I was a kid, really—24 or 25—walking up Chicago’s Michigan Avenue on my way to the bus when a man twice my age blocked my path. He was dressed in the uniform of the business elite and held out … Read more
A longtime political consultant, David Axelrod has managed upwards of 150 local, state, and national campaigns—including Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential runs, with a stint as the president’s senior advisor in between. But before he got his start in … Read more
“There have never been as many information producers as there are today. Paradoxically, the media have never been in worse shape,” economics professor Julia Cagé writes in her book “Saving the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy,” published … Read more
Blair Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, is used to generating controversy with his reviews. Yet the Donald Trump outburst that followed Kamin’s critique of the enormous sign the developer put on his Chicago … Read more
Growing up, if my sister and I were reading, we didn’t have to do chores. So, we read all the time. We loved a good story. My mother wanted us to read work by the poets. Gwendolyn Brooks was … Read more
The lunch for the summer interns was held at the editor’s swanky men’s club. The other interns and I had arrived ahead of the brass and I took my seat in one of the club’s private dining rooms, next … Read more