Ronald E. Yates 
A recent Gallup poll has just confirmed what most Americans have known, or at least suspected, about America’s mainstream media over the past couple of years. The news media have lost credibility at an alarming rate, and confidence that the news is being impartially reported has dropped to its lowest …
When I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I often gave my students a test designed to see just how observant they were. Observation, as I have pointed out in previous posts, is a critical skill writers need to master IF they are to provide clear and vivid …
How can the methods of reporting and writing practiced by professional journalists possibly benefit those who write fiction? After all, the rules of journalism demand that you shape your writing to your material, not the other way around. The answer can be found in the fundamentals of the writer’s craft: …
Without a doubt, one of the best places to learn the craft of writing is in the professional newsroom. The number of successful authors of fiction and non-fiction books, who began their careers as journalists, is remarkable. Here is a list of 10 (It could be 50 or 100): Charles …
This is a re-post of a blog post I did a while back. It is one of those timeless pieces about a one-of-a-kind journalism professor and his love of words and writing. Take a look. I bet you will find it fascinating and helpful. In any case, I hope you …
Late last month, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told an unprecedented gathering of generals, admirals, commanders, and senior NCOs that from this moment on, the only mission of the newly named Department of War is this: “warfighting, preparing for war, and preparing to win, [and being] unrelenting and uncompromising in …
For most of my professional life, I worked as a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. I feel privileged to have been a journalist during one of that newspaper’s golden eras—from about 1969 to 1997 when I left to teach journalism as a professor and dean at the …
When my maternal Great-grandparents immigrated from Denmark to Northeastern Kansas in the 1890s, they were ecstatic. For something like 200 years, their ancestors had endured a serf-like existence on a baronial estate on the Danish island of Langeland. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of like-minded Europeans immigrated …
President Trump finally did what other American presidents have failed to do: he opened a can of verbal whoop ass on the United Nations. He blasted the U.N. for funding illegal immigration to the United States and many European nations and took it to task for a litany of other …
For the past 13 years, Chicago has had the dubious distinction of being the murder capital of America. And here are a few more ominous facts about “That Toddlin’ Town:” For seven consecutive years, Chicago has had the highest murder rate among U.S. cities with more than one million people. …