Death in the Family?

. Out of Town News, Harvard Square landmark, may close

www.boston.com • November 19, 2008 06:01 PM

Richard O'Connor, at the cash register, has been working at the iconic newsstand for 25 years. (Essdras Suarez/Globe Staff)

By Michael Levenson, Boston Globe Staff

Out of Town News, the newsstand that has offered a cornucopia of newspapers and magazines as a Harvard Square landmark for more than 50 years, could close.

The owners have informed Cambridge officials that they have no plans to renew their lease after it expires Jan. 31. City officials say they are hoping to find another newsstand to take its place, but acknowledge that the business climate is grim as more customers get their news online rather than in print.

"It could be that we're chasing moonbeams, and we'll have to look at our re-use options," said Robert W. Healey, the city manager.

The newsstand occupies the center of Harvard Square and is on the National Register of Historic Places. No matter what happens to the business, city officials say they will keep the building, which is used as much as a meeting place as a place to buy news.

(Thanks to alert WORDster Barry Kort)

Letter to the Editor

.

Dreck?

Ted,

In years past, TODAY’S WORD was full of wit and wisdom and insight. It was like a rich stew or gumbo for the mind.

This (school) year, I find the quotes true but tepid, informative but not inspiring. In the past I used to pass on many of your gems; now I don’t.

Am I just imagining this? Have others commented? Is it me?

What was a tasty dish is becoming dishwater. Bring back the meat and potatoes. And the desert.

Steve

Editor replies: Hmmm. Well, as the chef, I’m responsible for selecting the ingredients of this gumbo. Maybe it’s been the election cycle? Worldwide (media) climate changes? Senility? I’ll see if I can’t find some new marketplaces. Thanks for the, er, feedback.

Today's Word—Historical Debate

.

What Is Journalism?

“The practice of journalism is two-fold. On the editorial side, it is an applied art; on the publishing side, an economic or business enterprise. Newspapermen, as a rule, seek to avoid dignifying themselves or the vocation with the term, ‘profession,’ but of this we are certain: the equipment of a well-qualified journalist consists of character, native ability, acquired technical skills and a liberal education. His tasks are never easy or simple. The manner in which he bears his public responsibilities, either as publisher or editor, is socially of great importance. If he lives up to the demands put upon him, we should be willing to admit him to professional standing, regardless of how lightly he refers to his job as a craft or even as a ‘game.’”

—Ralph D. Casey, chairman, Department of Journalism, University of Minnesota, 1940

Today's Word—Vonnegut

.

Perilous Knowledge

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.... He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.”

—Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), author, from Cat’s Cradle (1963)

Today's Word—Slippery

.

Tongue-Tied

“So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.”

—John Locke (1632-1704), scholar, philosopher, physician

Today's Word—Media Mush

.

Talking Heads and Food Fights

“Arguably, contemporary [news] media has made [a] shift away from hard information toward free-for-all opinion and speculation. This shouldn’t cost a lot, and indeed modern media peddles an inexpensive product. Most cable television ‘news’ is just talking heads and food fights; they don't even change the heads very often—they hire regulars who appear week after week. Most newspaper reporting consists of rewritten press releases and faxes. Many reporters don’t go after stories, they wait for the stories to be fed [to] them by publicists and flacks.”

—Michael Crichton (1942-2008), best-selling author, who died Nov. 4, in Slate interview (Thanks to alert WORDster Anne W. Anderson)

Today's Word—Lighten Up, Already!

.

Fun Stuff

1. “The days of the digital watch are numbered.” —Tom Stoppard, playwright (Thanks to Tom Hodges)

2. Palin-dromes: “Wasilla’s all I saw.” “Harass Sarah!”

3. “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much.” —Ted Williams (1918-2002), philosopher-athlete (Thanks to alert WORDster Karl Petruso)

4. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”—Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), writer

5. “I don’t know anything that mars good literature so completely as too much truth.” —Mark Twain (1835-1910), writer

6. “The First Amendment was the iPod of 1791.” —Ken Paulson, editor, USA Today

7. “That’s not writing. That’s typing.” —Truman Capote (1924-1984), writer (about Jack Kerouac)

8. “The future of the book is the blurb.” —Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), sociologist

Roger Higgins photo 1959

Today's Word—Murrow’s Lament

.

TV Guide

“Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. . . . [D]uring the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live.”

—Edward R. Murrow (1900-1965), legendary newsman, in speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Assn.,
Oct. 15, 1958

Today's Word—“Getting” the News

.

Watch the News. It’s More Fun!

“I just feel sorry for people who only get their news from us because they’re missing half the joke. Yes, we do a joke on what the news is, but the other half is on how the news is reported. So, if they watch the nightly news or cable news program, they’ll enjoy our show more.”

—Stephen Colbert, host, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, 2007

Today's Word—Veterans Day

.

