Will Voters in Maryland Elect Ben Jealous Their First Black Governor?

By Karen Houppert

On a Sunday morning in September, Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous is in church—of course…

Letter From Downeast

By Peter Behrens

I’ve just lost a friend. He didn’t die. Our friendship of 41 years expired—burned up, shredded—in one email exchange.

Jack—I’ll call him that—grew up in San Mateo County, California, the son of a municipal civil servant in what was a Leave-It-to-Beaver suburb that has since spawned some of the most expensive zip codes in the nation. After high school and one desultory semester of community college, Jack was drafted and spent one year as a combat infantryman in Vietnam…

Annals of the Press

By Jacob Brackman

Jacob Brackman was a 21-year-old features editor on The Harvard Crimson when, in 1965, he wrote this vivid profile of Izzy Stone, the ingenious and curmudgeonly proprietor of I.F. Stone’s Weekly. Corporate media was ascendant even in those early years, and Stone’s independence, fearlessness, and legendary work ethic earned him a unique standing at a time of incipient homogenization of news and culture.

In speech-making attire, a three-piece serge suit with wider lapels, I.F. Stone looks rather like an old Jewish tailor from the Bronx, uncomfortably slicked up for his grandson’s bar mitzvah. But when he begins to talk, eyes twinkling with more than a little demonic mischief behind perfectly round, steel-rimmed bifocals, the alte zeda image evaporates…