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‘Limiting free speech’
U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Reagan appointee, issued a remarkable 161-page ruling on Sept. 30 that found the Trump administration unconstitutionally violated the free speech rights of pro-Palestinian protesters and academics. Among the 85-year-old jurist’s findings: ICE agents wore masks to “terrorize Americans” and the administration incorrectly conflated antisemitism with criticism of Israel. Continue reading
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A ‘skin game’
In 1900, after St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporters readily discovered “wholesale violations” of anti-gambling laws, including widespread use of illegal slot machines, the paper demanded answers from police. Harry B. Hawes, the 30-year-old president of the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners, conceded the newspaper’s findings were correct, but claimed his hands were tied. While Hawes Continue reading
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Ghosts in the machine
As the capabilities of A.I. systems expand, some people are warming to the notion that machines may go beyond mimicking human language and reasoning; they may actually gain consciousness and start having actual feelings. Kevin McDonald concedes he is no expert on artificial intelligence, but the 32-year-old St. Louis man claims he and a couple Continue reading
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‘Vanished like a dream’
“Newspaper men work from day to day. They cover the day’s news, write the day’s editorials on current issues or events, complete the newspaper for the last edition; then everything in it passes and another newspaper is made the next day. Possibly there is a campaign for a few weeks or a few months, and Continue reading
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‘None but a jackass or poltroon’
Political passions ran deep in the frontier town of St. Louis in the early 19th century, where disagreements about national issues regularly turned violent. Newspapers, which served as voices of political factions, helped provoke the violence — and often suffered the consequences. Among the instigators was The Missouri Argus, whose owner was savagely beaten by Continue reading
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A town without police, courts, crime or taxes
As a schoolboy, Charles Lomax Delbridge discovered a remarkable faculty he didn’t quite understand — an ability to quickly solve multiplication problems involving fractions. He later described the process to a reporter: “It seemed to me that I simply telegraphed the problem into my brain and that scarcely an instant elapsed until the answer came Continue reading
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The Missouri editor whose bigotry outlived him
John W. Jacks was in his time an esteemed newspaperman, a native Missourian who started, owned and edited several publications before buying the Montgomery Standard in 1881 and editing the weekly for some 40 years. He was politically active, accepted state and federal appointments, ran for office and used his position and his paper to Continue reading
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‘I can’t save you unless you do what I say’
The Rev. Jesse Moore’s forehead was blown off with a double-barreled shotgun on Nov. 16, 1899, and suspicion immediately fell on his 19-year-old son, Elijah “Lige” Moore, who was sleeping in the same room that night, but claimed not to have heard the shot. A lengthy account of the murder, published three days later by the Continue reading
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Morphine eaters, whiskey drunks, eccentrics
“It is the writers of newspapers that cause the people to desire to read these newspapers. While the universal curiosity of humanity is such that all men desire news items, still it is a fact that newspapers that are merely purveyors of news have no chance at all in competition with other publications which give Continue reading
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‘No dictation from any central authority’
“In order that one may understand exactly what the Lee Syndicate is, it is necessary that certain policies and practices of the Lee Syndicate be disclosed…. They descended largely from Mr. (Alfred Wilson) Lee himself …. ¶ Continue reading
Roland Klose 