JPROF.com – Page 2 – . . . home of Jim Stovall, writer, watercolorist, independent publisher, etc.

The end of education as we know it? Probably not

February 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: writing.

During the past few weeks, artificial intelligence (AI) writing software programs, led by something inharmoniously called ChatGPT, have gained the attention of reporters and editors around the country and thus generated headlines that are scary and puzzling, particularly to those of us deeply invested in teaching writing to young people. As Hetal Thaker writes on • Read More »

The emerging picture that alcohol is bad for you

February 5, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.

A slow, underground movement – well, maybe not underground, but slightly below the surface – is emerging, and many of the articles I have read lately that come to the conclusion that alcohol does you and me good. First, there was the “dry January“ month that is now passed. People were urged to lay off • Read More »

Victor Navasky and the power of opinion

February 4, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: editing.

From the end of World War II to the present, the American political left has had many writers of depth and eloquence to espouse progressive ideas and to rail against those who, for instance, have restricted civil rights and promoted the war in Vietnam. None wrote with more depth and eloquence—and whenever possible a touch • Read More »

John Stonehouse: He was a fraudster, but was he a spy?

January 28, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.

If you have never heard of John Stonehouse, it is probably because of Lord Lucan. The British peer, Lucan, disappeared on November 7, 1974, after the murder of Sandra Rivett, his children’s nanny, and the attempted murder of his wife, Veronica. Lucan was never seen again by any officials, even after extensive international searches. Many • Read More »

American football, the game we love in spite of our better selves

January 22, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.

Americans’ love of football remains undiminished despite the spectacle of Damar Hamlin collapsing on the field during the Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals nationally-televised game a couple of weeks ago. Hamlin had just taken a normal hit to the chest on the previous play, but this hit sent him into cardiac arrest. He nearly died. It was • Read More »

Freeman Wills Crofts, setting the standard for the ‘police procedural’

January 21, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.

Freeman Wills Crofts is not a name that is heard these days along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, but that’s because we’re living in the 21st century. If you were reading detective fiction in the 1930s, the “golden age” of the genre, you would be very familiar with Crofts and likely would have • Read More »

Setting a standard for the police procedural, how we got the Smithsonian, and the love of American football: newsletter, January 20, 2023

January 20, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: books, fiction, history, journalism, newsletter, sports, writers, writing.

This newsletter was sent to everyone on Jim’s email list (2,829) on Friday, January 20, 2023. As promised in last week’s newsletter, I continue to present websites that attempt to avoid, as best they can, the “bad news bias” of many of the mainstream media. This week’s entry is YES! magazine. YES! emphasizes what it • Read More »

Bat Masterson: gun-slinger turned sports reporter

January 17, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: reporters, reporting, sports, writers, writing.

The world today knows him as one of the Old West’s most famous gunslingers, fearless associate of the famous lawman, Wyatt Earp. But in 1921, the world knew Bat Masterson as a world-class sports writer for the New York Morning Telegraph and one of the foremost experts on the second most popular sport of the • Read More »

The Tylenol murders

January 15, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: history, podcasting, Women writers and journalists, writers.

Forty years ago, you could walk into a grocery store or drugstore and grab a bottle of Tylenol off the shelf. The only thing that stood between you and the medicine was an unglued carton, screw-on bottle cap, and a small wad of cotton. Today, if you grabbed that same bottle off the shelf, you • Read More »

Harriet Preston Spofford and the first female-authored detective series

January 14, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

Her work had been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, but most of them were low circulation periodicals. Harriet wrote incessantly, sometimes as much as 15 hours a day, because the money that she received from her publications barely covered the family’s expenses. In 1859 she wrote a story that she believed was • Read More »

Metta Victoria Fuller Victor and the first American detective novel

January 6, 2023 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

You have probably never heard the unusual name Metta Victoria Fuller Victor, but from now on whenever you hear the name Edgar Allan Poe, you should try to remember Metta’s name. Poe is the undisputed (mostly) father of American detective fiction. He wrote three short stories featuring Inspector Auguste Dupin, and he wrote about detective • Read More »

Constance Garnett and the translator’s dilemma

December 16, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism, Women writers and journalists, writers, writing.

When we read a book or see a play that has been written in another language and translated into English, what exactly are we reading or hearing? Are they the words of the author or the words of the translator? This is the eternal dilemma of translation. Each language has its own words, phrases, structure, • Read More »

British government report calls for supporting and improving libraries

December 10, 2022 | By Jim Stovall | No Comments | Filed in: journalism.

We conclude that libraries remain an important part of communities’ cultural infrastructure, particularly in deprived areas, and call for further support to improve these services. That’s the last sentence of a summary of a report published by the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport Committee of the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. The report • Read More »