Covering Iowa 2020

“The good news for [Des Moines] Register staffers: Never have they been more indispensable. At a time of extraordinary interest in the presidency and national politics, the big game is once again being played in their own backyard, and by more players than ever before. There will be no story more important . . . — to Iowans and Americans, to Register editors and Gannett executives — than Trump’s fight for reelection, and the Democrats’ attempt to stop him. . . .

“The bad news: Never has the future looked so bleak.”

—Tim Alberta, chief political correspondent, “Inside the Shrinking Newsroom of the Paper That Shapes the Primaries,” Politico, April 19, 2019.

 

• Editorial Comment: See you in four years?

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Better pray

February’s Senior News hits newsstands!

  

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

Perks of the Job

“The country is so divided, the vilification of journalists so pervasive and the economic future so shaky that I sometimes have to ask myself what the hell I’m doing still working in this business.” 

—Kate Santich, reporter, The Orlando Sentinel, “Once again, Tribune wants veteran journalists to leave. Here’s why we haven’t . . . yet,” Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 17, 2020.

     

 

• Editorial Comment: Nice cubicles? Free coffee? Paper cuts?

PeezPix

Could play some golf

February’s Senior News hits newsstands!

  

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

‘People Will Hear About This’

 

“He shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the [9-minute] interview itself had lasted. He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence and many others.

“He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map; I said yes. He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked. I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away. He said, ‘People will hear about this.’” 

—Mary Louise Kelly, NPR reporter and “All Things Considered” cohost, “After Contentious Interview, Pompeo Publicly Accuses NPR Journalist of Lying to Him,” NPR, Jan. 25, 2020.

“There is a reason that freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution. There is a reason it matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible.

“Journalists don’t sit down with senior government officials in the service of scoring political points. We do it in the service of asking tough questions, on behalf of our fellow citizens. And then sharing the answers — or lack thereof — with the world. 

—Mary Louise Kelly, NPR reporter and “All Things Considered” cohost, “Pompeo Called Me a ‘Liar.’ That’s Not What Bothers Me,” The New York Times, Jan. 28, 2020.

   

• Editorial Comment: This man is America’s top diplomat. Should we worry?

PeezPix

Husky Road Trip

February’s Senior News hits newsstands!

  

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

Kobe Coverage

 

“In any major breaking news event, whether a hurricane or school shooting, you can assume that some of the early coverage will be wrong. The Kobe Bryant story was an especially bad example of that truism.”

—Margaret Sullivan, media reporter, “Media coverage of Kobe Bryant’s death was a chaotic mess, but there were moments of grace,” The Washington Post, Jan. 27, 2020. Video here.

   

• Editorial Comment: Early coverage was awful. Any of that crap would’ve gotten us fired in Mr. Mahoney’s 7th grade class.

PeezPix

Fog trees

February’s Senior News hits newsstands!

  

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

When Words Can’t Describe

 

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”

―Ansel Adams (1902-1984), photographer. URL.

 

• Editorial Comment: He said a mouthful.

PeezPix

February’s Senior News hits newsstands!

    

  

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

Jim Lehrer, No Showboat

 

“I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity. News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

—Jim Lehrer (1934-2020), veteran PBS newsman, American Journalism Review, 2001. Image: Lehrer, left, with longtime PBS partner Robert MacNeil, 1988/Ed Lallo

“Jim Lehrer is no showboat. That is a considerable distinction for television, where the interrogators are often bigger than their guests or victims. This man of modest mien keeps the spotlight on the person being questioned. His somewhat halting conversational manner invites rather than commands. And his professional principles dispel any fears that he is out to get not just his guests’ point of view but also the guests themselves.”

—Walter Goodman, reporter, “A Cool Head at the Eye of the Storm,” The New York Times, 1996. 

“Admirers of ‘The MacNeil/Lehrer Report’ — and there are many of them — often talk about it in terms normally reserved for unpalatable but nutritious breakfast foods: unalluring, perhaps, to the frivolous new consumer, but packed full of fiber.”

—Alexander Cockburn, political commentator, “The Tedium Twins,” Harper’s Magazine, 1982.

 

• Editorial Comment: A voice of reason. Thank you for your service, Mr. Lehrer.  

• Obits: NYTimes, WaPost, PBS, Reactions

PeezPix

Hydrangea

  

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

Good Job

 

“This job has always been more than a paycheck to me. I don’t want my kids to grow up in a society without a free and robust press — one that comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. If I can play a part in keeping that alive for my hometown, a place I love with my whole heart, then I’m happy to do that for a long as they let me.”

—Beth Kassab, reporter and section editor, The Orlando Sentinel, “Once again, Tribune wants veteran journalists to leave. Here’s why we haven’t . . . yet,” Orlando Sentinel, Jan. 17, 2020.

  

• Editorial Comment: Do-gooder. 

PeezPix

Carson Mansion, Eureka, CA

  

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

Endorsements

 

“[E]ditors nationwide need to wake up to the new reality and sit out endorsing anyone in the 2020 election.

“If the nation’s newspapers do what they did in 2016 — when only one major newspaper, Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, endorsed then-reality TV star and now President Donald Trump — they risk irreparable harm to not just their bottom lines but to their formerly essential place in voters’ lives. 

“Americans of all stripes are now seemingly more convinced by fact-less memes than by thoroughly researched articles. The media has [sic] a credibility problem, and that’s what’s truly threatening the very underpinnings of our democracy.”

—Matt Laslo, reporter and columnist, “The New York Times presidential endorsement shows why newspapers must end the practice,” Think, NBC News, Jan. 20, 2020. (Thanks to alert WORDster Tony Seton)

• Editorial Comment: Must . . . slavishly . . . obey . . . Times . . . 

PeezPix

Bee in the Moment

  

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