Bot, or Not?

“How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot.” . . .

“The internet has always played host in its dark corners to schools of catfish and embassies of Nigerian princes, but that darkness now pervades its every aspect: Everything that once seemed definitively and unquestionably real now seems slightly fake; everything that once seemed slightly fake now has the power and presence of the real.”

—Max Read, writer, “How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.” New York Magazine, Dec. 26, 2018. Cartoon: Peter Steine.

  

 

• Editorial Comment: How do I know if I’m a bot or not?


 

PeezPix

Sadie Boots (not bots)











 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Can I Quote You?

“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”  

—Robert Benchley (1889-1945), humorist and newspaper columnist.

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• Editorial Comment: No comment.


 

PeezPix

Dewy






 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Media Crash

“In the past three days, about 1,000 writers, editors, and other media workers lost their jobs — a number that will continue to increase over the next week.”

—Amanda Arnold, reporter, “1,000 People Lost Their Jobs in Media This Week,” The Cut, New York Magazine, Jan. 25, 2019

• Editorial Comment: Just what we need now — less information.



 

PeezPix

Hot Off the Presses









 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

The Honorable Path

 
Note: The Weekly Standard, a respected conservative voice founded in 1995 that opposed Trump and “combined high intellectual seriousness with the crass mentality of a political operative,” was summarily shut down by its pro-Trump owners in December.

“The Weekly Standard’s editors and writers refused to prostitute themselves to the Trumpists. In doing so, they stood as a continuing rebuke to those who jettisoned integrity for access and traded ideals for fame. Conservatives in the Trump era had a choice between sycophancy and honor; too few chose, as the Standard did, the honorable path.” 

—Jennifer Rubin, columnist, “Distinguished Person of the Week: Goodbye to the Weekly Standard,” The Washington Post, Dec. 16, 2018.

 

  

• Editorial Comment: Hazardous duty in the Drumpfocene Era.


 

PeezPix

Winter Daydreams









 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Russell Baker, RIP

“Mr. Baker, talking once to college students, was asked, ‘What courses should a journalism school teach?’

 
“He replied: ‘The ideal journalism school needs only one course. Students should be required to stand outside a closed door for six hours. Then the door would open, someone would put his head around the jamb and say, “No comment.” The door would close again, and the students would be required to write 800 words against a deadline.’”

—Russell Baker (1925-2019), longtime columnist and winner of two Pulitzers and a raft of other awards, died Monday. See Robert D. McFadden’s fine tribute, “Russell Baker, Pulitzer-Winning Times Columnist and Humorist, Dies at 93,” New York Times, Jan. 22, 2019. Image: Can you imagine an office containing both Russell Baker and Art Buchwald? Walter Bennett photo.

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• Editorial Comment: And make it sing.

PeezPix

Fresh Local Wild









 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

No Paine, No Gaine

“I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.”
 

―Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Revolution-era political activist and pamphleteer, author of “Common Sense” (1776), which argued for colonial independence from Great Britain, from “The Age of Reason,” 1794.

• Editorial Comment: Reasoning yourself into a corner.

PeezPix

Reasoned Argument









 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

A Great Lady

“I was, and still am, dumbfounded, surprised, but most of all disappointed and aghast that a once historically courageous American newspaper that exists by reason of freedom of speech would so trivially move to abate the free speech that it seems, when convenient, to hypocritically champion. And over a relatively innocuous sentence. … My mom would have been offended.” 

—Art Williams, after the Louisville Courier-Journal censored his 87-year-old mother’s obituary. “Kentucky newspaper removes criticism of Trump from woman's obituary,” The Guardian, Jan. 17, 2019. Image: Family photo, Fran Williams and husband, Bruce

The offending sentence deleted from the obituary of Frances Irene Finley Williams: “Her passing was hastened by her continued frustration with the Trump administration.”

• Editorial Comment: No wonder Gannett’s for sale.

PeezPix

Wellsvilles in Winter





 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

Thank You, Mary Oliver

 

“I consider myself kind of a reporter — one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.” 

—Mary Oliver (1935-2019), poet. The winner of the Pulitzer and National Book Award died last week. “Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver,” O: The Oprah Magazine, 2011. NYTimes obit.

• Editorial Comment: Seems simple enough.


Don’t Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
                                  —Mary Oliver

PeezPix

Cala Curl




 

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard

A Painful Thought

WORDmeister note: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 90 years old last week. So many of this writings and ideas and quotable quotes retain their core truth, 51 years after his assassination. How to choose? Here’s one. —TP

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.” 

—Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights activist.

• Editorial Comment: This is not aimed any anyone in particular. But hey, bub, if the shoe fits . . .

PeezPix

A Prayer

FREE! Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email This free “service” is sent to 2,000,000 or so subscribers around the planet more or less every weekday morning during WORD season. If you have recovered from whatever illness led you to subscribe and don’t want it anymore, send “unsubscribe” to ted.pease@gmail.com. Or if you want to afflict someone else, send me the email address and watch the fun begin. (Disclaimer: I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Trinidad, California. (Be)Friend The WORD

“I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard