The nation’s fight about the meaning of America’s great promises of freedom and equality played out at St. Louis’ Old Courthouse in 1850 and before huge crowds in the seven Illinois towns during the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858. It took the death of 750,000 men to settle the issue. Five paragraphs beyond those stirring words
It’s been hard in recent weeks to deliver my usual pep talk about journalism to the college students whom I teach. For one, we are not in the same physical space. I’m engaging with students online in bursts and have been since late March. Even so, I can sense their grief, sometimes in their silence
For the past five years, eating out was a regular part of our family’s weekend plans. As a freelance food writer for the Chicago Tribune’s suburban newspapers, my job was to discover interesting local restaurants and tell their stories. I didn’t have to be anonymous because I wasn’t reviewing the food. I’d contact the owners
In early March, Salvador Robles, associate publisher of Omaha’s The Reader, was planning for just the kind of story that would resonate with the alt-monthly’s readers: the hunt for the perfect margarita. But after the coronavirus outbreak, the story turned into an article on how to make margaritas at home. The publication’s film writer produced
When Ali Ghanbari headed out to cover a story about a 5-year-old boy whose birthday was canceled because of a state-wide stay-at-home order, he was thinking about ways to shoot the story and still observe “social distancing” guidelines. A news photographer at WJW TV, in Cleveland, Ohio, Ghanbari carried at least three boom microphones in
