Recommended (Slow) Reading

. 
Drink Deep

“It’s no accident that the click-happy online universe can sap our focus and make it harder for us to read a full-length book with rapt attention. But old-fashioned reading is still essential, because it teaches lessons about human identity that we can’t get anywhere else. Making your way through a long, realist novel means taking a journey with another self; you look into people’s inner lives as you could never do by watching a three-minute iPhone video.”  

—David Mikics, op-ed, “In Praise of (Offline) Slow Reading,” The New York Times, Jan. 3, 2014 (Image: Mary Cassatt, The Reader, 1877)

• Editorial Comment: True enough. It’s been too long since a tweet left me rapt.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Utah Winter






Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Say What You Mean

. 
Dis donc?

“Language is a very difficult thing to put into words.”

—Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) (1694-1778), writer

• Editorial Comment: You said it, François.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Utah Winter






Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

The Writing Process

. 
Stinky

“My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.” 

—Anne Lamott, writer, from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 1994. URL

• Editorial Comment: So that’s why my contented dogs stink. And they never write anything worth reading.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Sadie Doper Dawg







Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

No News, All the Time

. 
The Great Windbag

“‘CNN president Jeff Zucker recently told Capital New York that the ‘straight newscast model’ is unsustainable,’ Limbaugh said. ‘How does he know? Nobody's doing it!’

“According to Limbaugh, CNN is simply another example of the ‘daily soap opera that everybody thinks is the news.’

“‘But there isn’t any news being reported,’ he said. ‘If these people at CNN really think all they’ve been doing is broadcasting straight news, it’s hopeless!’”

—Rush Limbaugh, world-class windbag and self-styled “newsman,” in Catherine Tiabi, “Rush Limbaugh: I Give You More News Than CNN,” on HuffPo, December 2013 

• Editorial Comment: News is unsustainable? Well, Rush should know...

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

January sunset









Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Allende’s Hell

. 
Waiting for the Muse

“I start all my books on January eighth. Can you imagine January seventh? It’s hell. Every year on January seventh, I prepare my physical space. I clean up everything from my other books. I just leave my dictionaries, and my first editions, and the research materials for the new one. And then on January eighth I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to the little pool house that is my office. It’s like a journey to another world. It’s winter, it’s raining usually. I go with my umbrella and the dog following me. From those seventeen steps on, I am in another world and I am another person. I go there scared. And excited. And disappointed — because I have a sort of idea that isn’t really an idea. The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn’t show up invited, eventually she just shows up.” 

—Isabel Allende, Chilean author, “House of the Spirits” (1982), from Maria Popova, “Brain Pickings” 

• Editorial Comment: The muse is always late.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

January sunset






Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

It’s baaaa-aaack!

. 
Type Faster

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.”

—Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), writer and very fast typist




• Editorial Comment: Qwertybanananaqwerty!

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

New Year’s Day on Houda Beach




Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Benediction

. 
Tim says

Today’s WORD on Journalism launched sometime in 1995, when an annoyingly enthusiastic journalism professor wanted to force his students to learn how to use something called "E-mail” on what was quaintly called “the World Wide Web.” 

Imagine: 20-year-olds being forced into e-communication. They hated it, but their #$%^&*(&^%$#@!! professor sent them quotes about journalism every morning, and chances were good that these would appear on the daily news quiz. Thoreau, Jefferson, Mary Poppins, Let There Be Light.

Today marks the mid-point of the WORD's 19th season. My math skills being approximate at best, let’s say this is 37 semesters X 5 days/week = 2,960.

Well, as my last high school math teacher, Nate Smith, would say, pulling out chunks of his red (buy fast-greying) beard, “That can't be right, Pease!” 

But however approximate, the WORD has foisted a bunch of—um—“wisdom” on the unprotected planet since 1995. The WORDmeister appreciates your tolerance, however ill-judged. As my mother always said, there’s no accounting for taste.

Anyway, the WORD and I will take the rest of the semester off to dash the hopes of innocent professors, and then to binge on fruitcake. So this is the —30— on the WORD’s 2013. See you on the flip side (“20-fourteen”? What the hell kind of year is *that*?!).

In the meantime, as that wise young man said, “God bless us, every one.”

Pease

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

December Sunset





Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Shit Storm . . .

. 
 . . . and fish wrapping

“[N]obody reads the papers any more, is that it? It’s just another story—a couple of days of shit storm and it’s wrapping paper? You know, in the middle of all this gossip and speculation that permeates people’s lives, I still think they know the difference between real news and bullshit. And they’re glad that somebody cares enough to get things on the record and print the truth.” 

—Cal McAffery, Russell Crowe’s “Washington Globe” journalist character in “State of Play” (2009) 

• Editorial Comment: Um, remind me: what *is* the difference between real news and bullshit?

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

December Sunset





Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Vanity

. 
 . . . and the fragrance of ego

“Vanity in a newspaperman is like perfume on a whore: they use it to fend off a dark whiff of themselves.”

—Julian Assange, Australian founder of WikiLeaks

• Editorial Comment: Was that you?

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Luffenholz Beach





Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Boobies

. 
I ♥ Boobies

“While teaching students civility and protecting them from possibly inappropriate messages are understandable goals, they come with serious costs. Punishing students for their speech robs our public debate of needed voices, and it teaches our children—who, of course, one day become adults—that censorship, even broad and sometimes arbitrary censorship, is acceptable.” 

—Sonja West, reporting on censorship of breast cancer wristbands worn by Easton, Pa., middle school students Brianna Hawk and Kayla Martinez, a case heading for the Supreme Court, “Censorship 101: What schools are really teaching students when we let them censor their speech,” Slate, Dec. 6, 2013. 

Background: “School battle over ‘I ♥ Boobies!’ bracelets may go to U.S. Supreme Court” 

• Editorial Comment: Oh, shut up, you kids.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Egret Games







Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.

Punchy Sociopaths

. 
Twee-Tar

“Now, like most people these days, I have one source for news that I turn to more than any other—Twee-Tar. Because I likes my news like I likes my ladies: Short and punchy and delivered second-hand by anonymous sociopaths. . . . Without Twitter, how else would I learn about revolutions in Iran, or non-existent fights with angry ladies on airplanes?”  

—Jon Stewart, host, The Daily Show, “Parks and Recognition,” Dec. 3, 2013 Watch video here.  

• Editorial Comment: hmmm. Where to begin? Say “short, punchy, sociopathic ladies” out loud in public and see where that gets you.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.99

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ernie_pyle.html#Esc6vQCFKMUK3V3K.

PeezPix by Ted Pease 

Crabpot Christmas






Original PeezPix for sale. ted.pease@gmail.com

TODAY'S WORD ON JOURNALISM is a free “service” sent to the 1,800 or so misguided subscribers around the planet. If you have recovered from whatever 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. But all contain at least a kernel of insight. Don’t shoot the messenger.) 
 
Ted Pease, Professor of Interesting Stuff, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, and Humboldt State University, Arcata, California. ted.pease@gmail.com. (Be)Friend Dr. Ted, Professor of Interesting Stuff

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.” —Tom Stoppard
.