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She was smiling. She was on trial for manslaughter and she couldn’t stop smiling. It wasn’t a giggly high type of smiling. It was a sick dead eye smile.

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The number of victims is breathtaking. Close to 200,000 people have been killed in the three-year-old conflict; 6.5 million Syrians are displaced from their homes; three million are living in squalid refugee camps in neighboring countries with little food or water.

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1. You read the newspaper with a highlighter in one hand.

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19. If someone is making an effort to ignore you, he is not ignoring you.

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At this very moment there are a total of 211 journalists imprisoned worldwide.

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Rihanna’s true purpose behind this tour is not to give everyone diamonds and get them drunk in higher altitudes like she’s made it seem to the media.

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Your life becomes a constant progress of trying to sleep at night and work during the day — at least until you realize the utter impossibility of that endeavor, until you surrender to the fact that you’ll wake with full intention at 11 a.m. and instead spend four hours gazing at social media for some purpose you’ll justify to yourself somehow.

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Anderson Cooper. The Silver Fox. Mr. Vanderbilt. Sex With A Side Part. However you refer to him — and all names are equally apt — there is no denying that Anderson Cooper’s appeal is one that transcends all age, gender, and reason.

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Real journalists comprise a boggling range of humanity. The aspiring/working journalists I know, or have met, or regularly read, are mostly secret loners who have all sorts of agendas, agendas so diverse they can’t possibly be in collusion in that mass way you learn about in first year uni…

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In the comments section of one of my previous essays, “Barb Lee Stanwick” wrote “Bart is a really promising writer. Even though he doesn’t have any books out (what’s with young writers today? I’m kidding)” and this is my response to her, and for any readers of mine who want to know why I haven’t published anything yet.