A Time reporter has one less hand after trying to toss a live grenade out of a humvee in Iraq. The photographer with him took on some shrapnel. Background on the reporter, Michael Weisskopf, who was on his second trip…
Category: Salutes
Farewell to a great American
Paul Simon, the former U.S. senator who started out as a crusading newspaper publisher, died today after heart surgery. He was 75.
Give your books away…
… and get kids hooked on reading, Dan Gillmor says.
Memories of the civil rights era
Ben Bagdikian on covering the civil rights movement in the early 1960s: I spent a lot of time in Holmes County, Mississippi, and the county seat, Lexington, including the period when I traveled with SNCC and stayed in their safe…
Remembering the Commodore
Michael Francis Comerford was the legendary night city editor at the Philly Inquirer, who died Tuesday at 70. “It was amazing how much the Commodore could accomplish in an emergency with a skeleton crew.” Read the Inky’s story.
Just how popular…
… was George Plimpton? Mr. Plimpton was at Camp David playing tennis with an unnamed president when a courtside phone rang and was answered by a steely Secret Service agent prepared for the next international crisis. “I’m sorry, Mr. President,”…
SacBee shoutout
Nat Henthoff says the Sacramento Bee deserves a Pulitzer for its coverage of the Patriot Act. Among the specific illuminations of how government databases are being filled with the names of Americans unaware they have landed in converging surveillance systems,…
Ahmad Shawkat, former newsie
Iraq’s no place to go around writing stories people don’t like. Sometimes they put a bullet in you. Shawkat ignored letters warning him to close the paper after he published articles criticizing radical Islamists. On Tuesday morning, he paid the…
The Slot slips into new seat
Blanp parodies theslot.com in honor of Bill Walsh becoming national desk copy chief at the Washington Post. Autumn shares her contribution to Bill’s going-away page.
100 interesting things about Autumn
82. I didn’t have a Japanese Japanese teacher until college. (This is one of those 100-things-about-me lists that are flaming death in the hands of an inept writer. Since Autumn isn’t, it’s fun stuff.)