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An Ornament of Our Dingy Office

William Dean Howells called it his “Uneasy Chair.” Lewis H. Lapham thought it “a column always grotesquely misnamed.” Bernard DeVoto simply wanted to do something else—a books section—and tried to fob…

Embarrassment of ‘Wiches

From a correction that was published by the Louisville Courier-Journal in July.

The Missing

From advertisements taken out in African-American newspapers by former slaves searching for relatives. The earliest ads appeared in 1863. Villanova University and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Philadelphia,…

Final Edition

by Richard Rodriguez,

Twilight of the American newspaper

Outback Backout

The following correction was printed last year in the Australian, a daily newspaper published in Sydney. A story headlined “Syria seeks our help to woo U.S.” in Saturday’s Weekend Australian…

Untitled

by Jan Staller,

The Decline of Book Reviewing

by Elizabeth Hardwick,

The fates of authors and publishers — not to mention the reading public — depend on book reviews — but who reviews the reviewers? Miss Hardwich undertakes one of the few thorough critiques…

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