A gut-wrenching experience
Trials can be hard to cover. Our reporter, Sonny Long, has spent the past week covering the Crystal Ramirez murder trial. If you haven't heard of Crystal Ramirez, well, it's a sad story. She was an 8-year-old girl who was ...

Accuracy counts
I have a torn up knee, and before I consider surgery, the doc says I have to do some PT. In my PT session this morning, my therapist, Mary, says we've been spelling her daughter's name incorrectly in our sports ...

Now playing: Sample comics
In September, we asked our readers to rate their favorite comics, from favorite to worst. Our stated goal from the beginning was to inject some new life into the comics pages with reader involvement. We received more than 600 responses. ...

The great comics survey
I’ve written before that when I was a kid, I used to love reading comics in the newspaper every day. I liked Charlie Brown. I mean, I wanted him to kick that ball so badly! (That darn Lucy). I loved ...

Quiet before the storm
It's eerily quiet here today at the Advocate. We're all working hard to keep everyone updated through the day on our web site and with a special Ike print edition on Saturday. The whole town is kind of quiet -- ...

Are newspapers objective?
We are taking a beating over our Fatal Funnel series on a different part of this site. In one of the forums, someone made this comment: "When it comes to the press it is not like the old days where ...

Death of newspapers? Nah
Chicago -- A lot of discussion this week has centered around the future of newspapers, and what that future will look like. Talk of the newspaper's death has been circulating for some time now. However, recent struggles in the industry ...

How to cover a community?
Chicago -- A main point of discussion today in our Leadership Summit at Unity was how a newspaper thoroughly and accurately covers its community. One way to cover your community is to make sure you reflect part of that community. ...

Race and the media
Chicago -- I'm  in the Windy City attending the Unity -- Journalists of Color conference. I was selected along with 12 other editors to participate in a leadership summit meeting at this conference. Today's topic was how we talk about ...

A brother's suicide
About six years ago, my brother committed suicide. He did it in a very public way. On Wednesday, I posted a reply on a thread of comments about the photo we ran in the second installment of the Fatal Funnel ...