Eliot F. Porter Jr. was a one-of-a kind. He was a brilliant thinker and writer. He was crusty, cantankerous, infuriating and funny. Sometimes at the same time. I first met Porter in 1971 when writing about his work as technical secretary to Lewis Green, the head of the Missouri Air Conservation Commission. Green and Porter
Three out of every four American adults are fooled by fake news headlines. That was the finding of a survey authorized by BuzzFeed. I found that too when I started BD Fact Check, Bangladesh’s first fact-checking organization. I was looking for a model to identify fake news. Fake news stories have more engagement than real
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
An upstart women-owned digital media platform that aims to reshape the narrative of black Chicago has been awarded an inaugural media and storytelling program grant from the Field Foundation of Illinois. The TRiiBE, launched in 2017 by two Northwestern University graduates, is one of the first recipients of a grant for “outlets that are taking
A local reporter asked a question to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development senior official that sparked a three-day Twitter war in late August between the Trump appointee and the journalist. Molly Parker, a reporter for the Southern Illinoisian, has reported on the country’s public housing crisis locally and nationally since 2015. On August 21,
