Slippery

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Truth

“Philosophers have long disputed the nature of truth [which] . . . lies at the very center of journalism. So it’s essential to examine it, if only to discover that it differs from what many of us were taught—that truth is self-evident and unchanging. . . . In most ancient tribal societies, shamans and elders held the authority to say what was true and what was false. Later, religious authorities, kings, queens, and the nobility would claim it. In our day, scientists, political and religious leaders, and news media are the most powerful truth-tellers.”

—John H. McManus, journalist, educator and author
of Detecting Bull: How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism
in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web, 2009 URL
Image: Jules Joseph Lefebvre’s 19th century portrait of Truth

• Editorial Comment: I can’t handle the truth.

• PeezPix: December Sunrise

Ooops

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Typoes

“Look closer and you’ll see that typos are a symptom of a larger problem. Taken as a whole, they can point to widespread misunderstanding about spelling and grammar, not to mention lagging education in language. Thirty million Americans are functionally illiterate; clearly our educational system has some catching up to do. Typos also have a negative impact on how people perceive you, making you seem careless or even incompetent.”

—Benjamin D. Herson,
co-author with Jeff Deck of The Great American Typo Hunt:
Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, 2010
(NPR story)
Photo captured by alert typo hunter Ashley Stolworthy.

• Editorial Comment: Doesn’t he mean “incompatent”?

• PeezPix: Snowhound below Mendon Peak.
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Thanksgiving Treats

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Note: The WORD takes the rest of the week off. Be thankful for favors small and large. TP

Thankful for Language



“For me, it is a cause of some upset that more Anglophones don’t enjoy language. . . . People seem to be able to find sensual and sensuous pleasure in almost everything but words these days. Words, it seems, belong to other people. Anyone who expresses themselves with originality, delight and verbal freshness is more likely to be mocked, distrusted or disliked than welcomed. The free and happy use of words appears to be considered elitist or pretentious. Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today bother with it in quite the wrong way. They write letters to broadcasters and newspapers in which they are rude and haughty about other people’s language and in which they show their own superior ‘knowledge’ of how the language should be. I hate that.”

—Stephen Fry, whose exposition on language is made into “kinetic typography” by 18-year-old graphic artist Matt Rogers of Perth, Australia. Great stuff. Click here.

(Thanks to alert WORDster Mark Larson)

• Editorial Comment: Where the hell does he get off?

• For Thanksgiving: Instead of Peezpix, I offer this xtranormal video for all professors who have thought this, and for all students who have, too.

Snark

Cheap Shots in 140-Character Bites

“Twitter’s 140-character blasts aren’t bringing down the newspapers. They’re just turning journalists into sniggering cheap-shot artists. Ever since reporters started using Twitter, an old guard of newspaper hands has complained that the micro-blogging site is undermining the art of journalism, 140 characters at a time. But Twitter is actually more of a threat to a particular strain of journalism, a mostly noble one: press criticism. On Twitter, every journalist is a press critic. This may sound like a good thing: Journalism, more than most institutions, would seem to benefit from self-scrutiny. But, trust me, it isn’t. Twitter opens a window into journalists’ minds and, often times, the view ain’t pretty.”

—Ben Crair, deputy news editor of The Daily Beast,
“Twitter Killed Media Criticism,” Nov. 21, 2010

(Thanks to alert WORDster Brenda Cooper)

• Editorial Comment: ROFL . . . or crying.

• PeezPix: Sunrise

(No) Old-Timey Religion

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The Atheists’ Hymnal

WORDmeister sez: For the run-up to Holiday Season, Steve Martin feels sorry for atheists and offers this as a remedy.

“Religious people have such beautiful music and art. And atheists really have nothing. Until now.”

—Steve Martin, comedian, writer, musician and songwriter, with the Steep Canyon Ramblers, “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs.” 3:51 YouTube ****four thumbs up.
(Thanks to alert WORDster Sydney Larson)

• Editorial Comment: Damnation you can clap to.




• PeezPix: Autumn Tree

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Hot Air

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Overinflated

“We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.”

—Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007), a writer who was rarely overinflated, from Palm Sunday (1981)

(Thanks to alert WORDster Steve Marston)

• Editorial Comment: Well, that can backfire for many writers.

