Mobilization

 

“Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.”

 

—Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian, “Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Bully Pulpit’ Isn’t the Platform It Once Was,” NPR, Nov. 4, 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Better get mobilized in a hurry, else those ancient ideals be dead and buried.

 

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 Our Little Town, by Moonlight 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hot off the presses! What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.)

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

 

 

 

 

 

God’s Work

 

“When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree. When my mother explained it, I kept after her: What are you saying? What do you mean? I couldn’t believe it. It was astonishing. It was like—here’s the man who makes all the trees. Then I wanted to be a writer, because, I suppose, it seemed the closest thing to being God.

 

“I never wanted to be anything else. Well, if there had been a job of being a reader, I would have taken that, because I love to read and I don’t love to write. That would be blissful.”  

 

—Fran Lebowitz, writer, “A Humorist at Work,” The Paris Review, 1993.

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Little girl Fran, in fairness, then, God has also written quite a number of stinkers.

 

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Hot off the presses! What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Marching Orders

 

“We live in an age in which the fundamental principles to which we subscribe — liberty, equality and justice for all — are encountering extraordinary challenges . . . . 

“But it is also an age in which we can join hands with others who hold to those principles and face similar challenges.”

 

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020), associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court (1993-2020).

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Thanks, RBG. We can do it.

• Obit: Nina Totenberg, “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion of Gender Equality, Dies at 87,” NPR

 

 

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Half-staff and a half-moon for RBG, Trinidad, CA

  

What Scares Us? Check out the October issue of Senior News, Things That Go Bump in the Night. On newsstands everywhere. (Or should be.)

 

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

 

 

 

 

RIP, Crusading Newspaperman

 

“Hollywood reinforced my infatuation with newspapers. I identified with the small-town editor standing up to the crooks, the tough reporter winning the story and the girl, and the foreign correspondent outwitting enemy agents.” 

 

—Harold Evans (1928-2020), legendary editor, journalist and author, in Robert D. McFadden, “Harold Evans, Crusading Newspaperman With a Second Act, Dies at 92,” NYTimes, Sept. 24, 2020. Image:
Jack Manning/The New York Times

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Don't forget leaping tall buildings, etc.

 

 

 

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Remembrance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the September issue of Senior News, “Old Dogs, New Tricks.” Free everywhere.  

 

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 Art of Misdirection

  

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”

 

—Thomas Pynchon, author, Gravity's Rainbow, 1973 (p. 251) (Thanks to alert WORDster Peter Y. Sussman)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Loose the hounds!

 

 

 

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Fogwalk w/ dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the September issue of Senior News, “Old Dogs, New Tricks.” Free everywhere. 

 

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

 

 

 

Elephants in the Bushes

 

“The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press. There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. 

 

“The smug complacency of much of the press — I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’ — stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the second place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘Cat,’ and the other side saying ‘Dog,’ while the truth is there’s an elephant crashing around out there in the bushes.” 

 

—Molly Ivins (1944-2007), fearless and funny Texas newspaper columnist and buffoon skewerer, quoted in (among other places) Chris Hedges, writer, “The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News,” Truthdig, 2010

 

 

• Editorial Comment: To bag the truth, you need an elephant gun. And a sense of humor.

 

 

 

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Elephants, in the Open*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*you can trust me. I’m a journalist.

 

 

Check out the September issue of Senior News, “Old Dogs, New Tricks.” Free everywhere. 

 

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