No, not the and-Garfunkel guy, I’m talking about former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (who has such a great voice it’s a shame he didn’t become a talk radio jock), who used to own small newspapers in southern Illinois before he…
Author: tom
Hey Clyde, there’s more to life than money
New York Times piece laments inherent newsiness of journos gone bad (and getting rich), and ignores inherent good news: as long as it’s news that our colleagues are screwing up royally, it means the rest of us aren’t. In a…
Confession of raw cluelessness
I thought Paris Hilton was a place, not a person.
Reverse dictionary
Nifty post at JournoList. The OneLook Reverse Dictionary is ingenious, entertaining and might even be useful. You know there’s a word for something, but you can’t remember it. Type your definition into the box, and the dictionary comes up with…
Back in the U.S.A.
Tequila Mockingbird returns from visits to London and Paris. And she took some swell pictures. Tim Porter is back from Oaxaca with a post about finding younger readers. Newspapers need younger people writing and editing them, just as they’ve learned…
Keep your editor happy
Media Bistro has a bunch of tips for free-lance writers on avoiding collisions with their editors. Among the suggestions: Most editors are in a position to offer a bit of wiggle room on a deadline as long as you give…
Reporters say the darnedest things
The Testy Copy Editors reveal some of the most memorable malapropisms. Reporter does a story about a nature preserve and makes note of a magnificent blue herring spreading its majestic wings and flying off. I say a little prayer of…
Careful what you ‘refuse’
From a story about the tumult in the former Soviet republic of Georgia: For Shevardnadze, the silver-haired 75-year-old president who served as Soviet foreign minister in the waning days of the Soviet Union and has led his troubled country of…
The Michael Jackson-Citizen Kane connection
I did some poking around yesterday and came across an item by mystery novelist/blogger Roger L. Simon linking to my rant about Michael Jackson. Somebody posted this in the comments: You wonder why the focus on Jackson by the media?…
A new ‘about’ page
I’ve been meaning to do a better “about this site” page, so this morning I finally got around to it. It’s the post below; feel free to skip over any details you already know.