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What David Halberstam Learned in Mississippi
In 1981, the writer David Halberstam published a memoir in Esquire magazine, with the headline “Starting Out to be a Famous Reporter.”At the time Halberstam was well-known enough that the story’s title...
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An Engineering School Pulls Off an ‘Epic Trick Play’
Last month we wrote about the surprising partnership in Angola, Indiana between a city-redevelopment movement, which has brought new life and activity to a historic small-city downtown, and the...
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The Rural-Urban Divide Is More Complicated Than You Think
Here are a few stories I found intriguing from the past week’s newspapers, on the unfolding complexities of the much-discussed “rural-urban divide.”1) The first is by Andrew Van Dam, in The Washington...
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How a ‘Communiversity’ Works
Here’s a difference between the world of national politics and that of public problem-solving at the local and regional levels. Four or five years ago, I would have had no idea of this. Now I notice it...
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What Does All This Local Reporting Add Up To?
Yesterday, Deb Fallows and I sent an email to various loyal readers of The Atlantic. You can see what was in that message in the “Continue Reading” section of this post.In response, I got this message,...
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The Reinvention of Danville’s Downtown: Part 1
Factory towns face problems when the factories shut down. Everyone has heard versions of that story—involving steel and auto plants in the Midwest, sawmills in the Northwest, coal mines in Appalachia...
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Father’s Day, 2019
On this date 11 years ago, which was Father’s Day in 2008, I posted a tribute to my own father, who was then in the final months of his extraordinary life.I’m mentioning it again this weekend, after...
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The Reinvention of a Downtown: Danville’s Story, Part 2
Previously in this series: why the ups and downs of economic history have left the southern Virginia town of Danville with a genuine problem (what to do after its big mills closed), but also a...
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Bitwise Goes Big
Four years ago, my wife, Deb, and I wrote about an ambitious and unusual tech startup called Bitwise Industries, in the gritty and long-struggling city of Fresno in California’s Central Valley.For an...
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How Danville Has Avoided Omaha’s Mistake
Two previous reports, first here and then here, described the bittersweet heritage of old tobacco and textile buildings in the former mill town of Danville, Virginia.The bitter was obviously the loss...
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An American Story, Starting in Kosovo
Over the past three years, Deb Fallows and I have written frequently about the lakeside city of Erie, Pennsylvania, and its reaction to the loss of traditional manufacturers over the past...
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Report for America Revives Possibilities for Local Journalism
Because I’m not a politician, I don’t have to wear an American-flag lapel pin. (I’ve never seen a photo of, say, Dwight Eisenhower, or FDR, or JFK, wearing a flag pin. Richard Nixon did it...
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The Rituals of ‘Becoming America’
Our two great American holidays are, of course, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.They’re particularly American: Independence Day, for obvious reasons. Thanksgiving, because no one else observes it...
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The American Sense of Place
This dispatch is in the form of a newsletter update, on reactions from readers and significant developments around the country on the local-renewal fronts. It follows this Fourth of July post, about...
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There’s No Understanding Donald Trump
It’s been barely two weeks since Donald Trump became the first American president to step onto North Korean soil, with all attendant theorizing about what the move meant, or didn’t. Was it the “biggest...
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‘Understanding’ Trump: What the Press Can Do
In response to this item yesterday, “There’s No Understanding Donald Trump,” other readers weigh in.As a reminder: the main point of the previous piece was that trying to analyze why Donald Trump does...
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Sioux Falls Is Ready for Tom Hanks
A year ago, America’s Favorite Actor™, Tom Hanks, triggered a series of reports on TV and in the Argus Leader newspaper in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He did so with one little tweet saying that he’d...
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Three Big Lessons From One Small Town
Here is another look at the far-southern-Virginia town of Danville: once a thriving tobacco-and-textile center, now trying to figure out what to do after all the mills have shut down.In keeping with...
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The Choices Facing Community Colleges
America is in the middle of another news emergency, about crises that are genuinely important. But meanwhile, other aspects of public and private life grind on, and because they will matter so much in...
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The Power of a Community College
Last week I reported on a conference of community-college leaders that Deb Fallows and I had attended in Michigan, and about some of the reasons we’ve come to believe that community colleges are so...
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