When a chemical spill contaminated the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of people in West Virginia in January, Charleston Gazette reporters Ken Ward and David Gutman repeatedly asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) how it … Read more
Many years ago, I asked Anja to show me her favorite picture, the one she liked the most. The photo she sent showed an elegant older man sitting on the wreckage of a large destroyed vehicle as if it was … Read more
In December of 2011, Turkish military jets bombed the village of Uludere, about five miles from the border with Iraq, killing 34. Was the attack a tragic mistake or a planned strike on suspected Kurdish separatists? Were the casualties … Read more
Shortly after I co-founded Symbolia, a digital publication that merges comic books and journalism, I got an intriguing pitch. Reporter Sarah Mirk wanted to tell the stories of the veterans who had served at the Guantánamo … Read more
Form follows function. Just what that axiom means, applied to journalism, was revealed to me by a man named Carl Newton, city editor of The Atlanta Journal when I arrived for my first newspaper job in 1971. Newton was … Read more
On my way into work at Medill Watchdog for the first time, I stopped at Hanig’s Shoe Store. It was February 1, 2011, part of a three-day storm in which more than 20 inches of snow fell on the … Read more