The Stay-at-Home Order

“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”

—Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne, 1926

• Editorial Comment: Takes practice.

  

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Solitude

Last Day! Check out the March issue of Senior News 

  

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

Typo

 

“My qualifications for the job rested mainly on my ability to ferret out spelling and grammatical mistakes in texts. I found that I was a natural, spotting typos with an idiot-savant-esque regularity. I hadn’t had this kind of chance to show off my geeky prowess since winning consecutive junior-high spelling bees.”

—Jeff Deck, grammarian-savant and author of “The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time,” 2010.

 

• Editorial Comment: Edditors rule!

 

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From the mouths of hounds . . .

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Do We Consent?

“All legitimate government authority flows from the consent of the governed, and the governed can’t consent if they don’t know what is going on.

“One of the ironies is that the conservatives, of which I am proud to be one, are not generally thought to be good on this issue. I, for one, have never understood why. It just shows how sometimes people fall into bad habits without really thinking about the consequences of it.” 

—Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, “Cornyn Takes Up FOIA Fight,” The Rollcall, 2004.

 

• Editorial Comment: Not really thinking about consequences *is* a bad habit.

 

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Everybody just green-out

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

‘We’re Done’

“When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said all events with more that 50 people are shut down, I thought to myself, ‘We’re done.’ 

“I’m a pretty good salesperson, but to try and place ads for events that aren’t happening and businesses that are closing is beyond my abilities.”

—Jeff vonKanael, president of the Sacramento, Chico and Reno News & Reviews, three alternative weeklies in California and Nevada, closed his newspapers last week, in Abené Clayton, “‘We were on borrowed time’: coronavirus could strike final blow to local newspapers,” the Guardian, March 20, 2020.

 

• Editorial Comment: Great. A newspaper-killing virus.

 

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End of another crazy viral day

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Matter

“I wanted to write things that mattered. I wanted to matter.”

—Terrence McNally (1938-2020), Tony Award-winning Broadway playwright whose work focused on gay life, died Tuesday of complications from COVID-19, “A Conversation with Terrence McNelly, the Bard of American Theater,” New York Times Style Magazine, 2019. 

• Editorial Comment: You succeeded, Mr. McNally.

• NYT Obit

 

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Trainwreck

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Pandemic Coping Strategies

“Stella Bates, 70, said she is walking five miles a day now and feels pretty good under the circumstances. She’s from Great Britain, she said, where people are ‘less prone to panic’ having lived through things like the Blitz.

“‘Being miserable is not going to do any good,’ she said. ‘If you have the news on all the time, you’ll go mad. I try not to listen, especially when the president is talking.’” 

—Steve Rubenstein, reporter, “Coronavirus fears: If you touch an onion at Ferry Building farmers’ market, it’s yours,” SFChronicle, March 21, 2020.

• Editorial Comment: Stiff upper lip, what? Pip pip!

 

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Pile on.

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Go Tend the Garden

“[A]t my age, you care less. You just plain care less. You get tired of people’s problems, and you take less interest in them. You think, ‘Oh, to hell with them. I’ll go out and tend to the garden.’ 

“The kinds of problems you can care about in your old age are different from the kinds of problems you care about when you’re 30. And they are probably different from the kinds of problems most of your readers care about. So you tend to move away from all the heat and calamity of living and get into a kind of serenity that is not very creative.” 

—Wallace Stegner (1909-1993), Western novelist, interviewed at 80 by James R. Hepworth, “The Art of Fiction, No. 118,” The Paris Review, 1990.
 

• Editorial Comment: I’m not sure what this has to do with journalism. But it sounds like good advice to me. Maybe I’m getting old.

 

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Pretty. Nice. Day. Trinidad Bay, CA

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Renewed Appreciation

“Never in our time has [sic] the media been more underappreciated and overly attacked for simply doing what journalists have been doing forever — being watchdogs, holding the powerful accountable and, most of all, providing its audience with the valuable information they need.

“And while the coronavirus is a story none of us wish we had to cover, it has proven something encouraging: Americans need — and more importantly, want — good journalism.

“Major news websites . . . are seeing huge spikes in traffic numbers. Local news organizations are seeing renewed interest.”

—Tom Jones, media writer, “The coronavirus story is reminding Americans that they want and need good journalism,” The Poynter Report, March 16, 2020. Image: Indonesian kindergarteners practice handwashing./Getty

 

• Editorial Comment: When the wolf is at the door, a watchdog is a good thing.

 

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Edebee’s

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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

Tit-for-Tat

“At a time when facts and information are a matter of life and death for billions of people worldwide, the cycle of tit-for-tat retaliation between Beijing and Washington over the role of journalists is stunningly misguided and a grave risk to public safety. 

“Both countries should lift any applicable restrictions and allow professional media outlets to play their role of reporting the news and calling it like they see it.”

—Suzanne Nossel, CEO, PEN America, in Colin Dwyer, “China Pulls Credentials from Journalists at 3 Major News Organizations,” NPR, March 17, 2020. 

        

• Editorial Comment: First it was a trade war . . .

 

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Clear Skies

Check out the March issue of Senior News 

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