Remembering the war correspondent . . .

“In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory—there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else. . . .

“But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me. . . .

“All the rest of us—you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa—we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.”

—Dispatches from Ernie Pyle (1900-1945), World War II correspondent.

COMMAND POST, IE SHIMA, April 18, 1945 (AP) — Ernie Pyle, war correspondent beloved by his co-workers, GIs and generals alike, was killed by a Japanese machine-gun bullet through his left temple this morning ..."

This AP photo surfaced in February 2008. “It’s a striking and painful image, but Ernie Pyle wanted people to see and understand the sacrifices that soldiers had to make, so it’s fitting, in a way, that this photo of his own death ... drives home the reality and the finality of that sacrifice.”—James E. Tobin, professor, Miami University of Ohio. (Richard Strasser/AP Photo)

Today's Word—‘Fewer People Are Reading Newspapers’

.

Downward Spiral

“Fewer people, you and I, are reading newspapers. Then there is ‘online.’ The Internet offers great potential and many pitfalls. For one thing, who edits the news you read? What references do you have on the truth and accuracy of what you learn from the Net?

“In an era of heavily biased television news programs, there is little reason to believe that the Internet, perhaps more intractable than TV, will provide balanced coverage of people and issues, local or global. For us folks trying to figure out what’s going on, the best idea is probably to read widely from different sources. But do we know how to do that, and do we have time for it? I’m skeptical.

“I’m pessimistic about any kind of sunny future for typical newspapers in Maine and elsewhere. In Portland, Augusta, Bath, Rockland, Waterville, Bangor, Belfast—good newspapers have lost their edge. It’s a downward spiral. There is less to read in the paper, so we read less.”

—Steve Cartwright, columnist, Bangor (Maine) Daily News, 2008 (Thanks to alert Kiwi WORDster David Pease)

EXTRA! Election Day Front Pages

.
Obama Election Front Pages

Tuesday’s election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States was historic on a number of levels, and newspapers worldwide reflected that on their front pages. Here are a few collections of front pages from around the nation and the globe, from the reverent to the raucous. Great stuff.

Election ’08 Page 1 Collections
Amazon (Thanks, Tony Seton!)
The Poynter Institute for Media Studies collection
The Chicago Tribune collection
The VisualEditors.com collection

Today's Word—Newspaper Boom!

.

News Flash: Newspaper Circulation Skyrockets! . . . . for a day

From Boston to LA, there was a run on Election Day ’08 newspapers Wednesday as Americans bought up copies trumpeting Barack Obama’s victory as a piece of history. Copies of the New York Times reportedly sold on Ebay for $299.99 and $400, and the Washington Post printed 350,000 extra copies, selling them for $1.50—three times the usual cover price. Countering widespread continuing declines in circulation and revenues, newspapers nationwide printed tens of thousands of extra copies to keep up with demand, as customers seeking historical keepsakes lined up at newsstands and waited for trucks to deliver new press runs.

• Julia Wallace, editor, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “I think what this really says, at a huge moment in history, is that people want something to keep and to remember. A newspaper has a very historic, commemorative feel to it. More than anything, it’s about having this to pass on to their children and grandchildren.”

• Steve Hills, president and general manager of Washington Post Media: “I think there is an authority and finality, a sort of last word that comes from the printed edition of the newspaper.”

• NYTimes Editorial Board: “That long, patient line of New Yorkers was a little flame of comfort to warm a newspaper person’s troubled heart. People like to say that print is a withering industry, that newspapers are shrinking ice floes in a warming sea of pixels. But for crying out loud, when something big happens, don’t you miss the paper?”

LINKS: LATimes, NYTimes





Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

Today's Word—Virtual News?

.

Beam Me Up, Wolfie!

“[I]t wouldn’t have been television news without some bravura hype and aggressive flashiness. On CBS, Katie Couric (as calm and confident as she’s been at the anchor desk) hosted a sober presentation. Every other set looked like something you’d pick up at a Circuit City in Dubai. . . . But those gizmos—merely straightforward efforts to present data engagingly—were nothing compared with an embarrassing stunt that CNN first attempted in the 7 o’clock hour. Wolf Blitzer was in his New York command center standing 10 paces away from a 3-D rendering of a reporter: ‘Jessica Yellin via hologram in Chicago.’ The effects were such that she was ringed in an off-purple aura from head to toe (a distance, it seemed, of about 4 feet). This was distracting, perfectly superfluous, and in no way an advance on the good old two-dimensional Yellin to whom we are accustomed. This was just the latest example of CNN’s weakness for state-of-the-art technology that shows you little more than its state-of-the-artiness.”

—Troy Patterson, Slate television critic, Nov. 5, 2008. (Click here for full column.)

For more on Election Night TV gadgetry, see Wired online: For TV Networks, Election Is an Orgy of Gee-Whiz 3-D Tech.

