How Three Texas Newspapers Manufactured Three Competing Images of Immigrants

In Depression-Era San Antonio, Polarized Portraits of Mexicans Appealed to the Biases of Readers

In August 1930, an editorial writer for the largest newspaper chain on Earth proclaimed: “THE FARMER rids his barn of rats, his hen-house of weasels … the government of the United States should clean house and get rid of undesirable human vermin.”

The writer went on to demand that Congress make citizenship harder to obtain, so the government would be protected “against the vicious and criminal, the incompetent and the unfit.”

Sound familiar?

The Trump administration’s endless, bigoted campaign against immigrants may seem shocking. But the rhetoric accompanying that campaign, down …

A Cultural Touchstone Fends off the End of an Era

In the Age of the Angry Asian Man Blog, 113-year-old Japanese-American Newspaper 'The Rafu Shimpo' Reaches Out to New Readers

Long before I was the English editor of The Rafu Shimpo—the newspaper that covers Japanese-American communities up and down the Pacific Coast and other Japanese-American hubs like Denver, New York, …

I’m Happy Sheldon Adelson Wants to Own a Newspaper

The Ensuing Conflicts of Interest May Be Troubling, But It Sure Beats the Alternative

There is good news and bad news to report from the world of those whose business it is to relay the news. The good news is that the family of …

Blogs Are Not Dead

In an Era Where Institutions Are Dying, Individual Media Is Still King

I started my first blog 15 years ago, about the same time Andrew Sullivan embraced the form. Sullivan’s highly publicized decision to end his blog doesn’t surprise me, but it …

Is Fox News the Smartest Journalism Ever?

Tabloid Television Is Great at Manipulating America’s Long History of Elitism and Class Conflict

Lamenting the decline of journalism is a familiar trope of our media culture. Since a great wave of tabloid TV shows emerged in the late-1980s and cable news gained influence …

Cal Poly Pomona’s Michael Woo

The Former L.A. City Councilman on What It Would Take to Get Him Back Into Electoral Politics and Why He Keeps Quiet in Elevators

Michael Woo is the dean of the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona. An urban planner, he served on the Los Angeles City Council for eight years and …