Informed Outrage

“Public outrage is the best antidote, because it often leads to change. But people can’t get outraged without rapid access to solid, useful information — what we used to call journalism. There’s so much garbage being disguised as fact and so many gasbags posing as sages; somebody has to cut through the crap. That’s the job of reporters, and their job will be more important than at any time in history.

“There’s been this great lamentation about the end of newspapers as we know them, the end of the era of the paper hitting your doorstep in the morning, but I don’t think the language or the craft of writing is dying. In the next 40 years, there’s going to be a larger demand than ever for people who can communicate with the written word, whatever format it takes. 

 

“I don’t think there’s ever been a greater need for people to be able to write at a functional level, whether they’re tapping on their computer keyboard or on their iPhone.”

—Carl Hiaasen, newspaper columnist and novelist of the weird, “Carl Hiaasen on Human Weirdness,” Smithsonian Magazine, August 2010.

 

 

 

• Editorial Comment: Think first. Then write.

 

 

PeezPIX

Harbor mist.

 

 

The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.

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“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