Kent State Massacre 40 years later: ‘Get set!’ ‘Point!’ ‘Fire!’ orders said to be in enhanced recording

Four Kent State University students—including Bill Schroeder, an ROTC cadet whose funeral I wrote up for the Lorain Journal—died 40 years ago on May 4, 1970. Nine suffered bullet wounds. The Ohio National Guard fired 67 rounds at a crowd no closer than 150 feet. Shot in the back while lying on the grass, young […]

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‘Red Hot Patriot’ play is B’way-bound for sure if Philly gross is any hint: $437K in single-ticket sales

The Molly Ivins play—remember, Molly was the uppity newspaper columnist with a dog named Shit and a sassy ‘tude to match—is a sure thing for Broadway if you go by the numbers from Philadelphia. Hey, brag, didn’t I think as much earlier? From March 19 through Sunday as reported by Michael Klein in the Philadelphia […]

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Google IS killing newspapers—but not in the way you might think

I mourn the decline of traditional newspapers, like The Telegram in The Solomon Scandals, despite their many flaws. How many paper dailies—not just individual copies of them—will end up as trash? And, yes, as many in the industry believe, Google is responsible to a great extent, but not in the way you might think. Google’s […]

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‘What Would Google Do’ with my old steeltown newspaper in Lorain, Ohio? Here’s what I’D do.

Related: Media critic James Fallows and Google News’ Josh Cohen will discuss digital-era journalism tomorrow, Wednesday, at 6:30 p.m., in D.C. What if reporters didn’t take over from newspaper publishers, the tease I posted earlier? Suppose someone else did, Google. One old newspaper alum, Jeff Jarvis, has even written a book called What Would Google […]

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‘Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins’: My Q. & A. with playwright Margaret Engel

A black mongrel dog scampers across the stage, “dragging a leash and a canoe paddle.” Her owner yells for the dog by her proper name, “Shit”—an ever-handy expletive for a Texas oilman’s red-headed daughter, grouchy about the status quo. This is the populist journalist Molly Ivins at home, in a new play by Margaret (Peggy) […]

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Closing of the Rocky Mountain Daily News

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo. The owners of a newspaper where I worked in the 1970s, the Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio, the inspiration for “Marseilles, Ohio” in The Solomon Scandals, have just filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. Scandals isn’t merely about corruption in government and the press. It’s also about a much […]

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Lorain, Ohio: The real Marseilles, sort of—and Toni Morrison’s old town, on top of that

The Washington, D.C., area gets the most ink in The Solomon Scandals. But Scandals also contains flashbacks to the steel town of Marseilles, Ohio, a fictionalized version of Lorain, where I wrote features and worked the poverty and public housing beats for the Journal, the local daily. The phrase “factory town” applies. In Scandals even […]

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