Today’s college journalists are caught in the vortex of an important national debate that threatens the vibrancy of free speech and free press on campus. Limiting the vigor of speech and the press damages society’s capacity to hear the voices of protesters and undermines the university’s role as a forum for open thought. Here are…
Imagine if the world had never seen that photo of a young Mary Ann Vecchio screaming out in raw emotional pain over the body of Jeffrey Miller, shot dead moments earlier by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in 1970. Student journalist John Filo’s iconic, Pulitzer-winning photo arguably helped hasten the end of the Vietnam…
I want to tell you a story about covering Congress in 2002 that doesn’t feel that long ago but my 18-year-old students at Columba College in Chicago would assure me otherwise. I wasn’t too much older than that when I started working for The Washington Post after graduate school. I was young, ambitious, serious and…
President Donald Trump says the whistle-blower whose complaint triggered impeachment hearings is treasonous. So is Adam Schiff, chair of the committee investigating the complaint. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hates America because she is pushing ahead with impeachment. The president seems determined to prove Samuel Johnson’s adage that “patriotism is the last refuge of the…
In September 2018 I received a call from Carol Stroud, who does research for the U.S. Postal Service. Stroud explained that a Gwen Ifill postage stamp was under consideration. Deservedly so, I thought. During a 39-year journalism career, Ifill began at the Boston Herald-American, moved on to the Baltimore Evening Sun, began covering presidential politics…