advice from more seasoned ones about getting published and networking, or just getting feedback on a piece. Please note that for now, no more than one mentee per mentor at a time will be assigned — this program will evolve as we learn more, so we appreciate those signing up for its trial run, especially those giving their time as mentors. Use this form to indicate your interest.
Finally — the board continues to craft an official stance regarding Chat-GPT, the AI-writing tool which has earned the ire of everyone from programmers to writers. I encourage you to research it on your given the likelihood it will be a permanent fixture in our professions as both a tool and potential competitor. Quite a few notable publications have developed quite cogent stances on the platform, but I recommend Wired’s in particular given their authority in the field.
As always, don’t hesitate to reach out via email should you want to chat. My inbox is always open.
Best,
Matthew