by Bill Johnson

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The broken windows and shattered walls - all the outward signs of terror - have been patched and repaired now, and President Bush called upon Americans Monday to "enforce laws and reject hatred and bigotry" so another Oklahoma City bombing can never occur again.

by Steven Travers

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23, 2001 -- If hard work is a factor, UCLA is in very good hands with Steve Lavin, Jim Saia and Steve Spencer.

by Erik Deckers

SYRACUSE, Ind. -- Many people don't know what I do for my "day job," including several of my co-workers. When I'm not writing humor columns or donning a mask and cape to fight crime, I work in the marketing department of an export company. I also sell some of our products around the Midwest.

American Reporter Staff

LOS ANGELES, January 17, 2001 (2:20 p.m. PST) -- In a dramatic demonstration that California's deregulation of electric utilities has been an abysmal failure, the state's independent power grid operator today ordered "rolling blackouts" of an hour each in Northern California cities including San Francisco and Oakland as a hard-edged cold wave increases demand and the prospect of bankruptcy looms for its major utilities. The blackouts were suspended after about two hours but may resume later in the day, authorities said.

by Bill Johnson

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The man who blew up the federal building was told Tuesday he will die for that crime on May 16.

by Clarence Brown

t SEATTLE, Wash. -- I am not a journalist. You knew that, right? Yet I have been all my life a sort of camp follower. Editor of my high school paper, I wrote and drew cartoons for my college paper, published comic strips in London and New York newspapers. I was even a real editor -- Cartoon Editor of the Saturday Review.

by Constance Daley

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- This is the month when I look out the window at nothing in particular for as long as it takes to breathe a sigh, slowly turn away and get on with it.

by Joe Shea

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 13, 2001 -- I tried to run for Mayor of Los Angeles today as a "city secession activist," but the City Attorney -- who is also running for Mayor -- said I couldn't do it. He won.

by Bill Johnson

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The first woman executed by Oklahoma since statehood was put to death by lethal injection Thursday night, the second of eight people scheduled to be executed by the state this month.

by Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- When the press shifts into its feeding frenzy mode, it's not a pleasant sight. Views get distorted, reputations get mangled and the truth generally gets ignored.

by Joe Shea

LOS ANGELES -- This vast city's journalistic edge, once as vibrant and celebrated as that of New York and Chicago, has been decidedly dull ever since newspaper rivalries disappeared and the "if it bleeds it leads" paradigm took over tv (I don't capitalize "tv", for that among many reasons. I would rather capitalize "newspaper.").

by Erik Deckers

SYRACUSE, Ind. -- Since the real new millennium started, I haven't even hear an excited whisper heard from any of the marketing geniuses who celebrated it a year too early.

by Joyce Marcel

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I love newspapers.

by Mark Perew

SAN DIEGO, Calif., Jan. 9, 2001 -- The nine planets of our solar system have gained at least a couple of relatives in the neighborhood, but in a friendly family squabble, scientists say they're not so sure about some others.

by Clarence Brown

PRINCETON, N.J. -- After a year of pretending that we were already in the 21st Century, we now are, apparently with universal agreement, in the 21st Century. And thank goodness for that.

by Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- What are the songs that define the 20th Century? It all depends on who you ask.

by Clarence Brown

SEATTLE, Wash. -- Hello? No, this is not the Fire Department, you've dialed the wrong number, my name is Soup, but never mind that -- what was on your mind? Afire? That figures. Did you start it? No? Sure now? Well, it never hurts to ask -- you'd be surprised how many people set their place on fire, then change their minds and call us. I mean them.

by Joe Shea

At midnight tonight - and in the swift passage of a single second - a minute, an hour, a day, a month, a year, a decade, a century and the Second Millennium following the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem will come to a close, whether finished or not, perfected or not; and a vast highway flat to the vanishing point, a mountain that dwarfs our lives, a sea of time whose horizon is impossibly far, the Third Millennium, will open before us. But we are human, and our lives, after all, are about tomorrow.

by Randolph T. Holhut

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Back in the autumn of 1994, when the World Wide Web was still in its infancy and only a handful of newspapers were online, media critic Jon Katz wrote an article called "Online or not, Newspapers Suck."

by Bill Johnson

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma received a belated Christmas present worse than any lump of coal: Preliminary Census data show the state will lose one of its six congressional seats.

by Bill Johnson

DENVER, Dec. 28. 2000 -- A federal judge agreed Thursday that Timothy McVeigh may forego any further appeals, setting the stage for an execution date to be set for the man who blew up the Oklahoma City federal building. After a half-hour spent questioning McVeigh closely, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch held "that there is nothing inherently irrational about a person making a decision to accept the judgment of a court."

by Constance Daley

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- In mid-December 1968, Douglas C. Englebart and some 17 researchers demonstrated live an online system they had been working on since 1962. Rumor has it that at this public debut of a little box with an electric cord attached, someone in the room jokingly said, "Eeek, it's a mouse."