This is the story of how more than 20 statehouse reporters fooled me into believing I had a hot-breaking story – for the second time in a month. Last week I posted that a personal essay of mine was accepted by the Columbia Journalism Review and appeared on the CJR Web site. My essay touched [...]

I had a story on the Pennsylvnia Cable Network (PCN) in the Patriot-News two weeks ago. Here is some extra information that didn’t make it into the Sunday story. More than 10 million Pennsylvanians in 3.3. million homes on 150 cable systems can watch PCN. PCN has a $4.5 million operating budget and a 34-person [...]

Ostensibly, journalists write for others. So I get really excited when readers respond to what I write. That can go further when someone uses my reporting for broader purposes. A common rag on newspapers and most media is that their reporting isn’t in-depth enough. Of course, the response is that one can’t track trends without [...]

This ran for the Patriot-News of Harrisburg on Sept. 7 Next year, retiring state Rep. Jerry Nailor won’t have to listen live to the drum of the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s debate, which is lengthened by camera hogs, he said. “There are a handful of legislators who say, ‘I am for motherhood and apple pie, and [...]

A photo of an infant clutching a beer is currently paired with a story of mine on Google News, as seen above. Google’s news aggregation tool couples top ranked news stories with photos from related stories that are similarly rated. So, while my story on college presidents calling for a dialogue on underage drinking ran [...]

This brief ran online Thursday for the Patriot-News, prepping for yesterday’s front page story: Some college presidents who recently asked for a national dialogue on the 21-year-old drinking age say the focus of their effort has been lost. Some 123 university and college chief executives, including 15 in Pennsylvania, signed on to the Amethyst Initiative, [...]

I had a cover story on Tuesday’s edition of the Patriot-News about a Muslim airline pilot who says he was unfairly placed on a federal watch list, costing him his job. Yesterday, CNN.com picked up on the story – even featured it on the front of its Web site, as seen above – without any [...]

Front-page story for the Patriot-News: This isn’t about lowering the drinking age. That’s what Dickinson College President William Durden will tell you. This is about watching parents follow their freshman sons and daughters into dormitories with beer in tow. “We have a societal problem towards the attitude of alcohol that we have to fix,” Durden [...]

This on Page One of today’s Patriot-News: Erich Scherfen developed a love for flying early. Growing up in New Jersey, he would play outside and watch airplanes fly toward John F. Kennedy Airport. After military service, he became a commercial airline pilot. Today, the Gulf War veteran is fighting to keep his professional life in [...]

This Web brief for the Patriot-News, officially filed one minute after Associated Press Harrisburg correspondent, PLCA president, and Pennsylvania Capitol legend Peter Jackson filed his own to the wire: A Gulf War veteran and his wife say they’ve been unfairly placed on a federal list that limits their commercial flight access. To fight back, the [...]