This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Words matter.

I have written about that notion before.  It is one that served as a foundation for my life’s work, which was to write, whether I was a reporter for a daily newspaper, a state government official, or a lobbyist.

I like words more than numbers, graphs or charts, though I suppose those “others” can help provide a stronger foundation for words.

Washington Post media analyst Margaret Sullivan made the “words matter” point in a piece she wrote this week.  It appeared under this headline:

Words matter. So these journalists refuse to call GOP election meddling an “audit.”

Here are a few excerpts from her column:

“There’s a simple but powerful idea behind the Philadelphia Inquirer’s recent decision not to use the word ‘audit’ when referring to an effort by the state GOP to investigate the 2020 election:

“Words matter.

“The words that a news organization chooses to tell a story make a difference.  If a journalist calls something a ‘lie,’ that’s a deliberate choice. So is ‘racially tinged.’  Or ‘pro-life.’  Or torture.’

“Such decisions carry weight.  They have power.

Acknowledging this power and being transparent about those choices is exactly what the Inquirer did the other day when it embedded within a news story a bit of explanatory text, under the headline:  ‘Why we’re not calling it an audit.

“In clear language, the paper explained that it’s because ‘there’s no indication’ that this effort, which follows months of demands from Donald Trump alleging baselessly that the election was rigged, ‘would follow the best practices or the common understanding of an audit among nonpartisan experts.’

“How so?  The Inquirer noted that when it asked how the review would work, how ballots and election equipment would be secured, who would be involved, and so on, the leaders of this effort did not explain.”

Excellent points by Sullivan to oppose strenuously the use of the word “audit” to describe something only in Trump’s stupid mind.

On a different plane, I often thought of the “words matter “point when I was writing for a daily newspaper many years ago.  Think, for just a moment, about the word “admit,” as in a sentence such as this – “The member of the City Council admitted that he had talked with constituents about the issue before the Council.”

Would the word “said” have been better than the word “admitted.”?  I say yes because “admitted” carries the connotation of some kind of wrongdoing.  In the sentence, there should be no such impression.

Dan Hirschhorn, senior politics editor at the Inquirer, told the commentator Sullivan, “These are not ‘he said/she said’ stories — there is clear, objective truth here.”

Hirschhorn and Sullivan are right.  And, I add immodestly, so am I.

There is a word that describes conduct by the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Integrity.  A model for all of us as we use words and are careful to contemplate their meaning.