Note: This is Sunshine Week, a nationwide observance launched in 2005 by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (now the News Leaders Assn.) to celebrate and affirm the essential importance of open government and public access to information.
“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.
“The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
—Preamble to California’s Open Meetings Law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, written by SF Chronicle reporter Michael Harris (1922-2014), whose reporting inspired creation of the law, 1953.
• Editorial Comment: Public servants — remember who’s working for whom.
The March issue of Senior News is Celebrating Women’s Stories. Check it out.
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
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