Sam Liebeskind

Before the Watergate era, many journalists did not have college degrees. They were just smart people who knew how to get information. They were naturals at talking to people. And they knew enough about how things worked to recognize news.

The U.S. contains multitudes, and our regional differences are vast, and most people live fulfilling lives, without a lot of cinematic drama, but with a lot of quiet dignity, in the town where they were born.

During my aborted first attempt at flying to Duluth, when I was stuck for four hours on the tarmac with a planeload of Duluthians, I was reminded of another American fallacy—the idea that we are transient people, with no sense of place. That is certainly true of me, and most readers of this, and of the Northerners who filled my Florida in the ‘70s,... See more

The human eye is one of the most sophisticated optical instruments in existence. It automatically adjusts focus, adapts to light levels from pitch darkness to blinding sunshine, and processes information in real time. No engineer designed it. It evolved — 3.5 billion years of tiny improvements, each one barely noticeable, accumulating into... See more

“We would never rely [solely] on the AI-generated summaries,” said Seward. “Reporters are going back and listening to the real [podcasts] but using the report basically as a kind of tip line, or as a nudge to look at something more closely.”

Many of the most meaningful things in life look inefficient when viewed through the wrong lens. But that doesn't make them wasteful. It makes them human.