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a blog by Jack Limpert, Editor of The Washingtonian for more than 40 years.

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Leonard Downie: How Newsrooms That Move Beyond Objectivity Can Build Trust

January 30, 2023

From a Washington Post column by Leonard Downie Jr. headlined “Newsrooms that move beyond ‘objectivity’ can build trust”:

Amid all the profound challenges and changes roiling the American news media today, newsrooms are debating whether traditional objectivity should still be the standard for news reporting. “Objectivity” is defined by most dictionaries as expressing or using facts without distortion by personal beliefs, bias, feelings or prejudice. Journalistic objectivity has been generally understood to mean much the same thing.

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How Dog Walkers Make Over $100,000 a Year

January 30, 2023

From a New York Times story by Alyson Krueger headlined “How These Dog Walkers Make Over $100,000 a Year”:

Dressed in black leggings and a puffer jacket, Bethany Lane, 35, was walking down Bleecker Street in Manhattan last Friday afternoon with a pack of three goldendoodles and one bernedoodle named Tinkerbelle. They poked their noses into the Whalebone store to collect some treats, before trotting along the Hudson River Park and having their photos taken by several tourists.

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Putin Threatened to Kill Me, Britain’s Boris Johnson Says

January 30, 2023

From a Washington Post story by Karla Adam headlined “Putin threatened to kill me, Britain’s Boris Johnson says”:

Former British prime minister Boris Johnson says Russian President Vladimir Putin personally threatened him with a missile attack in the run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a claim quickly denied by the Kremlin.

The accusation came in excerpts of a BBC documentary on Putin and the West set to air later Monday, and Johnson conceded that the Russian leader might have been joking.

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Sadness and Static as AM Radio Stations Fade

January 30, 2023

From a Wall Street Journal commentary by Peter Funt headlined “Sadness and Static as AM Stations Fade”:

When I lived in Denver in the early 1970s, Sunday nights included an audio excursion to my hometown of New York—a trip only AM radio could provide. At 770 on the dial I listened to WABC, with its distinctive disc jockeys, rock music and “news at :25 and :55,” via a signal traveling more than 1,600 miles.

This magic was possible only for a few hours when station KOB in Albuquerque, N.M., which shared the 770 frequency, shut down for maintenance. With the competing signal out of the way, WABC’s sound was able to travel far west—literally bouncing off the ionosphere.

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New York Times Columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens: “America Is Breaking Our Hearts”

January 30, 2023

From a conversation between New York Times columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens headlined “America Is Breaking Our Hearts”

Gail Collins: Bret, I have a lot to ask you about government spending and deficits and … all that stuff. But first, we really need to talk about all the recent mass shootings and what to do about them, right?

Bret Stephens: In Britain or Germany these sorts of mass shootings are, at most, once-every-other-year events. Over here, hardly a day goes by without something like this happening. And the horror doesn’t just lie in the carnage. It’s that we’ve become accustomed to it. Dostoyevsky wrote, “Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!” That’s the state of our nation.

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In Russia, Compassion Has Become Civil Resistance

January 30, 2023

From a story on politico.com by Eva Hartog headlined “In divided Russia, ‘compassion has become civil resistance'”:

MOSCOW — Malika sobbed as she laid flowers at the foot of a statue of a Ukrainian poet in the center of the Russian capital.

In addition to her sorrow — the act was a commemoration of the victims of a Russian missile strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro — she had two reasons to also feel unease.

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Gregory Allen Howard: Screenwriter of “Remember the Titans” and Other Films

January 29, 2023

From a Washington Post obit by Brian Murphy headlined “Gregory Allen Howard, screenwriter of ‘Remember the Titans,’ dies at 70”:

Gregory Allen Howard, a screenwriter who recounted stories of perseverance such as the football and racial drama “Remember the Titans” and the biopic “Harriet” on the life of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, died in Miami.

Mr. Howard had story credits on films and series exploring Black struggles and successes, including “Ali” (2001) on the life of boxer Muhammad Ali starring Will Smith and Jamie Foxx. Mr. Howard also taught a screenwriting course at Howard University as a visiting professor.

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Writers Julie Otsuka and Ed Yong Win Carnegie Medals

January 29, 2023

From an AP story by Hillel Italie headlined “Julie Otsuka, Ed Yong win Carnegie Medals for Excellence”:

Novelist Julie Otsuka has strong memories of libraries from her childhood California — the bike rides with her best friend to the local branch; the soft, firm sound of librarians closing books; the shopping bags she and her friend would fill with science fiction and other stories.

“It seemed like I lived at the library,” she says. “I felt very free to explore there, and explore away from adult eyes.”

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A Small Boat, a Vast Sea, a Desperate Escape From Russia

January 29, 2023

From a New York Times story by Mike Baker headlined “A Small Boat, a Vast Sea and a Desperate Escape From Russia”:

A series of knocks rattled his apartment door one day last fall, and Maksim peered through the peephole to see two soldiers in uniform. They were military enlistment officers, he knew, expanding the vast conscription effort for the war in Ukraine to Russia’s remote Far East.

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Georgia Quarterback Arrested for Being Drunk in Public

January 29, 2023

From a Washington Post story by Cindy Boren headlined “Ex-Georgia quarterback Stetson Bennett arrested for public intoxication”:

Stetson Bennett, who led Georgia to its second consecutive college football national championship earlier this month, was arrested in Dallas early Sunday morning on a misdemeanor public intoxication charge, where he is preparing for the NFL draft.

Officers responded to reports of a man banging on doors in the 1600 block of Tribeca Way at 7:10 a.m. Eastern time, Dallas police said.

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About Editing

What Editors Should Look for in Writers

By Jack Limpert

When I became a magazine editor, I had no clue what to look for in a writer. As time went on, I began to think about left brain-right brain types of writers–left brain types being better at logic and analysis, right brain better at imagination and creativity. The split seemed to play out most noticeably with art directors–we went through lots of them and it seemed that we’d go from one that was creative and disorganized to another that was well-organized and not very interesting.

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About Writing

Writing That Is of Marginal Interest

By Mike Feinsilber

So there I was happily reading Lynne Olson’s fascinating book, Those Angry Days, about the pre-World War II struggles between the isolationists who wanted to keep America out of the war and the internationalists who couldn’t stand America’s hands-off policy while Nazi bombers were pounding London night after night.

And there I came across a series of pencilled in comments in the book’s margins by a previous reader of the book, which I’d borrowed from the D.C. Public Library. “Dear Reader” is how I’ve come to think of Olson’s ghostly second guesser. And  I’ve come to think of Dear Reader as elderly and a woman because of her frail, thin, and tiny handwriting. Maybe that’s sexist. My evidence is thin.

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“Words Are the Only Things That Last Forever.” – William Hazlitt

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