Snakeoil

“In our postmodern culture which is TV-dominated, image-sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.” 

—David F. Wells, British theologian and author, No Place for Truth, or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theory? 1993.

 

• Editorial Comment: Well, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

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Callas

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

Radicals, Defined

“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” 

—H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), journalist, author and curmudgeon, A Carnival of Buncombe, 1956.

 

• Editorial Comment: By this definition, the nation’s population of radicals must be exploding.

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Pound Puppy

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

Distracted Watchdogs

“We need journalists to cover what is important, not bark at every car. 

“If the public wants the press to function as a watchdog, and the press itself aspires to the role, then it needs to make sure it is watching what matters and barking when it sees a genuine intruder, not just a shadow. Today, when those in power enjoy more direct ways of communicating, they also have more ways of distracting the press and casting those shadows.”

—Tom Rosenstiel, journalist, author and director of the American Press Institute, “What the post-Trump debate about the press gets wrong,” Brookings, 2016.

 

• Editorial Comment: Good dogs are still on the scent.

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Train Wreck

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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

Songs for Ukulele

“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s ‘Saint Matthew Passion’ on a ukulele: The instrument is too crude for the work, for the audience and for the performer.”

—Ben Bagdikian (1920-2016), writer, reporter, editor and author, 1967. See Washington Post obit. (Thanks to alert WORDster Peter Sussman).

• Editorial Comment: Try the Drumpf Administration on a Sousaphone.

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Knick knacks

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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

Unlistenable

“The radio is no longer listenable. It’s sad to see a medium with so much promise squandered, surrendered to children and fanatics. 

“As a teenager I loved listening with an ear plug late at night. The lights were out and everyone slept. That was the age of ‘underground radio.’ That’s how I first heard Jimi Hendrix playing ‘Red House.’ Even talk shows, like freak shows, seemed interesting. John Birchers, UFO nuts, JFK conspiracy theorists — but also a guy, late at night, from a city I no longer remember, talking at length about Sherwood Anderson. 

“Of course, everything then was new. I hadn’t yet sorted out the gifts from the cranks.” 

—Patrick Kurp, journalist and blogger, “To Give In to the Story at Hand,” Anecdotal Evidence, Jan. 22, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: These days, I’d give a lot for a couple of UFO nuts and a good JFK conspiracy theorist.

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Homeless Clyde

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

Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Worse

News Bulletin: Sinclair Broadcasting Corp., the nation’s largest owner of local TV stations, is requiring its news anchors to take part in a new promotional campaign that slams national media outlets for sharing “fake stories.” The script reads, in part:

“The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, national media outlets are publishing these same fake stories without checking facts first.

“Unfortunately, some members of the national media are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think.’ . . . This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.”

—Brandon Carter, reporter, “Sinclair requiring anchors to read new promo slamming ‘one-sided news stories’: report,” The Hill, March 7, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: “I felt like a POW recording a message,” one Sinclair news anchor told CNN.

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Fishtank

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 Strip Mall of Ideas

“The Framers couldn't have imagined that the free marketplace of ideas would morph into a strip mall of ideas, which would, in turn, morph into a glass enclosed three-story, airless multiplex of ideas.” 

—Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor, Slate, “Remarks at the Free Speech Monument Dedication,” Charlottesville, Virginia, 2006.

Above: In 2006, the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression established a two-sided, 54-foot-long slate chalkboard wall with accompanying soapbox outside the Charlottesville, Virginia, City Hall to encourage free expression. Click here.

 

• Editorial Comment: How about the Twitterverse of Wild-Eyed Bloviation?

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It’s Spring!

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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

A Tall Order

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.” 

—Fran Lebowitz, author and occasional actor. Photo:
Christopher Macsurak

• Editorial Comment: Wait. Let me read that again...

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Cairn

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 Misery Quotient

“At a certain point, there’s a misery quotient that results from immersing one’s self in the news, in the almost forensic detail of the suffering, and I have to ask myself, ‘How does this affect my life?’” 

—Christian Livermore, writer, on her changing news consumption, in Christopher Mele, “Fatigued by the News? Experts Suggest How to Adjust Your Media Diet,” New York Times, Feb. 1, 2017.

• Editorial Comment: Yup. Mad as hell. Really, really mad.

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Day at the 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

Supreme Ignoramuses

“[T]here is plenty of dumb to go around. A 2006 Zogby poll found that more Americans can identify the Three Stooges than the three branches of government. Another poll that same year found that 77 percent of Americans could name two of Snow White’s dwarves, but only 24 percent could name two Supreme Court justices.” 

—Sophia A. McClennen, professor of international affairs, Penn State, “Trolls and Hackers Find It Easy to Trick Americans Because We Are a Nation of Ignoramuses,” AlterNet, March 3, 2018.

• Editorial Comment: Shep, Clarence & Dopey?

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Oh, Deere

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

Shellshocked

 

“Many in legacy media love mass shootings. You guys love it.” —Dana Loesch, NRA vampire and national spokeswoman.

“That’s an inhumane thing to say, tantamount to suggesting that cops like mass killings because they earn a bunch of overtime. 

“The reality is that some days, the hardest thing a reporter must do is pick up the phone to call a grieving family. But that’s what we do. We seek primary sources and hold an honest mirror up to our communities.

“We don’t have the luxury of conspiracy theories or parroting talking points. We report. We cry. And we wrestle with our coverage decisions through sleepless nights and broken relationships and a seemingly unending parade of grief.”

—Trevor Hughes, reporter, “Reporters sound off . . .,” USA Today, Feb. 28, 2018. 

 

Image: Outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, family members wait for word. Amy Beth Bennett/Sun Sentinel.

 

• Editorial Comment: And the NRA’s response at news of every mass shooting? Sad truth: gun sales always spike.

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Coasties

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