The View from Afar

Writings by retired newspaper publisher Stephen Waters

Books

Directory of books May 4, 2022
Individuals, Journalism, and Society
Why did the 20th century not lived up to expectations? By November, 2008, the concept for Individuals, Journalism, and Society had taken shape. Published two years later, the book’s preface listed reasons.
Journalism suffers from pervasive fog. Consciousness slips away. Schools lose traction. Character develops by chance. Politicians play games. Economists forget what works. History and philosophy drift. Scholarship loses perspective. Religion and tradition stall at cultural boundaries. Misbehavior threatens society’s fragile fabric. Literature and language languish as destroyers march through civil institutions in a world made more dangerous by scientific progress.

Available at Amazon. PDFs of individual chapters can be downloaded here.

Educating Stability
In the latter half of the 20th century, education deteriorated into mere schooling as state and federal governments took greater control over who could teach and what could be taught. What constituted a “good citizen” was different than that supported by the country’s founders. This unpublished book draft from 2015 gives explicit evidence in a critique of efforts to insert proposed Core Curricula into American classrooms.

The 2015 draft can be found here: Educating Stability.

Take Back your News
National media serves journalism so poorly that individuals need to take back the news. In the book, Part 1 gives evidence and arms you to defend yourself. Part 2 shows how schooling probably shortchanged you. Part 3 shows how individuals, journalism, and society depend on each other.

Available at Amazon.

Individuals, Journalism, and Society—Epilogue: Lessons learned
Nefarious people have joined in a new battle for your mind. They believe your individuality doesn’t matter, that journalism serves them alone, and that society expects them to rule. While most schooling leaves people defenseless against their words, this synthesis will help defend against their bold misuse of ideas. Written 12 years after the first book, the epilogue warns readers that the civil society they take for granted is at great risk.

Available at Amazon.. A PDF of the screenplay may be downloaded here: ijs20-epilogue.pdf.

Dinner at Morton’s
When protestors interrupt the dinner of a Supreme Court Justice, one patron challenges a protestor to examine under what principls the protestor operates.

Click here for the Dinner at Morton’s PDF.

Bibliography: The impetus to learn
Here are a number of books that furthered education after the schooling received in college. Many were sources for the books listed above. All help one to think more clearly. The impetus to learn

Stephen B. Waters

In early 2021, with 46 years in the business, I retired as publisher of the Rome (NY) Daily Sentinel

After five generations of family ownership, despite an unsettled economy, we keep on. We understand that although we may own the newspaper, we hold it in stewardship for the community.

Across my career, so many other small newspapers were purchased by media chains, large newspapers sold their integrity, and broadcast news outfits fell back on superficial entertainment.

They put journalism in this country at risk. The best antidote is for individual readers to arm themselves to recognize the danger to their community, culture, and society itself.

Index