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Tag Archives: columnist

Newspaper, Paper or Plastic

Sunday, August 1, 2010

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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Uphold, or Hold Up, Standards

Sunday, July 18, 2010

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 [...]

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Compassion Works. So Does Anger

Friday, July 16, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Saturday night, July 10, 2010 — The learnin’ part of the Saturday portion of the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists ended at noon, unless you’re a columnist (published or not). The usual field trip either can be written about or learned from. Lunch and and tour this time were [...]

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Creatives, Columnists and Cunning

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Friday, July 9, 2010 — “Get Schooled” was the columnists’ theme this year, our conference hosted at a university for the first time, Indiana. Appropriately, our informal welcome Thursday night was at one of the town’s oldest college hang-outs, Nick’s Pub. The meat of a conference like this is made up of lectures [...]

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We’re No. 37. Yeah, School!

Monday, July 12, 2010

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., Wednesday, July 7, 2010 — It was a travel day, where I wouldn’t normally post anything, but some one-sheets in the airport terminal surprised me. A college or visitors’ bureau — I forgot which and couldn’t find it again on the return to the airport on Monday, July 12 — mentioned it was [...]

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Helen Thomas, Ripped in Pieces

Friday, June 11, 2010

A statement on Helen Thomas from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, written by Ben Pollock as its vice president, edited by informal committee: For decades, Helen Thomas has been a paragon for younger journalists and her closing her career as a bad role model provides lessons as well, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists [...]

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Columnist Sympathizer

Thursday, February 18, 2010

A nice thing just happened. On Jan. 31, I was elected vice president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. I’ve been a card-carrying columnist since 1991, joining during the run of my column Mirthology, in the old Arkansas Democrat. The post is interim, to cover after a resignation, until the annual membership meeting in [...]

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Parting Shots

Thursday, July 2, 2009

VENTURA, Calif. — Following are reflections that don’t fit in the reportage articles from the weekend’s annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. A proud moment came in helping select the year’s scholarship contest winner. Paul Bowers of the University of South Carolina — the other USC, was the running, old joke — [...]

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A Man for All Cats

Saturday, June 27, 2009

VENTURA, Calif. — Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle may be an anachronism twice over, writing a humor column five times a week. That makes him a columnist hero. Sure I like some of his pieces better than others, which might mean he’s uneven. But it’s likely more of a matter of whether I’m [...]

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Branding — Feel the Burn

Saturday, June 27, 2009

VENTURA, Calif. — The final day of the columnists’ 2009 conference sought both to expand their possibilities then return them to the glory of old-fashioned reader-beloved essays. The background on The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch with Jeffrey Zaslow is easy to find online, including Zaslow’s experiences in creating the book. Jeff, of The Wall [...]

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