Today's Word—A New Morning in America

.

Hope

“All odds—all odds—said I shouldn’t be standing here. But I am because of love and education and lots of hope. . . . Hope is not blind optimism. Hope is not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside of us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that there is something greater inside of us. . . . They say I need to be seasoned; they say I need to be stewed. They say, ‘We need to boil all the hope out of him—like us—and then he’ll be ready.’ . . . If you will work with me, like you’ve never worked before, then we will win. And we will win America. And then we will change the world.”

—Barack Obama, new president-elect, on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Jan. 5, 2008.

“These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to [Sen. Obama] tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face. I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

—Sen. John McCain, conceding the presidential election to Barack Obama, Nov. 4, 2008

Election Coverage Recap

.
Click here for a recap of the, er, high points of the 22-month presidential campaign.

Today's Word—Finish Line

.

Stop the Bus, I Wanna Get Off!

“[CNN political correspondent] Candy Crowley can’t think of a single thing she’ll miss about the campaign. She’s long ago sent in her Maryland absentee ballot, and November beckons with lush vistas of sleep and TiVO. . . . ‘After the previous campaign, it took me a good month to stop waking up in the middle of the night in a panic that I’ve missed something,’ Crowley says. ‘After a while, you just miss your house, you know? I miss my back yard. I miss going to the grocery store.’”

—Julia Joffe, writing about the effect of a two-year campaign
on journalists who’ve covered it, The New Republic, 2008

NEWS FLASH: First-in-the nation returns from Dixville Notch, NH, where all 21 of the village's registered voters cast ballots just after midnight Tuesday, show a groundswell for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who received 15 votes to 6 for Republican John McCain. It's the first time Dixville Notch has gone Democratic since 1968. Click here for CNN report.

Today's Word—Lessons from Studs

.

Remembering Studs Terkel

“Studs could be cute, and damnably perverse. But the Pultizer Prize-winning author, pioneering radio personality, battler against Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism, raconteur, rabble-rouser and grand old man of the American left, who died Friday at age 96, never pulled his punches when it came to politics. . . .

“‘Information, news, ideas—that’s the juice that gets a democracy going. When a few corporations control all the juice, they decide how the democracy works. Or how it won’t work. I don’t worry that much about people doing the right thing if they have the facts about what their government is up to. But if they don’t get the facts, the whole thing falls apart,’ said the man who had spent most of his life interviewing Americans regarding their work, their ideals, their politics and, in his last years, their optimism about the prospect of making a better world.”

—John Nichols, political columnist, blogger and author, remembering Studs Terkel (1912-2008), who died Friday (See Nichols’s remembrance at TheNation.com.)
(Chris Walker/AP photo)

Click here for the Studs Terkel pages at the Chicago Historical Society.

Today's Word—Scary Halloween

.

The Sky Is Falling

“It’s been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. On Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force—up to 3,000 people.

“Clearly, the sky is falling. The question now is how many people will be left to cover it.”

—David Carr, media writer, The New York Times, 10/28/08

Today's Funnies

.

Just One Stinkin’ VOTE!

Click here to learn the outcome of Tuesday’s balloting....

Today's Word—Vox Populi

.

Get Out the Vote

“Cultural historian Morris Berman has a . . . depressing reason for not supporting get-out-the-vote campaigns. . . . [H]e cites page after page of polls and anecdotes documenting the ignorance of the voting-age public: 40% of American adults do not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II. Only 47% know that the Earth revolves around the sun in a year (most said a day or a month). Among the countries in the United Nations, the United States ranks 49th in literacy.”

—Philip Meyer, journalism professor-emeritus and author,
University of North Carolina, 2000. (USAToday)

Today's Word—Dead People

.

The 6-Foot-Deep Interview:

“I’ve found my calling. History, to me, is so rich, and American history is more interesting than any other history because you have this sort of violent streak next to these high-minded ideals, our gun-toting side matched with our Declaration of Independence side. Our history is full of all these cranks and weirdos and heroes and muckrakers and sex maniacs and killers. And I just love dead people. They’re easier to interview.”

—Sarah Vowell (which is a great name for a writer), essayist
on public radio’s “This American Life,” and author of The Wordy Shipmates, 2008

Today's Word—Local News?

.

Outsourcing Newspapers?

“Fond memories of dead newspapers will do nothing for our communities. . . . One thing we’re exploring is having one news desk for all of our newspapers in MediaNews ... maybe even offshore.”

—Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group (54 dailies, including The Denver Post, The Detroit News and The Salt Lake Tribune) and chairman of the board of the Associated Press, told the Southern Newspaper Publishers Assn. last week that newspapers might have to send news operations overseas to survive, 10/20/08 (Click here for story.)

Today's Word—Big Fat Lies

.
Tell the Truth, dammit!

“Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper. But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie—that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad—even bad weather—on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.… You’re just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it’s time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.”

—Orson Scott Card, writer, columnist and sci-fi author, in this column originally in the Greensboro, NC, Rhinoceros Times, Oct. 5, 2008. (Thanks to alert WORDster Nicole Coulter)

SPEAKING OF FREE EXPRESSION: Who stole our Obama sign?! See Don’t Steal Our Obama Sign (again)!


.

Campaign Goofiness

.

Editor’s Note: I first saw this in 2000, before the first Bush election. But it’s worth a chuckle in this repurposed update for 2008. See Canadian Recruitment Video here.

Fearing McCain/Palin Victory,
U.S. Liberals Flee to Canada

MANITOBA — The flood of American liberals sneaking across the border into Canada has intensified in the past week, sparking calls for increased patrols to stop the illegal immigration.

The possibility of a McCain/Palin election is prompting the exodus among left-leaning citizens who fear they'll soon be required to hunt, pray and agree with Bill O'Reilly.

Canadian border farmers say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of sociology professors, animal rights activists and Unitarians crossing their fields at night.

“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood producer huddled in the barn,” said Manitoba farmer Red Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota.

The producer was cold, exhausted and hungry. “He asked me if I could spare a latte and some free-range chicken,” Greenfield said. “When I said I didn’t have any, he left. Didn’t even get a chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher fences, but the liberals scaled them. So he tried installing speakers that blare Rush Limbaugh across the fields. “Not real effective,” he said. “The liberals still got through, and Rush annoyed the cows so much they wouldn’t give milk, eh?”

Officials are particularly concerned about smugglers who meet liberals near the Canadian border, pack them into Volvo station wagons, drive them across the border and leave them to fend for themselves.

“A lot of these people are not prepared for rugged conditions,” an Ontario border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a drop of drinking water. They did have a nice little Napa Valley cabernet, though.”

When liberals are caught, they‘re sent back across the border, often wailing loudly that they fear retribution from conservatives. Rumors have been circulating about the McCain administration establishing re-education camps in which liberals will be forced to shoot wolves from helicopters, deny evolution, and act out drills preparing them for the Rapture.

In recent days liberals have turned to sometimes-ingenious ways of crossing the border. Some have taken to posing as senior citizens on bus trips to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen young vegans disguised in powdered wigs, Canadian immigration authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior-citizen passengers on Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney hits to prove they were alive in the ’50s.

“If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk Show, we get suspicious about their age,” an official said.

Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are creating an organic-broccoli shortage and renting all the good Susan Sarandon movies.

“I feel sorry for American liberals, I do, but the Canadian economy just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “How many art-history and English majors does one country need?”

-30-

Today's Word—Jailing Journalists

.
Chilling Effect:

“An Afghan appeals court overturned a death sentence Tuesday for a journalism student accused of blasphemy for asking questions in class about women’s rights under Islam. But the judges still sentenced him to 20 years in prison. The case against 24-year-old Sayed Perwez Kambashkh . . . has come to symbolize Afghanistan’s slide toward an ultraconservative view on religious and individual freedoms.”

—Associated Press, 10/21/08 (See AP story here. And from the (London) TimesOnline here.)
.

Kambashkh, handcuffed, flanked by Afghan guards. (AP Photo)

Today's Word—Enduring Threat: BANKS!

.
History Lessons:

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

—Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. president,
in the Debate Over the Recharter of the Bank Bill, 1809.
(Thanks to alert WORDster Harry Crosby)

Today's Word—Voter Analysis

.
The Great Divide:

“Red state people are happier than blue state people. This is because they listen to country music that is forever telling them they live in a great nation and that things could be worse and probably were and if you stand by your man and remember what daddy used to say and love your mama that in the end Dale Earnhardt shall not have died in vain so long as Old Glory waves, Budweiser remains the King of Beers, and forced metaphors about rivers, trains and cowboys remain a part of our First Amendment rights.

“Blue State people, on the other hand, chase their Zoloft down with iced chai while they listen to twelve hours a day of public radio programming which ceaselessly and thoughtfully points out in genteel and condescending tones that we are all pretty much screwed.”

—Tom Bodett, radio personality and author, 2008

Today's Word—Canaries in the Civic Coalmine?

.

Editor’s Note: For many observers, the decline of the daily newspaper in terms of penetration and centrality in citizens’ daily lives is a tale of the End of Days. Many of these observers, of course, are newspaper people themselves, surviving or recovering, and so they are keenly aware of blips on the newsroom radar screen. Considering the continuing trend of draconian newsroom layoffs, bottom-line journalism, corporate takeovers and heavy-handed new owners with little or no journalistic background, expertise or apparent affection, the newspeople’s gloom is easy to understand. But are newspapers truly canaries in the coal mine of American civic responsibility and intellectual vigor? Clearly, there’s plenty of citizen engagement in the current election, but there’s also plenty of evidence that the average Joe (plumber or otherwise) is not particularly well informed or engaged, at least as such things used to be reckoned. What do you think? Click on the “Comments” link at the bottom of this WORD entry.

