It’s hard to imagine planning a family vacation in the midst of a global pandemic and lockdown. The US State Department has advised Americans abroad to return. Disney parks have shuttered. Governments have ordered schools and playgrounds to close and citizens to remain inside their homes. In the midst of all of that uncertainty, a…
Former U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello once said, “Viruses and bacteria don’t ask for a green card.” In 1990, she became the first woman and the first Hispanic to be named Surgeon General of the United States. George H. Bush was then president. Now 30 years later, with the Covid-19 worldwide health pandemic, we are…
At first, I wasn’t that concerned. The coronavirus seemed like other global health scares before it. As a photojournalist in northern Illinois, I had watched these stories unfold from a distance. Even my first assignment on Jan. 31 didn’t hint at what was to come. I documented how a local hospital was preparing to handle…
When I started journalism school in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the early 2000s, it was pretty much impossible not to catch the bug for narrative journalism. Every class was infused with a celebration of the great storytelling by journalists at what was then The St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). Writers like Tom…
Covid-19 morphed from a concern to a global problem to a local one, spreading from handful of states to more than 30 in a week. As the virus and the story spreads, getting the news to people is a difficult job, one made worse by the day as the story becomes more political, which can…