Friday, May 4, 2012

Sing-along

.
The Last WORD 

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of other things. . . .
Another season ends, dear friends, 
and the WORD’s fat lady sings.

Veteran WORDwatchers know what this means: The rusty van with the chronic muffler problem from St. Mumbles Home for the Terminally Verbose pulled up outside in the wee hours this morning to collect the sanitarium’s most recidivist inmate.

There was no worry that the meat wagon’s backfires might alert the target: After this year of declining literacy and wisdom, rampant punditry and the most ridiculous presidential primary season since the Demos’ Seven Dwarfs, the WORD was snoring off a snootful of hyperbolic “wisdom” on the couch, and was even less responsive than usual.

Few mourned (or noticed, really) as the WORD was tenderly but tightly wrapped in a cozy de-obfuscation Snuggi for the 900-mile trip to St. Mumbles. An intensive regimen of weight loss, deconjugation and heavy cerebral editorial sanding is planned for the moribund WORDweinie. After his 16th season of spreading crap far and wide, he’s tired. Indeed, before passing out in front of “Jeopardy!” he was mumbling this over and over:


Under the sod and under the trees
Lies the body of Edward Pease.
He is not here, there's only the pod:
Pease shelled out and went to God.

Nantucket gravestone, 1882 (only very lightly edited)

Scary stuff.

But that’s enuff, gentle and patient readers, as we follow another crop of graduates out the door and close down for the summer. The redwoods, the hammock and a promising salmon season beckon, and a lot of foggy walks and yogatime are needed.

As Karl Marx, the famous philosopher-comic, said, “Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough.” So this isn't a Last WORD—Lord knows there are always more!—but just the end of this episode. Look for the WORD’s escape from St. Mumbles in August, once again to afflict—merrily, gaily, happily—an unsuspecting world.

Per tradition, however, we like to end on the same note, invoking Stanley Walker, a very wise man:

“What makes a good newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy. He can go for nights on end without sleep. He dresses well and talks with charm. Men admire him; women adore him; tycoons and statesmen are willing to share their secrets with him. He hates lies and meanness and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his paper and to what he looks upon as the profession; whether it is a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts to debate it. When he dies, a lot of people are sorry, and some of them remember him for several days.”

—Stanley Walker, newspaperman, The New York Herald-Tribune, 1924

• Editorial Comment: —30— Thank gawd.

• Yesterday’s WORD: Mockingbird Did you miss yesterday’s WORDs from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, about reading? A good walk-off for the summer reading season. Click here.


News from our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café 


Journalism prof known as quirky, dedicated, passionate, inspirational, by Kristi Ottley 
Parking at River Heights park has neighbors at odds with city, by Sean O’Sullivan 

False ID makes Logan woman’s underage drinking trouble worse, by Steve Kent
Humane Society volunteers give loving care to homeless pets, by Jimena Herrero
Blind in a sighted world: Independence means everything , by Chris Lee
Herbal remedies, natural medicine growing more popular, by Tmera Bradley
Mongolian journalists visit USU to develop partnerships, by Rebecca Holliday 
Swapping schools: Logan, Cache districts accommodate requests, by Tara Alvey 
GRAMA request reveals missing faculty conflict-of-interest forms, by Caitlin Moffitt 
ACL injury lands snowboard pro in months of rehab, by Josh Ruggles 
History named top teaching department at USU in fierce competition, by Allie Jeppson
Astronomer warns of ‘Death from the Skies’ in Science lecture, by Mary Stocking
Commencement 2012: Aggies have less debt than national average, by Kristi Ottley
Aggies team up with Nike to launch new ‘look’, by Rebecca Holliday 
Aggies TV News—Cache Rendezvous (April 25)

 PeezPIX by Ted Pease 
Catalog here
Fish on! 


Thursday, May 3, 2012

Mockingbird

.
‘Minds Like Empty Rooms’

“I arrived in the first grade, literate, with a curious cultural assimilation of American history, romance, the Rover Boys, Rapunzel, and The Mobile Press. Early signs of genius? Far from it. Reading was an accomplishment I shared with several local contemporaries. Why this endemic precocity? Because in my hometown, a remote village in the early 1930s, youngsters had little to do but read. A movie? Not often—movies weren’t for small children. A park for games? Not a hope. We’re talking unpaved streets here, and the Depression. . . .

“Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.”

—Nelle Harper Lee, author, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), in 2006 letter to Oprah magazine.
(Thanks to alert WORDster Javan Kienzle)

• Editorial Comment: I’ll never forget the day I read a book.

• Yesterday’s WORD: Sweet Old Poop Did you miss yesterday’s WORDs from the British Parliament, who said Rupert Murdoch is unfit to run his global mega-NewsCorp? Click here.