Disengagement?

“The decline of newspapers is about the rise of the corporate state, the loss of civic and public responsibility on the part of much of our entrepreneurial class and the intellectual poverty of our post-literate world, a world where information is conveyed primarily through rapidly moving images rather than print. All these forces have combined to strangle newspapers.”

—Chris Hedges, columnist, pundit and author, 2008 (Click here for full column.)

The Funnies: On the other hand, as newspapers strangle (if Hedges is correct), other, er, commentary engages millions of Americans. In case you didn’t catch Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, these links. But does this refute or prove Hedges’s point...? Click here for Palin, Live From New York.... and here for The Palin Rap.

Today's Word—Presidential Endorsements

.
Editor’s Note: It was quite a weekend for Barack Obama. Coming off the last debate with John McCain, Obama received endorsements from three big newspapers: The Washington Post (natch), but also The LA Times, which hasn’t endorsed since Nixon in 1972, and The Chicago Tribune, a traditional GOP bastion that has never endorsed a Democrat. Then there was Christopher Buckley, the conservative icon’s son (“Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama”), who was promptly fired as a lead columnist for his father’s National Review. And over the weekend, Gen. Colin Powell went on Meet the Press to announce, eloquently, that he was voting for Obama and why. (Locally, in reddest Utah, The Salt Lake Tribune also endorsed “That One.”) Meanwhile, the Obama campaign announced it had raised a stunning $150 million in contributions during the most recent reporting period. Exclaims McCain, “We've got ’em right where we want ’em!” The question is what newspaper (and other) endorsements do, especially these days, when voters are certainly not dependent exclusively on newspapers for information anymore. It’s possible, I suppose, that undecided voters, seeing the Tribune or the Times or the local Bugle, might experience a sudden epiphany. And I do believe that newspaper staff pay much closer attention to the races, and so are much better informed about the candidates and issues than most of us. But are there unintended negative consequences? What do you think? Click on "Comments" under this WORD and chime in. File as “anonymous” if you like.


Endorsements & Credibility

“Young news consumers are suspicious about traditional authority. They prize objectivity, straight-forwardness and transparency. I doubt there’s a reader under 30 who gets why newspapers endorse presidential candidates—and most of the ones I talk to ask the following: How can a newspaper be objective if his newspaper endorses a candidate on the editorial page?”

Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune 2008

—Richard Stengel, managing editor, Time (March 2008)

Today's Word—Tough Questions

.
Inquiring Minds Need to Know

“It’s not enough to simply confirm your political views by only watching or accessing outlets that reinforce your views and do not challenge them. That is what I believe is a simple but important premise. . . . I am ever more convinced that a leader cannot make tough decisions unless he or she is asked tough questions. That is the only vehicle that brings them to closure, that forces any sense of intellectual rigor, that forces them to find a way to reconcile the political advice or the political pressures brought to bear.

"It will not be enough in a democratic society to simply have those on the left or right who are pamphleteers and unwilling to challenge the views of people they support. Tough questions need not be the loudest or the most sensational or the most theatrical, but rather probing and, hopefully, incisive.”

—Tim Russert (1950-2008), political journalist and host, Meet the Press, in Red Smith Lecture in Journalism at Notre Dame University, April 2008.

(Click on photo for tributes to Russert, and here to see Tom Brokaw’s announcement of Russert’s death, June 13, 2008.)

Today's Word—Perspective

.
EDITOR’S NOTE: After weeks of watching the stock market writhe and the government flail in response and our savings and hopes evaporate, in the midst of what both presidential wannabes* called a “tough” campaign last night, in preparation for a change of administration and (dare we hope?) world direction in less than three weeks, it’s somehow helpful to recall that we’ve endured and survived these dire times before. E.B. White—he of fine common sense and the well-turned phrase—offers today’s perspective. I think I’ll take my chances with lightning, thank you. *(BTW, Anyone else wonder why either presidential wannabe would want the job?)

Recurrences: Politics, Dow Jones & Lightning Bolts

“I got a letter from a lightning rod company this morning trying to put the fear of God in me, but with small success. Lightning seems to have lost its menace. Compared to what is going on Earth today, heaven’s firebrands are penny fireworks with wet fuses.”

—E.B. White (1899-1985), wise man and writer (“Removal,” July 1938)

The Funnies

All-inclusive political abuse. Click here.

And the is NOOZ!??? Click here.

Today's Word—Folding the Newspaper

.
News Flash: The Boston Globe reports that the daily newspaper in Maine’s largest city might fold (Click here for story: “A Maine beacon blinks,” The Boston Globe, Aug. 15, 2008.)


