To the Heights!

“What distresses me is to see that human genius has limits and human stupidity none.” 

—Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824-1895), French author & playwright. (Thanks to WORDster extraordinaire Dr. Mardy Grothe.)

• Editorial Comment: Some people have a rare genius for stoopidity.

PeezPix

The March issue of Senior News is out.

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

Truth vs. Lies

“In a sense Donald Trump has done journalism a favor. In his cavalier disregard for truth he has reminded people why societies need to be able to distinguish fact from fiction. At their best, journalists do that job well. They can now harness almost infinite resources to help them. But, at the same time, we have created the most prodigious capability for spreading lies the world has ever seen. And the economic system for supporting journalism looks dangerously unstable. The stakes for truth have never been higher.” 

—Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian and author of “Breaking News: The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now,” quoted in “A Revolution for Journalism — or a Death Knell?” The New York Times, January 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Out here, lies and truth can start to look a lot alike.

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Say What You Think. But Think First.

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

Write or Cut Bait

“Storytelling is probably only just a little bit older than fishing. . . . Have you ever been fishing? It’s unbelievably boring, so you have to do something.”

—Moe Bowstern, fisher-poet, “The Poets of Fishing Gather in Oregon,” NPR, Feb. 23, 2019.

 

   

• Editorial Comment: I come at it the opposite way: When the writing doesn’t work, I go fishing.

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Writer at Work

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

Incoherence

“It is not, as some have suggested, merely that Trump speaks at the level of a seventh-grader or that he harkens back to a preliterate oral culture. He embodies the incoherence of the modern digital age, filled with sudden shifts from subject to subject, a roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and lows punctuated with commercials.

“There is nonstop stimulation. Seldom does anything occupy our attention for more than a few seconds. Nothing has context. Images overwhelm words. We are perpetually confused, but always entertained. We barely remember what we saw or heard a few minutes earlier.” 

—Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, “Worshipping the Electronic Image,” Truthdig, Feb. 18, 2019.

 

• Editorial Comment: The new norm . . . wait. What was I saying?

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Look out

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

‘Enemy of the People’

“America’s founders believed that a free press was essential to democracy because it is the foundation of an informed, engaged citizenry. . . .”

“In demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle. . . .” 

“[T]he phrase ‘enemy of the people’ is not just false, it’s dangerous. It has an ugly history of being wielded by dictators and tyrants who sought to control public information. And it is particularly reckless coming from someone whose office gives him broad powers to fight or imprison the nation’s enemies. 

“As I have repeatedly told President Trump face to face, there are mounting signs that this incendiary rhetoric is encouraging threats and violence against journalists at home and abroad.”

—A.G. Sulzberger, New York Times publisher, “New York Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger responded to President Trump’s continued attacks on a free press,” New York Times, Feb. 20, 2019.

  

• Editorial Comment: Hear hear.

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DogSneer

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

Act of Faith

“Stories are always really, really hard to write. I think it’s totally rational for a writer, no matter how much experience he has, to go right down in confidence to almost zero when you sit down to start something. Why not? Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you.” 

—John McPhee, writer, “John McPhee, The Art of Nonfiction No. 3,” The Paris Review, Spring 2010.

• Editorial Comment: I came across this on deadline last weekend, and was comforted: Sometimes it’s like stepping off a cliff in the dark with your eyes closed. And I’m no McFrigginPhee.

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Keep Busy, Honey

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

CNN Goes Insane

“CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network’s decision to hire a partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting. . . .”

“Throughout her decade-long career in Republican politics, [Republican political advisor Sarah] Isgur has served as an advisor to Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney, and was Carly Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager for the 2016 Republican primary. Until last year, Isgur was a top spokesperson for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice.

“A CNN spokesperson said Isgur will not be involved in the network’s DOJ coverage, but will guide TV and digital coverage of the 2020 election, occasionally offering on-screen analysis. . . .”

“‘People are generally confused,’ [an] editorial employee said, adding that the decision to hire a partisan operative for an editorial position comes off as ‘very bizarre.’”

—Maxwell Tani, reporter, “CNN Staffers ‘Demoralized’ by Hiring of GOP Operative Sarah Isgur to Edit 2020 Coverage,” The Daily Beast, Feb. 19, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Um . . . what?

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Woof?

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

Another President & the Press

“Thomas Jefferson was as irritated with newspaper coverage as any public figure of his era. For all the talk of media bias today, it can't compare to the overt partisanship and personal attacks appearing in papers in our nation’s early years. 

“But Jefferson also knew that our democracy could only flourish with a free press that would keep an eye on people in power and help protect our freedoms.

“He understood that press coverage comes and goes, but freedom of the press must endure.”

—Ken Paulson, president of the Newseum Institute’s First Amendment Center, quoted in “Memo to Donald Trump: Thomas Jefferson invented hating the media,” The Washington Post, Feb. 18, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: The press must endure, and someone’s got to read it.

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Grasswirl

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

Worth 1,000 Words?

“In history, there have been professions that basically disappeared. There’s still a few chimney sweeps around, but not like there once was. The question is, what will photojournalism evolve into, and can someone earn a living doing it?” 

—Donald R. Winslow, photojournalist and former editor, National News Photographers Assn. “News Photographer,” in “The Uncertain Future of Photojournalism,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2019. (Image: Haiti, AP/Rodrigo Abd.) (Thanks to alert PhotoWORDster Mark Larson.)

• Editorial Comment: Sure, if you’re a chimney sweep on the side.

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Sadie and the Ferocious Hose

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

‘Cyber Libel’?

“We reimagine a better future for journalism and society. We protect public interest above all other interests. We celebrate the good and unmask the bad. We are transparent, accountable, and consistent. We ask, we explain, we investigate.”

—The operating principles of Rappler, a Philippine news website whose founder and executive editor, Maria Ressa, was arrested Wednesday for “cyber libel” against the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. See Hannah Ellis-Petersen, south Asia correspondent, “Maria Ressa arrest: everything you need to know about the Rappler editor,” The Guardian, Feb. 14, 2019. Image: Ressa posts bail. Alex Ongcal. 

Note: Ressa is one of TIME Magazine’s 2018 Persons of the Year.




• Editorial Comment: Crazy ideas.

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Road Rage

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

Slow Learner

“It took me 15 years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up, because by that time I was too famous.” 

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

• Editorial Comment: I have no such excuse, but still I write.

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Foggy Head

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