Finding your niche.

Writing an original news analysis article is a challenging endeavor. It involves extensive research, reporting, and organization, even before the first word of the end product is written.

Often, this process crystallizes the subject in the mind of the writer to the point that the piece, as they say, "writes itself." This was not the case with this issue's story on the Year 2000 problem in the oil industry (p. 29).

This computer "bug" afflicts all industries and presents a challenge so large and complex that its nuances cannot be easily explained in the space of a magazine article. That is why we have chosen to devote two full-length articles to this important …