Writing is hard work. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think most non-writers think that when authors sit at their computers (or for some, at their typewriters) the words just fly onto the written page. They don’t. Sometimes getting words onto the page is like trying to squeeze the …
It’s been a week since 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a deranged 18-year-old with a rifle in a Uvalde, Texas elementary school. We have had time to process that tragedy, debate the police response (or lack of it), discuss the attack, and of course, politicize it. I am …
Once again, there has been a senseless mass shooting in America–actually two, in the past two weeks in which a total of 31 people were killed. One was in Buffalo, New York, where ten persons were killed and three were wounded in the Topps Super Market; the other was in …
And now, for something a little different. Theodore Roosevelt is one of my favorite American presidents. I always respected his resilience and toughness—two qualities that were critical to his successful life. He needed both. When Roosevelt was young, he suffered from severe asthma, and as a result, he was weak, …
I saw a report recently that said a majority of Republicans and more than one-third of all registered voters believe Joe Biden should be impeached if the GOP takes back the house in the November midterm elections. Nobody should be surprised by this—not after what the Democrats did to former …
(I continue to receive requests that I repost my piece on Evelyn Waugh’s “Scoop,” the classic book that lampoons foreign correspondents. I first read Scoop in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in March 1975 as Communist Khmer Rouge guerillas surrounded the besieged city. Day after day, the Khmer Rouge bombarded the city …
[This is a follow-up to the story I posted last month on the 47th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon in 1975. ) After several dozen others and I were evacuated on April 29th, 1975 from the hulking Military Assistance Command-Vietnam building at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airbase I filed …
When I taught journalism at the University of Illinois, I created a Journalist’s Handbook that I required my students to purchase. I collected and revised the information contained in the Journalist’s Handbook for almost four decades. Some of it dates back to my time as a journalism student at the University …
When I taught journalism at the University of Illinois, I created a Journalist’s Handbook that I required my students to purchase. I collected and revised the information contained in the Journalist’s Handbook for almost four decades. Some of it dates back to my time as a journalism student at the …
