When Maudlyne Ihejirika, an award-winning journalist, asked me to meet her at her office recently for our interview, I was surprised. Hadn’t she retired from the Chicago Sun-Times? What was she doing at a high-rise office in downtown Chicago? Ihejirika was in the lobby, waiting for me so she … Read More... about After storied career at Chicago Sun-Times, Maudlyne Ihejirika is ‘redefining retirement’
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Midwest News

Essay: Autistic photojournalism student prepares to enter a workforce that doesn’t yet understand neurodiversity
Two years ago, I joined my student newspaper, ready to do work that I had dreamed of doing ever since I had entered college. I was 20, a junior and autistic. I struggled with assignments that weren’t clear, with expectations that I was supposed to know things – because my neurotypical peers did – or […]

Student news organizations wrestle with traditional tenets of journalism as faculty strikes hit close to home
By Ensung Kim
As strikes and work stoppages led by faculty, graduate students, and other academic staff become increasingly frequent on college campuses across the United States, student journalists often find themselves at the forefront of unfolding events reporting, writing, and disseminating news to their audiences. Last month faculty unions at three public universities in Illinois went on […]
Opinion

Can the First Amendment keep up with the brave new world of machine manufactured misinformation?
The point of the First Amendment is to protect expression people hate – Nazi protesters in Skokie, anti-war protesters burning the American flag, KKK hooligans in an Ohio farmfield, Christian fundamentalists protesting the burial of American soldiers. Tolerance for the speech we despise is the lesson of 232 years of the First Amendment. Yet the […]