“Reading a Book is Like Life:
You Live it One Page at a Time.” (Ron Yates)
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About Ronald E. Yates
Author, former foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, and Dean & Professor Emeritus of the College of Media at the University of Illinois, his acclaimed works are now available through this site.
The Latest From My Blog
How American Wokeness & Cancel Culture Mirror China’s Cruel Cultural Revolution
For the past few months, I have been struck by just how similar America’s “woke” movement is to China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s. For those unaware, Chairman Mao Zedong’s brutal Cultural Revolution resulted in the worst mass murder of Chinese people in modern history. Hundreds of thousands …
Thick Face, Black Heart: China’s Ruthless Warrior Strategy
In 1989 as I was covering the ill-fated occupation of Beijing’s sprawling Tiananmen Square by pro-democracy demonstrators, I bought a book entitled: “Thick Black Theory.” Of all the books I have read about China and the Chinese mind, this book by a Chinese scholar and politician named Li Zhongwu was …
15-Minute Cities: Utopias? Or a Brave New World of Domination?
The latest buzzword among urban planners is the “15-minute city”—a utopian “green” vision designed to persuade us to live in small, dense urban condos without our cars. The 15-minute city is a concept developed by a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Leave it to an academic to come up …
American Despotism
I am finding it increasingly difficult to be optimistic about America today. We have abandoned scientific fact, morality, and patriotism in pursuit of pseudo-science, impiety, and ambiguously deceitful concepts such as “equity,” “gender dysphoria,” and the increasingly violent cult of Transgenderism. Schools can no longer define what a woman is …
The Abject Amorality of Democrat Policy
Today, I am turning my blog over to Mike Ford, founder and managing editor of the American Free News Network https://afnn.us/ to which I am a contributor. Mike is also a former U.S. Army Colonel and US Military Academy graduate (class of 1980). In his post, he raises several legitimate …
“The Cojones Awards:” Honoring those who Counterattack Cancel-Culture
Our country is so woke that we now need a new award to honor people who stand up to the PC mob and the corrosive cancel-culture lunacy they have spawned. The unlikely creator of the “Cojones Awards” is normally liberal Bill Maher, the “Real Time” host who appears to be …
Is Ethical Journalism An Oxymoron?
Last week, in case you missed it, was “Ethics in Journalism Week,” sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists. As a journalist and a member of the SPJ myself, I naturally visited the SPJ’s website to see how it was commemorating this occasion. As expected, the site was bursting with …
Remembering the Final 24 Hours in the Fall of Saigon
Forty-eight years ago, I was on a U.S. Navy ship headed to the Philippines. It was May 1, and a couple of days before, I was evacuated from a place called Saigon (known today as Ho Chi Minh City) as it fell to Communist North Vietnamese troops. April 29, 1975, …
Join me for a Vietnam Retrospective
Tomorrow, April 29, I will be posting my recollections of the Fall of Saigon- an event I covered for the Chicago Tribune 48 years ago. I invite you to join me for this retrospective at ForeignCorrespondent or on Substack: https://ronyates.substack.com/. As many of you may know, the war in Vietnam …
What a Day! Media & Political Shakeups All Over the Place!
For those of us who toil in the media verse, nothing grabs our attention quicker than when powerful political appointees and grossly over-paid cable news hosts and anchors get canned or depart their lucrative positions. Yesterday was genuinely a day of days–a Monday morning media massacre! First came the news …
Have Chicago Voters Said they Deserve to Get it “Good and Hard?”
As I always acknowledge when I post about Chicago, I am not a native Chicagoan. However, I spent 27 years with the Chicago Tribune, where I held a variety of positions, from reporter and editor to foreign correspondent and member of the editorial board. So, even though I am not …
The Power of a Proficient & Evocative Book Review
Nothing is more meaningful for authors than receiving good reviews. Positive reviews provide validation of sorts for their work, and negative reviews can provide valuable evaluation, especially if it is constructive. Amazon is overflowing with book reviews—but not all of them are thoughtful, and few actually examine a book with …
