A few of the better columns and front-of-the-book pieces I wrote as an editor
at Miller-McCune magazine, High Country News, Key West Magazine and elsewhere.
Longtime Atlantic correspondent James Fallows helps introduce the premiere issue of Miller-McCune magazine by interviewing me about it. For which I will be eternally thankful. Or in the alternative, thankful as long as I am able to be.
The full column.
A new academic and professional discipline known as "computational journalism" comes to the economic rescue of investigative journalism.
The full column.
A backlash to always-connected is brewing. To support that assertion and counter the notion I might be a technological troglodyte, I offer four flashing signs that digital gadgets and ever-increasing interconnectedness are losing their cool -- even with the young people who supposedly are their biggest adherents. The full column.
An Arizona sheriff behaves as though he's in Rwanda, and becomes the state's most popular official. The full column
I go back to my roots in the industrial Midwest -- that is, to "The Region" -- and explain why the mismanaged hellhole known as Gary, Ind., deserves a federal bailout. The full column.
I return to Houston -- a legendary center of dysfunctional, corrupt power politics -- and am amazed that the Democratic county attorney and Republican district attorney get along and do good together. The full column.
The format of High Country News required that I write an editor's letter. I thought this one -- on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, his silly/phony "hydrogen highway" and global warming -- came out reasonably well. For an editor's letter. The full column.
Why John McCain and Barack Obama should support a truth commission on the human rights abuses of the war on terror. The full column.
Some Talk-of-the-Townish pieces I wrote during the start-up effort for Key West Magazine. Fairly sophisticated stuff amid launch madness, I think.
The pieces.
I look at a darkly hilarious British book, Flat Earth News, searching for the answer to that age-old question: Why are the news media so repetitive and dumb? The full column.
On George Bush's questionable connections to Saudi elites, and their apparent connections to terrorism. The full column