The Pompous Editorialist

“There is a little Mussolini in every editorial writer. Pompous, meddlesome, pretentious, a figure of fun to everyone but himself … issuing grandiose orders that have no effect on anything at all … to which an ungrateful nation will reply, ‘Oh, knock it off.’”

—Meg Greenfield (1930-1999), Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer and editorial page editor, in Matt Schudel, “Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor, dies at 66,” The Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2021. 

• Editorial Comment: Goose-stepping around the newsroom. . . Good times.

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Moon Over Trinidad

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Beware of Books!

“They are an insidious and deadly poison. Years after you read them, they come back and bother you late at night. They clang around inside your skull. They make strange things familiar to you and familiar things strange again. They have no respect for the boundaries of your dreams. They put turns of phrase into your gut where you digest them slowly and regurgitate them where they are least expected.”

—Alexandra Petri, columnist, “Take all books off the shelves. They’re just too dangerous,” The Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2021. 

 

• Editorial Comment: <Burp!>

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Good night.

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

‘Non-yelling Opinion’

“What I do believe is that there will continue to be a market for really good, serious, readable, reliable reporting and really good, serious, readable, thoughtful, unpurchased, non-yelling opinion. It’s up to us to continue doing our best to provide that, by whatever medium technology allows.”

—Fred Hiatt (1955-2021), editorial page editor (2000-2021) and three-time Pulitzer finalist, “Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor, dies at 66,” The Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2021.

• Editorial Comment: Gone too soon, Fred.

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Va-Roooom!

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Writers and Readers

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher and author, “Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays,” 1851. 

• Editorial Comment: It was ever thus. See Faux News, for example.

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Dancing Alders

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Don’t Know Much

“All I know is just what I read in the papers, and that's an alibi for my ignorance.”

—Will Rogers (1979-1935), cowboy philosopher

• Editorial Comment: There are so few newspapers left, no wonder we don’t know much anymore.

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Pie Doodle

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

Ghost Towns & News Deserts

“[W]e’re slowly replacing a functional press with PR spam, hedge fund dudebros, trolling substack opinion columnists, foreign and domestic disinformation, brand-slathered teen influencers, and hugely consolidated dumpster fires like Sinclair Broadcasting.” 

—Karl Bode, tech journalist, in Margaret Sullivan’s “What Happens to Democracy When Local Journalism Dries Up?” The Washington Post, Nov. 30, 2021. (Thanks to several alert and dispirited WORDsters.)

• Editorial Comment: Democracy? We don’t need no stinkin’ democracy.

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Out on the crab skiff, Tadpole

December's SENIOR NEWS is The Stocking Stuffer Issue. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism

‘Throw Those Books in a Fire’

 NEWS NOTE: The Spotsylvania, Virginia, County School Board votes 6-0 to remove books that contain “sexually explicit” material from library shelves.

“Two board members, Courtland representative Rabih Abuismail and Livingston representative Kirk Twigg, said they would like to see the removed books burned.

“‘I think we should throw those books in a fire,’ Abuismail said, and Twigg said he wants to ‘see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.’” . . . 

“Twigg said he would like to broaden the criteria for identifying objectionable books.

“‘There are some bad, evil-related material that we have to be careful of and look at,’ he said, without elaborating.”

—Adele Uphaus-Connor, reporter, “Spotsylvania School Board orders libraries to remove 'sexually explicit' books,” The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, Nov. 9, 2021. Image: Same thing in Utah, Pat Bagley/SLTribune.

• Editorial Comment: Or just stop teaching kids to read. Or think.

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Crabbers Betty Ann & Miss Phyllis load traps to start the Dungeness season, Nov. 28, 2021.

December's SENIOR NEWS, The Stocking Stuffer Issue, is out. Click here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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

_____________
Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism