This goes back to the 1980s. Maybe a vacation in 1982. Certainly no later than 1985, when I know I was in London for two-plus weeks — because I covered the first Wimbledon championship that Boris Becker won. And, in short, it was this: Too much good stuff to read. And this was just the […]

[Read more →]

I never played soccer as a child. Never saw a match. Didn’t own a soccer ball. Never knew anyone who followed the game. The extent of my pre-adult exposure to soccer probably was occasional videotape on ABC’s Wide World of Sports; presumably World Cup highlights; lots of Pele. By the early 1980s, I was the […]

[Read more →]

This blog commenced on March 10, 2008. Ten years ago today. It was four days after I had been fired by the Los Angeles News Group, and I wanted to let co-workers and other journalists know what had happened, with as many specifics as I could recall pertaining to the (then mostly novel) concept of […]

[Read more →]

The best opening sentences in literary history. Always a fun exercise. This has been going on pretty much forever. An early leader for “best opening line” has to be Genesis chapter 1, verse 1. “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” There’s a book you want to check out, just from the […]

[Read more →]

In conversations with journalists, over the years, I have found a common denominator: A significant percentage of them were thinking about journalism — and even practicing it — at a young age. This comes to mind after seeing a call from officials of the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, later this month in Abu Dhabi, for […]

[Read more →]

Pretty much everyone who has worked in print journalism nurses a grudge toward people who crumple a newspaper while paging through it. Today’s paper, especially.

[Read more →]

  The wind blows sometimes, here in the south of France. In the summer, that can pose problems with slamming doors, because we like to keep the windows open throughout the season, when it can be a bit warm. And gusty. Thus, we prop open the doors with compact and heavy things lying about. An […]

[Read more →]

This seems quaint. Print journalists are making a case to management that a planned layoff of dozens of veteran copy editors … is a very bad idea. It seems like such an Aughties thing, this push back. From 2007, 2008, 2009 — the opening years of the Great Newsroom Layoffs. Of late, in an industry […]

[Read more →]

A newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, has announced it is giving up publishing from a fear of its journalists being killed for doing their job. It certainly gives American journos reason to pause and reflect on the difficulty of putting out the paper in a difficult economic times … and conceding our colleagues in Mexico […]

[Read more →]

The mystery of Tom Brady’s missing Super Bowl jersey has been solved as well as resolved. A Mexican national with a media credential apparently snatched the No. 12 Patriots jersey after New England’s dramatic 28-25 victory in Super Bowl 51, but the jersey is back in the U.S. along with what appears to be the […]

[Read more →]