The tricky thing about the First Amendment is that you have to protect the speech you hate as fiercely as the speech you love. You have to protect leftist speech as much as rightist speech. Communists as much as fascists. Religious fundamentalists as much as atheists. Calls for war as much as calls for peace.…
A new Missouri law passed last year deletes the names of victims and witnesses in court documents making Missouri courts the least transparent in the nation, experts say. Among the witness names deleted are police officers. Eugene Volokh, a nationally known libertarian legal commentator, called the law “a very serious problem” under the headline “Missouri…
A feisty team of lawyers and tenants in Appalchian mobile home parks are fighting Alden’s owners — and sometimes, they’re winning. News analysis In Mercer County, West Virginia, Valeria Steele is proud of her home in Elk View Estates, a community she says used to be “such a nice place to live.” But since new…
Newspapers are dying. Young people aren’t reading them. Predatory hedge funds are buying them up, laying off reporters, milking them for profits and cutting home delivery. The result is that democracy is losing its eyes and ears and maybe its conscience. That was a theme of Rick Goldsmith’s new documentary on the predatory consequences of…
When Alden Global Capital bought Tribune Publishing in May 2021 and slashed Chicago Tribune newsroom staff to bare bones, few media experts and Chicago journalists were surprised. “Years of poor management” at Tribune Publishing paved the way for Alden, said Brant Houston, professor and Knight chair in investigative and enterprise reporting at the University of…