About Editing and Writing

From a column in the Wall Street Journal, “A New Saint for the Age of Loneliness,” by John Garvey, president of the Catholic University of America:

On Sunday Pope Francis will officially recognize as a saint the British clergyman and Oxford academic John Henry Newman (1801-90). Nearly 130 years after his death, Newman’s writings still offer readers incisive theological analysis—and practical wisdom….

“No one, man nor woman, can stand alone; we are so constituted by nature,” Newman writes, noting our need to cultivate genuine relations of friendship. Social-media platforms like Facebook and Twitter connect people, but it’s a different sort of connection than friendship. The self one presents on Facebook is inauthentic, someone living an idealized life unlike one’s daily reality. Interaction online is more akin to Kabuki theater than genuine human relations….

Nats unsung hero Michael A. Taylor.

After the Washington Nationals comeback win against the L0s Angeles Dodgers in the National League playoffs, I posted this on Facebook:

“When the Nats terrific playoff win against the LADodgers ended after midnight, I got up at 630 wondering if the Post’s sports section would have the dreaded the-game-ended-too-late message. What the Post delivered was a great game story and pictures plus very good columns by Tom Boswell and Barry Svrluga. Newspapers still can be wonderful.”

They don’t hire people like themselves. They’ve figured out what they’re good at and not good at and they hire people who are good at what they’re not good at.

From the book The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer’s Tale by James Atlas:

We biographers have always done our work amid a loud chorus of negativity. Oscar Wilde famously observed that biography “lends to death a new terror.” Joyce feared “biografiends.”…Then there was George Eliot who asked, “Is it not odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk is raked, and every significant memorandom which he never meant for the public is printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle to read his books.”

In a post yesterday about Washington Redskins owners Jack Kent Cooke and Dan Snyder, I touched on the time Cooke sued The Washingtonian after we interviewed Harry Turner, Cooke’s former driver, who provided lots of anecdotes and details about how hard Cooke was to work for. After the story was published, Cooke, angry about our continued coverage of him, sued the magazine.

The story became harder to defend when we read the lawsuit and discovered that Cooke’s lawyers had found information about Turner that we hadn’t. The weekly newspaper in Turner’s hometown in Virginia had years earlier published a story saying that Turner claimed he had been abducted by space aliens and taken to Alpha Centuri, a star many light years away.

In a 9/27/19 Washington Post story about the attempts over the years to identify who the real person was behind the “Deep Throat” character in the Woodward-Bernstein book and movie, All the President’s Men, the Post writer, Gillian Brockell, missed two 1974 Washingtonian stories that identified the FBI’s Mark Felt as the likely Deep Throat.

The story in the June 1974 Washingtonian:

Deep Throat: If It Isn’t Tricia It Must Be. . .

From an essay by Arthur Bradford titled “The Dogs” in the book How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors:

They are excellent companions for a writer since they don’t speak and rarely interrupt me in a meaningful way. They provide just enough presence to ward off loneliness without hindering my ability to escape into a good solitary haze. Sometimes they will sigh and groan, especially if it is a nice day and they’d prefer to be out walking, but I don’t mind that. At night, when I like to write best, they lie at my feet and sleep soundly, often twitching their legs in reaction to their silly canine dreams.

In the old days—10 years ago—newspaper editors often had to write a first-day headline, telling the reader clearly what happened, and then a second-day head with more of a feature approach.

Last night’s come-from-behind Washington Nationals 4-3 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, climaxed by a base hit by the Nats’ Juan Soto that drove in three runs, ended around 11 p.m. and when I picked up this morning’s Washington Post at 6:30 and turned to the sports page, the big headline across the page was:

Juan for the money