Andy Bechtel

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know don’t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.

Taken from the @freep.com IG, credit to Elsa/Getty Images, just BTW. It is such a good photo and credit where due!

A packed house at Politics and Prose last night for a moving tribute to the Washington Post Book World, closed by the paper’s executives. I grew up reading it. Bob Woodward and Rita Dove were among the speakers. “Awful and tragic” — Woodward on the changes to the Post.

How Nazgul the wolfdog made his run for Winter Olympic glory in Italy Nazgul isn't talking, but his owners come clean about how he got loose, got famous, and how they feel now

NPR continues to bring you all the news you can use about Nazgul.

A cartoon showing two researchers in lab coats holding up a microchip. The caption reads "We've decided to call it the neutron chip. It eliminates jobs, but leaves the work-place intact!"

I am currently doing research on occupational health and safety in the 1970s and 1980s, and I ran across this cartoon pertaining to office automation. Struck me as very 2026!

How Reuters captured the photo of former Prince Andrew leaving custody Slumped in the back seat of his Range Rover, a visibly shaken man once referred to as the "Playboy Prince" stares ahead of him as the car leaves Aylsham police station in Norfolk, England.

Reuters is out with a writeup of how their photographer Phil Noble got the picture of Andrew in the car

www.reuters.com/world/uk/how...

Q&A with Paige Masten, opinion editor and columnist Paige Masten is deputy opinion editor and columnist for The Charlotte Observer. Her work is also published in The News & Observer of Raleigh. Masten grew up in Raleigh and graduated from UNC-Ch…

Charlotte Observer columnist @paigemasten.bsky.social on identifying topics to focus on, editing and checking facts, and headline writing. editdesk.wordpress.com/2026/02/19/q...

An actual quote:

"This course does not violate discrimination against students."

Quick PSA for all mid-career academics and above: people may be citing articles with your name on them that don't exist.

I miss the possibility of a 5-5-1 season

Email typo averted: let me know what you thunk

Would AP style use ICE on first reference?
Stylebook editor Anna Jo Bratton answered in AP Stylebook Online's Ask the Editor. She said in part, "I would be OK with ICE in a headline, or even the lead of a story. I'd want to see it spelled out in the next reference up high in the story...

This morning, Executive Editor Andrew Julien, citing a "a highly competitive media landscape," told NYDN staff to expect layoffs.

The first cuts are primarily hitting our National Desk, but we're also losing some metro staffers and more cuts are expected — more than 25% of the unionized newsroom.

Stevie: Sara
Lindsey: Tusk
Christine: You Make Loving Fun

Here is the Czech pair dancing to their AI rip-off of You Get What You Give, replaced for the Olympics by an AI song with “original” lyrics that sounds pretty much the same

English-only California: the golden state with Spanish place names removed. First map I ever commissioned, to commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, whereby the US made Mexico give up its northern half, adding California and the Southwest to the Union.

This just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how to do news. Data helps, but data doesn’t tell a reporter to spend a years-long investigation into child labor or an editor to place staff in a country on the brink of war. What exactly does Bezos think WaPo’s “journalistic mission” is?

Why We're Not Endorsing This Year Given the gaping local news void today and our own limited resources, we see our main priority as filling the vast need for original, rigorous reporting on those races.

After 40 years, NC alt-weekly @indyweek.bsky.social will no longer endorse candidates during election cycles: "Making endorsements means taking an institutional position on which candidates we find best, which can undermine reader trust in the fairness of our reporting." indyweek.com/firstperson/...

If you're afraid to ask someone for a recommendation, please don't be. It's part of the job of being a mentor, editor, teacher, advisor, former boss, etc. to write recommendations or politely decline.
(I wish I could go back in time and tell my former self this.)

If you are an editor who used the CIA factbook, it’s gone, deleted, so you might want to bookmark this

Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy is hiring an endowed journalism chair. I'm a bit biased because I teach here, but it's a good gig, wonderful staff/faculty, and really top-notch, thoughtful and engaged students. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31624

Duke Chronicle op-ed "My connection with Jeffrey Epstein" by Dan Ariely

Live your life so that you never have to publish an op-ed in the campus newspaper about your connection with Jeffrey Epstein dukechronicle.com/article/my-c...

Today is the start of #BlackHistoryMonth in the US. It is also the anniversary of #OtD 1 Feb 1960 in Greensboro, NC, when four Black college students refused to move from a Woolworth's lunch counter after they were denied service stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/1096...

Hey Duke--you OK with this behavior by a faculty member who also is known for his falisfied data? Once again student journalists leading the way
www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

a group of people are standing around a woman in a skirt with the number 1 on it . Alt: Catherine O'Hara's character from Best In Show. She stumbles on a broken shoe at a dog show as her husband played by Eugene Levy tries to help her

We need more O'Hara gifs from Best in Show, but here you go.

The weather forecast for Nashville, current temperature 27, lows into the teens at night the rest of the week.

The Nashville Electric Service outage map which still shows 100,000 people around the city without power.

I know a lot is going on right now, but Nashville is literally freezing to death, and the national attention/assistance has been appalling. We’ve been without power since Saturday morning and received absolutely no information about when that might change.

An excerpt from a news story about the weather. It ends with "stay tuned, snow lovers"

Stay tuned, snow haters. (You gotta hear both sides.)

Thanks for reading!

Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire Published in Journalism History (Ahead of Print, 2026)

Hola, amigos. Here's my review of "Funny Because It’s True: How The Onion Created Modern American News Satire." Of course, I had to mention Jim Anchower and T. Herman Zweibel. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....