Words of Wisdom   

The man behind the daily quote-of-the-day e-mails

Every day it slips into the e-mail inboxes of some 1,100 media-minded souls worldwide, resulting in laughs, frowns and even some harumphs.

Today's Word on Journalism, a creation of Utah State University journalism department head Edward C. "Ted" Pease, 46, is a daily quote from the famous and not-so on journalists, journalism, the media and government that Pease began sending to his students in 1995.

It began as a tool to force reluctant students to read their e-mail so they wouldn't miss an assignment. But now professionals dominate the mailing list, many of them working journalists who take it as a reminder--amid concerns over newsprint prices, angry advertisers, boring meetings, computer meltdowns and the like--of what reporters and editors were put on this earth to do.

"When you're in the trenches, it's nice to have somebody thinking and pushing that stuff around because you don't do enough of that internally," says Richard D. Hall, managing editor of the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. "I have to say, it's a nice little bright spot in the day."

Hall keeps a file of bon mots from The Word to use in speeches.

"This one keeps us honest," Hall says about this quote from September 7, 2001: "The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands."--Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wilde, author, 1854-1900.

Doug Tallman, a political reporter for Frederick, Maryland's News-Post, also collects favorite Words and has sent them to other Maryland Statehouse reporters.

"Most editors are failed writers – but so are most writers," is a witticism from poet T.S. Eliot perpetuated in one Word and savored by Tallman.

"Sometimes I feel starved for good media criticism along the lines of A.J. Liebling," Tallman says. The Word is "very thought-provoking. It's not often you get someone looking at the media with that kind of critical eye."

Pease, who keeps a hearty computer archive of potential Words, has gotten most quotes from subscribers and students, though he has turned to more unorthodox sources. He has been known to spend time reading the walls of the Chicago Tribune lobby, where quotes are carved into the Gothic architecture, and he's retrieved at least two Words from the framed quoteables in the men's room at the Poynter Institute.

Subscribers praise Pease for coming up with good quotes day after day--summers and academic holidays excepted. Why does he do it?

"I'm an evangelist, that's why," Pease says. The Word, he says, "is like a public service."

Like a public servant, Pease says he often hears from his constituents--who hail from all parts of the country as well as more exotic locales including China and Dubai. They complain about conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh's quotes one day and about an equally liberal notable another.

"Don't shoot the messenger," Pease says, acknowledging that part of his purpose is to elicit a response.

After September 11, he consciously tried to make some, but not all, of The Words lighter in tone.

"The difference between barbarity now and in other times is that now everyone sees it on television. Television sits in the living room corner, ready to show us the absolute worst at the flick of a switch," was the quote from columnist Russell Baker that Pease used on September 14.

But then Pease threw in a lighter thought: "A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself," from playwright Arthur Miller.

Pease says, "I can't tell you what all those victims of The Word get out of it, but I get some pretty amazing e-mail responses. The thing makes the world smaller."

He closes his e-mails with a quote from playwright Tom Stoppard: "Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."