The self-checkout line at my funky neighborhood grocery was wide open, but I waited for the old-fashioned line, with a checker and a bagger. I don’t like to weigh my own Honeycrisps any more than I’ve ever learned to … Read more
Major League Baseball, that beloved summer sport, returns to a shortened season later this month. Or at least it is scheduled to, but as with all things in the time of coronavirus, schedules are subject to change. In honor … Read more
During the 15 years that Chip Scanlan taught writing workshops at the Poynter Institute, he wrote a popular column called “Chip on Your Shoulder.” Searching Poynter’s archives takes some work, but you can find a … Read more
On May 23, 2020, (May 24 in print), the New York Times landed a daring and historic front page: A wash of overwhelming gray, which jumped to two more gray pages inside the print paper. To mark the deaths … Read more
All news is the stuff of history. But some deserves more than a dusty archive to be stumbled upon by a research scholar. It is an immediate marker that demands be heeded for the ages. We are living in … Read more
A friend reached out this past week, asking if I would chat with a friend of his. The second friend — I’ll call her J — runs a non-profit news organization on the West Coast. It was barely a … Read more
This column was originally published as an issue of Nieman Storyboard’s weekly newsletter. You can read back issues of the newsletter and subscribe here. Thoughts this week turn to the creativity that is rising out of … Read more
This column was originally published as an issue of Nieman Storyboard’s weekly newsletter. You can read back issues of the newsletter and subscribe here. We read most stories from a distance — whether that distance is … Read more
My mother’s reverence for education, a solid grounding in middle-school grammar, and a long career in old-school journalism has chiseled me into one of those people who honors language, and tries to be precise — at least when I … Read more
