Sowing Division
Timeless stories from our 175-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Democracy Dying in Darkness
[ J U N E • 1 9 4 8 ]
“A subsidized press is a controlled press; whether it is controlled by holy angels or fiends in human form it remains a controlled press.”
Read “Great Newspapers, If Any” by Gerald W. Johnson
[ D E C E M B E R • 1 9 6 4 ]
“But beware that the grass-roots winnower of great issues may not be the thinking editorial mind, but the circling editorial hand, feeling in the lower drawer for the bit of prefabricated politics and pluggery that happens to fit, in inches and ideology, that sacred interstice for which all newspaperdom is supposed to exist: the space between the ads.”
Read “Behold the Grass-roots Press, Alas!” by Ben H. Bagdikian
[ S E P T E M B E R • 2 0 1 2 ]
“The monopolist owners in their lonely Xanadus will keep leveraging their teetering empires, and the distinctions between news articles, editorials, and press releases will continue to blur.”
Read “The Only Game In Town” by David Sirota
Tariffs Cropping Up
[ F E B R U A R Y • 2 0 1 6 ]
On corn, corruption, and the presidential caucuses.
Read “The Trouble with Iowa” by Richard Manning
[ M A Y • 1 9 7 8 ]
Anne Nelson’s report on the crisis in agricultural economics.
Read “A Long Row to Hoe” by Anne Nelson
[ A P R I L • 1 9 3 5 ]
To hog-raise or not to hog-raise?
Read “Farmer Olsen and the New Deal” by Charles D. Madsen
Jobless in America
[ J U L Y • 1 9 3 0 ]
“In a country like ours, where the real wealth is so vast that the liveliest imagination can scarcely comprehend it, is there not enough corporate intelligence and good will to do away with the mighty load of human misery borne by three million men out of work?”
Read “Man Out of Work,” a woman’s testimony after her husband lost his job
[ S E P T E M B E R • 1 9 9 3 ]
“Until we rethink work and decide what human beings are meant to do in the age of robots and what basic economic claims on society human beings have by virtue of being here, there will never be enough jobs.”
Read “The End of Jobs” by Richard J. Barnet
[ O C T O B E R • 2 0 1 5 ]
A report on the real face of welfare reform.
Read “Getting Jobbed” by Virginia Sole-Smith
Remembering Ralph Ellison
[ A U G U S T • 1 9 6 4 ]
“To live in Harlem is to dwell in the very bowels of the city; it is to pass a labyrinthine existence among streets that explode monotonously skyward with the spires and crosses of churches and clutter underfoot with garbage and decay.”
Ralph Ellison was born on March 1, 1914. Ahead of this anniversary, read his essay “Harlem Is Nowhere.”