Hockomock Head Light, Swans Island, Maine (©Ted Pease 2000)

Losing Community

“It is such a profound change as to be almost impossible to imagine. It would mean the end of a shared experience, sense of community, sense of common purpose. Newspapers represent all of that.”

—Herb Adams, Maine state legislator, on the possible demise
of the Portland, Maine, Press Herald, the city's only daily newspaper, 2008

Today's Word—More on Truth

.
Defining Truth (I know it when I see it…):

“There’s one word that exists in every language on the face of the Earth and in every society since man began to speak. And the word is truth. And in every language it means exactly the same thing. Truth is . . . what you get other people to believe.”

—Tommy Smothers, comedian, 2008.

Today's Word—Snow, Pandering & Marriage

.
...But not necessarily in that order.


.
Editor’s Note: It's snowy and cold, as per this image from the yard this morning. Where the hell did “fall” go? The dogs are excited, but I just bought a lawn mower, and I think there's still some golf in my bag...

Today’s offering acknowledges professor, economist and columnist Paul Krugman, who is the 2008 Nobel Prize-winner for economics. A multi-faceted man.

We also must commemorate another snowy day, 17 years ago in Vermont, when Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas crashed our wedding. They weren’t invited, but everyone was much more interested in the hearings than in Brenda’s folly, when she said “I do” for the justice of the peace in the bar on North Hero Island. I’m still dazed and enormously grateful for her focus. The hearings came back on right after, of course. Click here to see the commemorative column.

Political Pandering:

“We don’t have censorship in this country; it’s still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media companies have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to.”

—Paul Krugman, columnist, New York Times (5/3/03) (Click here for column.)

Today's Word—Dump the Bag 'O Rocks

.
Editor's Note: Today’s offering from E.B. White, one of my heroes, is not strictly about writing or journalism, although it could be taken that way. It does, however, describe the life of both the writer and the teacher—at least, on a good day when the bag o’ rocks we all carry isn’t too heavy.

On these days, writers whoop when words, thoughts and intent come together right; and teachers glow like the little flickering light bulbs that sometimes appear above that kid in the fourth row. This morning I found this glowworm in my email: “You may be interested to find that your class has made me think a little bit about working for the newspaper. It sounds like a fun job! but that would require knowing what was going on in the world, not one of my strengths (but I’m sure you already noticed that. haha). . . I prefer the logical to the illogical anyway, thus I’m an engineer. Your class has really caused me to question most everything in the news. I think you are succeeding in your task of teaching us to think about ‘How we know what we think we know?’”

Hmmm. Even as NPR reports a new 200-point slide in the Dow during a single newsbreak, if I heard that right, and nations crumble and slide into the sea, it’s going to be a good day. Once I get this sent, I think I’ll take the dogs up the mountain.

Good advice

“I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.”

—E.B. White (1899-1985), wise man and writer, who knew when to take a walk with the dogs
(Thanks to alert WORDster Louise Montgomery

Today's Word—New Old Technology

.
Bookin’ It

“[I]t’s not surprising, when making mental lists of the most whiz-bangy technological creations of our lives, that we may overlook an object that is superbly designed, wickedly functional, infinitely useful and beloved more passionately than any gadget at Best Buy: the book. It is a more reliable storage device than a hard disk drive, and it sports a killer user interface. . . . And it is instant-on and requires no batteries. Many people think it is so perfect an invention that it can’t be improved upon, and react with indignation at any implication to the contrary. ‘The book,’ says Jeff Bezos, 43, the CEO of Internet commerce giant Amazon.com, ‘just turns out to be an incredible device.’”

—Steven Levy, tech writer, Newsweek, 2007

Today's Word—Who Are Journalists?

.
Giving Voice to the Voiceless

“Because I grew up in a family and a neighborhood that had no voice, I have tried in some small way to be a voice for those whose feelings are too rarely heard, or even expressed. I hope this was not presumptuous, and I hope that I can continue to do that, for in today’s neighborhoods there are also large numbers who do not ‘fit.’

“I am still—foolishly, perhaps—enough of an idealist to believe that the media are too often the only ones in town to help redress the grievances of those who have nobody to lobby for them in the corridors of public and private power.

“I still believe that it is our job to raise hell responsibly and comfort the afflicted, to focus public attention on issues and events that people in power would just as soon see disappear from public discourse.”

—Alan Lupo (1938-2008), journalist, The Boston Globe, died Sept. 29 (See obit.)(Thanks to alert WORDster Andrew Merton at UNH)

Today's Word—Spelling as Distraction

.

.
Editor’s Note:

This morning, in the 6 a.m. pitchdark, I made the mistake of turning on the kitchen light before starting the coffeepot. And the radio. As a result, I began the day with news about the presidential campaign, and then happened upon the latest dire quarterly statement from my TIAA-CREF retirement fund, which I’d been avoiding. My parents bought a house in 1976 for less than this. On the up-side, if I’d known I had lost so much money in September, I’d have put a bullet in my head.

