Over the next weeks, tens of thousands of migrants will likely cross the U.S.-Mexico border, and emotions and political accusations will be running hot. It is all the more important for journalists to mind the words they use. In today’s newsletter, I will walk you through a conversation we had at Poynter today about the headline on my column yesterday and why we changed a few words in it. We hope that it will spark awareness and conversation in your newsroom too.

A study by a professor at Ohio State University estimates that Americans waste a third of the food they buy. The study says those meal-prep kits seem to reduce waste and the professor said this would be a good time to revive high school home economics classes. There is a certain amount of logic to the idea of teaching young people how to manage household budgets, spend less on food and make the most of the food they buy, especially with food costs being what they are. 

Eight states are banning TikTok from being used on government-issued devices and new legislation is getting congressional support to ban the app in the U.S. over concerns that the Chinese government may be mining Americans’ data. I will point you toward the legislation. TikTok says the Chinese government does not get access to U.S. citizens’ data. 

Some of you will be traveling in the next couple of weeks and maybe you are depending on those “star” ratings to help you determine where to stay. But the dirty little secret is that some star ratings are determined by the hotels themselves, not an impartial ratings company.  I hereby declare all of my readers to be five-star thinkers.