I feel like maybe I was too soft on Pearlstein. Or that I came off too soft on him anyway. I don’t mean to say that he made the right stand, on principle, since he does seem to have ruined Time’s ability to use anonymous sources. I just meant that I understand his motivation to […]

I don’t think that I could go to jail for a principle, but that’s because I’m a weakling. At the same time, I’d like to think that there are principles that are important enough to me that I would defend them by going to jail. So I reconcile these two somewhat conflicting thoughts by not […]

Until this moment, I haven’t updated this blog since before Groundhog Day. This, of course, means that if I ever had an audience–Rachael, my sister, some high school kid from Prairie du Chien–it is now gone. But I am going to do something that I tell my students to do when they write: imagine an […]

This is the promised follow-up to yesterday’s application essay. This is Essay B, in which I was to explain why I want a doctorate in communications, what I wan to study, and what I want to do afterward. Here, in (slightly more than than) the mandated 500 words, is my answer: Essay B As a […]

I just finished applying to the Columbia University Ph.D. program in communications, so as a special treat to my loyal reader (singular intended), I’m posting my application essays. Why the heck not? This first installment, of two, is mostly biographical, but if there’s anyone out there who isn’t Rachael, I suppose this could give you […]

A question from my personal gadfly, Rachael: “is Pitts completely unethical or a brilliant journalist? What say you?” My thought is that the answer, as you might have guessed, lies somewhere between the two poles you offer, Rachael, though I do lean toward “brilliant journalist.” In fact, I think I might clear him entirely if […]

All hail the video game critic! Now I don’t play video games much myself. I leave that to my personal video game adviser, Jason, who, frankly, does play video games much. And yet, even though I have no real need for a video game reviewer, I find myself, almost weekly, turning to the “Game Theory” […]

This week’s New Yorker has a story by Roger Angell about the Red Sox winning the World Series. The accompanying illustration is a colored-pencil drawing of a fanciful, physics-defying ballpark. As the work of Saul Steinberg goes, I actually like this piece. And the fact that Steinberg has been dead for five years doesn’t change […]

My class and I have been discussing Howell Raines, Jayson Blair, and that whole fiasco this week. And since it’s verging on a month since I’ve posted anything to this blog, I thought it appropriate to share this parody I wrote of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Howell By Kevin Lerner, with appropriate apologies I. I saw […]