Community Fabric

“The local paper, on the other hand, was meant to draw a picture of a physical community, with its customs, rituals, manners, lingo and collective memory inscribed in a thousand minute ways. Even if you get it only for the yard-sale ads or to hate-read the letters column, its presence itself is reassuring, part of the sometimes thin fabric that holds you and your neighbors together. But if you can’t buy it at the gas station along with your six pack and your night crawlers, it might as well not exist.”

—Luc Sante, writer, “The Daily Miracle: Finding Magic Inside The Times’s Printing Plant,” The New York Times, March 26, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: And now it doesn’t.

PeezPIX 

Shroom Season

November’s SENIOR NEWS celebrates the book. Online here.

FREE! TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM This free “service” is sent to rafts of subscribers worldwide 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: Don’t shoot the messenger. I just quote ’em, I don’t necessarily endorse ’em.)

 

“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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Edward C. Pease, Ph.D.
Professor & Department Head Emeritus
Department of Journalism & Communication
Utah State University
Today's WORD on Journalism