G. Michael Killenberg

Government News for the People

The business of government is conducted at polished walnut desks beneath the fresco-adorned ceilings of massive statehouses. It also is conducted at folding tables set up on the patched linoleum floors of cinder-block community halls.

Lessons in Law and Ethics

Stephen A. Cousley knows firsthand how litigation can smother aggressive journalism. As editor of the Alton (Ill.) Telegraph , he fought to prevent a

The Roles and Realities of Reporting

9.2 million libel award from killing his family-owned newspaper. 1 The Telegraph survived, but at a dear price.

Special Beats, New Challenges

On a raw winter night in 1899, an 18-year-old reporter named H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) struggled to compose what was to be his first published news story—a minor item from police records. “I wrote and tore up, wrote and tore up,” Mencken later recounted in Newspaper Days. “Finally there emerged the following:”

The Trial and Thereafter

General-assignment reporters cover the days news as it unfolds—from a hail storm in the morning to an American Legion convention that afternoon. They are valued for many reasons, such as the ability to transform a dull press release into a page-one story. Few assignments intimidate or deter competent general-assignment reporters, who can cover a first-grade play and the opening day of the state legislature with comparable verve and results.

Public Safety: Crimes to Corrections

Every year seems to bring its share of sensational trials. But 2005 set a standard for scandal and melodrama.

Into the Legal Maze

Edna Buchanan knows the police beat, having spent more than 20 years covering murders, muggings and mobsters in a city made infamous by the television program Miami Vice and now by CSI: Miami. Here is how she once described the job:

The Ways and Means of Reporting

Columnist Ellen Goodman often tells engaging stories about the law and its sometimes extraordinary implications. In one, she described the experience of John Moore, a 43-year-old Seattle sales manager whose treatment for leukemia included removal of his spleen. Moores doctors, though, did not tell him that tissue from his spleen would be used for important research. The research led to development of a cell-line for treating cancer, which the doctors patented and negotiated into multimillion- dollar contracts with a bioengineering firm and a pharmaceutical company.

Interviewing: Speaking, Listening, and Learning for Professional Life

Charlie Bosworth stood quietly to one side of a conference room at an Illinois State Police complex just outside St. Louis. As Bosworth watched and took notes, a dozen television and print reporters questioned police officials about a massive drug bust that had taken place a few hours earlier. In another room, the state troopers displayed the spoils of the raid: sawed-off shotguns, cash and drugs.