News from our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café 
Journalism prof known as quirky, dedicated, passionate, inspirational, by Kristi Ottley

Parking at River Heights park has neighbors at odds with city, by Sean O’Sullivan
False ID makes Logan woman’s underage drinking trouble worse, by Steve Kent

Humane Society volunteers give loving care to homeless pets, by Jimena Herrero

Blind in a sighted world: Independence means everything , by Chris Lee
Herbal remedies, natural medicine growing more popular, by Tmera Bradley
Mongolian journalists visit USU to develop partnerships, by Rebecca Holliday
Swapping schools: Logan, Cache districts accommodate requests, by Tara Alvey
GRAMA request reveals missing faculty conflict-of-interest forms, by Caitlin Moffitt
ACL injury lands snowboard pro in months of rehab, by Josh Ruggles
History named top teaching department at USU in fierce competition, by Allie Jeppson
Astronomer warns of ‘Death from the Skies’ in Science lecture, by Mary Stocking
Commencement 2012: Aggies have less debt than national average, by Kristi Ottley
Aggies team up with Nike to launch new ‘look’, by Rebecca Holliday
Aggies TV News—Cache Rendezvous (April 25)

 PeezPIX by Ted Pease 

Catalog here
Lulu the Bighearted Dog left us much too soon. 
2002-2012 RIP







Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Uncle Rupert

.
Unfit


“Rupert Murdoch is ‘not a fit person’ to exercise stewardship of a major international company, a [British Parliament] committee of MPs has concluded, in a report highly critical of the mogul and his son James’s role in the News of the World phone-hacking affair.

“The Commons culture, media and sport select committee also concluded that James Murdoch showed ‘wilful ignorance’ . . . .”

“Rupert Murdoch . . . ‘did not take steps to become fully informed about phone hacking’ and ‘turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications.’ The committee concluded that the culture of the company’s newspapers ‘permeated from the top’ and ‘speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International.’”

—Dan Sabbagh and Josh Halliday, reporters, 
The Guardian, May 1, 2012
See HuffPost link
About NewsCorp, NYTimes, May 1, 2012 

• Editorial Comment: So is that good news or bad news about who’s driving Fox News?
• NEWS CORP OWNS . . . (partial list
Dow Jones
Fox TV & News (19 cable stations and 25 local TV affiliates)
International Satellite TV: BSkyB (39%), FOXTEL (25%), Sky Deutschland, SKY Italia, Sky Network Television Limited (44%), TATA Sky (20%)
Fox 2000 Pictures and 16 film companies, including Fox Music, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox Studios Australia, Fox Studios LA, Fox Television Studios . . . 
The New York Post
The Wall Street Journal
SmartSource (Coupons)
National Geographic
24 U.S. newspapers
15 Australian & British newspapers
20th Century Fox 
HarperCollins Publishing
and more....  

• Yesterday’s WORD: Errat . . . um Did you miss yesterday’s WORDs about correcting errors on TV News from NYTimes media critic David Carr? Click here.

News from our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café 
Journalism prof known as quirky, dedicated, passionate, inspirational, by Kristi Ottley
ACL injury lands snowboard pro in months of rehab, by Josh Ruggles
History named top teaching department at USU in fierce competition, by Allie Jeppson
Astronomer warns of ‘Death from the Skies’ in Science lecture, by Mary Stocking
Commencement 2012: Aggies have less debt than national average, by Kristi Ottley
Aggies team up with Nike to launch new ‘look’, by Rebecca Holliday
Young couple finishes restoration of historic Hyde Park house, by Shannon McCleve
Wellsville residents’ opinions divided on proposed truck stop, by Jemina Herrero Aggies TV News—Cache Rendezvous (April 25)
Decision nears on proposed Oneida Narrows dam, but fight not over yet, by Allie Jeppson 

PeezPIX by Ted Pease 
Catalog here
Lulu the Bighearted Dog left us much too soon. 
2002-2012 RIP









Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Errat . . . um . . .

.
Creating [Wrong] Reality

“What is it with television news and corrections? When the rest of the journalism world gets something wrong, they generally correct themselves. But network news acts as if an on-air admission of error might cause a meteor to land on the noggin of one of its precious talking heads. NBC used all of the powers at its disposal to amend the mistake, except the high-visibility airtime where the bad clip ran in the first place.”

—David Carr, media writer, 
The New York Times, April 22, 2012



• Editorial Comment: No film @ 11.



• Yesterday’s WORD: Truth Did you miss yesterday’s WORDs on Truth from Will Rogers, Winston Churchill, Emily Dickinson and other luminaries? Click here. 

News from our award-winning student news site, The Hard News Café 
Journalism prof known as quirky, dedicated, passionate, inspirational, by Kristi Ottley
History named top teaching department at USU in fierce competition, by Allie Jeppson
Astronomer warns of ‘Death from the Skies’ in Science lecture, by Mary Stocking
Commencement 2012: Aggies have less debt than national average, by Kristi Ottley
Aggies team up with Nike to launch new ‘look’—uniforms, bull, logo, by Rebecca Holliday
Young couple finishes restoration of historic Hyde Park house, by Shannon McCleve
Wellsville residents’ opinions divided on proposed truck stop, by Jemina Herrero Aggies TV News—Cache Rendezvous (April 25)
Decision nears on proposed Oneida Narrows dam, but fight not over yet, by Allie Jeppson 

PeezPIX by Ted Pease 
Catalog here
Lulu the Bighearted Dog left us much too soon. 
2002-2012 RIP










.