The demise of newspapers means better journalism

We who contemplate the importance of journalism look at the future with trepidation. What happens to journalism, we ask, when newspapers continue on their inevitable decline? The question assumes that journalism itself will be diminished. I am coming to a different...

Lincoln at 200; Lincoln the Writer

Once Americans get through Christmas, they will be faced with two important dates that inter-weave themselves politically and historically: the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on Jan. 20 and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln...

The man who didn't invent Christmas

Charles Dickens had a lot to do with the image we have of the Christmas season -- Victorian England and all that -- but he didn't invent Christmas. Several months ago I wrote an essay on book titles that make too much of a claim for their subjects. To have titles such as...

Civil War images: Authors explore the Mosby Myth

What we think about John Singleton Mosby is a mixture of what he did on the battlefields of the Civil War and the myth-making that occurred during and after the war. In this post, author Ed Caudill talks about his book on this expert image-maker. What is real, and what just...

A good take on being a reporter

Reporting is where journalism begins. Without reporting -- gathering facts, information, and views and putting all those together -- journalism doesn't exist. So we owe a deep debt to those who spend their lives doing the tough job of reporting. Deborah Howell, ombudsman for...