• PeezPix: Sadieface

Emptiness

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Vacancy

“Newspapers are the public’s referees as to which information is credible. You can go online and read no end of fiction and smear about public figures. But when you read content in a newspaper, you consistently can rely on it. . . . When a newspaper dies, you don’t get a comprehensive periodical to fill the void. You get an informational vacant lot into which passers-by can throw their junk.”

—Debra J. Saunders, columnist, “Cutting off your news to spite your face,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 2009. (Thanks to alert WORDster Steve Nash)

• Editorial Comment: Maybe a community garden in that lot?

• PeezPix: Beam Me Up! .

Gramagical

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Do You Believe in Magic?

“The word grammar has taken a bit of a nosedive since the days when some tipsy scholar north of Hadrian’s Wall mixed up his r’s with his l’s. Today grammar connotes everything unglamorous: absentminded professors; fussy schoolteachers; British grammazons with binding names like Lynne Truss; nagging perfectionists; pedantic correctionists; high school students asleep at their desks, stalactites of drool hanging from their lips. Long lost from grammar are associations with power, magic, enchantment and mystical energy.”

—Roy Peter Clark, writer, writing coach and vice president of The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, from his new book, The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English (2010)

• Editorial Comment: You’ve cast a spell on me….

• Photo of the Day: PeezPix defers today to The National Geo
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Facts

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Koppel’s ‘Nonpartisan Sadness’

“The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oft-quoted observation that ‘everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts,’ seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.

“And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be.”

—Ted Koppel, veteran newsman and columnist,
“Olbermann, O’Reilly and the Death of Real News,”
The Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2010.

(Koppel was managing editor of ABC’s “Nightline” from 1980 to 2005,
and is a contributing analyst for “BBC World News America.”)
Cartoon: Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune

• Editorial Comment: Facts? We don’t need no stinkin’ facts!

• PeezPix: Water Lily—Thoughts of warmer days...

Butterfly

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Write Now

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.”

—Vita Sackville-West (1892-1962), English author and poet; Virginia Woolf’s partner

Bio

• Editorial Comment: Butterfly net? I need a bazooka.

• PeezPix: November Frosting

• WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.
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Antisocial

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Unreal

“Socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”

—Aaron Sorkin, sceenwriter of “The Social Network,” on why he’s not on Facebook. The Colbert Report, Sept. 30, 2010.

(Thanks to alert WORDster Ross Martin)

• Editorial Comment: C’mon. What about WWF?

• PeezPix: Shell Still-life

• WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.
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Chips, Anyone?

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Googlebrain

“If you’ll walk around with a Bluetooth headset hanging from your ear, you’ll probably walk around with a Google chip in your brain.”

—Nicholas Carr, technology writer and author of books and articles on new technology, including The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2010) and “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic (2008). From Computing the Cost, The Sun, March, 2009

• Editorial Comment: Let me Google an idea

• PeezPix: Horsenose

• WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu. .
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Russian Journalist Beaten

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‘I think they wanted to kill him’

“The thing that bothers me is that at the moment of the beating, they broke his fingers. It is completely obvious that the people who did this did not like what he was saying and what he was writing. I don't know what specifically they did not like, but I firmly connect this with his professional activities.”

—Mikhail Mikhailin, editor of Moscow’s daily Kommersant, on the brutal beating of his reporter, Oleg Kashin (New York Times, 11/06/10)

(“Kashin . . . is in a medically induced coma in a Moscow hospital with a concussion, a broken jaw, fractures in both legs and broken fingers, the newspaper reported Saturday. At least one finger was severed at the joint.”—Ellen Barry, NYTimes, 11/6/10)

Oleg Kashin Photo: Svetlana Privalova/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

• Editorial Comment: Silencing the Russian watchdog

• PeezPix: Plymouth Peak

• ANNE GARRELS: Two stories and a radio interview from NPR foreign correspondent Anne Garrels’ visit to USU last week: Garrels’ conversations with students and her Morris Lecture, “Bearing Witness: One journalist’s take on covering the world” —Hard News Cafe

• WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu. .
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Gullible

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They’ll Believe Any Darn Thing . . .

“Ask how to live? Write, write, write, anything. The world’s a fine believing world, write news.”

—Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625),
English dramatists during the reign of King James I.
(from Wit without Money, act II, 1614)

• Editorial Comment: Early truthiness...

