WORDmeister pre-ramble: This is the last week of my last classes. Last week, I appeared for the last time on the campus of Utah State University, where my wife, Brenda Cooper, started as professors in 1994. As part of my triumphal swan song, I offer this lightly edited plagiarism to my students and colleagues, none of whom I will ever forget. Really.
Good Old Professor Who?
“What
makes a good journalism professor?
newspaperman? The answer is easy. He knows everything. He is aware not
only of what goes on in the world today, but his brain is a repository of
the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He is not only handsome, but he has the
physical strength which enables him to perform great feats of energy teaching, service and,
especially, research so as to publish, not perish. He can go for nights on end
without sleep. He dresses shabbily well
and talks with charming but
opaque academic idiom. Men admire him; women adore him; deans and provosts tycoons
and statesmen are willing to share their secrets — but not their salaries — with him. He
hates lies and meanness, committee work and sham, but he keeps his temper. He is loyal to his school paper and
to what he looks upon as the teaching
profession; whether it is a profession, or merely a craft, he resents attempts
to debase it. When he dies, a lot of students people are sorry, and some of them remember him
for several days.”
— With apologies to Stanley Walker, newspaperman, New York Herald-Tribune, 1924
• Editorial Comment: Good old whatsisname. Dear old poop.PeezPix by Ted Pease
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. If you have recovered from whatever 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
“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment