Elizabeth Donald

Tonight my husband and I will watch a DVD that cost us $543.
Then we will return it, but we won’t get the money back.
This is probably the dumbest thing we have collectively done in the nine years that we have been a couple. I can’t say it was the dumbest thing we’ve done in our lives, because there were some truly questionable personal choices back in the nineties that don’t bear close examination.
But Othello is probably in the top ten list.

Journalists at NPR Illinois are pushing back against a University of Illinois policy that they say is hampering their reporting on cases of sexual harassment at the university, which is also the station’s licensee.
The conflict arose after the Springfield station and ProPublica undertook an investigation of how the university has handled sexual assault cases. #metoo

The transition from high school to college is challenging for any recent graduate, but students with autism have additional obstacles that colleges and universities are trying to help them overcome.
Approximately 50,000 youth with autism leave high school each year, and about one-third choose to go to college, according to a 2015 study by the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute.
But the special education services legally mandated for those students end at high school graduation, and only 58 percent ...

A new medical school under construction in Georgia may help address an ongoing shortage of medical practitioners in rural areas, a problem under scrutiny by the healthcare profession, medical schools, and the federal government.
There are 271.6 active physicians in the United States per 100,000 residents, ranging from a high of 443.5 in Massachusetts to a national low of 186.1 in Mississippi. Georgia ranked 39th out of the 50 states, with 225.2 doctors per 100,000. But the study did not examine the difference between rural and urban areas, which can be significant.

At least 37 teenagers have died by suicide in the metro-east since 2006, including Emily’s childhood friend — an average of three suicides each year, according to local coroners.

(This article won first place in the Illinois Press Association Awards for community service journalism, shared with co-author Lexi Cortes.)

There are hundreds of columns and editorials out in the world condemning the slaughter of five journalists at a newsroom just like mine, less than two weeks after it happened. The columns appeared within hours, tweets and posts and laments. There’s a reason. Words are our lifeblood and our solace. We may be working out our collective sadness and fury in words for some time to come.
I honestly feel this is the closest we journalists will come to understanding how police officers feel when they...

Headlines from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day will soon be part of the library collection at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, after a family donated scrapbooks from World War II newspapers to the museum — the news as the first rough draft of history.

Dorris William Wilton, of Alton, was a manufacturing executive with McDonnell’s aircraft division while his son, Dorris Wilbur Wilton, served with the U.S. Army in north Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II. While his son served overse...