Stefan Zweig. Know him? I thought not. Neither did I, until I expressed my interest in the history of Europe before the First World War while in the earshot of our friend Mary, who has an enormous library in her home in Paris. She later sent me the names of five authors, including Zweig, with […]

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We have conceded on this site that accounts of long, draining travel are nearly always boring. Meaningless to all but those who survived them. And yet, we keep talking about them. Because they are so intense. Like our 31-hour door-to-door trip from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles or, to be exact, to San Clemente, south […]

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  Journalists who work inside the office need to get out once in a while. To see anew how the other half lives. To get reacquainted with the realities of reporting. The untidy and inexact process of going onsite, piecing together what has happened, interviewing people who may not want to talk, making sense of […]

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I enjoy doing newspaper crossword puzzles. Particularly the big Sunday crosswords from the New York Times. Particularly when they have fun clues, as does one I completed the other day. The overarching clue — which applies to all the long answers — is paper chase. And I will tell you right now the answers have […]

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Some guys have trouble with change. Many of them are sports writers. Something I stumbled across while looking up something else: An 11-point rant by a professional journalist, in London-based Daily Telegraph, on “why the Super Bowl sucks”. We won’t address every point, because mostly this is about anti-Americanism, which flows wide and deep through […]

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Lorem ipsum is a famous dummy text. Random words, Latin-looking, that designers use in page mockups. (Not to get too wonky about it, but “studies show” that when designers are creating new looks, real text often distracts non-designers who are looking at a page. They begin reading real stories, instead of looking at how marvelous […]

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For the first time since 2007, we spent Thanksgiving Day at home, in California. The period of absence allowed us to get a sense of seven years of what probably was incremental change, perhaps not as obvious to those who experienced it year by year. For us, the on-the-ground experience of Thanksgiving jumped from 2007 […]

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I had forgotten the date. A former colleague sent me an email about it, and yes, he was right. It was 25 years ago today that the U.S. national soccer team recorded the most important victory in the history of American soccer. We can say that without reservation, actually, because soccer was languishing in the […]

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Production journalists are creatures of habit. They know what will fit where. How many words with how many pictures. How to assemble four blocks, or five or six, to make a page. Fitting together shapes to complete a puzzle. And coding it up becomes a synaptic exercise. Just put your fingers on the keys, and […]

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An added benefit to working at a newspaper is the fascinating things you learn. Presumably golf fans already knew this, but I did not. The man who finished in a tie for second at the U.S. Open this year has had two heart transplants. Erik Compton is living with his third heart. But he has […]

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