The evening before I headed out to cover a Black Lives Matter protest last May for The Kansas City Star, I listened to and read media coverage about out-of-control mobs looting and vandalizing stores, overturning parked cars, … Read more
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” —Voltaire The carnage on January 6 was precipitated by a lie that the election was stolen from President Trump. The events that day would have remained in the … Read more
Chicago is a city of immigrants. Over 1.6 million of them live in the metropolitan Chicago region I call home. And nearly one-third of households in Cook County, Illinois, include one or more immigrants. Yet, Chicago’s local … Read more
We began Donald Trump’s presidency debating whether it was fair to call lies lies, even though we knew he was the most prolific political liar of modern times. We end it saying forthrightly that the President of … Read more
If a candidate for high office carries a group of voters by more than 30 points, when do we call it “a loss?” When that same candidate flips five states his party lost in the last election, … Read more
While I was writing this, I read that another newspaper closed in Iowa. It’s likely you never heard of it, but the La Porte City Progress Review was 127 years old. You might have heard of The … Read more
There is a significant percentage of Americans who will always distrust us no matter how well our pieces are written, how compelling our broadcasts, how high the stack of documents buttressing the claims in our reports. Even if we found … Read more
Beatrice Mtetwa is a prominent human rights lawyer and free press advocate in Zimbabwe who is representing journalist Hopewell Chin’ono. He was granted bail and is expected to be released later today after being held in … Read more
Though I’ve seen the way the media portray Black women evolve over time, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it done exactly right — or at least with the complexity and nuance we deserve. I say we intentionally, though journalists are not … Read more
In the weeks following the 2016 election, Sinclair Lewis had been dead for as long as he’d lived — 65 years — but there he was on the bestseller list in Amazon’s Classic Literature section. His … Read more