THE NEWS CYCLE—The Salt Lake Tribune’s editorial cartoonist Pat Bagley
illustrates Beaumont & Fletcher’s point. (Salt Lake Tribune, Nov. 7, 2010)

• PeezPix: Lulu in October

• ANNE GARRELS: Two stories and a radio interview from NPR foreign correspondent Anne Garrels’ visit to USU last week: Garrels’ conversations with students and her Morris Lecture, “Bearing Witness: One journalist’s take on covering the world” —Hard News Cafe

• WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu. .
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Disagreement

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On Partisanship

“Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world—and never will. . . . If a man doesn't believe as we do, we say he’s a crank, and that settles it. I mean, it does nowadays, because now we can’t burn him.”

—Mark Twain (1835-1910), writer

Editorial Comment: Although a good bonfire can be a cracklin’ good thing....

PeezPix: Waiting Room

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu. .

Snowshoes

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Word Things

Report from a Far Place

Making these word things to
step on across the world, I
could call them snowshoes.

They creak, sag, bend, but
hold, over the great deep cold,
and they turn up at the toes.

In war or city or camp
they could save your life;
you can muse them by the fire.

Be careful, though: they
burn, or don't burn, in their own
strange way, when you say them.

—William Stafford (1914-1993), poet and professor

(Thanks to alert WORDster Peter Y. Sussman)

Editorial Comment: The power of the storyteller

PeezPix: October Stubble—Mown fall field below the Wellsvilles, Northern Utah. JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State TODAY! to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. HEAR her interview with Tom Williams on Utah Public Radio. And READ preview of today's appearance in the Logan Herald-Journal by JCOM alum Matthew Jensen. Public speech TODAY, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.
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The Morning After . . .urp!

Columbia Journalism Review watches the election returns

Joel Meares: “So, my election night was spent flicking between MSNBC and Fox News; my surf along the Republican wave guided by the blustery Keith Olbermann and his panel of MSNBC big names for some returns, and by Fox’s Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier for others. As you might expect, it was like dinner with the Montagues and Capulets; two households alike in indignity with very different takes on the dishes being served. . . .

“Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann (R), . . . wide-eyed and wrapped in what looked like a coppery prom dress, refused to answer [Chris] Matthews’s question about her suggestion that members of Congress should be investigated for being anti-American. A sign behind her, waved about by a supporter, read, ‘How’s the tingle Chris?’ As off-camera laughs could be heard, and Bachmann evaded the question with rote Tea Party patriotisms, Matthews asked, ‘Has someone hypnotized you? Has someone put you under a trance tonight?’”

“Fox portrayed every GOP victory as a repudiation of Obama, and the overall wave . . . as history-making. Conveniently, they didn’t cut to O’Donnell’s ready-for-SNL concession speech. The central Fox panel was made up of [Roger] Ailes’s tamer brood . . . as well as Karl ‘this is the most historic election in the history of foreverdom’ Rove, who, as you would expect, talked over anyone who suggested the results didn’t show a tidal wave spewed out of a volcano set off by an earthquake.”

Liz Cox Barrett: “CNN clearly wants to wow viewers with the whiz-bang: the ‘data wall,’ the ‘election matrix,’ the ‘sentiment analysis’ of the ‘Twittersphere,’ the exit poll 3-D doodads that from time to time crowd Ali Velshi out of the shot entirely. Early in the evening, [Wolf] Blitzer was on it. . . ‘Everyone remembers Christine O’Donnell, the candidate who said she was not a witch. She is not going to be a United States senator, at least for now, either.’ Zing!”

Lauren Kirchner: “NPR is a great choice for following the election if you want your poll updates punctuated by stories about the BP settlement, the S&P 500, and a Modigliani painting now up for auction in Manhattan.”

• For more almost-instant analysis of the analysis—Election Night Coverage Roundup: What was said on CNN, NPR, the BBC, the NYT, and elsewhere, visit Columbia Journalism Review.

Editorial Comment: I need a morning-after pill....

PeezPix: Chilly Day—Autumn snow on the Bear River Range

JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State TODAY! for class meetings and to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. When the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing started in Baghdad, Garrels was one of 16 U.S. journalists who stayed to cover the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Her 2003 book, Naked in Baghdad, tells that story. Over three decades, Garrels has been in Russia, China, the Middle East and elsewhere in war and peace to bear witness and tell the rest of us what she has seen. JCOM student session Wednesday 11/3, 2:30 p.m. AnSc 303. Public speech Thursday, 11/4, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •

Political Discourse 2010

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Shooting the Messenger?

