About Editing and Writing

From Gene Weingarten’s column in Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine:

From a New York Times obit, by Katharine Q. Seelye, headlined “John Sears, Strategist for Nixon and Reagan, Dies at 79: Some thought he was ‘Deep Throat,’ the secret source who helped The Washington Post unravel Watergate. He was not.”

John P. Sears, a Republican political strategist who worked for Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan and was fired by both, died on Thursday in Miami. .  . .

Frequently referred to in the news media as a modern-day Machiavelli or Rasputin, Mr. Sears was only 28 in 1968 when he served as deputy director of field operations for Nixon and helped him secure the Republican presidential nomination. He then worked briefly as deputy counsel in the White House.

From a Wall Street Journal story, by Lukas I. Alpert and Keach Hagey, headlined “Coronvirus Is Giving Readers Plenty of News. But Local Outlets Are Still Teetering.”

Readers are flocking to news sites during the coronavirus pandemic. The media has a basic commodity—information—that people are craving as they try to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

And yet, financially, the crisis is delivering a punishing blow to already struggling local publishers, from big-city metro papers to small-town outlets.

From lithub.com:

By Jesse Gaynor

The Great Gatsby
“So we beat on, fists against the window, borne back ceaselessly into the house.”

Blood Meridian
“He never distances, the judge. He is going on spring break, going on spring break. He says that he will never die.”

Animal Farm
“The creatures inside looked from couch to man, and from man to couch, and from couch to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

The Catcher in the Rye
“It’s funny. Don’t ever look at Instagram. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

From the Writer’s Almanac:

On this date in 1915, the woman known as “Typhoid Mary” was put into quarantine in a cottage in the Bronx. Her name was Mary Mallon, and she was a large and fiery Irish-American woman about 40 years old. She worked as a cook in and around New York City, and every household she worked in seemed to suffer an outbreak of typhoid fever. Typhoid is caused by a form of Salmonella bacteria, and is usually spread by contact with human or animal waste. It was common on battlefields—it may have killed more than 200,000 soldiers during the Civil War—and in poor and unsanitary housing conditions, but it was rarely seen in the wealthy households like the ones where Mallon worked.

From a Richard Reeves obit by Harrison Smith, in the Washington Post:

Richard Reeves, a veteran political reporter, columnist and author who chronicled the nation’s history and politics in graceful prose for more than half a century, bringing readers inside the White House during pivotal moments of modern presidencies, died March 25 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83. . . .

With his baritone voice and conversational writing style, Mr. Reeves was a personable, erudite guide to American politics, both in print and on television. He co-hosted the NBC magazine show “Sunday” in the 1970s, was chief correspondent for the PBS program “Frontline” and won honors including Peabody and Emmy awards, for documentaries on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and TV’s impact on politics.

From a New York Times obit by David Stout headlined “Richard Reeves, Columnist and Author on Presidents, Dies at 83”:

Richard Reeves, a journalist and author who explored the presidency, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World II, the role of the media and other aspects of American history in muscular, passionate and occasionally acerbic prose, died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 83. . . .

Mr. Reeves, who was a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, wrote more than a dozen books and, from 1979 to 2014, a syndicated column that appeared in more than 100 newspapers. He was also a familiar face on public affairs programs on PBS.

From a Times Insider column “How Poetry Shakes Up the National Desk’s Morning Meetings: A good poem can jolt our minds into thinking about the country’s most important stories in unexpected ways, our National editor writes”:

By Marc Lacey

When the National desk gets together to discuss stories, it can be a grim half-hour. We dissect natural disasters. We reconstruct mass shootings. We delve into political scandals and all manner of domestic tumult. Recently, though, we added a new feature to our morning meetings aimed at inspiring us and boosting our creativity before we embark on another long day of editing the news.

First lines of classic novel rewritten for social distancing—from lithub.com:

By Jesse Gaynor

Mrs. Dalloway
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Then she remembered the florist was closed. And the party was cancelled. Finally, some time to rest and reflect on her marital choices.

Swann’s Way
For a long time, I went to bed early. I wasn’t even that tired. It was more like, hey: here’s a good way to pass the time.

Middlemarch
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by the same leggings and sweatshirt she has been wearing for the last five days.

From a Wall Street Journal story headlined “Amazon’s Bezos, Other Corporate Executives, Sold Shares Just in Time”:

Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.