Malnourished

“Having worked in cable news for more than a decade after a wonderfully misspent youth in newspapers, I can tell you the result: a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished. Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies.”

—Chris Stirewalt, former Fox politics editor, “Op-Ed: I called Arizona for Biden on Fox News. Here's what I learned,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2021. (Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton)

 

• Editorial Comment: Well said, Mr. Stirewalt. But weren’t you at least a sous-chef in that kitchen?

 

 

PeezPIX

 

Look out, it’s February in 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

 

 

Breather

“It’s an exhausting job. With the Internet being so big a part of it, it’s 24-7-365. You’re pretty much on duty and on alert all the time. It means you never really get to disconnect.” 

“I think I’m owed a breather.”   

—Martin Baron, in the newsroom for 45 years, stepping down as editor of the Washington Post, in Paul Farhi, “Martin Baron, executive editor who oversaw dramatic Washington Post expansion, announces retirement,” The Washington Post, Jan. 26, 2021.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: 30, Marty. Don’t forget to write.

 

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Eggplant

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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

 

 

Inspiration

“For Sulzberger Jr, the lightbulb came on when he went to work in the advertising department. ‘I figured I’d give it a year, I’d hate it, and I’d go back to the newsroom,’ he said. But then he made his first big ad sale and ‘realized that I had just covered Johnny Apple’s liquor bill for a year!’” 

—Arthur Sulzberger Jr., newly retired chairman of the New York Times, in Charles Kaiser, “‘I figured I’d give it a year’: Arthur Sulzberger Jr. on how the New York Times turned around,” The Guardian, Dec. 20, 2020.

  

• Editorial Comment: That's a big ad sale.

 

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Road Dawg

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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

 

 

Poetic News

 

“It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

 

—William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, writer & physician, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” 1955. (Thanks to alert WORDster Wesley Chesbro)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: There’s more news in poems than you’d think.

 

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Pacific Winter Sky

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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

 

Elemental

“One of the new things in this administration is, if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess. Just say you don’t know the answer. . . . The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence is, what the science is, and know that's it, let the science speak — it is somewhat of a liberating feeling.” 

—Anthony Fauci, director of National Institute of Allergies & Infectious Diseases, in White House press briefing, “Dr. Fauci Calls Speaking Freely About Science a ‘Liberating Feeling,’” Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2021. (Thanks to alert WORDster David Eaton)

• Editorial Comment: Other reports say Dr. Fauci has been breaking into sudden unrestrained recitations of the periodic table of elements.

BONUS: Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements,” Copenhagen, 1967.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This is January?

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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

 

Weirdly Normal

“The first official words by President Biden’s [Jen Psaki] spokeswoman included truth and transparency. ‘Rebuilding trust with the American people will be central to our focus,’ the former State Department spokeswoman told a small group of socially distanced reporters as she promised a return to daily briefings.

“In fact, Wednesday night’s session with reporters, the first of the Biden administration, was so normal — so weirdly normal — that you could be forgiven for thinking that you had mistakenly put on an old episode of ‘The West Wing.’

“This return to norms is wonderfully welcome after the horrors of the past four years. ‘It’s like running into a friend you haven’t seen in 4 years,’ tweeted Columbia University journalism professor William Grueskin.”

—Margaret Sullivan, media columnist, “The media can be glad for the Biden White House’s return to normalcy. But let’s not be lulled,” The Washington Post, Jan. 21, 2021.

• Editorial Comment: Are there no more alternative facts?

• Video: Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki statement video. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Morning Comes

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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

 

Morning in America

“The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

—Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate, Biden inauguration address, Jan. 20, 2021.

• Editorial Comment: I’m feeling better about the future.

 

 

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Good Night, America

It’s a New Day and a New Year. Get your January Senior News here. 

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