Rave Reviews

 

“[L]arge segments of the American population think the media is attentive to trivia, and indifferent to what really matters. They also believe that the media does not report the country’s problems, but instead is a part of them. Increasingly, people perceive no difference between the narcissistic self-serving reporters asking questions, and the narcissistic self-serving politicians who evade them.” 

—Michael Crichton (1942-2008), novelist and screenwriter, “Mediasaurus,” Wired, 1993.

• Editorial Comment: Well, sure. That was in 1993....

PS: Hey, Crichton: The media ARE . . .

PeezPix

Got Pie?

  

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

Martin Luther King Jr., 1929-1968

 

“O’ freedom, o’ freedom, o’ freedom over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free

No more weepin’, no more weepin’, no more weepin’ over me

And before I’d be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave

And go home to my Lord and be free.”

—“O’ Freedom,” Negro spiritual, “Old Plantation Hymns,” 1899.

“In the town of Trickem, at the Nolan Elementary School — a small white shack on brick stilts, which had asbestos shingles, a corrugated-iron roof, six broken windows, and a broken wood floor patched with automobile license plates — a group of old people and barefoot children rushed out to embrace Dr. King. They had been waiting four hours.

“‘Will you march with us?’ Dr. King asked an old man with a cane.

“‘I’ll walk one step, anyway,’ said the man. ‘Because I know for every one step I’ll take you’ll take two.’”

—Renata Adler, journalist and author, “The Selma March,” The New Yorker, April 1965.

”A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.”

—The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), civil rights leader, in a sermon the day after “Bloody Sunday,” when marchers were beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, March 8, 1965.

• Editorial Comment: We’d better keep marching.

 

PeezPix

Women’s March, Eureka, CA, 2017

  

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

Today’s Reporter

“It’s a very strange thing to get emails that say, ‘I’m going to come rip off your skin and dismember you, and your family isn’t safe either.’ 

 

“It’s upsetting to have people express such hatred and creative violent imagery about you.”

—Michael D’Antonio, veteran journalist, 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winner and author of 2015 Trump biography “Never Enough,” has received threatening phone calls and emails, and been the subject of the president’s tweets, in “The Disinformation Age,” UNH Today, Nov. 21, 2019. (Thanks to alert WORDster Andrew Merton) 
Image: Trump rally, Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport, 2016: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters

• Editorial Comment: Hazardous duty.

 

 

PeezPix

Bloom

  

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

Another Devilish Definition

“anecdotal lede, n. Narrative opening to a news story in which a reporter takes great pains to demonstrate why he failed as a novelist.” 

—Sean Braswell and Sean Culligan, “The Devil’s Guide to the Media,” Ozy.com, November 2017.

• Editorial Comment: It was a dark & stormy night . . .

 

 

PeezPix

Gotta be a story here . . .

  

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

Elusive

“A vibrant, responsive democracy requires enlightened citizens, and without forceful local reporting they are kept in the dark. At a time when political polarization is increasing and fraudulent news is spreading, a shared fact-based discourse on the issues that most directly affect us is more essential and more elusive than ever.” 

 

—PEN America, “Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions,” Nov. 20, 2019.

• Editorial Comment: I’m sorry, “fact-based discourse”?

 

 

PeezPix

Dusk, 01.14.20.

  

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 Tablet Newspaper

“We can’t just lose money year after year, and that’s the way it’s going. 

“And I tell them, look, we might still be able to deliver a print edition to you but it’s not the kind of paper you’re going to want to read, it’s not the kind of paper I’m going to want to publish. It’s going to have a whole lot less news in it. It’s going to have a whole lot fewer reporters and editors covering things. 

“There’s no future in that. That’s what a lot of newspapers are doing, but in my opinion, there’s no future in that.” 

—Walter E. Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “The Arkansas Gamble: Can a Tablet and Print Replica Rescue Local News?” Local News Initiative, Northwestern University, Jan. 13, 2020.

• Editorial Comment: Can you wrap fish in that?

 

 

PeezPix

The Back 40

  

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

Awaiting Words for a New Year

“Last year’s words belong to last year's language

And next year’s words await another voice.”  

—T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Nobel Prize-winning poet and essayist, “Little Gidding,” 1942. (Thanks to ever-alert WORDster Dr. Mardy Grothe)

 

• Editorial Comment: Yup. Eagerly awaiting a new voice.

 

 

PeezPix

Winter Rollers

  

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

Shelf Life

“Every word I wrote was ephemeral, as evanescent as baby’s breath, and had the shelf life of fish.”  

—Paul E. Schindler Jr., writer and journalist, May 19, 2006.

• Editorial Comment: I’m on deadline for a nice rainbow trout.

 

 

PeezPix

Fishface

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 I-Man, 1940-2019

“During a career that filled a half-century, the I-man — as he was known to his broad following — applied the lessons of outlaw radio to the evolving technologies of modern communication. He made radio interesting; not like a seminar is interesting, but like a bank robbery is interesting. Like emergency surgery is interesting. Like climbing a cliff with no rope is interesting.” 

—David Von Drehle, columnist, “Don Imus, the man who was always willing to go too far,” Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2019. Radio shock-jock Don Imus died at 79 two days after Christmas. (Thanks to alert WORDster Tom Ferrell)

• Editorial Comment: Like a loudmouth is interesting.

 

 

PeezPix

Snow day, 2011.

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