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The Course of Words

Resolutions for the Columnist

The following is my president’s column for the January 2011 edition of monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. 1. Quit grasping onto obvious topics like “Columnist Lists New Year’s Resolutions.” 2. When writing, quit the posed, “I don’t know about you, but as for me …” or a similar phrase. Reflective columns […]

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The Course of Words

Food, Shelter and Columns

The following is my column for the December 2010 edition of monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Earlier this week I woke up presuming I could start this month’s column with, “Hello, I have a story to tell,” and wing it. I didn’t have a clue where to go from there, though. It’s […]

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The Course of Words

Certifiably

First published in the November 2010 issue of the e-Columnist By Ben S. Pollock President, National Society of Newspaper Columnists “Politics make strange bedfellows” goes the quote by 19th-century newspaperman Charles Dudley Warner, and this fall it’s been columnists getting renown for jumping on the mattress. Columnists, commentators, news analysts, bloggers, interest-group hacks, cable yaks — […]

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The Course of Words

The Future Just Showed Up: Like

The following is my column for the September 2010 edition of monthly newsletter of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Last year I asked my Facebook friends on my “Wall,” where conversations are texted (Is this English?), “Why are people so upbeat on Facebook?” I’d been on Facebook a few months, having been sold on […]

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The Course of Words

Newspaper, Paper or Plastic

My first “President’s Column” for columnists.com. Thank you for electing me president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Didn’t you hear? I have not published a running column since Sept. 16, 2001. Instead I’ve written at www.benpollock.com/brick for nearly seven years. After the first year, the water warms up. Blogging is how I’ve coped […]

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Bloomers

Uphold, or Hold Up, Standards

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Sunday, July 11, 2010 — Indiana University feels bigger than my hometown’s University of Arkansas. Yep, 1,933 acres versus 345 acres. It has a journalism school not a department, a music school not a department. It is a handsome forested campus, full of sculptures (even a huge Calder) and fountains. Come October it […]