What if the people storming the Capitol on January 6 had been Black? Newsrooms around the U.S. posed that question as largely white pro-Trump rioters and white supremacists, incited by the president himself, stormed the Capitol, … Read more
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
"Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them" by Ethan Zuckerman In “Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools … 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
Most days, Paul Gillespie keeps himself to photographing the news, not commenting on it. January 6, 2021, wasn’t one of those days. As violent pro-Donald Trump rioters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, disrupting congressional certification of … 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
Seven years before the largest explosion since Hiroshima obliterated a large part of the port of Beirut in August, claimed some 200 lives, and left some 300,000 homeless, port authorities who could have prevented the … Read more
