By Glenn Mollette
Everybody needs medical insurance. Without it you are headed for the poor house or a shorter life.
Here is what our government should do: Read More
Category Archives: Editorials
Understanding the Nation: Why is America so Dysfunctional?
By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist
I write a column for the Oriental Morning Post in Shanghai, one of China’s leading newspapers. I try to explain our system to the paper’s upscale readers. Here is my recent take on American political dysfunction. This is edited down, as the Chinese paper likes long columns. Read More
It’s Just Golden…The Forlorn Lady in Lace
by John Golden
NP Columnist
Whenever Halloween rolls around every year, the autumn air becomes eerily filled with everyone telling his or her own scary tales. The television networks run their plethora of materials that feature vampires, werewolves, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins. School children do their best to torment their classmates’ thoughts, and they attempt to keep each other up at night. To me, the most frightening stories are the stories that also happen to be true stories.
The following is a true story: Read More
Understanding Illinois: State Held Hostage for a Song
By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist
When big game goes lame, the jackals gather. The metaphor is a bit melodramatic, yet seems apt when the big game (Illinois) is destitute and the jackals (Motorola Mobility; Navistar, Ford, others, and now ADM) seek to chew off part of the state’s revenue in tax breaks.
Agri-business behemoth ADM of Decatur is the latest to seek tax breaks from the debt-burdened state, in return for shifting 100 jobs from the downstate city to Chicago. Read More
Not Surrendering Hope in Dark Times
by Dan Hagen
NP Columnist
And then there’s that moment when you’re reading along in a good book, and you’re surprised by one of your own quotes.
“I guess I treated the whole thing like a big advertising campaign,” Stan Lee said. “I wanted to give the product — which was Marvel Comics, and myself in a way — a certain personality.”
That’s from a 1983 interview I did with Lee published in David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview magazine, and cited in Sean Howe’s book “Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.” Read More
Understanding Illinois: Nobody’s Thinking About Downstate
By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist
I attended a conference recently at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank on economic competitiveness in the Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana region—yet downstate Illinois was never mentioned.
The focus was on that great metropolitan region of about 12 million people, centered in Chicago. In addition, four major economic development plans have been done solely for that region in just the past few years. Read More
Your Community, Your Newspaper, Your Life
by Jim Zachary
As newspaper executives struggle over whether the news should be digital first, tablet first, SMS first or print first, readers know exactly what they want their local newspaper to be — community first.
Reading a newspaper is not like reading a novel, a magazine, a history book, poetry, prose or any other type of literature.
Newspapers are not about what has happened in the past, what is happening some place else, or what happens in an author’s imagination. Read More
The Responsibility of Newspapers
By Lynn Richardson
President, Tenn. Press Assoc.
As a publisher of a weekly newspaper, you find yourself doing a lot of different things. Both news and advertising become part of the daily routine. One day you’re crunching numbers for the budget, the next day you’re calling on a new business that has just opened in the area.
In a lot of cases, the publisher also writes – news, features, editorials – the whole gamut. Whatever it takes.
It’s a way to stay connected to the community in a personal way and it can remind us when and why we decided to make newspapers our life’s work. Read More
Understanding Illinois: GOP Going All Out for Governorship
By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist
Illinois Republican leaders see the 2014, non-presidential year elections as their opportunity to recapture the governor’s mansion (not that anyone lives there anymore) and claw back a few seats in Congress. Their chances are good.
By all visible indications, Democrats are the 220-pound bullies to the GOP weaklings. The state legislature is dominated by the Dems, who hold big majorities in both chambers, and the party holds a 12-6 majority in the state’s congressional delegation, including three seats in the once impregnable GOP suburbs. Read More
Clean up the Garden, Ready it for Winter
by Kim Riedel
Master Gardner
Another year is drawing to a close and looking back over the past several months, there has been a lot of effort, hard work, and joy put into the many aspects of my life.
My first grandchild was born earlier this year, my high school graduate went off to college, though I’m putting off an empty nest for a few more years, and I have a new position at work that I am enjoying more since it has been cooling down. Read More