Healthy Skepticism

“I just don’t know what to think. You would have to know the facts, and I don’t know that I’m getting the facts from the media right now.” 

—Jerre Corrigan, Wisconsin elementary school teacher, in Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardiner, “‘No One Believes Anything’: Voters Worn Out by a Fog of Political News,” The New York Times, Nov. 18, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: Whose facts?

  

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Autumn Dog

 

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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

Titillation

“Media exposure, which is the oxygen of terror in our age, not only amplifies the perception of danger but, in generating such hysteria, makes the bloated threat to society real. This is especially true today because the media is mostly designed to titillate the public rather than inform it.” 

—Scott Atran, anthropologist, University of Oxford,“Isis is a revolution,” Aeon, 2015. (Thanks to alert WORDster John Taylor)

• Editorial Comment: These days, the sky is always falling.

  

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Shoelog

 

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

Slimy Stuff

 

“One of the things that concerns a lot of Americans lately is the increase in plain old nastiness in our political discussion. It comes from a number of sources, but Rush Limbaugh is a major carrier.

“I should explain that I am not without bias in this matter. I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.”

—Molly Ivins (1944-2007), political columnist and commentator, “Lyin’ Bully,” Mother Jones, 1995.

  

• Editorial Comment: A slander on newts.

  

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Stella Washed Up

 

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

The Morass

“We have all these new channels and tools to understand the world as it happens, but there’s no reliable algorithm for sorting through the morass. 

“It used to be to read the morning paper on the way to work and read the evening paper on the way home. Now we have to invent a new personal methodology every day. And if we’re waiting for things to settle down and become simple, that’s never going to happen.” 

—Jim Gleick, journalism and author, in “Lost in Space,” The New York Times, April 23, 2013.

  

• Editorial Comment: It’s exhausting.

  

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Pietime

 

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

Apostrophe Protections Extended

“A retired journalist who founded a campaign to preserve the correct use of the apostrophe is bowing out because ‘ignorance has won.’

“The Apostrophe Protection Society was started by John Richards in 2001 to tackle misuse of the punctuation mark. The 96-year-old said: ‘We have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won.’ . . . 

“‘It seems that fewer organisations and individuals care about the correct use,’ he added. ‘Those who do will get it right but those who can’t be bothered will just carry on sprinkling it about where they feel it looks nice.”’ 

—BBC, “Apostrophe campaign ends due to ‘ignorance and laziness,’” Nov. 29, 2019.

  

  

• Editorial Comment: What about the Save the Ümlaut League?

• UPDATE: News of Mr. Richards’ despair resulted in “a 600-fold increase in demand,” which crashed the Apostrophe Protection Society server. According to the site: “As a result, we have closed the full site until early January 2020. We apologise for disappointing you but do come back in the New Year! The APS Website is NOT closing Down!” [emphasis and color original]

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Beach Lumps

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

Too Much Fun to Be Grumpy

“[H]er new role is punishing — too many candidates, too few reporters, not enough hours in the day. But she’s having too much fun to dwell on the downsides.

“Even those times when you’re grumpy and have been on the road all day and nothing is going right, you still just pinch yourself and say, ‘Wow, they pay me to do this,’ she says. ‘As some of our senior reporters have told me, it’s like sitting in the front row of history.’” 

—Brianne Pfannenstiel, chief politics reporter, The Des Moines Register, in Tim Alberta’s “Inside the Shrinking Newsroom of the Newspaper that Shapes the Primaries,” POLITICO, April 26, 2019.

   

 

• Editorial Comment: History makes for a good story.

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Sadie, Sprinkler Dawg

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

Vultures Roost at Chicago Tribune

“Alden [Global Capital]’s strategy and operating practice is unapologetically cutthroat. The company’s executives believe that newspapers are on a permanent decline, headed inevitably toward a value of zero. However, there are differing opinions about how far away that zeroing-out point is, and over a long interim, smart operators can make a lot of money on the way down.” 

—Ken Doctor, media analyst, “Newsonomics: By selling to America’s worst newspaper owners, Michael Ferro ushers the vultures into Tribune,” NiemanLab, Nov. 20, 2019.

   

 

• Editorial Comment: Run that black border.

Note: Alden Capital’s newspaper arm, MNG Enterprises (formerly Digital First Media), is now the second-largest newspaper group in the U.S.; the newly combined Gatehouse-Gannett is largest.

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Burnt Ranch, California

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

To the Death!

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” 

―Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish poet and playwright.

 

• Editorial Comment: And I, sir, will defend to the death your right to dress like that . . .

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Houda Hump

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

Readers Needed

From the WORDmeister: Have you been feeling WORDless? Sorry about that. Here at the International Galactic WORD Headquarters and Spa, we’ve been in a blackout since Tuesday. The cause was not PG&E incompetence this time — the weather weinies said cyclonic winds hit the North Coast of California, knocking stuff down all over the place. We got our power back Friday night after 76 hours of powerlessness. No heat, either. Warming up now. Send soup.

“There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers. According to a Pew Research Center survey, adult Americans read an average of twelve books a year, heavily weighted on either end of the age spectrum. How many read fiction? God only knows.” 

—Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) and Suzanne McConnell, coauthors, “Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style,” 2019. Image: Yousuf Karsh, 1990.

 

• Editorial Comment: I’ve recently learned that a blackout is good for reading books.

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Houda Beach

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