ST. LOUIS – Ferguson became the Selma of the 21st century after Officer Darren Wilson killed Michael Brown seven years ago. Protests transformed Black Lives Matter from a hashtag into the nation’s leading civil rights movement and forged a potent political coalition that elected Black reformers to top St. Louis offices, from prosecutor to congresswoman…
After covering the Jussie Smollett case for nearly two years for The New York Times, I had to turn down reporting from the actor’s trial in Chicago recently on charges that he faked a racist, homophobic attack in 2019. I had another assignment that week so couldn’t commit to being in court every day of…
Heidi Randhava, a reporter and advertising manager for the Evanston Roundtable, a hyper-local digital media publication in the lakefront city of Evanston north of Chicago, calls herself a “cheerleader” for local news. “Even if you tune into CNN, or listen to local officials, being a consumer of local news is the best way in which…
Union members at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other papers owned by Lee Enterprises Inc. are urging the company to fight hard against a takeover attempt by Alden Global Capital LLC, a hedge fund the unions accuse of “gutting newsrooms.” In a letter Monday to Lee’s board of directors, 12 guilds representing Lee’s unionized newsrooms…
We’ve talked about this ad nauseam: How did our once-upon-a-time era of “Walter Cronkite credibility” give way to current polarization perpetuated by rancorous social media? And where is our government in overseeing mass and social media? Why isn’t it fixing this? What ever happened to the Fairness Doctrine? Couldn’t that be our guide in dealing…