But the mail is late, my attention wavers, the market is worse, the presidential “leadership” farces on, and the latest financial debacles are already yesterday’s news. As I step out into the driveway to retrieve the newspaper, the dogs frolic in new frost, the stars are clear-eyed and bright above the mountain, and two owls hoot in the cottonwoods along the creek. Not so bad, after all. Today, on the advice of Mr. Clemens, I’ll just work on my spelling—something useful a man can do in tough times.

Extravagant Entertainments:

“Now, I’ll bet there isn't a man here who can spell ‘pterodactyl,’ not even the prisoner at the bar. I’d like to hear him try once—but not in public, for it’s too near Sunday,
when all extravagant histrionic entertainments are barred.”

—Mark Twain (1835-1910), scholar of the alphabet, author and a man
with a sharp sense of perspective in the face of tragedy and conjugation, 1907

PS: (Below) For those of you wondering about where the owls might hang out at dawn, this is why I can put the TIAA-CREF statement in a drawer and take a walk instead. TP

.

Today's Word—The Public Trust

.
The Public Trust:

“Newspapers, when well run, are a public trust. They provide, at their best, the means for citizens to examine themselves, to ferret out lies and the abuse of power by elected officials and corrupt businesses, to give a voice to those who would, without the press, have no voice.”

—Chris Hedges, columnist, pundit and author, 2008 (See column here.)

(Thanks to alert WORDster Javan Kienzle)

Today's Word—A Flaming Sword!

.
The Flaming Sword of Free Press:

“The power of the freedom of the press is a flaming sword. That it may be a servant of all the people, use it justly—hold it high—and guard it well.”

—Big Town Radio, 1940s+ (Click here for URL.)

(Thanks to alert WORDster Phil Meyer)

Today's Word—Public Interest

.
Fear Minus Fact

“The emotion which brought us the Iraq War, exploited by George Bush, was fear. Let political decision be ruled by fear minus fact, and you can say goodbye to the role of journalism in a democracy.”

—The Rev. Donald W. Shriver, author and president emeritus,
Union Theological Seminary, New York, 2008

Today's Word—Hot Air

.

.
Political language:

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

—George Orwell (Eric Blair, 1903-1950), writer

Today's Word—Damn Nuisance

.
Latter-day iconoclasts take note

“The daily newspaper unquestionably has its use, but about eight days a week it is an insufferable damn-nuisance. A man may get himself covered with honor an inch thick and have gilt-edge glory plastered on him with a trowel, and the chances are that the newspapers will never notice him, or if they do will accord him a three-line paragraph tucked away among the ads; but let him be accused of some heinous crime, or his wife be caught philandering with some other fellow, and forthwith he is given a front-page 'spread' with headlines that would scare a cable-car.”

—William Cowper Brann (1855-1898), editor of The Iconoclast, briefly the nation’s most controversial magazine, with a national circulation of a quarter-million. An enraged reader shot and, er, “deleted” Brann on the streets of Waco, Texas, on April Fool’s Day, 1898.

Today's Word—Dr. Seuss Sez...

.
Political Advice for Kids
(Large & Small)

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don't mind.”

—Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) (1904-1991), writer

Today's Word—Measuring Civic Health

.
The Argument for Apathy:

“Wouldn’t a really healthy citizenry in a really healthy country be as unaware of the government as a healthy man is unaware of his physiology?”

—Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970), naturalist

.

Today's Word—Deaf, Dumb & Blind

.
How Do We Know What We Think We Know?

“A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.”

—Chris Hedges, columnist, pundit and author, 2008

(Click here for full column.)
(Thanks to alert WORDster Javan Kienzle)

Today's Word—Listening

.
The Freedom of Hearing

“The Emmy is given not so much for writing as for attitude, because freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren’t really important . . . unless they’re heard. So freedom of hearing is just about as important as freedom of speaking.

“It’s hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. There’s nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action.

“So I dedicate this Emmy to all people who feel compelled to speak out, and are not afraid to speak to power, and won’t shut up and refuse to be silenced.”

—Tommy Smothers, comedian, accepting commemorative Emmy award, 2008.
(Thanks to alert WORDster Becky Tallent)
(See Steve Martin and Tommy Smothers clip.)

Today's Word—We Happy People!

,

Ignorance Is Bliss:

“Isn’t the ignorance of Americans part of the American experience? Americans are defined as people willing to be involved in the pursuit of happiness. And ignorance is bliss. Therefore, the Founding Fathers have put us on that path: We are pursuing ignorance in order to get to that happiness.”

