journalism blog

March is a big birthday month in our family. I will turn seventy-two at the end of the week. Two of our granddaughters also have birthdays this month. Cecily turned nine years old last week and Emily will be ten later this month. We are going to have a joint March birthday celebration. As we

We have grown numb to gun crime in America. A couple of days ago it was three students killed and eight wounded by a gunman on the Michigan State University campus. Just this morning, we awoke to another shooting at a shopping mall in El Paso, Texas. One killed. It was not far from a

Former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley has announced she is running for president. She is the first Republican to challenge Donald Trump for the nomination. Until now, all potential candidates have been afraid to step up and challenge Trump. They all supported or worked for him in the past, and now

It snuck in last week, but it had been lurcking for almost three years. My wife Maureen started sneezing. She thought it was allergies. A slight sore throat would come and go. But she was falling asleep watching TV by nine o’clock and sleeping later in the morning. No other symptoms. Then last Friday, I

On the second anniversary of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, we are watching the Capitol destroying itself. As I write this, we are less than an hour away from the House of Representatives reconvening to continue the humiliation of Kevin McCarthy. His desperately trying to get at least sixteen of the twenty radical

You have to grab their attention. It was the first rule of what we called “tease” writing in the television news. You give the viewer a taste of the story, but you tease them with an element that peaks their interest and makes them keep watching. The same applies to the first line of any

The US Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a case that could effect many businesses and customers. It’s called 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado wants to expand her business to include wedding websites. Smith is a devout Christian and doesn’t want to do business with LGBTQ customers

The World Cup is the rest of world’s Super Bowl every four years. The passion and excitement generated by soccer in the rest of the world, where it’s more accurately called football, is part of people’s national identity. We have our own football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, which I think we stole from Canada. So

We didn’t get the Red Wave. But we got the Big Crack. The turnout for this mid-term election was huge, and political landscape shifted. Yes, the Republicans did make some gains. The House is still undecided, but will likely go for the GOP with a much smaller margin then they hoped. The senate is hanging

It will be a long off day for Phillies fans. They will be hoping the Phillies can now beat the odds and come back from being down 3 games to 2 and pull off what they all thought was an impossible dream of winning the World Series. The good news it’s a day we won’t