Category: News and Opinion

In age of disinformation, newspaper political endorsements should be embraced, not abandoned

In early October, Alden Global Capital instructed the newspapers it owns to stop endorsing for major political offices after this year.  “Unfortunately, as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars,” the company confirmed to the New York Times. Alden…

Relatives blame prolonged exposure at wood-treatment facility for Carbondale family’s cancers

On the verge of the Great Depression, Fredrick Tisdale, one of the only black farmers in Carbondale, moved north of the former Koppers Inc. wood-treating plant to start a family and plant roots in the town. Tisdale built a house very close to the plant, originally called Tie Addition and named after its former owners…

New River City Journalism Fund stimulates local reporting

At a time when regional newspapers are cutting back and news deserts are emerging across the country, pioneering collaborative journalism efforts are growing to fill the void. The GJR’s September cover story featured collaborative journalism projects across the country. One was “Solving for Chicago,” a solutions-based collaborative consisting of 20 print, digital and broadcast newsrooms…

To paywall or not? Young readers provide the answer

A few years ago, while preparing to teach a copy editing course for the first time, I stumbled across a hidden gem in The New York Times digital edition: Copy Edit This!, an interactive quiz that tests readers on grammar and word usage errors from recent Times articles. The Times’s standards editor catches the errors…

Southern Illinois media fail to report whole story of Chinese-American professor wrongly targeted by feds

In April 2021, the federal government indicted a Southern Illinois University Carbondale professor under the “China Initiative,” alleging two counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement in regards to a National Science Foundation grant application made on behalf of the university. If convicted, Mingqing Xiao could have faced up to…