Good afternoon from Capitol Hill. The House and Senate are still out of session. If you miss the Capitol Hill Sturm und Drang, you can live vicariously through the midterm debates going on around the country. Rep. Tim Ryan and JD Vance face off in a debate for the open Ohio Senate seat tonight at 7p. Sen. Mike Lee debates challenger Evan McMullin tonight at 8p. You...
Now that Scott Pruitt has been confirmed as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, he must determine what his priorities are and whether his agency should actively pursue carbon dioxide emissions cuts. The concern is that he will abandon the cause under the guise that it is economically oppressive. Is that wise? Pruitt’s general belief is that the...
Home to Nina Simone, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Rapsody, and J Cole, North Carolina’s musical legacy is rooted in activism. Even hip-hop’s newest Carolinian chart-topping trap rapper DaBaby has embraced rap as a medium to address racial injustices in America by sharing his personal challenges with law enforcement. Despite our state’s rich...
Author’s note: ‘beyond a better hell’ / talking to ghosts is a mixtap/e/ssay—a hybrid genre that brings together the mixtape and personal and scholarly essay. The project is composed with prose, lyrics, music, repurposed film, and news clips. Reading and listening to the entire project is recommended, with no recommendation for which you should do...
This essay mentions state-sanctioned death, violent prison conditions, and suicide. Names have been changed to protect privacy. “One day closer to home.” Those were the words etched on the wall above the bunk bed in cell 212 at Dekalb County Jail. They were the first thing I saw when I woke up between 3 and 5 a.m. for the first food delivery of the day...
A new revenue playbook will help newsrooms tap the financial potential of solutions journalism Newsroom leaders featured in the playbook will speak about their experience at this event on Thursday Dec 2nd noon-1pm ET. Jay Allred, president of Richland Source in Mansfield, Ohio, has championed solutions journalism as a way to serve the community and tap into local...
In The New York Review, Andrew Delbanco reviews the LOA publication of The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters, 1945–1946, edited by J. Michael Lennon. He writes: Norman Mailer wrote with an unstable mixture of self-indulgence and self-awareness, bravado and diffidence, glibness and bracing honesty, macho posturing and an almost sheepish gentleness. Read the...