Making Apple Pie

“Newspapering deals with small daily bites from a fruit of indeterminate size. It may take dozens of bites before you are sure it’s an apple. Dozens and dozens more bites before you have any real idea how big the apple might be. It was that way about Watergate.”

—Ben Bradlee (1921-2014), executive editor, The Washington Post, from his obit, “Ben Bradlee, legendary Washington Post editor, dies at 93,” The Washington Post, Oct. 21, 2014. (Thanks to alert WORDster Barbara Zimmerman)

 Image: Bradlee examines the page 1 plate for the Aug. 10, 1974, edition. The headline: “Nixon Resigns.” David R. Legge/The Washington Post

• Editorial Comment: Some bites are hard going down.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Frozen Cutler Marsh, Utah









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Compatible Bedmates

“Take a good book to bed with you. Books do not snore.”

—Thea Dorn, German TV host and crime-fiction writer.

• Editorial Comment: The same can’t be said of my iPad.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

The Lighthouse’s New Home









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

GIGO

“Consider this: Never in human history has more information been available to more people. That’s a wonderful thing. But it is also true that never in human history has more bad information been available.

“The quickest, most direct way to ruin a democracy is to poison the information.”

—Scott Pelley, former anchor, CBS Evening News, “CBS’ Scott Pelley Calls Fake News ‘The Quickest, Most Direct Way to Ruin a Democracy’,” The Wrap, Nov. 22, 2016.

• Editorial Comment: GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Wild Crab












Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Local News

“The only newspaper I continue to read with any regularity — in hard copy, I mean — is our folksy neighborhood weekly. It survives by pretending it’s 1962, complete with what we used to call ‘chicken-dinner’ news. I mean no condescension. I read it faithfully every Thursday, even the ads. . . .

 

“The writing can be clunky and leans toward earnestness, but is never slick or trendy. A recent front-page story documented the swarms of grackles, starlings and cowbirds that congregate at twilight at a nearby intersection and shit on cars.” 

 

—Patrick Kurp, writer and blogger, “‘Asservation Is Today the Rage’,” Anecdotal Evidence, Jan. 24, 2018. (Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton)

• Editorial Comment: More bird news you can use.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

February Senior News











Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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 Birds

“The relationship between the critic and writer is similar to the one between the pigeon and the statue.” 

—Ashwin Sanghi, Indian author.

• Editorial Comment: That’s why, generally speaking, writers are not bird-lovers.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Firehouse








Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Journalism Is Dead

 

“I lived through Pentagon Papers and Watergate, Iran Contra and Whitewater and more but 1st time in my life seeing Press trying to keep lid on govt actions rather than fully expose. They hate @realDonaldTrump THAT much. More than they love truth. Sad. Journalism is dead.”

—Mike Huckabee, former presidential candidate and Republican governor of Arkansas, tweeting Saturday. Feb. 4, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: More than Mike loves hyperbole?

 

Other comment:

• “Imagine the Pentagon Papers, but instead of the actual papers, Ellsberg released a memo describing what was in the Pentagon Papers WITHOUT HAVING ACTUALLY READ THE PENTAGON PAPERS.” —Chris Hayes, MSNBC commentator.

• “Imagine further that the memo was a politically motivated distortion of what was in the Pentagon Papers — and another memo pointing out the distortions and omissions was suppressed to enable the distortions to be believed and take hold before the truth could out.” —Norman Ornstein, political scientist, American Enterprise Institute.

• Vocabulary-Builder (From 2/5): ASS•er•va•tion. n. acknowledgment, affirmation, declaration; act of recognizing authority or truth of something.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Mendon Peak








Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

A Little Ham

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“I started work as a reporter just in time to learn how to write, before editors (and readers, and most reporters) stopped caring. In the seventies, symptoms of morbidity were already undeniable, . . . but I sure had a lot of fun. I think of newspapers as my graduate school, just as Ishmael declared ‘a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.’ We were certainly kept as poor as grad students. One year we got canned hams as Christmas bonuses, and were grateful.” 

—Patrick Kurp, writer and blogger, “Asservation Is Today the Rage,” Anecdotal Evidence, Jan. 24, 2018. (Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton)

• Editorial Comment: Use “asservation” in a sentence. Dare ya.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Split Rock. Looks like a cleavered canned ham, now that you point it out.











Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

A Good, Green Book

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“I won’t read a book because I’m told it’s good for me. Reading is not therapeutic and it’s not like eating kale. Literature is slippery and defies pre-fabricated marketing. By definition it surprises and sometimes offends.”


—Patrick Kurp, writer and blogger, “‘Chekhov Had Really Written in Yiddish,’” Anecdotal Evidence, Jan. 19, 2018.


• Editorial Comment: And eating kale, while sometimes surprising and offensive, is not like reading.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Look Out










Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Sugarcoated Evil

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“Morning shows are a necessary evil. Viewers need the news sugarcoated in a way that will not lead to despair. So it is, at its best, news with the edges polished. The delivery is caffeinated, unbearably upbeat, and rapid. It is news for people who can’t handle the news quite so early in the day.” 

—Edward Burmila, political science professor and blogger, “The Power Behind the Throne Is ‘Fox & Friends’,” The Nation, Jan. 29, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: And for people who can’t stomach that much cotton-candy fluff so early in the day, there’s “Morning Edition.”

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Outhouse












Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Best & Brightest

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“This Department of Corrections has certainly never seen a first year like this. Falsehoods and exaggerations have tumbled relentlessly out of Trump’s Twitter account, speeches and interviews, the vast majority in service of his ego. 

“Other presidents have skewered the truth — George W. Bush on the pretext for the Iraq war, Barack Obama on the benefits of ‘Obamacare’ — but Trump is of a different order of magnitude.” 

—Calvin Woodward, Associated Press fact-checker, “AP FACT CHECK: Trump presidency creates an alternate reality,” Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: Job security for AP’s Department of Corrections.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Woodley Island









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Echo Chamber

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“People who lie to themselves and listen to their own lie come to such a pass that they cannot distinguish the truth within them, or around them, and so lose all respect for themselves and for others.” 

 

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian author, “The Brothers Karamazov,” 1879. Pope Francis quoted this in his address condemning fake news last week. See NYTimes story.

• Editorial Comment: Such people should step outside every now and then and take a breath, walk a dog, turn off the damn Tweeter.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Hunter is a year-old Black Lab, a new inmate at the Humboldt County Animal Shelter. Doesn’t your household need this dog?











Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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

Day of Reckoning

. 

“[T]hank God we had these journalists. And that they exposed this truth and that they continued to cover this story. . . . 

“The final takeaway is that we as a society need investigative journalists more than ever. What finally started this reckoning and ended this decades-long cycle of abuse was investigative reporting. Without that first Indianapolis Star story in August of 2016, without the story where Rachael [Denhollander] came forward publicly shortly thereafter, he would still be practicing medicine, treating athletes, and abusing kids.”

—Angela Povilaitis, Michigan assistant attorney general, in her prosecutor’s statement at Larry Nassar sentencing, Jan. 24, 2018.  

Image: Olympic gold metalist McKayla Maroney was one of 156 former athletes treated by Nassar, USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor, who accused him of sexually molesting them over three decades. Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison.

 
• Editorial Comment: The Indy Star should have won a Pulitzer for that work.

 

PeezPix by Ted Pease

Crab Pots









Get TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM in your email every weekday morning during WORD season. This is a free “service” sent to the 2,000,000 or so misguided subscribers around the planet, to infinity and beyond. 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) #tedsword
 
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