Thursday, January 01, 2009
So hot & stuffy in my apt today I opened a window in this room & turned on an exhaust fan in the other. Faster than tinkering with the radiators.
Question answered in first half: Is Penn State's gaudy regular season record misleading Yes. But we needed USC to confirm it.
Columnist Fran Wood took a buyout at the Star-Ledger & retired to a blog. She's had a long career in dailies. Fran was well-informed, intelligent, usually got her facts straight, always had something to say, but didn't have an interesting writing style. No quirkiness. I imagined her strolling through high school & college on a path of "A" papers, always following her teachers' suggestions on removing her idiosyncracies. I think generalists ought to write with strong individual style; they're not hired for their special knowledge. So Fran, here's my advice: Become a blogger, not a newspaper columnist writing a blog. Think of the space as a sandbox. You can play inside that kind of box.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Question answered in first half: Is Penn State's gaudy regular season record misleading Yes. But we needed USC to confirm it.
Columnist Fran Wood took a buyout at the Star-Ledger & retired to a blog. She's had a long career in dailies. Fran was well-informed, intelligent, usually got her facts straight, always had something to say, but didn't have an interesting writing style. No quirkiness. I imagined her strolling through high school & college on a path of "A" papers, always following her teachers' suggestions on removing her idiosyncracies. I think generalists ought to write with strong individual style; they're not hired for their special knowledge. So Fran, here's my advice: Become a blogger, not a newspaper columnist writing a blog. Think of the space as a sandbox. You can play inside that kind of box.
