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Spring is here — sort of. Despite the on/off weather in Chicago, one big change is underfoot: We have a new mayor. Lori Lightfoot, a reform candidate who quietly kicked off her campaign 12 months ago, will be sworn in as Chicago's [...]

We are only three months into 2019 and it's already been a busy year! For the Washington Post, I made a few trips to Milwaukee to spend time with the young women of Salam School. They're breaking cultural barriers as athletes not [...]

Summer 2018 was a difficult one for Chicago. The city was already dealing with the usual spikes in gun violence, but it also was creeping toward the start of the Jason Van Dyke trial. He is the Chicago Police Officer who fatally shot [...]

That's right. There's a connection between central Illinois and Somerset County, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, killing everyone on board. Since that tragic day, the National Parks Service has been slowly building a memorial park designed to honor all [...]

A few weeks ago the Washington Post sent me to the South Side to cover the first stop of a national tour by the kids of Parkland, Florida. They were in town to sign up voters and connect their experience as victims [...]

Just a few months into 2018 and things have been busy. This Sunday (3/25) the Washington Post will publish a feature I wrote on the Obama Presidential Center. I tell a national audience about the controversy that's been brewing on the South [...]

Happy New Year! (Okay, it's really late January.) The reason for the delay is that things have been busier than usual. In late December, Crain's Chicago Business published my front-page feature that looks into why Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pulled the plug [...]

A sad news day today for anyone covering the mass shooting in Las Vegas that left nearly 60 people dead and hundreds injured. The Guardian asked that I write a story to provide context into the event itself — A three-day country [...]

Two weeks ago I attended a Cvil War reenactment in the tiny tourist town of Three Oaks, Mich. While this may have been any normal summer weekend in Harbor County, this Civil War reenactment followed the violence in Charlottesville, a weekend that [...]

I'm proud to announce that my essay on early country singer Linda Parker is included in the new edition of RUST BELT CHICAGO: AN ANTHOLOGY, the latest edition from the people at Belt Publishing who have been documenting stories from across the [...]