“This year will likely go down in the history books as the year of the angry voter. But 2010 will also be an election year notable for another kind of ire: when politicians let their contempt for the news media boil over. From New York to Alaska, the 2010 campaign season has been rife with hostile and downright bizarre encounters between candidates and the news media.”

—Jeremy Peters, “Politicians Are Fighting Mad, at the News Media,”
The New York Times, Oct. 31, 2010

And . . . “As politicians use social networks to connect directly with voters, some have turned ‘bypassing the filter’ into a cause, openly criticizing the news media and journalists. Of course, tensions between reporters and politicians is nothing new, but this year, ‘the civility that has generally kept relations from breaking into outright feuding has been shattered,’ writes The New York Times. There were several strange run-ins between candidates and journalists, including when a reporter was arrested by security guards for [Alaska] Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller or when [New York] Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino held a shouting match with a reporter that included the words ‘I’ll take you out, buddy.’ This seems to be a natural progression from the broad attack against the news media as an institution that many politicians have launched this year. As a political strategy, it might very well make sense. After all, Republicans have long held the news media in low esteem, but that sentiment is growing within Democrats as well.”

—Slate, Oct. 31, 2010 URL

Meanwhile, “WASHINGTON—Former Governor Sarah Palin launched a broadside attack on the news media Sunday, charging the industry with wholesale corruption in support of liberals and insisting that a local CBS affiliate was staffed with ‘corrupt bastards.’”

—Sam Stein, Huffington Post, Oct. 31, 2010 URL

Photo (above): Reporter Tony Hopfinger, far right, after being handcuffed by the security detail for Joe Miller, a Senate candidate. Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News, via Associated Press

Editorial Comment: Shoot, beat, shred and mangle the messenger?

PeezPix: Golden Fall Morning—On Election Day 2010, we can only hope for better days now the campaigns are over....

JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State TOMORROW! for class meetings and to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. When the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing started in Baghdad, Garrels was one of 16 U.S. journalists who stayed to cover the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Her 2003 book, Naked in Baghdad, tells that story. Over three decades, Garrels has been in Russia, China, the Middle East and elsewhere in war and peace to bear witness and tell the rest of us what she has seen. JCOM student session Wednesday 11/3, 2:30 p.m. AnSc 303. Public speech Thursday, 11/4, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.
• • •

Insane Fear

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Rally for Fearful Sanity

“This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear—they are, and we do.

“But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus, and not be enemies. But unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke.

“The country’s 24-hour, political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the dangerous, unexpected flaming ants epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”

—Jon Stewart, comedian/commentator,
concluding the Stewart/Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,
Washington Mall, Oct. 30, 2010 video link

Editorial Comment: Comedy in defense of liberty is no vice.

Rally attracts 215,000+, say U.S. Park Service, others. CBS

PeezPix: Mendon Peak in October—The Wellsvilles reflected in Cutler Marsh here in Northern Utah, last week, as winter arrives

JCOM News Note: NPR foreign correspondent ANNE GARRELS comes to Utah State this week for class meetings and to deliver a Morris Media & Society Lecture: “Bearing Witness—One journalist’s take on covering the world.” Garrels comes to USU fresh from several weeks in Russia. When the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing started in Baghdad, Garrels was one of 16 U.S. journalists who stayed to cover the invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Her 2003 book, Naked in Baghdad, tells that story. Over three decades, Garrels has been in Russia, China, the Middle East and elsewhere in war and peace to bear witness and tell the rest of us what she has seen. JCOM student session Wednesday 11/3, 2:30 p.m. AnSc 303. Public speech Thursday, 11/4, 2-3:15 p.m., USU Performance Hall. Free & open to everyone.

WRITING PROF WANTED! JCOM @ USU is hiring. A search for a new tenure-track faculty member to focus on the teaching of writing. Revolutionary! See job posting at Utah State University HR or email ted.pease@usu.edu.

NOTE: Today’s WORD on Journalism is now on Facebook! Join up and rant daily! And join USU JCOM Alumni & Friends on FB.

• • •

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