—Jon Stewart, host, “The Daily Show,” 2008

Pease’s Soapbox

After yesterday’s WORD on the survey documenting the American people’s ignorance of the most basic precepts of the Constitution, it appears that we are well along the Founding Fathers’ Roadmap to Bliss.

Strangely, though, the syllogism sputters as we survey the state of the nation’s happiness—as I perceive it, at least. There is much more evidence of not simply ignorance but WILLFUL ignorance abroad in the land than bliss. Unless, of course, you’re one of those Kings of Wall Street who will cash our $700,000,000,000 check to bail you out of the gawdawful financial mess the moguls and the Bush overseers have gotten us into.

See? Look at the Wall Street meltdown and the proposed blank-check “final solution”—ignorance and bliss abound!

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and the rest of the moguls might try this for inspiration in tough times:

“I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have
one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.”

—E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)
(Thanks to alert WORDster Louise Montgomery)

—Ted Pease, working on both bliss and ignorance daily
.

Today's Word—Freedom of ... hunh?

.

CONSTITUTION DAY—The Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787
.
State of the First Amendment 2008:

“Perhaps one reason so many [Americans] are not fearful of, or would even invite, government limits on the five freedoms is that so few of us can even name them.

“The survey found again this year that just 3 percent of those questioned could name ‘petition’ as one of the five freedoms in the First Amendment. Only ‘speech’ was named by a majority of respondents, 56 percent. Less than 20 percent named religion (15 percent), press (15 percent) or assembly (14 percent). . . . 4 in 10 could not name any freedom--the highest such result in the survey’s history.

“[These are] ‘inalienable’ rights for all, indeed—but in today’s United States, rights that are unknown, unnamed, or even undefended, by many.”

—Gene Policinski, vice president and executive director

The First Amendment Center, Washington, DC.

(Click here for full survey results.)
.

Update

.

NYU Prof Angry at Student Critique

Alert WORDster Simon Owens sends this heads-up:

“Hey Ted: I remember seeing your post the other week about the NYU journalism student who complained that her journalism class was still firmly planted in old media. I don't know if you heard about this, but yesterday Media Shift published a follow up article revealing that the professor of that course got angry when she read it and banned the student from blogging or twittering about the class. I thought this was something you and your readers would find interesting.”

Indeed. Read on...

From PBS’s website MediaShift:

NYU Professor Stifles Blogging, Twittering by Journalism Student

Alana Taylor

After New York University journalism student Alana Taylor wrote her first embed report for MediaShift on September 5, it didn’t take long for her scathing criticism of NYU to spread around the web and stir conversations. Taylor thought that her professor, Mary Quigley, was not up to speed on social media and podcasting — even though the class she was teaching was called “Reporting Gen Y.” And Taylor felt that NYU was not offering her enough classes about new media; she cited the requirement that students bring print editions of the New York Times to class as one example of their outdated mindset.

Not surprisingly, Quigley was not happy with the story and was upset that Taylor had not sought permission to write her first-person report about the class, and told Taylor it was an invasion of privacy to other students in the class. By Taylor’s account, Quigley had a one-on-one meeting with Taylor to discuss the article, and Quigley made it clear that Taylor was not to blog, Twitter or write about the class again. That was upsetting to Taylor, who had been planning a follow-up report for MediaShift that would include Quigley’s viewpoint and interviews with faculty.

—more at URL—

What do you think?

Today's Word—Fast News

.

You want fries with that?

“We think people want SERIOUS, and they do, but they only want about 3 inches of serious on most things. USA Today got it wrong . . . they didn’t go far enough. I'm getting more and more convinced people want a smattering of everything but just a smattering, and you’d better tell them the nut graf quick. I call it ‘drive-through journalism’: filling and fast. And don’t forget to give them a side of fries or an apple pie along with it.”

—Dawn Dressler, executive editor, Amarillo Globe-News, 2008

Speak up! Feedback and suggestions—printable and otherwise—always welcome. After all, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “There are no false opinions.”

Pease’s Soapbox:

Columnist Erma Bombeck once observed, “In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced on television.” So newspaper editors like Dawn Dressler may be overly optimistic—expecting not just fries with their in-depth 3 inches of serious news, many Americans under the age of 50 have been raised on fast-news diets that sing, dance, throb and link them to YouTube while texting their Fave 5.

This is distressing not only to editors of dead-tree journalism, but to anyone concerned about an informed and engaged citizenry in a participatory democracy. Back in the early 1990s, one Midwestern editor told me he wouldn’t really want his kid to go into newspaper journalism, which he predicted would soon be “like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch.” Not that people using other media can’t be well informed and engaged, but the suggestion that our attention span for actual knowledge is so abbreviated that USA Today’s formula is too long, and that we lose interest after 3 inches is . . . well, most readers have already moved on from this sentence to join the 51,077,905 people who have seen Charlie bite his brother Harry’s fingah....